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You are on the verge of killing people. We have to send you to Montana to go fly fishing. Good morning, degenerate anglers, welcome to the podcast that believes Congress would get a whole lot more done if representatives from different parties were forced to fish together at least one day a month, preferably, I say, on a head boat out of Brooklyn, Miami or Galveston, Texas.

I'm Somali.

I'm Miles Nulty, and I am a hundred percent convinced of that statement. Miles proves this statement 100 hundred percent.

No, and I've taken I have taken hundreds, maybe thousands. I don't know. I've lost count. I've taken lots of people, strangers fishing. Yeah. In the course of my life. You got didn't. Yeah. I didn't always agree with them. I didn't. Those did along with them frankly. I didn't always like them.

But no matter what was going on, no matter what kinds of things they said or we disagreed upon, we were always able to find common ground in the sense that we all had the same goal of catching fish. And we could put some of the other things aside and at least agree on that. One hundred percent, 100 percent. And the theme for this week's show on that note is bringing people together. And to be fair, that's kind of the theme of the show all the time.

Yeah, I think we I hope we established that by now, but we're going to lean into that extra hard today because after recently being told I was essentially a dirt bag for using trout magnets on a fly rod, I think we could all use a little more focus on what connects us so that someone actually gets in so many words.

Vadum I was called a piece of shit for using or promoting the use of trout magnets on a fly rod.

So I hope whoever sent that message is listening right now, because I'm going to say this. Send me some.

Oh, wait, there's a box. It's packaged. It's got the packing tape on it. We've talked in the show about our reluctance to go to the post office. I just need to get my ass to the post office. We're going to make your trout fishing dirty in 2020.

Send it send it to justice as long as I have them. You know, ahead of the spring fishing bonanza on the matter, I want to be seen on the Madison River tying trout magnet's on to the end of my fly rod and casting him out there proudly.

I'll see if I can get your trout magnet hat, too, so you can just go the whole route or I'll do a trout magnet jersey.

I'll do it. And and I don't mean that in the sense of trying to divide people further. I mean that in the sense of like let's all get over ourselves and come together on how we're united.

I think I think I speak for Joe and myself when I say that we still believe fishing is one of the few places where people who disagree on just about everything else can find common ground.

No, I hate just about everything.

Lance V stands for that cloud, but I'd still fish with the guy.

And you know what? I'm pretty sure I'd have a good time doing it. Oh, I'd have a tremendous time, if only because I'd spend the entire day just backhandedly making fun of them. But look, on that note, right, let's kick the tires and light the fires on a show. We're striving to make extra diverse in terms of guests information and our special brand of self deprecation. And we're going to start with our Covering Water segment featuring someone I've actually shared a boat with, had a great time with, though, not because of the fishing, because I never wet a line that day.

But it was magical because I had a front row seat to competitive bass angling like no other.

Taking his licks on Bent today. Maybe I could say this.

The one and only Mike I.

Kanelli, I'm going in. Come on before I can hold it no more. Today on Covering Water, we've got a guy I'd call sort of an up and comer in the fishing scene. My notes say his name is Mike I Kanelli. Mike, tell us who you are and what you do. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm totally kidding. I'm kidding. I had an answer for you. I'm totally Mike, I can tell you.

You're on the air. You're listening to the very wrong podcast. But, dude, we are so pumped and thankful to have you on the show, man.

And considering we're both Jersey guys, it's taking way too long for us to collab, as the kids say, on something. In fact, the only time you and I have ever hung out is when I rode with you on day one of the elite tourney on the Delaware many years ago.

Yeah, yeah. And I was always a little bumps. I feel like I was there for the tough day. And then in the following days, you just utterly dominated. Yeah, but I heard you were a bad luck charm, Joe.

That's what I heard. That's not. I've been I've been known to be. But that day comes up often. People always like tell me about that day. And I'm like, oh, well, it's the only time in my life I was ever on a boat that for a brief time was straight vertical.

So that that was that was my takeaway from that. I just saw the trolling motor under the belly of a 747. Yeah. In the Philly airport. Yeah.

But yeah, man, that was I'm glad we got to do that.

And that was that was a while ago to me too. I'm actually glad you were there for the first day. You know, tournaments like that are one on the tough day, on the day where you're struggling and trying to figure it out there. The day is you win, you know, the other day, as were gravy, you know. So I mean, you know, I think catching five that day, putting that weight in the boat, you know, I had I had a missed opportunity that day.

I remember I broke one off. You know, that's the day that defined the week for me, not the days, you know, where I caught them easier, you know? So, yeah. I'm glad you were with me that day.

No, dude, I got there was a great hug I got when you caught five.

I remember that also. I also lost I also lost one of my favorite hats that day. But I thought it inappropriate because you were working and stuff to be like, hey, Mike, could you spin around and grab my hat? So technically, you kind of owe me a hat.

OK, anyway, I've got one on your way and I've donated many to the River Gods of the Delaware River over the years myself.

So I'm kind of kidding because I don't think since I've been in the industry, I've ever paid for a hat. They're all free hats anyway, so. That's right.

You know, so. All right.

So we will move on here and here. Here's what we do in covering water.

Instead of conducting a well thought out sort of proper interview, I put two minutes on the clock and Miles and I rapid fire questions at you. And the goal here is to get through as many as we can in two minutes, which means you can't think too long. You just you just have to react in this one.

It's kind of like a like a verbal Rorschach test. And as a prior guest on Uncovering Water, one said, oh, so it's two minutes to end my career, which, you know, depending on how you said.

So I go in in the spirit of fairness.

Right. We will give you one minute to expand and elaborate on whichever answer you think was the most damaging at the end of the two minutes. Oh, I like that.

OK, that all sound good. That sounds great. OK, all right. So I'm going to put two minutes on the clock here and here we go.

Miles, are you ready? I'm ready. You're leading, right? I am leading. All right. Here we go. Snakeheads. Yes, please. Or no thanks. Yes, please.

Absolutely. Snakeheads do not get the credit they deserve. They're not bad for the population of largemouth smallmouth bass. I love snakeheads, my man.

Most revolutionary lure ever invented us.

You know, in my business in bass fishing, I'm going to have to say the plastic worm, it kind of all started from that bait to where it is now. The madness has begun with the plastic worm korkor.

OK, which major U.S. metropolis has the best fishing boy? You know, there's a lot, but I'm right here next to Philly, so I got to go Philly. I'm going to Philadelphia. I'm going to school. Yeah, nice. Which is worse. Zebra mussels or Eurasian kilfoyle.

Oh I they're both. I'm going to get in trouble for this. I love them both. I love exotics. I love, you know, in some states they try to make it clean your boat. I never do that. I love it. I'll transport mussels and kilfoyle all over the country. Man they're neither of them are bad. They're both really great.

Oh man. I love that. Oh, yeah. See, that's the one that ruined my career. So I'll go back and talk about the opportunities. OK, all right.

All right, all right. Corne, Slipknot or Rammstein.

Oh man. I'm going to have to go Slipknot Licorne as well, but I'm going to have to go Slipknot all the way.

OK, follow up. Biggie, Tupac, Eminem or Outkast. Who just I got to go big, you know, begin to talk. There's always a battle between the two, but you got to stay on the East Coast.

Who is the greatest angler of all time men? Big debate there. There's been four years. I'm still voting for Rick Klein. You know, I'm saying Rick Klein from a standpoint of what he's accomplished, in my opinion, he's the first guy that really was the thinking man of bass fishing. So I'm going to recline.

OK, most shameful thing you've ever done in a tournament. Oh, boy.

Well, that's that's one I don't have. I'll eat up all the two minutes.

Got to be almost out of the two minutes. I'm letting it go because we're having a little fun.

OK, pooped in a duck blind with a camera guy watching me. Yes. What is. I can't even keep going. What is the most underutilized Basler of all time?

Most underutilized. Bessler. Jigen Spoon.

OK, how many turns in a clinch?

Not mine. I would say six to eight depending on the line size, but six eight. OK, the best cheesesteak in Philadelphia is made by.

Oh man. You know, it's funny because Gino's and Pats gets all the attention, but I'm gone. Tony, Luke's there.

I love that biggest mistake the average best angler makes.

The biggest mistake would be not throwing deep enough into the cover, not making the cast. That is the impossible task to make.

OK, if you're not chasing Bass, you'd prefer to be chasing anything.

Swimming in saltwater for salty. I like lady fish there. Anything that had minnows on miles one. OK, gas station burrito or coffee shop panini.

I'm gone. I'm gone. Bad bottom of the barrel. Gas station food all the way. The junky, greasy, dirty.

Give me the gas station food that was. I am so glad you went Tony because I was like man, if he says Gino's, his social media numbers are just going to plummet over that answer.

No, I don't. I don't want to just say what everybody else says. I'm going to go a little different on that one.

I struggle, though, with the roast pork Italian or the cheese steak at Tony. Is that I'd agree with that. You know, roast pork is just as good as the cheese that especially at St. Luke's. The broccoli. Rob, come on, man. There's so many choices. Yep. Yep.

All right, man. So you've got one minute give or take, will say, to elaborate on any one of those answers.

OK, I do want to elaborate probably on the Eurasian GUILFOILE. Zebra mussels and snakeheads probably all fall maybe into the same category. Know they're exotics, they're invasive and, you know, but there are good things that come out of those things. And so, you know, from a snakehead perspective, what a great game fish. You know, they thought it was the devil. They thought it was the end of the world here all these years later.

It's an amazing game, fish. It's a great fighter. And, you know, sort of the same thing with the other two, you know, Eurasian guilfoile, although for homeowners and maybe water skiers and that segment is the single best form of cover vegetation cover for largemouth bass. It makes the life, the life of the system increased two fold up. Chesapeake Bay is a great example. We had a hurricane come through in the eighties, wiped out all the grass.

It wiped out all the fish. Eurasian Guilfoile all these years later came back in full force. It's twenty square miles of Eurasian. GUILFOILE And why do you think it's the best bass fishery in the northeast right now? So zebra mussels, I'd have to give it the same nod came over and ballast water. But wow, has it really shaped and changed the smallmouth bass fishery and some of the Great Lakes and river systems it's gotten into? It's made the water cleaner.

It's it's just it it has diversified the fishery. There were never twenty to thirty pound bags of small amounts available, hardly anywhere in the United States. And since the zebra mussels, it's commonplace. So long live the exotics. Oh, my goodness.

I wish we had a whole show to talk about. We were going to go back to the city, too. Yeah, I know. Because I am a snake, that fantastic snake head fanatic. So to hear you say that, chase him all the time around here. Yeah. So that's that's cool. But anyway, look, hopefully we didn't ask you anything too insulting and you'll agree to come back on Bent again in the future. In the meantime, if you don't already follow Mike, you need to because the amount of valuable fishing information that this guy produces weekly is staggering on YouTube.

You've got going like Ike in the shop, fish my city. It's all rock star. And we appreciate you hanging out with so much, man. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

As awesome as that was, I'm 100 percent positive we're going to hear about the invasive species. Love that, Mike. Just I just have a hunch I have got that. That was interesting. One of those moments where I wish we had a longer format interview show. I mean, I usually feel that way, but right now I do so that we could we could dig into topics like that one when they come up. But, you know, that would just make us like every other fishing podcast out there.

And that's not what we're trying to do. But I think we need to chop this up at least a little bit. We can't just drop that and walk away. Snakeheads, I get right. They're not destroying native fisheries and the way everyone expected, they found their own little niches and ecosystems. And as you and Mike and everyone else tells me, they're great sport fish.

So I get that. But male zebra mussels, like, do you know how much money and effort the state of Montana puts out every year to try and keep zebra mussels out of the waterways? I don't have that figure at hand, but it's a lot I was gonna say.

I'll take your word for it. I don't I don't know. But I believe you. Yeah, I don't either. But I know it's a lot. I know that they added a new, like, invasive species stamp to our our fishing licenses a couple of years ago just to pay for it was costing so much.

I mean, seeing zebra mussels are beneficial that borders on like conservation, treason, man. Like, yeah. If it were anyone else, I'll say this.

If, in my opinion, for anyone else making that claim, I'd probably call bullshit.

But Mike, I respect and I feel like I feel like I need to do more research on this and follow up with a Fish News segment on Millfield Mussels. And depending on what I find, I don't know, maybe we can bring back for a quick debate or something. I'm like, my gears are turning on this one, though.

I'd be totally down for that. And I get it. And it's a great debate because we've talked on this show about how many anglers feel zebra mussels essentially save the Great Lakes, you know what I mean? Like, there's two sides to every story anyway. Starting up a debate segment then style could be very interesting and a fun edition of the show, but I feel like we might be starting to go overboard with new new segment ideas.

The we might the show's only so long. You know, we just you know.

I know I know these like we are not short on ideas every time we're talking like, oh, we got to do this thing. Just because we have the ideas doesn't make them good ideas. But we've got ideas. No, they're not all good ideas.

Some of them are terrible. I'm just thinking back to the earlier days here, like the time you tried to convince me we should do a segment where we surprise anglers on the water by just throwing a mic in their face and going, hey, man, what you catch?

You dip. That was not a good idea. Like that's you can't do that shit.

But I where I live anyway, just taps indeed on the shoulder with Mike and his female work. Yeah. You be down for that.

All right. All right. But if we're on the subject of bad ideas, how about the that one you want to do? We're like we combed social media looking for four comments that were complaining about spot burns, like, hey, man, you're blowing up a spot. And then we would blow those spot burns up is like some kind of weird public service announcement to let people know what waters were official in that.

I'll defend that through and through. That was a work in progress and is a fantastic idea.

We're going to call it burned is. But then we thought better of it anyway.

Look, the point is that sometimes we find ourselves having a conversation with somebody much smarter than ourselves and they give us a little nugget of wisdom that doesn't necessarily fit into the format of the show.

So, I mean, essentially, we don't know what to do with it. All right. So instead of trying to invent a new segment to fit the content, we just decided that sometimes we're going to give you these random stories or tips that come up when we're interviewing people for a regular segments, which I think is a good compromise.

Wasn't that long ago, we talked to Tom Rosenbauer, one of the most respected and knowledgeable fly fishing anglers out there. And and Tom, in case you don't know, host the author of his podcast. And he receives approximately fourteen thousand five hundred and twenty seven stupid questions a year by my math. And the three of us got to talking about how most anglers like the just ask the wrong questions. Yeah.

Questions like what are the fish biting on or where are the big fish? Might seem like good things to ask anglers who know more than you, but they're not. They're actually dumb questions. Right?

The answers to those questions are true for a few hours, maybe a day or two. Right. A week at most. So if you really want to learn long term, useful knowledge from smart people, you need to work on your question asking skills. And that's exactly what Tom is going to explain.

He's a fish taco shaped like other fish. That's the goal.

And today we are we are very fortunate indeed. Mr. Tom Rosenbauer of Orvis has agreed to talk to us.

I'm I'm not totally sure why he agreed to talk to us, but we are extremely grateful. And and before I actually let Tom talk, which I will do in a minute, I have to say that Tom and I used to often run into each other at the fishing shows, and I always enjoyed the time I got spent with him, partially because he's just good due to talk to, but mostly because he is the only. Person I know who makes his own chocolate.

Let me tell you, Tom, you make some damn damn fine chocolate and if you ever get sick of being a fly-Fishing celebrity, I see a future for you as a successful chocolatier.

I, too, have had the chocolate, and it's legendary. There's no there's no future in. You think writing fishing books does. Oh, I know that. Yeah. Yeah, we all know that. Right. Try making chocolate for a living.

But we didn't actually bring you to talk about chocolate. We want to hear about stupid questions and smart questions. So please, if you got some examples of questions you wish people would stop asking as well, some examples of questions you wish they would ask more often.

Let us know. I've got lots of them. I believe that as I answered podcasts questions, there are lots of one of the one of the worst is I'm going to Hot Creek in California next week.

What flies should I use?

And a guy who lives in Vermont and they're serious. They want to know. They want to know. They want me to be their Google machine, because that's what I do. Right. And that's what I tell them.

So that one is that one is is really annoying because I can't help them. Yeah. Another one is what's your favorite fly or what's your favorite fish. It doesn't matter what my favorite fly is for most of these people unless they're fishing right alongside me. And as far as my favorite fish is concerned, you know, we all have we all have these we all have these desires. And, you know, we get what we want out of fly fishing.

My favorite fish might be pretty boring for for other people. So those those two or three are probably the worst.

And I feel like the Flavor Flav question is really just trying to get at. I don't want to have to get a bunch of lies. So can you tell me, like, the one that will solve all my problems right here? That's just not that's not a thing. Yeah. Yeah. So what are examples, you know, one or two examples of questions that you wish people would ask more often and why?

Well, you know, the best questions are the ones with specificity. So somebody says, you know, I was I was on a stream. The water temperature was fifty five degrees. There were caterson mayflies hatching and I was using a five x dip it and now Kocabas and I couldn't get a bite. What do you think I was doing wrong? You know, when they give you those specifics, then you can help them or something like, you know, I just remember one that I have to answer on a podcast later today where I was fishing six weeks Tippett with bluegill bugs, and he said his clenched teeth weren't holding.

And, you know, he tried to tried and even the improved clincher didn't hold. And, you know, that's a that's a that's a great one because, you know, you know exactly what he was doing wrong. He was trying to put a really fine tip into a heavy wire hook. And Lynch not needs, you know, can't go around that big diameter. So, you know, the more specific they get with their questions, the better.

My answer could be.

And I think that that's applicable. You know, obviously that's applicable with you and the questions you get in your podcast.

But I think that someone that folks can take any time, they ask anyone at a whether it's a flash opera beach chopper with a guide or an outfit or just a buddy who knows more than you, make sure that you're paying attention to enough variables to be able to get your question answered effectively.

Don't just say I was there and I wasn't catching fish. What did I do wrong? Yeah.

Yeah, there's so many variables. There's so many variables. Another annoying one is that I took three fish and I lost two. What was I doing? One, the fish get unbuttoned and people and it seems like to me it seems like in some days more fish in a unbutton than others. And I have no idea why, even with sharp hooks and good hooks, sets and everything.

So I don't think anyone can get to that particular point. I lose all those fish.

I don't know, maybe they beat you. Maybe you suck at it. Yeah. Either way, Tom, we really appreciate you can't we can say that on the show. Thank you. Yeah. But we really do appreciate you.

You debasing yourself enough to come and chat with us here on the show. And we hope to see you again soon.

Thanks, Miles. Thanks, Joe. You know, learning to ask good questions is one of the best skills you can have, because the truth is that every good angler takes as much knowledge as possible from other people. Oh, say shamelessly steal. Yeah.

Yeah. And learning how to ask good questions is a lot like learning how to do anything well and fishing. Pay attention to the details. Be aware of what's going on around you. You know, situational awareness.

As a captain, I learned from back in the day I used to beat into our heads, cultivate the habit of noticing everything for the record, for whatever it's worth, I could not agree more with Tom.

And in the interest of increasing your awareness of all the things going around you that are at least tangentially fish related, it's time.

Fish News. That escalated quickly again and start off with a little housekeeping and and this one is a bit of a correction for me. On the Christmas episode, I talked about using old Christmas trees as fish habitat and that that definitely got some reaction. I heard from the people on that one, got some notes. So. So first, a listener named Caleb who didn't want to give his last name because he doesn't want to listen to us butcher it, that that's a quote.

And also happens to be an arborist pointed out that I mistakenly called Christmas trees pine trees. Oh, yeah, I read this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he wrote, While there may be some people somewhere that use pine trees as Christmas trees, the traditional tree sold pretty much everywhere is a Douglas fir. And and if any of you out there are wondering what the issue is here, this is valid. Pine trees are not fir trees. They are both conifers, but they are not the same. And and I will own that one. That was a rookie mistake on my part.

And Caleb, I appreciate that correction. Thank you. Also, Justin Walters, who works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, wrote, I just wanted to give you a short fisheries biologists perspective on Christmas tree brush piles here in the Midwest. A lot of our reservoirs are aging and the quality of fish habitat is gradually declining. These reefs offer a little help. I do agree they don't last as long as hardwood, but they're easy to come by.

Our angling community, along with other outdoor enthusiasts, love to help our agency by providing the trees we use every year. It makes them feel a connection to the resource more than just buying a license. As far as how the fishing is on them, it's seasonal, but it can be amazing. Hopefully, some fellow listeners contact their local fisheries managers to see if there are doing a collection this year. So there you go. If you are one of those lazy asses whose tree is still desiccating in the corner your living room, call your local agency, see if you can turn that fire hazard into fish habitat at the time of this recorded in mind, still on the front lawn and it is blown over.

It's all like dried out and spindly now and it's like blown over onto my neighbor's lawn five times.

They love you. I do appreciate the first guy, though. Just not giving. The last name is somebody whose last name is never pronounced correctly. Not once, not ever. Schmiel Komal Chameli sermo.

So I take I'm looking at you and you know what you brought it up.

It's time to acknowledge the fact the film is not mispronounces my name every single week. Yeah. Yeah it's Nalty.

Felt sorry we had to do that but they're ok. All right. So I've got, I've got one very quick but important shout out. I have to give to listener John Mert's who sent me a totally bad ass handmaid spiring decoy featuring the bent logo, which is appropriate because we've just done a bunch of spiring decoy stuff. Yeah, yeah I did. Ryan ibut another listener, his his decoys on the Instagram and we had a news story about the, the DQ that sold for a lot of money.

So John sent this to me and it's a it's a pike shape and it's blue and it's super rad. And some of you may have actually seen it on my Instagram page, but the personal touch that really resonated with me is the Misfits fiends skull on its back.

And I feel like I have this thing going where people are like, hey, if you want somebody to be in your shit, a misfits go on and they're not wrong.

They're not wrong. They're not like you could give me an ironing board or a dust pan.

If it's got a misfit skull on it, I'll think it's just the most dope thing anyway. John, thanks again. And while I'm not sure if you've gotten yours yet, I believe I told you he sent some Deeks out to Bozeman for you.

Haven't gotten there, but there's more than an eye out. I'm looking forward to it.

There's more Couston decoys out your way, and I'm sure they are killer, too. So that's it. It's hard to give a shout out to John. We can move on the news here. And as a reminder, Miles, and I don't know which news stories the other gentleman is bringing to the table, this is a competition.

And Phil, who will hopefully say Nulty correctly for the first time in bent history, assuming you win and your last name gets red, will weigh in when we're done and declare a news.

Victor, you are leading off this week. So what do you got? Yeah, I've been on a cold streak.

So so, Phil, I hope you're listening. Listening carefully, Miles Nulty too much. Listen to them bringing the heat.

All right. So I'm leading off this week with something just a little different because I found the story. It's not new, but I think it's really interesting. And you'll you'll see why. And it also it relates to something that you covered last week, Joe. And a quick recap. You told a story about a pair of catfish caught in Louisiana that had a whole family of ducks in their bellies. Yep. Yep.

So I was I was Googling around. I was trying to find pictures of that story because you and I had been talking about, like, what kind of ducks they were.

And I said, well, it can't be right. And and you said, I'll send you the photos, which you never did. I'm over it. But I didn't actually in the Googling I didn't find and. Photos of that story, but I got sidetracked, I didn't look that far because I found this other article that that I'm now going to share.

This one comes from The Independent. It's an online British news publication. And and this was actually published last March. But again, I think it's still worthy of of of covering the headline reads Fish Caught Eating Ducks at Essex Shopping Center. Lake was removed because it, quote, upset children. And and not surprisingly, this story got picked up in a number of different UK news outlets, everything from the BBC to the Sun, like the whole the whole gambit.

There's a mall in Essex, which is an area north of of London. And that mall Borders Alake. The mall is creatively named Lakeside Shopping Centre, really thinking outside the box there. Now, when I think of mall ponds, I think of these like really tiny bodies of water.

But this one is it's it's big, like it's pretty significant.

And it's got all kinds of fish in it, like pike perch, roach and invasive or planted wells, catfish. So last spring, someone unidentified, someone complained to the Environmental Agency about a fish eating ducks in front of innocent children. The agency then sent officers to the lake who caught a twenty five pound catfish, which is not a very big wells note, and then relocated it to another lake. Ben Norrington, one of the fisheries officers involved, told reporters large fish have the potential to eat wildfowl, so we're pleased we could remove it.

And invasive species like the well's catfish pose a serious threat to native wildlife. Norrington was also quoted as saying, It's not great for kids to see these large fish eating ducks. So we removed the catfish. Again, the cavefish was not killed, but safely relocated to a different private fishing lake, and at first I got to say the story just didn't make any sense to me. Like, I was like, what is going on here? And let me explain why I'm so confused.

No. One, I completely disagree. With the with Mr Norrington there, I think that's great. Had I been a young boy, like if I was a young kid and I'm at the mall hanging out with my friends or my parents and I see a duck get munched by a fish do that would have made my year. I'm right there with you.

If I was out in the wild and this was happening for my kids, I'd be like, look, kids, it's a mess. This is eating us ducks. You never see that again in your whole life. Like, OK, if I was OK. Oh, that. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd be super pumped.

And second of all, I would be begging my parents to take me there every week with or without fishing gear, like I would have loved it. All right. That's number one second.

Like, I couldn't figure out how this made any sense from a conservation perspective. Right. The stated goal there was that they're trying to protect native birds from this marauding rogue catfish.

Right. How does relocating it solve the problem? Yep. Moving the fish to a different lake. Does like does that other lake not have birds? Do they not fly? I don't think that's true.

Well, unless and I don't know if you know the answer to this, but I mean, there's a lot of private water in Great Britain. Yes.

A lot of private lakes pay lakes, you know, and that's where there's not all this. Yeah.

My guess would be that somebody who was, like, really pumped about having a wells catfish put that in a private lake.

So my next quote comes from Tony Wignall, the guy who owns the lake where the supposed problem, catfish, got relocated.

Tony, my man Tony told the Anglers Male, which is it's one of the top fishing publications in the U.K. He told them, I'm sure there must be bigger cats at Lakeside, as I doubt the one removed could have been quite big enough to have taken a duck. So even the guy who scored and got the free catfish out of this, he doesn't think that the fish they caught and relocated was even the fish that was involved in the mornings. Right.

He doesn't think it had anything to do with it. I mean, he was happy to take the fish and put it in his private lake. But like, again, if the goal here is you're trying to protect native ducks or other wildfowl, it seems pretty clear that this isn't the solution. Right.

So I'm I'm scratching my head on this. I'm trying to figure out. And then I found a photo that I think ties the whole thing together and the photos of bin Norrington and the other fisheries biologist who went to deal with the situation, a guy named Tom Beard. And in this other photo, they're collectively gripping and grinning with a big pike. From that same day and to be the photo actually looks a lot like that when we roasted from like Mazzini, like they're kind of close.

So here's what I realized.

These officers were actually fishing, like with a rod in line to remove this problem, catfish.

And they were clearly having a really good time. And that's the moment when, like, I was like, oh, I get what's going on here.

So, all right, hear me out. Here's what I think happened. Some sensitive suburban parent takes their spawn out for a spring shopping trip on their way to the mall. They stop for a quick look out across the lake and they see some ducks majestically paddling around.

Just then, one of the beautiful ducks gets murdered, said parent is incensed that they have to suffer such trauma when just trying to, you know, buy some stuff at the mall. I mean, this is a mall, not a nature documentary, right? So they can't plan it. No.

Those you get little warnings on those. So they call the Environmental Agency to complain. And a couple of fisheries officers are sitting in their cubicles and they see an opportunity. They can placate this concerned citizen and use the whole thing as an excuse to go fishing on the clock. And that is at the mall, at the mall pond. Maybe you're not even allowed to fish.

And the whole thing sort of worked out, except the media got a hold of it. Right. And a bunch of reporters showed up. And at that point, the officers, like, they had to produce a catfish to hold up for the cameras so they can claim, like we got it, the threat has been neutralized. Everything's fine. But then but then hold up. If they were then to kill the fish, then they'd catch hell from some animal rights group.

So they had to find a private pond where they could give the fish a new home and then they had to spend some got a halfway plausible story to make the whole thing seem legit. That's my guess about how all this came together.

Well, OK, refresh my memory, because that was a long story. Did the concerned parent actually witness a catfish eating the ducks or the ducks were just disappearing? No catfish, no ducks. Yes.

OK, so it wasn't a mistaken identity. It wasn't the giant pike in there eating the ducks. It was catfish.

Well, I mean, I'm not going to say that these people have the capacity to identify a fish, by the way. Well, that's true.

We've done stories about people that couldn't identify a giant sunfish ocean, some fish in here before. So, no, I ask that because, you know, you tied this to that story we had last week about the two blue cats. You said it was a twenty five pound wells. It was only a twenty five pound blue cat, which is a much, much smaller mouth then. I mean, wells have massive amounts.

But I looked at I mean, I saw pictures of fish. It would be a stretch to get a full grown duck in there. I mean, it could happen, but be a stretch. Yeah.

I'm surprised that the guy who now owns the catfish doesn't think that was Pied Piper. Like, I need more now. I'll take them all, take every single one of them.

I mean, that's exactly what he was saying. He was like, I don't think you guys solve any problems, but if you want to give me free catfish, bring them on over.

Well, I think it goes without saying you have never in the history of this podcast giving me an easier transition because we're going to go from invasive catfish in the UK to invasive catfish right here in the USA.

Nice. How about that? Furthermore, we're going to talk flathead catfish, which are like super similar to wells.

They're like damn near Harwell's catfish. So this one's this one's kind of sort of local to me and of interest to me personally. And it's from the website of CBS Baltimore headlined Cecil County Man earns first ever Maryland state fishing record for invasive flathead catfish. And this went down right after Christmas, December 27th.

Angler Joshua Dixon hauled in this fifty seven pound fifty inch flathead while fishing from shore on the Susquehanna River near a boat ramp just north of the city of Havva to Grace.

And he says it took him thirty minutes to reel this fish in and he hooked it on, as the story says, zoom swim bait.

And I'm just going to assume that's my all time favorite zoom fluke is what they're actually talking about there now. Seems legit. It's powerful law.

But what that also tells me, regardless of the bait model, is he was not using tackle meant for a 57 pound flathead.

Right. So that's impressive right there. And he even says in the story for the first for the first bit of the fight, he just thought he was snagged in a tree.

So I can picture like the dude, you know, it's like walking backwards with your rod behind you, just pulling straight, going, wow.

Yeah, exactly.

Point and Poppit trying to get unstuck and all all of a sudden this beastmaster just goes ballistic and he fights it for a half hour. But here is what's fascinating to me. As long as the Susquehanna is right, there's really not that much of it in Maryland and of the roughly 25 miles that are in Maryland, about half of them are below the Conowingo Dam, which is the first of several major dams going up the Susquehanna.

So where Dixon caught this fish is basically the last little bit of river before it dumps into the Chesapeake Bay. It's essentially the mouth of the river.

And according to this story, for a flathead to qualify as a state record, it had to weigh a minimum of 40 pounds.

And the Susquehanna dude, I know it's rife with flatheads. They're invasive, huge problem. And in fact, one of the craziest nights of fishing of my life was on the Susquehanna a few falls ago.

We literally could not get four rods in the water for hours.

And I don't think we caught a fish under 20 pounds and I think we had to over 40 pounds.

And this was this is 50 miles upriver from where Dixon caught the fish and also behind several major dams.

So, you know, 40 pounder in the river in general is not that uncommon. But I find it interesting that nobody until now has weighed in a 40 plus pounder in Maryland waters. Right. And it doesn't mean they haven't been caught. There could just mean that nobody's weighed one in there.

And I might hear otherwise from listeners, but I have not heard of the waters below that last dam.

The mouth of the river being a flathead hotspot like stretches are upstream, you know, which it just makes you wonder, was this tank one that sort of slipped over the dam years ago? And it's just been sitting, you know, getting fat in the tidal zone or there more of these invasive in this part of the river than people realize.

And to me, it caught my attention because it's one of those stories that kind of tweaks the curiosity, like those old folk tales of like a giant catfish or gar bass lives below the dam and like somebody saw it once, you know, but nobody can ever catch it.

Or you often hear that while there aren't maybe many of a particular species title sections of a river, the ones that are there really massive, which makes them even even more mysterious and elusive. Do we see that here? We have the Passaic in Jersey. They say there's massive pike in the tidal section, but nobody's down there targeting them. So, you know, nobody really knows. And a final like final note on this.

People catch loads of flatheads on swim boats out here. I have friends that just like knock them dead in the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Google. And it has never happened to me. And I want it to know. I'm saying, like, every time I'm hucking smallmouth lures in flathead water, I'm hoping it happens. Yet it never has. And this dude throws the old zoom in in the middle of the winter from shore at a boat ramp in the tide zone and smacks of fifty seven.

So good job for like for like walleye or something. I don't know what he was fishing for.

I don't remember because I read this story. I thought. I thought. I thought. I read that. I don't know if they're well I've never fished there so I don't know if they're in there.

Well I mean no, there's plenty of walleye in the Susquehanna. But again, look, if you look at where he is, it's I wouldn't even think that would be a great walleye zone.

We have walleye on the Delaware here, but you don't hear many people targeting them once you get down past the tide line. What I mean, like the whole makeup of the river changes.

No, it could be I could be totally wrong about that. But my memory of it was like I was I was walleye fishing with my with Mazumdar.

Yeah. Bam. Yeah.

But I'm shocked knowing how many fish are in there, even with not that much Susquehanna in Maryland, that there was no state record on the books.

I mean, this is not a new thing. I mean, like there have been giant flatheads in that river for a long time now.

So that was when I saw this story. That was the piece that I was like, oh, not only is this like they didn't didn't break a record, he created a record. And that just doesn't happen anymore. And and I was like, wow, that's a really interesting angle and a cool story, but I had nothing else to say about it.

So I'm glad you picked it up, because you have you actually know that fishery and you actually have some things that you can round this out and turn into a whole story.

All I had was like, well, that's cool, but yeah.

But the part that I'm doing the same thing, I just like, you know, filled it with more where I basically just did what you did. I just think it's cool.

And I just talked about along. I want to I want to back up on because you said, like they say, that they're flatheads over here, but nobody knows. They say they're big pyken, lower persay, but nobody really knows. Don't they do shocking surveys?

No, not not of not of the Passaic.

They don't they know the I can't I can't speak of, you know, for for all the fisheries that would would tie into that. But, you know, it's obviously it's a very East Coast thing. But it's true.

If you look at a lot of the major rivers that have tidal zones, you know, whatever their big thing is, flatheads Pike, you know, there's X amount that would naturally make it over the dam or go hang out in the lower tidal reaches. But because now you're in water where they're they're less easy to target because the rivers also tend to be wide. They're right.

Like where we're talking about where he caught this on the Susquehanna.

I mean. Damn, dude, it's almost a mile wide. Yeah, I mean, like, it's it's not a it's not like a little tiny little thing coming out.

So maybe in some places they do, but like, yeah, that's like a thing my whole life here, like even freshwater species that start to mingle in the brackish areas, it's like, oh man, there's some big ones in there. But Snakehead, same thing I've heard tales of, like you want a giant snakehead, you fish the brackish water down here. But yeah, it's so wide and there's so much of it's like where do you start?

It's much harder in those areas often to pinpoint, like where do I even begin. So it adds like a lot of mystery.

If you're a Tidal River guy, man, I'm really glad you did cover that.

And I thought that was me to answer this. Like, don't they don't they shock. But no, I guess that's no, that's something that happens here, but it doesn't happen everywhere.

And I make no assumption now about other other rivers or it's a possibility that a million people who target flatheads in that piece of the river are just going, yeah, damn, dude, shut up. Shut.

Oh, I hate you. Yeah. So sorry if that's the case as you are, we're we're making it worse.

All right, so for the second story, I'm going to talk about Grayling, so you and I have swapped Grayling stories in the past and and I know that we both agree that these are just they're beautiful and they're interesting fish for anybody who's anybody confused right now, Grayling are a cousin of trout and salmon that live in high latitude rivers and lakes across Europe and North America. They're found in Alaska, Siberia and parts of Canada.

And they were once very common in the upper Missouri River system, as well as various different places in Michigan. Like those are the kind of two places in the lower 48 they used to be. And they're shaped like a trout or a white fish. They've got that that same fin structure and cylindrical body. But Grayling and they have such a unique colouring, they're just they're iridescent. Yeah, right. They're like they're kind of like a gunmetal gray with with a purple sheen and the sparse black body and kind of black lines offsetting the whole thing.

But the physical attribute that really defines Grayling is their massive dorsal fin.

It just it raises way up off their backs and it's blue and green and purple and sometimes fringed red or orange.

They kind of looked like a cross between a mountain whitefish and a sailfish.

And if I had to if I had to describe them that way, if I, you know, give give examples, if you watched the Ferhat Ice tour on on the YouTube's, then you saw Carl catch one in episode two. And like I said, they used to be common in certain parts of lower 48, but now they're pretty much gone. Grayling haven't been in Michigan for over a century.

Back in the late 1980s, Grayling defined sportfishing in Michigan like anglers flocked to places like the upper bear market just to catch Grayling.

And we're not talking like 20 fish days. We're talking 200 fish days. Yeah, was loaded.

And yeah, which is kind of to say that grillings sort of fit the stereotype that many of us have about models.

Right. They're very attractive, but they're not known for for a dazzling intellect, shall we say.

Like. Well yeah. That's what's so great about them though.

I know. I know. And when I was guiding in Alaska because we had tons of them up there, like if you had clients that were just they just couldn't get it done, like they were totally inept, you'd go catch Grealy and it didn't matter. You could stand there just dragging a bear hook in the water and you'd catch Grayling if you're in the right spot.

And that that quality of them is part of what led to their downfall in Michigan, overharvested combined with habitat degradation from logging, and then the introduction of highly aggressive and competitive and rainbow and brown trout just wiped them out. And it happened fast, like they were everywhere and then they were gone. And again, we're talking well over a hundred years ago that this happened. And so people have been trying to re-establish grazing populations in Michigan since 1936 without any demonstrated success at all.

Yep, yep. Zero. And some people would argue it's time to give up like we gave it the old college try, and if we haven't figured out in 80 years, it's probably not going to happen.

But I am not one of those people. And and neither are the fisheries biologists who work and run the hatchery in Marquette, Michigan. They think they may have found a way to reintroduce these fish that might actually work. Like in the past, biologists would would they would just take Grayling of different sizes, like they played with different sized Grayling, just dump them in the rivers and hope they came back. Right. But then they wouldn't they just disappear.

And so the theory goes that Grayling imprint so strongly on the places where they hatch that they will not spawn anywhere else. Right. So if you raise a grayling in a hatchery, it doesn't matter to what size and then you put it in a stream. It just won't reproduce. It can't figure it out, right? Yeah, not that smart because it can never get back to the place where it was hatched. So it just doesn't. I have a question about that that you may address.

I may or may not. I may not have the answer.

Are they raising them in the water from the streams they're putting them in? Here we go. So the researchers are borrowing a technique that was actually pioneered here in Montana.

And I have some follow up. We have time for that. And so what they do is they place fertilized eggs in buckets, inside streams, and the buckets have holes cut in them in the up and downstream sides so the water can flow through and they have removable mesh to keep the eggs in and predators out. And once the eggs hatch, researchers pull out the mesh and the tiny fish swim out in the streams fully imprinted on their home river and is close to wild as hatchery fish can possibly get.

Now, it's going to be a few years before we know if this works because because they had to bring in Grayling from Alaska to start the brood stock in the hatchery. And so once they have a healthy and genetically diverse brood stock, then they'll collect eggs that are, you know, that are already fertilized and they'll plant them in wild streams and rivers and wait to see if those fish mature and start spawning on their own. So success like whether or not this works, it's it's a long way off.

But if it does work, like we're talking about reestablishing a game fish that's been gone since Grover Cleveland was in office, I mean, we can't really harken back to good old Grover very often now say, oh, we're going to get back to those days. So, I mean, I don't know. But I'm hopeful on this one. I hope this one works. I really do.

I think it would be amazing. I, I love Grayling, right. In fact, the last time I fish from a couple of summers ago, I was up in Fairbanks and.

I asked the guy, I was like, can I throw a mouse the whole time, like, well, they eat that. And he was like, Yeah, yeah, and that's what I did.

And they will literally it doesn't really matter.

But so I interjected there with the water question.

I have to say, man, why is it taking this long to try this technique? And look, I'm not super well versed in the whole, but I knew that that was a thing that happened because I feel like that technique has been happening a lot of other places in the country for like decades.

That's just what you do.

I'm pretty sure it's it's relatively new. And I can only speak to that because an ex-girlfriend of mine, as part of her PhD work, was one of the people who first used that technique out here in Montana on the West Slope, cutthroat. And the reason that it hasn't been done is because it's incredibly, incredibly hard, like it requires a lot of work. It's one thing to just raise little fish in a hatchery, take them someplace and dump them in one way.

Yeah. In this, you've got to, like, set up these rearing stations up in high mountain streams or other places. You got to build them. You got to monitor them. You keep going back in there like it's a lot of work and you have to carry all that stuff depending on where you are sometimes like into the back country. So the reason why it's it hasn't been done before, I'm guessing, is because it's really expensive and really hard.

Yeah. Well, and again, that's my ignorance. Right? I thought that was a common thing. I don't know the ins and outs, but thinking back to it, I actually think we talked here once about me catching tiny Atlantic Salmon Smoltz in Connecticut. And I'm I'm fairly certain they did the same thing with that program. They tried to raise them in that water and that that didn't work out super hot either. So, I mean, I'd like to see this work, but how much does the sporting community benefit from it?

I feel like at this point it's just sort of us going like, oh, man, we really screwed that one up. They were always here, so we want to have them back.

But, you know, then what do we do with regulation on them?

Like up in Alaska, the first time I ever fish in Alaska, I caught one and I like treated it like gold and then found out by the end of the trip that, like, now there's so many of them, you can kill like 20 a day, like nobody. Nobody cares. Like they eat them and it's.

Oh yeah, they're delicious. Yeah. You can kill them really. You can't you can't kill the rainbows but you can kill Grayling in the Bay Area. Exactly.

So you know then then what do we do with them. Like, you know, do you think that they'll they'll be like a draw for that or is this just more to, to, to re-establish what was.

I think it's more of the latter. I think your question about like, does this benefit the sporting community? You're asking if the even the fishing community is is a monolith and in agreement. And the answer to that is no. Right. We aren't some people who like, screw it. I prefer brown trout and steelhead. I don't care if they're native. Put all your money into them. Right. And are those people wrong? I'm not gonna say they're wrong, but those fish didn't used to be there.

And one of the towns, too, right? Right. Exactly.

Like I said, I'm not going I'm not trying to wade into that particular argument like.

Well. Are we trying to go back to something that doesn't exist? I'm merely saying for me, I think this is an iconic and interesting fish. I hope this works. And unless they have another really good idea, maybe this should maybe we move on after this. I don't know.

But I can say that this technique has worked with with WestLB Cut-throat here in Montana.

So for whatever it's worth. Yeah. And we'll move on from it. But I mean, that's the other thing to it. A lot of these rivers that they're talking about in Michigan in particular, when those grayling were thriving, didn't have Pacific salmon and steelhead running up them either.

Yeah.

You know, so you also have to factor in that there's rivers ain't what they were in old Grovers or not?

No, I have not much of a transition other than I took a note here that you referred to them as gunmetal gray, which kind of transitions in a weird way.

And in this quirky one from the website of Live Science Dotcom, the headline sucked me right in and it is eight times nature was totally metal in twenty twenty.

Oh my gosh. Nature's metal has become part of the cultural conversation. An Instagram account has changed anyway. Good.

The funniest thing to me about this is that this this list actually in a way reflects just how shitty twenty was, because there are some really cool things in here that I don't recall hearing a peep about, probably because there was a lot more other Sukie less cool shit like clogging up the news all year.

But just to rattle off a few.

There was a dazzling show of lightning shooting out of a volcano in the Philippines, a species of cannibalistic dinosaur uncovered and the discovery of a fossil depicting a squid and a fish locked in a death match.

Right. I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So but the one that grabbed me, which I have no recollection of whatsoever, was slugged in the story. And it eel goes alien and we suck at our job is because this happened in Delaware just this past November and I don't remember seeing this at all. An amateur photographer captured this series of photos of a great blue heron with what they originally thought was a, quote, snake eel, which isn't a real thing.

And they figure that out later, too.

But they thought it was a snake eel biting and latched on to the bird's upper chest, lower neck region. And apparently this heron was flying and walking around completely unbothered by a pretty damn big eel dangling from its chest. While upon further study, it turned out to be an American eel duck because there's no such thing as a snake eel that had burst through the chest cavity of the bird.

In other words, what it looked like in the photo to me, OK, because the head was down. Right. Right. So they originally thought the head was grabbing the chest. It was attached by the tail. The head end was hanging down and it was stuck. And it looks exactly like a chest burster from the aliens, a TV movie franchise.

Right. And it seems the eel was dead.

And again, the bird was unfazed. There's a bunch of shots of this and no one is sure what happened to the bird. But I'd love to know the scenario because American eels, they don't exactly have teeth like a moray, but they do have teeth and they are very wily. So I wonder, like, did this heron grab the eel head first and did it, like, literally nibble a hole in its torso while being swallowed or did it exploit a small hole the bird already had from another injury?

This is actually a pretty big food item for a heron. I mean, it's a big deal. It's it's not tiny. But regardless, it's it's friggin disturbing.

Like, the shots are really disturbing.

So I'll throw a shot of that in today's insta story. But that's really that's all I got. I just I don't know how we missed that one.

And it's probably one of the most disturbing nature images I've ever seen.

Yeah, that shot is crazy. And I don't know how we missed either.

We do suck at our job, particularly since, you know, I, I did a bunch of coverage on American eel's, both on the show and on the website. And I love those things in the sense that I think they're just really interesting, although creepy and alien looking. So check that one out. And if anybody has the answer or figures out the answer to what did happen there, I really want to know.

Yeah, we have Christmas tree people who chime in, right? Yeah. We got to have some bird people, you know.

I mean, but how the heron is so unfazed as it seems to be, it's flying around. It's got a giant eagle hanging out of its neck.

Yeah. So Phil Jenelle's hanging out of necks. OK, what more fish eating ducks, scaring children.

Why? Why? When we come to the end of this evening, we'll just excuse me. I worked eating fish. That's right. Record catfish. We always come to the end the news.

And even though we've just done all this, I have a hard time recalling what the hell we just talked about. Phil, you were probably listening, though, so we'll hear what Phil has to say and then move on to another epic smooth moves. Miles, nobody like the NIC variety.

Wow, I got it, Miles, considering you say your own name at the top of every podcast and I have heard every podcast. This is the epitome of embarrassment.

You're one of my favorite colleagues. So I just want to say from the bottom of my heart that I apologize.

And guess what? You're the winner.

Now, if you're asking yourself if you really earned this or if it's just my way of saying sorry, don't worry about it. I don't know why. Why did you do it? Oh, my God.

Welcome back to Smooth Moves. It's the part of the show where we call up guides and outfitters and charter captains and, you know, people who make their living and earn their beer money, taking other people fishing. And we get them to tell us some kind of ridiculous story about something the clients have done.

Today, we have my good friend Hilary Hutchison, who I don't get to see very often except in these weird little fake zoom like spaces. But but one of these days, again, we will go fishing. Hillary, how's it going?

It's going great. I can't wait for that time. I would love to have you on the boat soon.

Oh, man. How how's your guide season?

It was weird. It was weird. It was great. Yeah, it was weird because in the beginning it was so bizarre. Like there were I think one day I had twenty three cancellations in one day in like April for June. So basically all of it was just canceled. Yeah. Because yeah, I'm up here at Glacier National Park and they had announced that the park wasn't going to open the time they thought it was going to open. So yeah.

Twenty three cancellations in one day and just like freaking out. But then suddenly everybody rediscovered the outdoors.

I guess he said, oh yeah, they sure have. So it like all filled like within the next day. So it was like super high and low, low and like super weird. So then from then on it's been every single day, all of June, July, August, September, October, it's been busier than ever. So super strange and just weird covid stuff all summer long, you know.

So I mean, that sounds like the perfect storm of different factors coming together to set you up for some strange occurrences, which is why you're here to tell us about one of the strange occurrences. So let's lay it on us. What do you got for the for the smooth move?

I don't know how long this trend has been going on forever and ever and ever, but it's a growing trend of having, like, these corporate execs get sent out to go fly fishing to somehow relieve a bunch of stress, like their board was like you are on the verge of killing people. We have to, like, send you to Montana. They go fly fishing and they think fishing is like something. It's going to chill them out or something that's going to make them calm.

I think they think of it as like some serene, peaceful kind of thing. Well, as everybody knows, like if you've never done this before and you're from like Manhattan and haven't been like out west at all, you're getting thrown to the wolves. This has been happening, you know, a fair amount, a lot where we get these people who are highly stressed. And I get this woman and she is the most amazing, remarkable woman of all time.

I mean, she is fabulous. She is like was a national merit scholar, Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford. She's like a Wall Street executives multimillionaire. She is like the consummate vanquisher. She is the ruler of all Wall Street. She's just this fantastic. And I am in awe. She's like only twenty eight years old. She's super fit. She's gorgeous, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. And she's got this, like, aura of just like ruling the world and also very nice.

She was very cool. She brought like this super high end bourbon for me. And she's like, you know, at one point she smoked a cigar and she was wrapped like she was the coolest, smartest millionaire, most fantastic person ever. And she was witty, funny. She caught on to fishing. She fished her ass off. She was fantastic in every way. And it was super weird because she's feeding me like, you know, this bourbon and she's like drinking cappuccino.

And she's like, and I'm drinking water. And I'm like, I got to pee. So I kept having to pull over, say, do you need potty break? She's like, No, I'm good. So I'd go off into the woods, go pee, come back. We go down the river. She's fishing. She's amazing. I'm in LA and there's like light shining all around her. And I'd be like, I got to pee and I'd pull over, get off the boat, go pee.

Do you have to be. Nope. She didn't have the whole time. And like that you don't even have to pee. She's drinking bourbon. She's drinking coffee. She's drinking water. Jump all day long. No pee from this woman. She's not peeing at all. And I'm like, amazing. So she must have been so dehydrated. Her body is absorbing all of the liquids as I'm getting off the boat every five minutes. So then and ended the trip and we get to take out and there is porta potty at the take out.

She finally gets off the boat, goes to the porta potty. And I was like, oh, she really held it all day long after drinking this whiskey, after drinking all this water, coffee, everything. I'm like super impressed. She's in. There were two seconds. She comes back with plastic grocery sack handed to me, asked me to throw it away. No big deal. We get to the company and she gets in her fancy car.

She gave me a giant tip. We exchanged information. I was just like, oh, my gosh, I love you. You're the best person ever. And then I go to clean up my trip and I'm taking out the trash and I see this, like, garbage bag she had given me to throw away. And I don't know why I can't just look the other way, but I had to look in the bag depends adult diaper all day long, way below the full list of full depends.

And this girl, she is my idol in every way. She was just the coolest chick ever. And all day long she was pissing her pants all day long. And here I am, a sucker like she had to be. She was. And I think I don't know if, like, there's a blog going out and like Manhattan outdoors or something like that. There was this hack, like, go out west, your pants, you know. But I have heard of this exact story almost exactly the same.

Or like some corporate exec comes out and they don't want to be in the woods. And that's they're hat. They're using adult diapers. And this is not to say that it is a bad thing to use the pen. You know, lots of people wear them. This was just so unexpected from this particular demographic that blew my mind, blew my mind.

She doesn't have an incontinence problem. This was a choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you think this was almost like a hack? Like there was a memo like for city folk going out there, like if you don't want to lower yourself to urinating in the woods.

Yeah. Throw on some pants. Right. Or if they're afraid of, you know, bears are like, how do you even do it. What what do you do? Like if that's just like, you know, a big mystery and something they don't want to have to deal with, you know, I mean, I was thinking the same thing like, well, that if I have to go to Manhattan and go on the subway, maybe I'll just wear depends like I don't I would rather I would rather wear depends.

Having worked in Manhattan for many years, I would much rather right where it depends than they use the restrooms at, say, Penn Station. That's what I'm talking in there. And I've seen some things. That's what I you don't you can't unsee that.

So and she's probably not expecting that I would look in there and I mean, this diaper was heavy, heavy. And I'm I don't I mean, because I really like this person. I'm not sure if it was number one or number two, but it made me think it made me think throughout the day. I'm like, maybe I thought she was laughing at my jokes. She was actually just taking a giant bowl. I feel like if we were going to turn that into an instructional.

It would have to be titled How to Soil Yourself with Class and Dignity. Thanks, soupçon crap, my pants. I love our low humor. Speaking of class dignity, try to salvage this one. Joe's going to going to close the gap here for us. Bring the show full circle back to those magnets. And and this one is by request to have that right?

Yes, it is. This is our first end of the line by listener request. And what prompted the dirt bag comment was a bunch of social media posts from earlier this winner of Trought right that I was catching on trought magnets, which I love. And I had an outpouring of requests for a Trought magnet and the line segment. And it seems many people are in the know on this law. Many others are magnet curious or have not harnessed their full power, such as Miles here.

So listen up, because I'm about to screw you on why the Trought magnet could be the glue that locks together the hands of fly and conventional trought bombs as they sing Heal the World.

They it's not loud enough, but. The trout magnet is the brainchild of Jeff Smith and Todd Garner, two buds from West Virginia that started tinkering with bait making in Jeff's garage in the 1990s, eventually forming the company Leland's laws. Now, during that tinkering, a pivotal piece of kit emerged a plastic mold designed to make cake decorations. It was Smith who figured out that he could also use this mold with soft plastic. And what he ended up creating was the earliest version of the trout magnet, which he'd spend the next few years refining into what many consider the most potent, versatile trout lure ever made.

Now it was unleashed upon the masses in nineteen ninety seven, thanks to a fateful encounter with a Wal-Mart big shot that Jeff took fishing and who subsequently got to witness the power of the magnet firsthand.

So what is this mythical trout magnet? In simplest terms, it's a soft plastic mealworm. The body is segmented slightly tapered. It features a split tail and measures just a hair over an inch. By the way, they're not centered. OK, this is not power bait. This little fake mealworm, however, is pretty worthless without its unique head trout. Magnets come with itty bitty one sixty fourth ounce jugheads that East Coasters might recognize as tiny baby shad darts.

The head is conical but sliced off diagonally at the front to create a sloping face when the head and body harmonize.

Smith and Garner's genius reveals itself unlike other jig's say, a curly tail grub or a hair jig that will always fall nose down, a trout magnet falls horizontally or flat as fishing people like to say. When paired with a tiny float. It also hangs perfectly horizontally below it, showing off its full profile at all times.

Now, finally, that sloped jughead face naturally deflects water, which makes a trout magnet most effective when you do nothing at all with it.

Whenever I post a shot of a mag in a trout's face, people ask me, How are you working that thing, man? And the answer is I'm not.

Now, I've had great success casting a trout magnet by itself on an ultralight rod and twitching it back. That works very well. But that's not really how these lures were designed to be fished.

Your job is just to create a drag, free drift, letting your little trout magnet float slip down a seam or through a pool without dragging the current does the rest, pushing on that shad dart head, making the lower twitch quiver and flash ever so slightly as it rides down the lane. And there is an area trout or Great Lakes steelhead, by the way, that can resist when the presentation is right. So if you just said to yourself, Oh, it's just Ninn thing with a spinning rod, you'd be correct, which is why my blood boils when I get looks of shame from fly guys or worse, your own endeavors.

OK, I got many of these looks just a few weeks ago on what is arguably New Jersey's most famous piece of trout conservation water. Your name thing is trout magnet fishing without a spinning rod. OK, I mean, our strike indicators were the same size and both of our reels were spooled with straight mono as far as I'm concerned. Yet I was still the asshole somehow not worthy of a nod or a hello as we crossed paths on the river trail.

But you know what? That's OK, because there was a time in my life when I was that guy, too.

And then I got over myself and realized I didn't really care how I was catching trout anymore as long as I was catching them, even if that meant putting a trout magnet on a fly rod, which to me, frankly, isn't dirty because it weighs as much as a big stone fly nymph and is made from pretty much the same material as a squirmy Worimi, which most people seem to accept as flies.

Luckily, though, trout magnets are available in a huge amount of colors, many of which match natural aquatic forage.

I mean, hell, you can even opt for a matte black jig head so you don't run the risk of being called a cheater by incorporating flash.

Now, from being totally honest these days, if I am forced into a situation where Nifong is the smartest or only game in town, particularly in the winter around here in the Northeast, I just assume fish, a trout magnet on a spinning round. And if I'm fishing a trout magnet on a spinning rod, it's usually classic mealworm, gold stock or rainbows crush. Hot, pink, peach and red are good too.

But then wild buttery browns love that gold baby.

Final note, trout magnets are also dirt cheap.

For ten bucks you can square yourself one hundred piece kit, including seven of the most productive body colors and a selection of those shad dart jugheads in all the colors available ten by.

Roughly buys five minutes, give or take, just saying the kid comes in a sleek little box that takes up very little room in your Flambeau IC 400 tackle bag, or it can be easily and discreetly concealed in a Sim's freestone ambidextrous fishing sling pack.

Well, that just about concludes our peace, harmony and togetherness episode.

If you're now thinking about shaving your head, wearing flowing robes and handing out inspirational pamphlets at the airport, make sure to include the following points. Mike Organelle love zebra mussels. Yes, Tom Rosenbauer is secretly judging your stupid questions. Trout magnets work exactly as advertised and Hillary Hutchinson's idle peizer pants if peeing your pants is cool.

Consider me Miles Davis.

Thanks for spending some time with us. As always. Keep sending those bar nominations, Selborne items, awkward photos, all the other things we ask you for to bend at the meat eater dotcom us.

Would you like tell us what you hate, tell us what we got wrong, because that happens sometimes and just, you know, how are you doing?

Yeah, we appreciate each and every one of you degenerates, so long as you're not the person leaving empty worm containers on the back of my favorite chow hall because that guy.