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What was that top water John like was thrown over at FDR Park for them, largemouth John asked to see his dad's old Muskego. How else would you dispatch of Muskie before bring you to the boat? If you could fish with any Muppet, which one would it be? The guy who lives in the trashcan example. Where's Puck? Remember Puck from the real world. Whatever happened to Puck? Good morning to generate angler's and welcome to the fishing podcast that once got booted off an episode of MTV's lip service for not knowing the words to How Do You Talk to an angel?

I'm Joe Somali.

I'm Miles Nulty and were, well, not like the theme song to Dawson's Creek.

No, no, it was not. And you know what did you know it wasn't. You know that.

You know that your snide ass rhetorical question there is it's actually more on point than you realize, though, because the guy who's saying how do you talk to an angel actually did play Tori Spelling's boyfriend on Beverly Hills nine.

021 one.

Oh, really? How about.

Yeah, how about that your dude, you're like a Chinese media savant.

I hate that. I know that. But I. Do we ever get to play bar trivia again? I'm on your team. I'm calling dibs. World team, you're up. And you're right, that was a snide comment and I was being a jerk. But to get back to where I think you were trying to lead us in this conversation. Yes, I do remember MTV's lip service. And and if memory serves, it was a cringe worthy lip synching competition judged by B list celebrities.

All right. Exactly. And I watch that show religiously back in the day. And I feel like in that era, in the early to mid 90s, you'd come home from school.

And that was always what was on like. If you just put on MTV in the afternoon, that's what was on. And I watched it like crazy.

What's Spinderella was the salt and pepper. So. Yeah, from salt. Pepper. Yeah, sure.

It was the bomb because she'd throw Jane's Addiction at some sorority girl and it was glorious because this same girl, she'd be all over that as a bass track, you know, like really feeling herself and grooving. But then like Perry Farrell comes in and it's instant train wreck. Yeah. It just falls apart. And then these poor, these poor people would have to have their their performance judged by like Gilbert Godfrey on bottom, Candice Gilbert.

How do they move for you. They move. Wow. I got a good body movement. Well you give a man restore. How deep the lipservice rabbit hole did you. Did you fall to do this? Bit was large.

It was large and deep is large.

And to be honest, I gotta tell you, man, it wasn't even the lip service footage that that, like, took me back and tickled me most.

But the commercials in the episodes I watched, like some of them had the old commercials still in there, like, you know, I mean, I listen to this. Do you remember Sinabung gum?

These dots indicate an explosive personality.

Zetterberg with Blaber. Chris may not be suitable for adults flavor.

Crystal. Yes. Oh, I had completely blocked those from my memory, I think.

Or, I don't know, maybe maybe whatever toxic chemicals those were actually responsible for my lack of short term memory. I don't know. I don't know. But they definitely couldn't have been good for. No, probably not be bad.

This might also be retarded. Wasn't what happened to that dude who hosted LipService?

Oh, I don't even know his name. Who know? I don't know. He who knows. I know, John. Something I think I don't know. John Jay was definitely a J word.

I mean, there's that guy. I feel like what I feel like there's a whole host of twenty somethings who thought that getting on MTV was going to, like, jump start their careers. Oh, now, I have no idea what happened to them. Where's my example? Where's Puck? Remember Puck from the real world. Whatever happened to Puck.

Holy shit. Oh, Puck. Puck was man Puck was the best. He was.

Terry, thank you for. Oh my God. I forgot about that.

I will say, Puck, if you're listening, we'd love to have you on Puck. And normally like we say stuff like that and it's a joke because these people it's not going to happen. These people aren't going to come on our show.

But it's not outside the realm of possibility. We may actually hear from Puck because I'm assuming at this point his career as a bike messenger has dried up.

He's probably not doing a whole lot these days.

I, I really hope we don't hear from him. I'll just say. Come on, I yeah. No, I get it. You think it would be funny. I would vote nay on and I'm not worried about it. If I'm being honest. I'm pretty sure Puck didn't take up fishing. All right. No movie on. That's that's probably enough 90s pop culture for one intro. Let's get into it. Let's get to our real world here.

This, this this real world. We're kicking things off this week with a bad ass, salty East Coast fly fishing guide who's probably too young to have got any of those references. But that's all right. We like her. Anyway, in this week's Covering Water segment, we're making like the pilots and wings a little more for you. But instead of trying to fly to Nantucket, we're landing on Martha's Vineyard to Rapid Fire. Idiotic questions at Captain Abby Schuster.

I'm going in.

Come on before I can hold it no more. Joining us today, we have Massachusetts based guide outfitter and shop owner Captain Abby Schuster.

What's going on, Abby? Oh, are you? Thanks for having me. Great to have you here.

Even if you're on the wrong side of the country, I still I still appreciate. Correct. She's on my side of the country, on the right coast.

Officials.

So so as I was as I was trying to prepare for this, like I was I was I was working on figuring out how to somehow quickly sum up the trajectory of your career. And I'm not sure if I got it right. You're born out east and then you came to Montana for college and started guiding around Missoula. Then then you went over and started guiding in Washington and Alaska, and then you went back east to start up your outfitting operation.

Is that all correct?

Yes, that's right. And is that is that because you finally couldn't stand not having a good piece of pizza anymore? Actually is part of it.

Say, Caldari part of it.

You probably pick it up on something that you may or may not know, and which is that Joe and I are perpetually locked in this East versus West feud.

And and the fact that you went back there kind of tells me that you're on his side. So I'm holding that against you a little bit, but I'll get over it.

Beatriz's and finally, I said I could be East Coaster again. England is a party. People I'm not I'm not arguing that.

I just you know, I'm partial to Montana myself. Part of my heart. Fair enough. I'm I'll leave that alone because we don't need it. We don't need to dove into that whole east west thing. I think that's been covered more than enough. Another thing I found out about you, you are the only charter captain that I know who's also a yoga instructor.

All right. So just a quick, real quick look. I'm very familiar with the process of getting licensed as a captain because. Because I've done it.

But is there is there like a formal process for forgetting oneself recognized as a yoga instructor, or is it just like being a professional fly fishing guide on Instagram?

OK, so what does that mean? Like what does it mean to be you can't just like I can't just tomorrow call myself a yoga instructor. I hope not.

I hope, you know, you have like two hundred hours of school or five hundred hours of school and then you're two hundred our teacher, five hundred a hard teacher. And so it's usually like mine was nine months for of like twice a month for the whole weekend.

So it's harder than becoming a captain is what you're saying. It's longer, but the tests raise, taxes are hard. They're really hard. I know I was surprised how hard they were.

I could spend too much time on this, but I feel like I feel like I'm going to save my stupid questions for the actual reason you're here. We asked you on to the show today to take part in covering water, which is the rapid interview segment we do instead of bothering to conduct proper interviews. And here's how it works. Joe is going to put two minutes on the clock and then he and I are going to rapid fire questions at you.

Your goal is to get through as many as possible in those two minutes, which means you can't think about your answers. You just got to blurt out whatever comes to you.

But in the spirit of fairness, after those two minutes are up, we will give you one minute to expand and elaborate on whichever answer you think was most interesting or potentially damaging to your career.

You picked the career ender and you have one minute to ask. People love this. All our guests are like, what a great segment.

All right. You ready to go?

Yep. All right. Two minutes starts now.

We're doing more yoga. Make me a less shitty speaker. Hastert.

Yes. What's the most painful spot you've ever been?

Hooked my stomach. Your least least favorite fish to target.

I see.

Rather an interesting one, which is honestly, truly better bad. Martha or Cisco?

Cisco. Whoa. That's the Nantucket beer.

Go ahead. Now, that's bad.

I should explain the Rocky Mountain oysters or whole belly clams, all the clams. What gets you more excited?

The worm hatch or the squid run squid? Oh, which fish are stupider stripers busting a bait pile or cutthroats?

Cherian Tadesse cut the Cape Cod canal. I love it. Or screw that Chacho.

Screw up such a nice thank you. Who's the greatest angler of all time.

Oh. My grandmother is pretty good. That's a great, excellent, great beautiful, the best fish to cite Casta to in the entire world is striped bass.

OK, Iyengar or Vinyasa.

So I don't even have anything there.

The movie you quote most often is I'm really bad at quoting movies. OK, so now the species you've never caught the tiniest on your list. Peacock bass.

OK Clouser Romanos sha truc over white or pink over white. If you could only use one for the rest of your life.

Hank hearable excellent poppers or stick bass poppers.

If you could fish with any muppet which one would it be.

Oh that's a good one. Maybe the guy is in the trash can now.

That's Oscar time. But this is a perfect color for. We'll have to get clarification on whether Oscar the Grouch is a Muppet.

I don't think so.

So either that was a fun one. All right. That one. So I will I am now putting one minute on the clock. And you can you can elaborate, Abby, on any one of those answers that you would like. Your time starts now.

OK, the bigger question, I feel like I have to go back to that because we have this little rivalry between Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. I like this. I like that Martha's my people, but I just like the taste of Cisco better. I have to say, I really do, man.

You pick the one that is like saving your local street cred.

I personally know I would be the shop would not run another year and we're right down the road, so I have to protect like that. Oh man.

I wish I had anything to say about this because I don't know either of those beers or anything about this.

We guys like to drink and look. Full disclosure, when I was coming up with questions, I wanted to come up with some fun ones. So I reached out to a buddy of mine who's up there and works for On the water. And I was like, dude, what's a good beer question for Abby? And he's like, she's on the vineyard right now. So, yeah. So bad. Martha or Cisco.

That's the two rival. That's the two rival beers.

Yeah, they do. The island's rival. You should see it. It's crazy. I've never been to Nantucket, only Martha's Vineyard. But that was for a jobs tour, sadly not to fish. And that that's dorky. And I'm sorry I said it, but that's what I've been there for.

I don't live in Nantucket. One No. Two, I fish around there all the time, like actually stepped foot on the island twice and yet they have the better local brew.

Yeah, I know. I got a beer. Yeah.

I feel like, I feel like we've thrown a regional gantlet here unbent and and this will only be settled with the, with the fishing throw down. Hopefully Joe can get up there and do that and help you out with that.

Abby, thanks for coming. We really appreciate having you. Thank you so much.

I'll tell you what, man, I got such a kick out of Avi using her one minute of clarification time to explain why the rival islands microbrew is better than her islands Mike.

Yes, that was gutsy. If you think about it. Like to just just you know, she just went for it and was honest. But I admire her honesty so much. And I hope nobody, you know, like burning cases of Cisco on the steps of the shop right now. Terrible.

I hope that's not the case either. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to think better of humanity and guess everyone took it in stride.

And, you know, I think that that's part of why I and other people like Abby, she's a straight up and she calls it like she sees it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know anything about that fischeri out there. So I don't know what you guys were talking about with the Cape Cod Canal.

But after she outed it as a shit show, I want to know more.

I'm interested. Yeah. Yeah. We could spend hours picking that apart. And for the record, I've never actually fished there.

But I want to because I enjoy good shit show, you know, sometimes like it's just part of the northeast scene, but basically it's shoulder to shoulder dudes in season.

And like many places in the Northeast, you know, it gets crowded and some people consider catching a big stripper, their kind of half a victory, you know, because it's real easy access and the fish are kind of corralled and somebody with relatively little knowledge can can stick a 40 pounder. They're just like walk up in sweatpants and do it.

But then that's that argument.

Does that fish count as much as the 40, you know, a guy caught by putting on a wetsuit and swimming to a rock in the middle of the night after months of noting the tides and following the migration?

So it's kind of you it is like the easy place to get your big bass, but I still want to fish there.

So, yeah, I mean, I don't think I can I can weigh on that. If we're talking about, you know, big trout in Spring Creek versus Land of the Giants out here, I could I could talk about that. But I'm I'm I don't know if we're if you're asking me the question, does that count? I don't know. I think the guy doing the crazy stuff in the middle of the night counts more. I would I would pick that one as more valid.

You know, I definitely I mean, in my youth around here, I almost killed myself a couple of times, just trying to catch twenty in trout.

I have no idea what I would have done if I had access to forty pound stripers like, I don't know, I would have done something stupid like I did for a time when I discovered stripers.

Yeah.

And like in the past when we've been swapping fishing stories, you've told me about folks, you know who get like fully suited up in heavy, wet suits and swim rough seas at night, deep water rocks.

And they like they tow all their gear behind them. Right.

Just just to get a shelter proof stuff like, you know, that's what all those van stalls are for. They're waterproof. Lash it to themselves and kick backwards. Man none for me, thanks. But I know the guys who do this.

I'm intrigued by that. Like, yeah, there's one of them. We can edit it to a whole list of things in the Northeast that I just don't know much about, but I wanna know more about it. Like, I'm I'm interested in that. And as we do so often, we get on these topics about Western stuff and Northeastern stuff.

And and by my request this week, Joe is going to teach us a lot more about a very niche ne word with hip hop roots in the weekly word.

Webster's Dictionary defines fish as. This week's word is John, that's Jay W.M. and it's a word that really has nothing to do with fishing, but at the same time could technically have everything to do with fishing. The only reason I'm even doing this, John, is because I said the word John in another episode. And Miles, being the wordsmith that he is, was so intrigued by my John, he had to know more about the John. John is a slang term that originated in Philadelphia, at least mostly.

And we'll get to that and is used so much even in Philly surrounding New Jersey suburbs, that it often appears in advertising. McDonald's even got down on that, John, with billboards featuring nothing but a Sausage McMuffin and the words, that's my John visit Philly dotcoms, billboards read, There's no John like home and vitamin water plastered the area with billboards that said vitamins, electrolytes.

Get that, John. So what is this, John? Well, according to that Oxford Dictionary, John, John refers to a thing, place, person or event that one need not or cannot give a specific name to. So basically, John can be used to replace absolutely any noun, anyone at all in its singular or plural form. As an example, I might say, what was that top water?

John Michy was thrown over at FDR Park for them Largemouth John, or upon seeing a giant flathead catfish swimming along the bank of the school river, I might say. Know that's the biggest John I ever seen in here, followed by Yo, I'm retired mahjongg with fifty pound because that 30 pound john ain't going to be strong enough if I hooked that, John. Interestingly, John can be pluralized with or without an ass saying, let me get one of them.

John's, when asking a buddy for a fresh minnow out of the bucket is acceptable. But more commonly, John is used to refer to multiple things minus the yes as an example. When asking a friend where he acquired multiple new strieber plugs, you'd say, where'd you get them, John? You might also say, I want to get in to fly fishing. But there's so much John to buy. Theories abound about John and where it came from.

In fact, John is such an intriguing word because it can be used in so many ways that linguists have spent years studying this, John, and tracing its origins. All signs point to John being a derivative of joint joint as a slang term rose in popularity in the American South. Around the time of emancipation, bars and clubs that served as safe havens for black Americans were called juke joints.

This eventually expanded into the labeling of somewhat sketchy places as joints which even further down the line translated to any place you considered kind of underground, such as that little pizza joint or burger joint you think only you and your boys know about, even though that John is all over Yelp. But some smart John believed John was born in Philly in nineteen eighty one.

Specifically that year, hip hop group Funky four plus one had a popular song called That's the Joint, and it was one of the earliest recorded hip hop tracks where the word joint was used as a positive term to refer to something good or something that you like, linguists say, because the singer's slightly drew out the vowels in the word joint and didn't accentuate the T. Philadelphians either heard it as John or sang it as John, ultimately solidifying the future of that John.

Take a listen.

Well, we just can't miss it. Just can't miss what we just can't miss to be like. This is the joy. Did you hear it? Let's listen one more time. So what the hell else to tell everybody to hear whether you heard Joint or John, the mere mention of this song being the origin of John infuriates many Philadelphians.

Why? Because Funky four plus one was from the Bronx. And even though most linguists agree, John technically came from joint, which got popularized as a catch all in New York hip hop culture, Philly. People just don't want to hear that, John. That John means too much to them.

Now, if you're one of them, John, that gets all mad about John coming from New York. John, here's what I suggest. Head out to the garage and grab your John and head down to that John, where you call them John. Last season, cast out a live John under a bob or maybe throw one of them Panther Martin John's and just relax. You got other John to worry about, no matter where that John came from. It's a Philly John now.

Quick follow up, do you think that funky four plus one that that particular track was ever on lip? Oh, absolutely not.

Yeah, it would have been a death sentence. It would have been these those those 90s kids would had no idea. No idea.

And I also I think it's funny because that song is from that era in hip hop, you know, like when one track was was twenty five minutes long and like crummier an entire week in somebody's life, you know, my alarm went off at eight a.m. It was Tuesday.

I was tired, so I hit the snooze button. Eight minutes later, my alarm went off or they just get on the thing. It's like we're going to rock this beat, going to rock this, we're going to practice. And it would go on for five minutes.

Yeah. Yeah, I am. Yeah. Sugar Hill. That's their style, no doubt. Yeah.

But I am curious though, like listening to that. Did you hear Joint or John.

OK, so the first clip I heard joint but the second clip I heard John. Yeah.

So I think, I think it messes with you like you can take that one either way to be honest with you, because, because there are different parts of the song that you sampled there and in the first one to me is clearly joint. And the second one I hear the John. But before we get too far away from it, I really did love everything about that weekly word.

I felt like you completely crushed that one and took it, took it a direction I didn't think was going to go. And I very deeply enjoyed it as a fun one for sure.

Yeah. And it hit on a lot of levels for me personally. And and you got me thinking like as I was listening to that, you got me thinking about how how influential that particular nineteen eighty funky four plus one track was. I mean and then I started thinking about all of its different references in hip hop. Right. You got this one from eighty nine.

The point is the Charlie. Yeah, man beasties for the win on that fantastic track. Fantastic album. If you don't know Paul's Boutique, you got to. And then there's this other one almost 10 years later. This one's from ninety eight.

That's to. And that day again. Now who's that. I don't know that.

OK, that was that was Black Eyed Peas back when Black Eyed Peas did hip hop instead of pop back before Fergie was in it. And they were like they were an actual legitimate hip hop trio.

Gotcha. OK, I could go on and on with this for a very long time and we won't. I'll leave it at those two because I think they're good ones. But we've got our own little linguistics rap battle to deal with here. It's time for that Phish news, Jon. Bishnu. That escalated quickly. All right, for getting the news here, I got a shout out this week, have to shout out listener Dustin Doug Stad or Dukes again.

Again with the names. Don't know.

Not really sure, but he sent us a video clip. Right. And I know you've seen it.

I have a book before you get into it, though. The first time he sent it to us, there was no information, no context. It was just a really weird clip that I looked at and I went, I don't know what's happening here, but I want to know. Please tell me the story.

Well, not so now. Yeah.

So he came he came through with the follow up and now we know and I've never seen anything like it. Right. And it almost makes me question how badly I actually want to fish in New Zealand. Now, I've always sort of dreamed of it and now I'm not so sure.

So we'll do the short version because we've got a lot to get through today. But in this clip, Dustin's fishing this this Trout River in New Zealand, and he had caught himself like a really nice big rainbow that he apparently decided he was going to take home for dinner. So he bonked the fish.

But then what he does is he props his cell phone up on a rock so you can get a little selfie video of his big rainbow. And then he says while he was shooting that video, he realized the trout still had a little life left in it. So he moved off camera. He bonked it again, and then he reaches down to wash the slime and blood off his hands. Now, remember, his camera is still rolling, propped on the rock.

So it's like getting him in the corner of the frame and all of a sudden this giant, like three, four foot eagle latches on to his middle finger and he rips it out of the water, still still holding onto his hand and just flings this giant, you know, just flings it.

And his reaction is priceless. OK, but he had said in the email after the fact, you don't see this, but while he's examining his bloody chewed up finger, he looks down, he notices there are there are four more of these giant eels at his feet just poised and staring at him, ready to grab either a piece of trout meat or his hand, I guess.

And I posted this on my Instagram earlier this week, but I'll drop it in my story again today.

But it's creepy and it leaves me like clutching the hand bit, because while I'm fascinated by eels, I don't love the guy.

They creep me out when I catch them. Congress, I don't like it.

I don't want to be their creepy. And I have fished that river that Dustin was on, actually. And I will I can attest to the fact that there are a lot of those freshwater eels swimming around. Yeah. In New Zealand waters like they're everywhere.

But you told me you don't you don't catch them on flies, but like any any drop of blood, any chunk of meat, like, I never fished bait.

So I would imagine that if you fish bait, you get you get a lot of eels. But an artificial line never had any any eel action other than just seeing them around. They're everywhere and they're definitely creepy.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Super creepy video. But Dustin, thank you for that man.

Like I got a I got a I don't know if I'd said pleasure out of it, but it was it was fascinating to watch and thank you for giving us the story so that we knew what the hell's going on, because that's one of those amazing moments you catch on camera that you can never recreate.

All right. So as long as you all know Fish News is a competition and normally we have no idea what stories the other ones bring in, but it's a little different this week because Joe knows what to talk about. Yeah, yeah. We talk about something that we all know about here, but I don't know what Joe's going to talk about.

So there's at least some mystery still involved. And at the end of it are phenomenal and amazing. Audio engineer Phil is going to choose a winner and crowned the champion of the week. And Joe, you're leading us off.

So what do you got, man? I am. I am. I'm leading this off.

And I'm sure some of you recall the news story I did just last week, I believe, about a woman in Malaysia eating her pet carp, got a little little traction on the interweb and she turned them into a nice soup. And in that report, we touched on how it's understood that many people in many cultures love eating carp.

But by and large, we Americans don't we don't eat the carp.

In fact, like in the culinary world, people would go as far as calling carp at four letter word, which has been a really massive problem when it comes to getting people to eat invasive Asian carp. Right. And even though they're not they're not the same species as common carp. They're not grub in the bottom, in the mud, in the park pond. You know, they feed differently. They taste differently. And you and I can vouch for that.

And we don't need to harp on it. But a piece of deep fried Asian carp is delicious and mild and not fishy at all. I've eaten at your house before.

Still. Still, they're called carp, which sauers a lot of people from having any interest in eating them.

Well, per recent story in USA Today, a full on media blitz is coming later this year, OK, to change the consumer's perception of the fish and also, more importantly, change its name. OK, so now from this is from the article, the proposed new name.

The fish is being kept tightly under wraps for a big rollout in June prior to the Boston Seafood Show in mid-July, but other aspects of what they're calling the perfect catch campaign will point out that invasive Asian carp species, being Silvas big heads, grass, carp and black carp are flaky, tasty, organic, sustainable, low in mercury and rich in protein and omega three fatty acids. So what's happening here is the foodies are kind of pulling another fast one.

Right. And in case you didn't know, this has been done before, I'm sure you know, I'm sure many of you have heard of orange roughy, right? There are deep dwelling saltwater fish, but orange roughy is not their real name. Their technical name is Slime Head. They're called slime heads.

And in the eat that, nobody wants to eat a slime head. But in the late 70s, a decision was made to rebrand those fish so people would buy and eat them. And they did. And the world eats so much orange roughy that in 2010, Greenpeace added them to their red list of unsustainable fisheries.

I mean, the biggest Ru's of them all is Chilean sea bass. Yeah, their real name is Patagonian toothfish, but nobody's paying 80 bucks for a plate of Patagonian toothfish at the country club. Right.

And but that name, point blank, was dreamed up by a seafood wholesaler in 1977 looking to increase his profits. And, boy, did he. And we don't have time to go into all the history and drama of commercial tooth fishing. But if you're interested, grab a copy of a book called Hooked Pirates Poaching and the Perfect Fish by Bruce Knecht.

I don't know if you've ever read that.

It's a it's a several people. Several people. After we I talked about the toothfish last week and their blood being used to melt down. Several people melt, melt snow. Several people wrote me and said I should read that book. I haven't read it, but it's one when we might have to cover.

It's been a lot of years. I should reread it, but I remember it's very, very good book, very detailed.

Anyway, there's not much more to say about the carp story, right? Because it's all a big secret, like they're unveiling the new name, like it's like a New Year's Eve ball drop. Yet I fear that when it does finally light up, like there will just be the deflated sound of one party blower, you know, like.

Yeah, like the effect Phil uses in fish news. Phil, you remind us. Thank you, Phil, but I hope it works. I really do.

I'm just skeptical because people have tried this with dog fish, see robin skates, all kinds of things, like all these different efforts to get people really excited about eating them and buying them.

And it really hasn't worked on a grand scale. But it does leave me speculating. How can you not about those names? Oh, that's the fun part about that. I do. You have a couple in mind because I have a couple in mind.

Of course I do. All right. Do you want to go first or second?

I mean, I only have one that I think is valid and it's not really funny. I just think it would work. I think you need to call it Silver Card, so.

OK, interesting if if anything cards, people are going to buy it and they're going to get the hell out of it.

I had a little bit more fun with it. And the way I look at it is it all depends on the branding. Right. If you want it to be mostly consumed at state fairs as like fish and chips, deep fried, crispy, crispy, brown, if that's sort of the motif we're going to get people excited about.

I was I was I would say Kentucky COD was one of my. That's a good one.

But now if you want to if you want to glitz it up and make it fancy and have it in a raspberry reduction, I came up with Peri and Hake or my favorite Davenport Soul or Davenport Soul's pretty clever.

That's clever.

I like, you know, so we'll see what they what they rename the Asian carp up there in in Boston this summer. But kidding aside, this is a fun little story.

If you have the chance to consume some weather, you catch it or somebody offers you some, you'll be shocked.

It don't say no. Don't say no. Exactly.

It's really we've really done a good job. And I got to give you credit for most of us. But keeping this, it's been a fun, lighthearted episode so far. Everything's been been kind of cheap and everyone know you're going to nose dove at it.

I am going to completely ruin this vibe right now. It's got to be done now. It's got to be because I love my nails. There's an elephant in the room that has to be discussed. And I'm only going to I'm only going to do one story today because. Because it's kind of long. Yeah. So last week, the state of Wisconsin's head sturgeon biologist, Ryan Canik, was charged with obstruction in a case that alleges he and his staff illegally transferred Lake Sturgeon eggs to local caviar processors and then tried to cover it up.

Yeah. If you if you watched the sturgeon spearing episodes of the first iStore, you might remember the interview the Yenny did with Mr. Canik when we were putting that episode together. I talked with him a lot, like I'm not going to say we're buddies, but I definitely got to know him. And he really helped kind of shape that story and helped me understand how to all of us understand the sturgeon fishery.

So so Karnig is or I should say was responsible for overseeing one of the largest, healthiest and best managed sturgeon populations in North America, the Lake Winnebago system, the story of this fishery and the community tied to the Lake Sturgeon around there.

It just it captivated everybody involved. Right. And that's why we got two of our episodes there. We yeah, we had to cover that. It was so good.

And I don't want to get too repetitive for folks already know, but I feel like this needs some back story. Lake Sturgeon, like all sturgeon, were pretty well wiped out by the turn of the 20th century. And in most places they just haven't come back. In 19 of the 20 states where Lake Sturgeon once had viable populations, they remain either threatened or endangered. Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin is an outlier. It is the epicenter for sturgeon recovery. This is the success story that the rest of the country and other parts of the world are hoping they can emulate.

And some of that can be attributed to the culture of sturgeon spearing, which would seem weird to some people with those of us who work here and honey and understand the relationship between sport and conservation.

People around Winnebago really loves spearing sturgeon. They really enjoy sitting over these giant holes, cut in the ice, holding six foot long tridents and waiting for massive fish to swim past them. Back in the late 1970s, a sturgeon spear named Bill Casper noticed that there just weren't very many fish around.

Yeah, and he figured that other spears might be seeing the same thing.

So he drove to all the bars around Lake Winnebago and tacked up these handmade fliers asking people to come to a meeting and talk about it. To his shock, over 300 people showed up and the conservation group Sturgeon for Tomorrow was born. And that group like to me, that represents exactly what we mean when we talk about degenerate anglers.

Yeah, like going to a bar, stacking up fliers and starting a conservation organization is exactly what I mean, because that group has now grown into the largest citizen advocacy group for Sturgeon in the world. They have partnered with management agencies and biologists from all over the U.S. and all the way to Europe. They were instrumental in jumpstarting and helping to fund sturgeon hatchery programs. They pioneered the Sturgeon Guard, which is like a bunch of volunteers who lined the banks of the Wolf River every year to protect spawning sturgeon from poachers or people who just want to mess with them like they literally stand guard over fish.

And so often, fish and wildlife recovery efforts result in conflict between management agencies and local residents, but in this case, Spears and anglers have been able to work in concert with the Wisconsin DNR and the results have been phenomenal. Here's Canik.

This population's had a chance with the protections that have been in place for the last few decades that we're starting to see what these fish can actually do.

We've got more fish than we probably had in recent decades, maybe even dating back to the late eighteen hundreds. And we've got more big fish than we maybe ever have had.

All that's to say, Lake Winnebago Sturgeon are a rare and unequivocal success story in modern fisheries conservation. They're in such good shape that the Wisconsin DNR can confidently open up a spiring season every year and tens of thousands of people by tax.

Yeah, sturgeon biologists set annual quota and the DNR operates registration stations at all the major lake access points so that they can closely monitor fish harvest as soon as that quota is met, which doesn't happen every year. The season closes immediately if they're on it. So Texan biologists collect samples and data from each fish harvested like length, weight, sex, stomach contents and sexual maturity, which provide critical information for continuing to monitor and manage the fish.

So this is a very complex and really well organized event that gets tens of thousands of people fired up about Lake Sturgeon and also helps the DNR collect all kinds of useful data. Mm hmm. But the twenty twenty one spring season, which opened last Saturday, began with a kind of a dark cloud over it.

Karnig, the biologist who has successfully overseen the Winnebago's sturgeon season since 2012, has been placed on administrative leave. He's also facing up to ten thousand dollars in fines and up to nine months in jail if convicted. And he's not alone. Several other pillars of the sturgeon culture around Lake Winnebago are also facing possible charges. So what happened? Wisconsin DNR has compiled evidence suggesting the Karnig and other staff have been supplying RO to local caviar processors for years when a successful spear brought a sexually mature female to a registration station.

The biologists and techs would sometimes collect the eggs. As part of an ongoing fertility study, Karnig told investigators that he delivered eggs to specific caviar processors at the Spears' request.

After completing his analysis, Karnig also told investigators he handed out sheets at Sturgeon registration stations that listed certain processors names and contact info so Spears' knew where to deliver eggs if they wanted them processed into caviar. Now, if that were just the complete truth, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Sure, but Karnig and others have been under investigation since 2017, and the criminal complaint alleges more nefarious goings on, shall we say. Investigators claim the DNR staff stored sturgeon eggs at registration stations with the sole intent of giving them to processors.

They even found one cooler containing eggs marked with the name of a local processor. The complaint does not, however, cite any known sales of caviar or make any claims that anyone from DNR or elsewhere received payments for eggs. The problem is that there are numerous reports indicating that Karnig and other DIENER employees received jars of caviar as thanks. As soon as Karnig and others accepted gifts, those sturgeon eggs were no longer given away. They were bartered and bartering with wildlife products is unequivocally against the law and to be honest, for really good reason.

Caning is being charged with obstruction because it appears he tried to cover up his involvement, the statements he made to investigators did not match some of the evidence they collected. Additionally, he performed a factory reset on his DNR issued cell phone after he became aware of the investigation. Oh, yeah.

Three other residents were charged with unlawful sale of a game in connection to this case, including Victor and Mary Schneider. Again, if you watched the Ferhat iStore, you're probably going to recognize Mary Schneider's name. She's the 87 year old decoy Carver and just matriarch of sturgeon culture around Fond du Lac.

I like the pain like that. I like the car would do you know, I've been doing it for years.

Mary told investigators that she and her husband process eggs dropped off by successful spears in exchange for half the finished product. There's no evidence that the Snyders sold any of the caviar, they either ate it or gave it away to friends and family, but under the law, that's still a form of barter. I do not condone bartering or selling wildlife in any form, doing so towards a slippery slope that can lead to the commodification of wild fish and animals. But man, I got to admit the story.

The story really leaves me conflicted. You have several retired state employees said on the record that it wasn't unusual for DNR staff to share the prepared caviar they got from the processors at meetings or local taverns as a way of encouraging people to maximize the use of the fish they harvested. They considered the samples educational.

And I can I can imagine that the folks working those those sturgeon spearing season.

Yeah, like they see a lot of fish and a lot of fish eggs go to waste every year.

And I'm yeah, I can imagine how frustrating that's got to be. And so I can understand why they would want to encourage more spears to eat eggs by showing them like, hey, this stuff can be made into a delicacy. It can be really good.

Don't waste it. I also know how in a small town, people often operate on a barter system. Right? Like they help each other out and they return favors in whatever ways they can.

But I just meant I think this case is a very sad and very high profile reminder to all of us that we just we can't use wildlife or fish, meat or wild game as currency, even a situation where it seems completely innocent and innocuous, like if somebody has helped me on a sand and repaint my deck. The law says I can't thank them with walleye filets and deer steaks from my freezer. And I'm sure that there are some people out there that are saying that it's crazy and this is a total overreach of enforcement.

But the commodification of wildlife has had disastrous outcomes in the past. We've seen what happens. So we have these really strict laws for a reason. And and for those who out here want to know more about this, head on over to the media, dot dotcom and check out Pet Durkin's article titled Wisconsin's Top Sturgeon Biologist Chargin Caviar Probe. I totally agree with the slippery slope here, but just to maybe try and have a better understanding, just or to clarify here.

So what you're talking about with somebody scanning your deck and you thanking them with walli falaise or deer meat from your freezer. Yeah. That you're not supposed to do because now technically that has become a form of payment. Basically right now that's barter.

If those same two dudes came over and helped you with nothing and as a gift, you were like, hey, man, you want to take some Walli home or some venison home?

That's OK. It is. Yes, you can gift. It's different state by state, but sometimes you have to have paperwork associated with it to say like this has been gifted, but often after it's processed, you don't have to do that. If it were a whole animal that I had harvested under my tag and I wanted to give it to somebody, there'd be a bunch of paperwork you have to do to make it legal. But you can gift things.

They just cannot become a form of currency. That's where things become a problem.

You cannot begin to use any wildlife products as currency of any sort by law. And again, look, I get why it's it seems potentially crazy. How could you be upset at at this 87 year old woman who is making caviar for somebody and, you know, she gets half of it that she gives to her friends and family. That is that is something I very much can identify with and understand that sense of frustration, but I also think it's important to recognize that we have these game laws for a reason and they're really strict for a reason.

Of course, I genuinely hope and I expect that the Schneiders get let off, like I will be pretty upset if they actually get prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I really I it's not my call. It's not my place. But if anyone were to ask me, I'd say, I mean, come on, let's.

You made your point. Everybody understands, like, let's let's not actually prosecute these old people. Sure. Karnig is a different story. Yeah, I think he probably did have good intentions. I really do. But it's the lying and the cover up instead of just coming clean. And that for me, that's where he crossed the line.

That's what bites a lot of people in a lot of things. Man, if you had just been open about it, you might not be in the same in the same pickle. And, you know, to that end.

So both of us I mean, we got lit up since this dropped like, you know, I wasn't that the guy in Ferhat wasn't, you know, you guys worked with him and sort of unrelated to the central story to, you know, this happens from time to time.

And it is it has happened to me. There have been several times over the years where you shoot a video or write an article or quote somebody you know, and you do the best you can to to vet people. And you certainly don't know everything about it. But then it comes out later like I did, got, you know, hit for poaching croppies and like you crappy fished with him three years ago.

It happens on occasion, you know, like it's it's terrible.

But I've had it happen with dudes who, you know, had these incredible careers on the up and up. And then, you know, something happens and then it comes back on you like you were fishing with that shithead. So, yeah, man. But you don't know that, you know what I mean? Like, this stuff just unfortunately happens time to time.

And, you know, there's also the you can't throw out or discount the excellent work that exact this person has done previously in his career.

That doesn't mean that you condone. Right.

The aspects that were illegal or unethical, but you can't just discount and throw away the great work that he has done to help manage the sturgeon population and maintain the relationships with the community, with a surgeon like the dude deserves the credit for what he did. And he's getting he's certainly getting the punishment for the things he did wrong as well.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's shady. Is this is he made some wrong choices in this. But you're right.

You can't let this wipe away and define every single thing that this guy has done in his career.

No, I don't I don't think so. And I think ultimately, the real loser in all of this isn't going to end up being the sturgeon population. Right? I think I think, yes. That you've lost the person who was heading that up. You've lost some of the infrastructure that's worked to to do this really well for the past nine years. And I'm sure that Wisconsin is going to get it back together and get things up and running. It's all going to be fine.

But, you know, losing the folks who've been intimately involved in this program had done well with it for almost a decade is certainly going to be a hiccup. I don't think I don't think this I don't think this has a happy ending. And I just hope that, you know, I think I think if there's a takeaway for me, it's it's to remember like that how easy it is to run afoul when it comes to gifting or bartering with with Fish and Wildlife.

And we just we all have to be careful with that. Yeah. There's a reason why those laws exist. There's no reason to be pissed off about it. Just just be careful what you do.

It's yeah. And it's the simplest things that can get you in a lot of trouble.

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All right, so that one that we had to get that one out of the way, I got one more short one here, although it all does kind of tie together. We've eaten Asian carp and caviar now.

Two very controversial dishes, apparently so.

Well, let's let's we'll try and move way to something a little more safe and familiar week, because we all love a nice, golden, crispy fried piece of walleye. Right?

Especially it is the American fish. It's the American fish, which is what makes this interesting. We especially love that out of a frigid lake in the middle of winter.

It's good eats anyway. Minnesota based Bluewater Farms, which is an aquaculture company, believes they're going to be the first to successfully raise mass quantities of eater sized walleyes indoors. Walleye farming, now indoors, indoors. So now here's the thing.

We could spend another hour digging into the back story of walleye farming and commercial walleye fishing. But there's just a couple key bullet points here that will help paint a better picture of why this is a big deal. There is no commercial walleye fishing in the U.S. anymore.

Right. But there is in Canada.

So while you don't see walleye for sale in the States as frequently as you did, you know, many, many years ago, if you do see it in a fish fry joint, in a restaurant in the Great Lakes, whatever, it was probably harvested in Canada and then sold with a couple exceptions.

I got it. I got it. Because otherwise you're going to get hammered there, OK? There are a couple of tribal nations who still do commercial fish for walleye in the U.S., But OK, mostly it's gone.

But I know I can see with our listeners that you are going to know.

I appreciate that. I appreciate it.

There's a lot of research in this and I was not great in school. So the other bullet point here, we know walleyes can successfully be raised in hatcheries.

Many states do this for stocking purposes. However, they're typically released into the wild around 20 centimeters, because once they reach that length, they're sort of off of plankton and micro invertebrates and they're eating each other.

So basically, walleyes can't really be raised to market size or one of the difficulties, you know, the size you get nice flowers off of because they're just too damn mean and cannibalistic. That's one of that's been one of the biggest hang ups in walleye farming. And that's just one of many problems have been encountered over the years now. And doing some research, there have been some advances. Right. There was one due to figured it out in floating pens.

But, you know, he was he was supplying local establishments, but his walleye were so much more expensive than the ones being imported from Canada that it just didn't make any sense. He kind of got knocked out of the market. Anyway, according to this story in the Luthe News Tribune, Bluewater Farms thinks they've got it figured out. And to be clear, this walleye rearing facility doesn't exist yet. They're still in the funding phase and grants phase planning phase, but it is chugging along and the company is actually hired, a gent named Gregory Fisher, who was kind of the top dog at the aquaculture facility at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

And according to this story, he has essentially figured out how to rear market size walleyes in a Indore recirculating aquaculture system. His team has proven that it can be done with brood stock.

And I get the impression that there's some trade secret here, like there's a lot of details about the specifics of how he's figured that out left out of the story.

However, the thing to keep in mind is proving it's feasible is not the same as scaling it up to a point where it's economical. Right.

So to make it economical, you've got to produce loads and loads of walleye so that you make the cost of goods to restaurants and markets comparable to buying, you know, imported wild caught walleye or wherever else you get it. And Bluewater is confident that that they'll get there. But it's really yet to be seen. And I think one of the interesting things about this is, you know, you call that America's fish.

It's easy to forget how many people have never had delicious walleye, because in a lot of cases, if you're not an angler catching your own, it's not something that you could get your hands on very easily. But but so many anglers target them. And you and I tend to run with fishery people. Were fish people listening now that you sort of forget that. And it's very similar to striped bass on the East Coast. It's not easy to find legally harvested, you know, saltwater, pure strange striper on a menu or in a fish market.

So many people have never tasted that.

But because I fish for them my whole life, it's it's not weird. And I'd be curious to see if while anglers think if this happens, if blue water can achieve this, if the fish is as good, because it's it's, you know, common, the common non angling consumer won't really know the difference.

But even here, you can buy what's labeled as striped bass in a fish market. But it's it's sneaky wordplay because it's hybrid farmer striper guarantee side by side with the real deal.

It's not as good, but very same. It just isn't. Exactly. And this whole operation, if you're unfamiliar with aquaculture, it's a circulating system. So they'll be growing walleyes to market size, but also year round growing lettuce and strawberry. And all kinds of other things with with the wastewater that filters through and grows vegetables, it could it could be pretty revolutionary if they can get it done.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm I'm I'd say cautiously optimistic with the limited information I have. I don't this is not a useful comment, but.

You're in Minnesota. Why would you name yourselves blue water? That just doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't know I don't know of any blue water in Minnesota. But anyway, maybe it just sounds good if you're in the fish farming game. Blue whale.

Well, yeah. And we'll talk more. Time will tell if it works. But, you know, if you think about it, while there's still commercial fishing on the Canadian side of like the Great Lakes and things like that, I mean, the fact that it's not really happening to on a grand scale on our side anymore really speaks to why we have such incredible walleye fisheries in the Great Lakes.

So there's plenty out there to be caught for you to take home and cook up.

But if we were commercially fishing for him to get the amount that we needed to supply restaurants and things, you know, walleye fishing wouldn't be nearly as good on this side. So this does have value in terms of sustainable fisheries and maybe there'll be a lot more walleyes down the road in fish markets.

We shall see.

You are definitely still eligible for a win for your reporting. Phil still has to pick somebody.

And I think after this, this round of news, I can certainly use a stiff drink to wash all this info down. So we'll hear from Phil and then we'll do a little. That's my bar.

Miles, you fell on the caviare grenade this week so that Joe Somali could be crowned the winner and I'm sure he appreciates it, this whole Asian carp rebranding thing is all very amusing to me, like it's al Qaeda in the Breakfast Club or Olivia Newton John in Grease.

The carp will take off its glasses and let its hair down and we'll realize that it was hot the whole time.

But as far as a rebranding goes, this feels less like Ziggy Stardust and more like Chris Gaines. People say you stink, you, Garth Brooks, Phish, you. But I see you.

And you know what? I love you just the way you are. Best God damn bartender from Timbuctoo to Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and for that matter. OK, we've got a dandy of a that's my bar submission for you guys, courtesy of Brad Shusha. I hope I said that right.

And Brad, let me tell you what, man. I love when a part of what makes a bar great is a character at that bar. Like, I love the cheers aspect of this entry.

And today we are going to Leona, Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin people probably got to tell me I said that wrong, too. But you give me what's going to happen. It's going to happen.

We're going we're going there to Johnny's resort on the shore of Babakhan Lake. I'm sure I said that wrong to just send me a note. It's fine. Anyway, Brad writes Open in 1947 by John Senior and still run today by his son Johnny Muskie. Aschenbrenner Johnny's resort stands in a category all by itself. When it comes to fishing bars. You can pop into the resort in the morning, rent a boat with a full tank of gas for only 50 dollars, and head out for a full day of musky fishing on some of the best water NE Wisconsin has to offer.

When your day is done, you're going to want to stop in for what is easily the best and only frozen pizza on the lake. And be sure to get your name up on the wall of honor. If you are successful in catching a muskie, Johnny keeps a record of all muskies over 32 inches caught in a year. That is rad. But I do I, I just need to stop for one second. I just got just comment and say in my East Side world, the words best and frozen do not belong in the same sentence when discussing pizza.

Even the dive's here. They make their own. Sometimes it sucks but they make their own.

But I look I do understand the frozen bar pie is such a Midwest thing and even me, like the pizza snot that I am, will admit that if I had to classify the finest frozen pizzas I've ever had, the finest on the market, they would be hedges, which is from Minnesota and Jacks, which is in fact from Wisconsin.

I appreciate that clarification and that you were willing to go there. But I got to say, the whole Northeast pizza thing is is overrated. It is. Maybe so. All right. Thirty years ago, right. Maybe maybe thirty years ago when the rest of the country just had Pizza Hut and Domino's, there was a legitimate argument that, you know, oh, only get good pizza, the Northeast. But now you can get good pizza pretty much anywhere.

And I see this having eaten at both Grimaldi's and Julianna's in Brooklyn, they're both very good. But are they the end all be all of pizza? I know. I do not think so. Hmm. I mean, that's fine.

You're trying to get me to engage here, but I find that sometimes it's just easier to let people that don't know what they're talking about just have their moment, like we don't have the time.

If I wanted to take a shot, though, I'd say, oh, Grimaldi's and Juliana's.

Someone watches a lot of that food paradice show.

And as a tourist, the real Brooklyn people are not in either of those places.

They're at the real point anyway. Enough about that.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm wading into water. That's deeper than my waders right now.

Back to Brett, who really is the focus of this. You're not ours.

Yeah, we're being jerks, Brad says in his email. Be sure to visit with Jonny. Ask him to tell you some tales of his youth growing up in the lake. Asked to see his dad's old musky gun.

How else would you dispatch a muskie before bring it to the boat or maybe asked to see the Buchtel Johnny tied with his own beard hair and certainly spend some time looking out over the collection of lures and mounts from a different era of musky fishing.

Above all else, you must must celebrate a successful day, musky fishing or drown a shitty one with the bars signature drink. The Kraut bomb. The Kraut bomb. Yeah, and that's not racist. It's not racist if you're not out.

Now we are talking sauerkraut.

So ready for this because here's how you make it right. Brad says in a bomb cup, you know the plastic cups with a shot glass in the middle surrounded by a second larger cup, fill the shot glass with a yagur, then fill the outside with. And this next part is very important, he says warm Franck's sauerkraut juice open with a rusty can opener. So he says Johnny himself poured me one to celebrate my first fly Rod Muskie.

And I can say from the experience they are just as delicious as they sound. And I guess, Brad, if I stuck my first fly Rod Muskie there and it was a good one, but like over 40, not a little tweezer, I'd slam that.

But it really sounds awful like it really it sounds terrible. Plus, I'm going to just go ahead and say my younger days are kind of over and my socco days are even further behind me, I think, than my my younger days.

Smart, smart choices.

I don't know. I don't know. I like the Kraut juice itself. That doesn't turn me off like I could see, adding maybe a spritz of that to a bloody or a Caesar. But Kraut juice and yagur in my head, that's like fish sauce on Starburst or something like that.

Yeah, that that sounds pretty terrible. And I'm going to I'm going to agree. It's not the crowd juice. It's. It's the Yagur, but the drink sounds awful, the bar does not know if I got a drink, if I if I am absolutely forced to drink a round of Kraut bombs to get Johnny started telling Muskie stories that that is one bomb, I'll fall on a grave. I'll throw myself on that one. And, you know, beard ducktails, Muste guns, vintage mount's.

Come on. I'm in. I'm freaking in. All I do with the other. I checked out Johnny's website and it's it's Spartan at best. And it doesn't appear to have been updated since 2011, but it does seem to confirm the legitimacy of this magical place. So Brad is not just putting us on with some elaborate fantasy.

Mm hmm. That's good to hear. Do not play with our emotions like that. But if you have a magical place that serves liquor, you'd like to hear called out on the show, much like Brad, please write down a compelling story and send it to us at Bent at the Meat Eater Dotcom. I loved that one. It left me wanting on some details because I want to know more about the gun. Oh, yeah, I mean, was this was a twenty two.

I have a question. There are lingering questions. So do I, man.

I know. Yeah, exactly. Was it a pistol, a shotgun.

B and I don't know man in the in the old school shark fishing season at least out here, most guys did not rely on a pistol, you know, because you had to be too accurate and too much could go wrong, like shooting a hole in the boat.

So the old heads around here, they often went with it with the single shot for ten step.

Same Shadforth. The hell was that? It was my fault. That was my. I did not authorize this sticking in a bag. What was that?

That was my friends. I hope you noticed that was Robert Rockin. And I had to get one more song reference in this episode.

I just it was we were on a roll anyway.

It sounds like it sounds like back to the bar. Johnny's is such a museum as it is actually a bar resort. And they might even have one particular classic leuer hanging on the wall there that's been on my mind lately. In this week's end of the line, I'm taking a deep dove into allure that somehow escaped both Joe and me for most of our lives, despite it being influential, groundbreaking and catching lots of big bass.

So so right along with me, as I give props to the devil, they say it's not loud enough, but. I know Joe covered a classic propeller bit just a few weeks ago when he talked about getting all Pooky in the Amazon, pulling woodchopper for peacocks. But but I feel like I need to revisit this genre. The main reason comes from listener Ryan Brumberger, who runs the website Access the Wild and recently sent us a care package that included a couple of vintage lures from his great grandfather's tackle box now.

I don't actually know what compelled Ryan to send such family riches to a couple of degenerates like us, but I am deeply grateful and humbled. One allures that Ryan sent along is a long, cylindrical wooden hard boat with propellers in the fore and the aft superficially similar to the woodchopper Joe described, as well as a whole bunch of other boats that have been sold over the years. But as I have come to learn, this one's different. This lure has captivated me ever since it arrived at my house, and I've spent way too much time digging into the back story.

To be totally honest, I'd never heard of this leuer and neither had Joe.

At first glance, I just thought it was one of many short lived beats from the late 20th century, something produced for a couple of years that never took off. But I was wrong.

It's called a Devil's Horse spelled Divi E-L for reasons I'll explain in a minute. And it was manufactured by the Smethwick Leuer Company. Smethwick is probably best known for their road jerk bait's, which Joe covered in an early episode of the show.

But though the rogue may be the bait that is best known, it wasn't the lure that launched the company or even their most groundbreaking design. That was the Devil's Horse. Jack Smethwick was an office supplies salesman in post-World War Two, Shreveport, Louisiana, which might sound like a bland, dead end job, but it gave Smethwick access to the heads of some of the largest companies in the South. In the early 1940s, he started carving lures out of broom handles, much to the irritation of his wife, supposedly who started hiding her brooms.

In 1946, Smethwick designed and fished the first prototypes of what would later become the Devil's Horse. A couple of years later, once he knew it was on to something, he started giving out sample lures to his biggest clients. At that time, just about every serious businessman in the south fished for bass. Pretty soon, those clients were calling him for more than just office supplies. They wanted lures and were willing to pay for them. In 1949, he quit the office supplies business, bought a lead from Sears, hired some help and started making Luas full time from his home even after going in full time and producing thirty thousand devils horses in the first year, demand vastly outstripped his production capacity, which gave the lures an even greater appeal.

For the first decade, the Beats were something of a regional secret popular in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Florida. And at that time they were branded with the word devil, like I said, misspelled with two E's. Most sources claim that misspelling to have been intentional, a marketing decision made due to concern that buyers wouldn't purchase a lure with the word devil on it during those more pious times. But in an interview with the writer Michael Bacon, Smethwick son Jack Jr.

claimed, Hell dad just couldn't spell. Either way, in 1963, the bait was officially renamed The Devil's Horse with an eye, just as the Smethwick brand began to gain national traction.

By then, they had a whole line of devils, horsetail stick bait offshoots in different sizes, weights and body shapes.

Throughout the 60s, outdoor writers, pen tales of riding the devil's horse and catching bass all over the country.

In 1969, Smethwick released the road jerk bait, and that seems to have been the turning point when the Devil's Horse began to fade in the background a couple of years later, Smethwick started making rubber worms, spinners, weights and crank beats. And somewhere in this period, the company seems to have stopped riding the horse that brung them.

Though the Devil's Horse never went out of production, it faded into the background, at least in certain parts of the country.

Which is probably why Joe and I, a couple of lifelong anglers who came of age in the 80s and 90s in the Northeast and West had never heard of this bait.

But that's not the end of the story, just because Joe and I weren't hip to the horse doesn't mean that other people stopped fishing them or that they stopped catching fish.

Solid chance that any Southern bass heads listen to this are hollering at their phones or radios right now and calling me a complete moron, because across those same states where the horse first gained popularity, it never really fell out of fashion.

It has quietly remained a staple top water lure for big bass in shallow water, even among some of the top pros. Unlike the woodchopper and other prop, the horse supposedly shines brightest when phished slowly in close proximity to rediscover instead of retrieving it with aggressive rips and jerks like Joe descried with the woodchopper or burning it on the top like a buzz bait. Folks in the no fish the horse as a finesse lure, casting a tight to cover, letting it sit for several seconds and working at painfully slow, short twitches, followed by long pauses.

And here's where I feel like the story of the horse really comes full circle. If you're deep in the bass fishing scene, you've probably heard about spy baiting or spin baiting. A technical finesse presentation for highly pressured, finicky bass developed in Japan in the mid 2000s. It became the hot new thing in the hardcore bass world about a decade ago. Spy baits are long, cylindrical, baitfish shaped lures with propellers in the front and the aft. Sound familiar?

Yeah, just like the Devil's Horse, but holdup Spiderbait Sync and the Devil's Horse is known as the top water, except the original horse was actually a sub-surface leuer.

And Smethwick continued to produce various cinching models for many years after. Unfortunately, spy baiting wasn't a thing back then, and because the top water models outsold the subsurface versions, the original design eventually fell out of production. The only horses made today are floaters.

And that's kind of a shame.

Smethwick was actually designing and fishing the hottest new lure for the smartest, most tactical bass. He just did it about 60 years too early.

So that's all the time we have this week and what you've just experienced was the true story, the true story of two complete fish bombs picked to live in a podcast and have their bullshit taped to find out what happens when a salty girl from the vineyard, a washed up bike messenger and a guy who's dead used to throw let it musky heads, stop being polite and start getting real serious about reminding you to please keep those comments, questions, concerns, bar nominations, saleman items, awkward photos and all that.

John coming to Bent at the Meat Eater Dotcom.

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