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

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You've seen this cook up some pretty wild stuff here at Meat Eater, whether we're fixing diet, making our own sausage, rendering down fat or even making tallow, we're passionate about what we cook and how we cook it.

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That's p o r t e r r o a d dotcom slash meat eater. Find all these ingredients on your own. It's not easy. And we got limited inventory, so be sure to get yours while you can.

Hot dish was once described to me as just every leftover in the fridge dumped into a casserole dish and baked together. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I just threw some names in the hat. I got a little toxic in that journey for a while, proving I was oji metal and a virgin. Good morning, degenerate anglers, welcome to Bend, the podcast that melted the top of your Mr. Buddy Heater when we bought it last ice fishing season and still haven't bought you a new one.

I'm Joe Smellie.

I'm Miles Nulty and straight up. And you got to be careful when you toasted sandwiches on your Mr. Buddy Heater's.

So that is an actual public service that we're offering truth. And if anybody out there is watching or has been watching the Ferhat Ice tour on our YouTube channel, you know that that Giannis and Mark Norquist had fun sparring Whitefish and Pike in Minnesota. But what you don't see is the behind the scenes carnage. We permanently damaged a borrowed space heater when we put our full rep sandwiches on it and the foil like deflected the heat right up into the plastic frame on that heater and yeah, got a little toxic in that journey for a while.

So I don't do that.

I was not part of this production. But weren't weren't you the producer, the producer of that episode?

I was I was the producer of the episode. I was the one who put the sandwiches on the heater.

Yeah. So entirely your fault in entirely my fault. This. Well, that was a rookie move, you should have known better. Any real hard water guy brings the Aftermarket Grill attachment for the heater and I'm not a real hard water guy, but even I know that it's standardized fishing gear these days.

I know that now. All right. Like I learned, I learned my lesson. And I realize that straight up I have so much to learn still when it comes to fishing.

But the one thing I know for sure is that you absolutely cannot go out on the ice without a thermos of coffee.

That is true. And if you're going to drink coffee, you might as well drink good coffee. This podcast is entirely fueled by Black Reifel coffee, whether we're sitting over a hole staring at a flasher and killing one of those thick red lines to appear. Or we're sitting in front of a computer pressing control off delete because doom froze me to shoot out again. We probably got a cup of black rifle in our hands.

Right now I can't get enough of the just black roast, which I get delivered right to my door through Black Reifel coffee subscription service. Super convenient. And yeah, if you're coffee drinker, I highly recommend signing up you.

Yup. Just go to Black Reifel Coffee Dotcom Backslash Medidata to get started. And if you use the promo code meeting Eater at checkout, they'll give you a 20 percent discount just for having good taste in podcasts.

Yes, they will. All right. Get back to the show. It is time for trivia. But I do feel the need to publicly admit that that story about melting the borrowed heater, like we were just making up some some shit to say that was completely true. All of that happened. And in fact, the heater in question actually belonged to our trivia guest today.

Oh, OK.

Yeah, I don't I don't know why she keeps agreeing to come on the show.

This is why I can't have nice things. Yeah, we still haven't replaced the heater.

Just for the record, you've got to be highly skilled for these shows. You understand it. Yes, I do understand. Are you well versed there? You very smart man. Yes, I am. All right.

So we've reached the part of the show where we call smart and talented people and ask them stupid questions. Joining us today is Angler Hunter and biologist Mandy Uruk. Many. How's it going?

It's going, guys. Thanks for the call.

You know, these are always fun for us. Are you are you ready to play some trivia?

I'm ready to play some trivia. All right. Let's do it.

Now, if I remember correctly from a conversation you and I had in your garage, which is a better man cave than any man cave I've ever been in, for the record, you had a hand in naming some of the soft plastic baits for 13 fishing, right?

Yes, yes, I guess so.

Like maybe, say, the bubble butt or the churro or the. My name's Jeff. All infused with donkey sauce. You're to blame for all that?

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I just threw some names in the hat. Oh, all right.

So you're not you're not going to own any of those, at least not publicly. Nope. All right. Well, today, I'm going to give you a list of ridiculously named soft plastic baits that are not made by 13 fishing. Your job is to correctly identify which one is fake. All right. So all of these, except for one, is an actual soft plastic bait. You got to figure out which one is is not real. You got it.

I got it. All right. So is it A Vibora grub, B shrilled pin, C, Jega later. D, bearded crazy legs chigger Karar or E, machete.

I'm going to go with a you to go with a yes think you think the Vibora grub does not exist now? Oh, I'm sorry.

No, the fiber grub is a real bait.

I wouldn't be in so much trouble for getting all of those except for the Jega later. Actually, a real bates'. And I'm just going to give everyone a hint out there. Don't look up Jugulator online. You won't like what you find, Mandy. Thanks so much for being a good sport and playing. Always good to talk to you. Thanks, guys.

Got to say, man, Mandi remains our reigning smooth moves champion with the fast and by best, I mean worse guide's story we've gotten yet. If you haven't heard that one, go check out Episode six.

I believe it was the podcast. Bring an extra bottle of bleach and a few rolls of Charmin, though. OK, so you know what we're talking about.

And and go watch the Four Eyes tour on the media YouTube channel. You can watch Mandy try to teach you how to fish for Wollar and explained once and for all the difference between hot dish and casserole.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Hot Dish was once described to me as just every leftover in the fridge dumped into a casserole dish and baked together from the camera in that Hamburger Helper Kung Pao chicken.

In it goes.

That may be true, but I, like men will go to the mat with you and kick your ass and tell you that there's more to it than that and win because I really don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, we're going to transition now from hot coffee, ice cleats, bibs and tiny poles to cold beer, flip flops, board shorts and long rods.

And look, every year around this time, I personally start feeling the itch for some saltwater flats, fishing and climbs.

And I inevitably think about the small island nation of the Bahamas. It's been so long since I've been there. I long for Androes and too many man Yemeni's. The sleeper, by the way, big bones. But the Bahamas defines saltwater flats fishing as we know it. The country controls the largest expanse of saltwater flats in the world, and it's built an entire multi-billion dollar industry around Bonefish, a species that, if you think about it right, not so long ago, it was practically worthless, totally.

Locals caught them just to sell to big gamer's as Marlin Bates'.

That's what they did back in the day. They trolled them for more. Imagine that. Right.

But also, they're super flashy and reflective.

So I kind of get it. But that was in the not so distant past anyway, in this week's Freak Philistine segment, where we encourage all of you to get out there and read actual words that have been printed on actual paper. Miles is going to tell you about a book that traces the history of that fishery and explains how it all came about. What's Folkston?

It's a guy who doesn't care about books or interesting films and things that I'm Fallston.

The great thing about poetry is that sometimes you can get lost in it when a poem works, it resonates past logic. You lose yourself in a chord of language, of perfect economy, of words that hits in a way that doesn't necessarily make sense, but it feels good. You might not understand what's going on, but you enjoy it. The problem with poetry is that sometimes you can get lost in it without a story or characters to hold on to.

A poem can feel like this chaotic jumble, a dartboard of language, a monkey with a dictionary. And when that happens, words that might make you feel something turn into ash and slip through your fingers.

Chris Dombroski primarily writes poetry, but his book, Body of Water is narrative nonfiction.

On its face. It's just a damn good fishing story. A Rocky Mountain fishing guide gets obsessed with a certain saltwater fish and goes on to spend time and money that his young family just can't afford pursuing that fish.

Of course, all of us who genuinely understand pursuing fish know that it's never just about the fish. And as readers follow Dombroski on to Sun Salt Flats, chasing another hookup, another banshee howling run, we get far more than we might have expected. This book provides an unauthorized creative account of the Bahamian bonefish industry through the cataract Moatize of a man who arguably pioneered that industry but explores how these unpalatable and once reviled bottom feeders became silver bricks in the foundation of high end Bahamian tourism and the subsequent tussle over who gets to stand on top of that structure, body of water stands out not just as an engrossing fishing book with enough depth to feel worthy of your time, but as a sublime example of what happens when a poet turns his widdled phrasings into a long form narrative.

It's just satisfying to read. Here's an example. I was about to enter my 13th year as a fly fishing guide in Montana, but would have to wait two months before my seasonal work began in earnest and wait twice that many months before I could begin to roll my way out of five figure deep debt, the product of some of my patented financial wizardry, which was itself largely a product of having endangered myself to the angling life at age 16, followed by sustained attempts to live like a 16 year old for the ensuing 17 years.

I think it's fair to say now, with the perspective of several years of Ford, that I was at best clinically depressed, fatigued with indecision that bordered on dread and in need of professional help. My psychologist father would have referred me to any number of well qualified counselors, but out of some strange instinct or allegiance, I trusted only waters. Treatments threadbare, more than a bit benumbed. I hoped I might be able to fish myself out of my friend driven depression.

I'd done it before each cast a pathway out of what I assumed was myself. I remembered vaguely or perhaps invented an apocryphal story in which doctors in ancient India tied mentally ill patients to trees beside the moving water, sequestered near the sound of water run over rocks, the man were often cured. I was hoping to fill such a prescription. Now, if that doesn't make you want to follow along, you just don't let good fishing stories, so do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Body Water.

Dude, we need to get Dombroski on this show. All right. Aren't you aren't you two buddies? Like, why are we not already done? Is is he worried hanging out with us might tarnish his brand or something?

No, no, no. It's not like that. It's not like that. I mean, yes, Chris is a very well respected writer and a guy, but he's not like one of those holier than thou, high and mighty kind of dudes.

It's those not on him, honestly, like I am the problem.

We you know, we just have another chance to catch up, you know, and like, I don't want to be I don't want the first contact for me to be asking him for a favor.

You know, like, I don't I don't want to be that guy. Like, we haven't talked in, like, ten months, but, hey, I got some. Can you help me out with some?

I just I don't want to do that, you know, so I got to catch up with him. Oh, it's it's it's that's totally forensic.

My buddy. It's like my buddy John Frazier. It's going to be like, hey man, they're waiters.

How are you doing, by the way? Shout out to John. That is fair. But you should get on that. And while we hope to have Dombroski on the show sometime soon, we're not waiting around for him. This show, like the news, waits for no one. And it is time for fishnets.

Bishnu. That escalated quickly. All right, let's fire up some housekeeping quickly, kind of big news. I mean, it's not really big. It's kind of exciting news.

At least the big news is that big news. We have stickers finally and I'm such a I'm such a sticker nerd. Some of you guys have been asking about stickers, and some of you may have seen Miles and I post these on our Instagram pages last week. But quick sticker recap.

We now have some super bad ass meat eater fishing stickers drawn by my good bud and killer artist, Mike Sewell. And they've got a wicked food chain, Russian nesting doll sort of thing. One one listener even likened it to the human centipede. But I mean, he's just a second.

So it's not real. Can't go that way. But anyway, it's a musky swallowing a bass that's swallowing a trout, that's swallowing a mynor, and it's damn cool.

So those are now available to All in the Meat Eaters store. But strong possibility, Miles. And I might have a few stacks of those set aside to give away that.

It's highly likely our little secret stash. Maybe we'll see.

Yeah, you know, but we also have official degenerate angler Ben Sticker's, which trained eyes might notice, mirror the text Sergei's used in the movie Clerks. So the burning question out there, how do you get some I know all of you were wondering.

Well, there are a few different options if we use anything that you send to our email bent at the Meat Eater dot com on the show, whether it's an awkward photo or a item or a news story or a question for Lands', a bar nomination, really, really anything at all.

Even if we just give you a shout out or you correct us on something, we screw up, you'll get a little sticker back from us. We'll send it to you. However, we're also we're also keeping an eye on the hashtags Degenerate Angler and best podcast on the gram. So, you know, if you impress us, like make us laugh, we'll probably throw some stickers your way.

Yeah. At least for now. The only way to get yourself an official degenerate angler sticker is to somehow chami your miles. But a modicum of work involved there. Think about how much cooler it will be to stick one of these ultimately valueless items on your lands series tackle box, because you got it directly from us.

And I'll also add that we're not very difficult to charm. So, yes, it's simple, people, it's time for you to represent. We appreciate it. All right.

It is time to get to Fish News. And a quick reminder, this is a competition, Joe and I do not know which stories the others bring to the table. And we are, as always, competing for the praise, the recognition and the validation of our paternal podcast. Engineer Phil, Joe Lieberman, what do you got?

I am. I am. So I'll tell you what, dude, I'm about to make a very dedicated listener of this program, perhaps even may I go as far as to say our number one fan, very happy this week.

And that person is Mr. Mike Stevens of the Western Outdoor News.

Oh, Mike, Mike. He emails US Weekly.

I yeah, dude know. I'm sorry. I'm going to I'm going to jump in on you because you reminded me you actually reminded me of some some housekeeping I should probably to do too, because I totally forgot. I have a very important correction that needs to be addressed.

Mike, uh, he wrote in to tell me that I messed up in our recent interview that we did with Oliver and I. And in that we asked Oliver to choose between Nike pumps and Reebok catapults and MIT Road.

He said, I'm pretty sure it was L.A. gear, not Reebok, that made the catapult a watchdog that's a watchdog right there.

Actually learned to say, I only remember because I played hoops in high school. And back then it was all about whose shoe you wore. Karl Malone rock catapults, but L.A. gear was almost always in the same category.

So thank you for that, Mike. And since I wrote the question, I take full responsibility for that. But egregious error. And let's hope I don't mess up anything new that important in news here. Sorry, I am back to you.

No, no, no, no, no, no. That's great. I'm glad we worked that in. Mike gets double shot it out, but this is no joke. I didn't go look Mike up this story of his in the Western after and he's genuinely popped up in my Google News feed and it's very recent and it it resonated with me so much.

And I'm betting it will resonate with a lot of other people out there. And it made me say, yes, damn right you preach, Brother Mike. Headline Lake Management, stop publicizing stock days. So listen.

Yeah, I got a serious education from this piece because I'm not hip to the California truck scene. I don't know anything about it. And according to my story, due to a mix of factors which include some virus outbreaks at certain fish hatcheries, meaning the fish, not people like, I don't know what they got, but the fish got sick. Plus covid-19 budget shortfalls misallocated. And as he put it, a D prioritizing of fishing at state and federal leadership levels, California had a shortage of trout this past season and this is a big problem.

And as in many other states, it sounds like Cally has a mix of fish that, you know, some come from state hatcheries and some come from private hatcheries, which is important because I'll jump into a selection from my story, says Lake's.

Opting for private providers of hatchery rainbows are not immune either, because anglers frustrated at the lack of trout plants at their local holes are going to look elsewhere and most are willing to get up earlier and burn some gas in order to find spots where putting five on a stringer is within the realm of possibility. Lake, stocked by private non DFW hatcheries, are no longer solely doing so for the benefit of local anglers because those folks are the ones taking advantage of the best trout fish in a given lake has to offer.

And most of that carnage is going down on the day a lake is stocked. Most anglers know the location. Their favorite lakes are stocked, and even on an unfamiliar lake, it's easy to figure out and there's not many practical workarounds there.

But lake staffers or city personnel publicizing the day, if not the time of the plant on social media or their own websites is what creates that gauntlet. And that's what he's saying needs to stop.

And Mike goes on to say, there's an understandable benefit to posting those details because it results in cars lined up outside the gate hours before the lake area opens. And it sounds like a lot of these lakes, which is a little different from the East Coast, have concession stands that sell everything from coffee to worms to fishing permits and hot dogs. And they make money off people showing up to catch these trout. But his argument is that that quick spike in cash produced by posting these minuit stalking details, it's kind of a bad win because what happens is the joint gets fished out in a day or two.

Then there's this long ass lull in action between Stocking's during which the same concession stands aren't making any money. And meanwhile, he's saying, all you see on social media, you know, is people crying about this spot's fished out, it's fished out, it's fished out over here or berating people, calling them chuck trout chasers, you know. And yet, as Mike points out, the situation has sort of forced you to become a truck chaser, because if you want to experience a really good hot bite, you kind of sort of have to play this game.

You have to be there when they're stocked. And Mike finishes with why not keep stock dates under wraps, you can still announce how many pounds will be stocked over the course of a season or how many times within a given month trout will go in and even DFW only publishes the week.

Trout plants are scheduled to happen, not the day. And he says if we adopted that of California, adopted that, he says the crowds will spread out over the rest of the month, making fishing more comfortable. And there will absolutely be more permits and worms and cups of Joe sold over the long run to all the new faces in the crowd.

And dude, this hits so close to home for me, it's not even funny.

I'll tell you, like out here my entire life, trout stock streams and Jersey closed two weeks before the season open and across the river in Pennsylvania, one month before the season open. And those rivers and lakes could be stocked any time within that period. Right.

And then after opening day, you could find out the week most bodies of water would be stocked, but not the day. And there were a few exceptions. There were a few places where where you could find out the day. However, you weren't allowed to fish on that day, or you could fish after six p.m. or something like that.

But the bottom line is my entire life, the stockers would flush the system, you know what I mean? You could wait a couple miles of any given trout stream well away from the easy access stock points and catch fish.

And I don't do this as much as I did growing up. But per recent experiences over the last few years, that doesn't really seem to happen anymore. And, you know, now is that because it's so easy to figure out the stock weeks and days? Not entirely, because it's always been that way. I think it's a combo there being a lot more people out there that want to chase stock trout now. Then you have the influence of social media.

And I think since time is money for a lot of people, there's more effort to hit places as close to stocking as possible.

And I swear these days, man, like you only catch these fish where where they're dumped and they won't be there for long. And I'm getting long on this, but I got to end with this example.

My daughter's five, just old enough for a little chest waders, and I took her to a stream. I grew up fishing for the first time this past spring, and she caught her first trout. Right. But we started at the bridge. Nothing went to two more known holes down nothing. Fourth hole was a charm. We caught four trout, missed a few, all in just that one hole, brought them home, cooked them up. Short trip because five year olds have no attention span.

But I went back two days later by myself and. They're in that spot was a rooster tail package, some asshole left on the bank and I called zero trout and I waited half a mile or so downstream, zero trout.

So my point is, like my daughter had this really sort of cherished milestone experience because of pure dumb luck and timing.

Like we we just went I paid no attention to the schedule and it was pure luck.

And had I taken her two days later, she may not have caught her first trout last spring and we probably would have caught nothing.

And I feel like what Mike saying and what I see here that's in a lot of places becoming what trout stocked fishing is.

But this is so outside of my realm of experience and understanding because I've just I've never, ever done any of this. And so, yeah, on one hand, it's really fascinating to me, just this whole culture about trying to time where they're going to be and when they're going to be there. I know now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sort of sounds like what you're saying is what Mike is calling for is what's already happening out east.

And that's not solving the problem either. Well, if that's not the solution, what is it?

I mean, see, I think this is this is what's happening here on both sides of the country.

I think you have a good example of government or whoever, thinking that by putting this detailed information out there, they're making it easier for more people to enjoy fishing and enjoy the outdoors.

Right. But that's that's questionable.

You know, I agree. People want to know where their money is being spent. So to say, hey, especially out here, we buy we buy trout stamps, all that money goes to the hatchery programs.

So to say, hey, we're putting X amount of pounds of trout in these rivers between April one and May 30th and call it done that.

We've told you how many trout are going in there, you know, when opening day is. But beyond that. I think it would be a great idea to completely randomise that and not make it so, so cut and dry, but at the same time.

It's always been that way out here, and it's I don't know, man, I don't know if it's fewer people fishing, I don't know if it's more people jumping out there following those stock days. But, you know, growing up.

Yeah, like you'd get your jollies catching six and 10 minutes at the bridge on opening day. Like you wanted that change. Stringer fully or six right away.

But the real satisfying ones was like that lone fati you'd catch in June a couple of miles like way away from where they stopped. You know, that one was almost wild at that point. I was almost where the meat was.

The big thing here, you open up, it's got pink meat. The meat turned pink like that was like the big thing. But I don't know man. I talked to a lot of dudes.

I feel like that's not as common an occurrence now. It's like you better get your ass there when they're dumped, they're going to get whacked out of these holes. No time to flush the system. And that's that's I have no issue with stock trout fishing. It's what I grew up doing. And back in the day, they would they would get throughout a good chunk of the system and then it would actually feel like you were trout fishing for real.

They were still stocked. But you could sneak around a bend or walk a little further and pick fish off and it doesn't happen like that anymore.

It sounds like the way that you're describing it happening now and what Mike was writing about sounds really transactional to me, like it makes me think of those pay to play hatchery ponds where you could, you know, five bucks for three trout. Right. You know, which never even when I was a kid and all I cared about was catching fish, those had no appeal to me. Like, I was just not interested in doing that.

And so the idea of stocked trout streams, at least in my head, is not to be the that that paid hatchery pond, but it's to simulate the experience of. That's exactly catching trout in a semi wild environment that feels more like fishing.

And what it sounds like you guys are both describing is the loss of that sense. And I think I agree that that's a problem. I don't know enough to say like, well, I think this is the solution because I'd be an asshole to say that. But I agree that there's a problem there.

No, no, no. And you said that beautifully. That's what it was like. You accept that these are, you know, clip thin, you know, raceway fish, but they're put there so that your river that's probably going to be dry by June feels like a real trout stream for a few months. And you get out there and you fish the riffles. And I don't fully understand the Calli deal, but I don't think it's it's full on pay.

It just sounds to me like, you know, these are these are private and state stockings, but it's not a play because the public is constantly getting more pay.

I did. I was just I was using the pay thing is an example of what it's like trying to be I mean, same same deal here in our lakes, man.

Like, you know, they stock a bunch of lakes here, but any more you go a couple of weeks after they do that because I guarantee there were people knew exactly when they were dumping them.

And they what I can never understand is that how you could look at it as a good time to, like, sit there with your power bait in the water while they're dumping nets of trout overtop of the power bait in the water like that ruins the whole thing.

Yeah, but anyway, it's like it's like pulling the curtain back on the magic. Yeah, I totally get that. We I think there's one we could probably cover like half a show on. But I'm going to I'm going to, I'm going to move us away because otherwise we will and and I'm going to follow it up with some other questionable fishing practices within the industry.

And and it's a little bit awkward because I feel like pretty soon we're going to get a reputation on the show for bagging on fishing tournaments. And, you know, neither of us are tournament anglers. And that's something we have discussed in the past.

But I feel like I've got to say, I don't actively hate on tournament fishing. It's not something I want to do, but I don't hate on it. And I think tournaments increase the visibility and the popularity of fishing. And that's something that you and I both fully support.

Yeah, and I'll clarify for myself, too, like I'm not a tournament guy, not my scene, not what I'm into, not why I fish, but I am also not like anti like there's never be fishing tournaments.

I'm really, really not. But despite having said all that and needing to caveat that this next story is exactly the kind of outcome that can paint tournaments in a bad light. All right. So in July of twenty nineteen, a guy by the name of Ben Wu hosted a two day bass tournament on the St. Lawrence River in Ontario, Canada. After the opening day of the tournament, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources started getting calls from local anglers reporting that lots of fish were dying.

After the tournament, Bruce Tuft's, who's the fisheries biologist that helped craft the province's guidelines on fish handling during competition, he went down to the marina because he'd heard these rumors and he was just born to investigate. So he and some officers from the Ministry of Natural Resources, they started poking around. They found a few dead fish in the bushes nearby and they found a few more in the water. But then a Marine employee pointed them toward a dumpster.

There they found 185 dead smallmouth, double bagged in black plastic and buried under a bunch of other trash in total. Investigators found nearly 200 fish that the biologist Tuft's described to the CBC as, quote, the biggest, best brood stock in our fishery. And if you look at the photos, I mean, I'd have to agree they're all really, really nice smallmouth.

Now, Tufts claims that these fish died as a result of high temperatures and low oxygen levels in the holding tank, the tournament used to keep fish after they've been weighed, a staff sergeant for the ministry told the CBC. We believe the organizer was negligent in the way he handled the fish, and that's what resulted in the deaths of so many. OK, so all this happened in the summer of twenty nineteen. And so why am I talking about it now?

Well, the guy who put on that tournament, Ben Wu, was recently convicted of failing to abide by the terms and conditions of his licence as an organizer. He received a fine of nine thousand bucks. That's that's Canadian dollars and a 20 year suspension of his fishing license in the province of Ontario. But but here's the kicker for me, who doesn't live in Ontario anymore in the wake of this incident, which, you know, didn't look real good for him.

He moved to New Brunswick. And this punishment doesn't impact who's fishing privileges in any province other than Ontario. Now, I have to say, Wu denies any wrongdoing in the handling of the fish.

And I feel like I need to point out that he has hosted lots of tournaments and has never been linked to any other fish kills. He blames the venue and claims the poor water quality from the river was a contributing factor. Now, maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. But either way, I got to say, man, this dude's conduct seems really, really sketchy to me.

Reports the first day of the tournament indicate that Wu and other organizers knew they had a problem with fish mortality in that tank.

Despite that, they did not halt the event to save the fish. And they didn't report the fish deaths to the Ministry of Natural Resources, which they were required to do by law.

Moreover, even though Wu denies doing so, it looks like they tried to hide all those dead fish, right?

Like they buried him pretty much in trash bags in the dumpster in order to avoid getting in trouble.

And in contradictory public statements, Wu has said that he has, quote, no negligence and that he, quote, takes full responsibility. So I don't quite know what to do with that. He also told the CBC that he was done hosting fishing tournaments, but then continued to host fishing tournaments under a new business name.

So, look, I'm just going to close by saying, like reiterating that I think fishing tournaments play an important role in modern fishing culture and the fishing industry, which were both part of I'm not trying to hate on tournaments, but incidents like this make some people understandably skeptical of competitive angling. Right. And and I know and you know, the big circuits like Bass and FLW and Major League fishing, they work really hard to ensure that they minimize fish mortality.

But there are a lot of smaller tournaments like that one out there that don't have the resources of those three tours. And look, man, those are the ones I worry about because they have impacts on the fisheries, too. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, ultimately write a terrible story, but you certainly can't look at this and say this is all tournaments by a stretch. This is one bad dude who did it wrong.

I mean, you know, you can't you can't let this sort of tarnish your view of all of all bass tournaments.

No, but, you know, having a really bold statement I want to make that's actually based off someone I interviewed who I'd have to keep nameless. But it's I'm hesitant, but I'm going to I'm going to do it because it's sort of it sort of ties in.

You know, years ago I was I was doing some interview work about a GA study in South Texas. Right.

And I'm familiar with the study, tons of bass tournaments down there. And, you know, Bass is big business, brings in a lot of money and you have a lot of bass fishermen that want to see all the guard dead because they're down there, kill, you know, supposedly killing all their bass. Yeah.

And they did this study on these GHA. And then the long story short, they kind of found that the thing they were eating the least of was largemouth bass. I mean, they cut them open, did stomach contents. It was all rough fish. And I can't say names because I promised that I wouldn't.

But but someone with authority within that whole deal said, you know what, I what I really want to tell all these bastards is that the worst thing for the bass in your lake is another tournament every single weekend on these lakes, like it is more disruptive to the bass population than than anything else.

And even that. Right. I'm still not saying tournaments are bad, but it's real easy to look at this dude and be like, wow, what an asshole. Look, he screwed up. He knew the fish were being harmed. You could have thrown all these fish in the dumpster. That's the worst case scenario.

But on that local level, too, you know, I live by lakes out here and I don't even live in super bass land that also there's a there's a tournament on them almost every weekend by some club, you know, and I think we just don't think about that, you know what I mean?

It's it's real easy to look at how they're held after how they're released. What happens after. The fact but if there's something to think about it, it's also the pressure of tournaments on these lakes that see a lot of them in a lot of different parts of the country.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And look, we got to move on, but I will I'll close by saying adding to that. Under five percent, mortality is considered acceptable, so stretched out over every weekend with big tournaments all the time, there's an impact there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, you know, again, not coming down on tournaments.

I do agree with you that they do a lot of good for fishing.

But, yeah, that's that's that's a lot of stress depending on the lake, depending how is they see it.

Well, jump from stress on fish to Massachusetts shit Segway stress on one of America's greatest outdoor writers. How about that? And I'll lead it by saying or asking, rather, even though I kind of already know the answer.

Are you a Hemingway fan as in Ernest? Entirely. Not not Mariel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

You know, the question I am I will say I think that he did so much for the form of writing, like modern and writing and particularly his short fiction for me is is is fantastic. I am also a sort of an advantage or disadvantage. I don't know how the story is going to go, but I used to teach at the university. I taught some Hemingway. So I'm a little bit in this world. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no.

And that's all well and good. And I learned some Hemingway in school. I did the Hemingway thing and right out of the gate.

Right. Incredible respect for Ernest Hemingway. And I agree. He is an incredible writer icon, one of the best there ever was.

I just have always sort of taken a little issue with people that sort of they fancy themselves well versed in outdoor literature, but immediately jump to Hemingway is their main guy.

Like, that's the main guy.

And I've met many of these people, and I like to put it in a different way. I use this analogy.

It's like hearing someone say, like, I'm really into punk music and I'm like, oh, cool. Me too. Who's your favorite band?

And they're like, Oh, Green Day knew you were going to say that. And that pisses me off. But go ahead. I love I love Green Day. Green Day is terrific.

But like, if that's where you jump to pronounce your love of punk, especially then if you have no idea who Operation Ivy or the Misfits or The Descendants are, I'm like, I can't have a conversation about this with you. And I just sometimes feel and this is just my opinion and you're going to fight me.

Hemingway is just too tokin and easily latched upon. Right. And I just need to establish that because this little story from The Wall Street Journal is for these sort of token Hemingway people headline fly-Fishing, The Ernest Hemingway Way. And it begins, interestingly, when Ernest Hemingway's well-worn steamer trunk containing his fly fishing gear disappeared from a train bound for Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1940, the loss was so crushing, the author never again waded into the shallows. Instead, he concentrated his angling efforts far offshore, catching record breaking objects like sailfish and marlin.

And that was a little fun fact. I did not know about Hemingway anyway. His great grandson, Patrick, said the loss of this trunk shook the entire family. But apparently the idea of this long lost steamer trunk loaded with Hemingway's fishing gear is now the inspiration for a new Hemingway inshore collection of wares from several high end brands, one of which is several.

And that's who created the reels within this line. OK, now ever all because you're giving me the look of what's that, right?

You ever heard of several Ahamad?

I'm feeling negligent, so. No, no, no, no, no, no. So so overall is not a well known name, right? However, seeing that I'm a vintage tackle nerd, while they were never super prevalent in the US market in the rest of the world, Europe and everything there, the van Stallmann, the accurate the old school feigner like serious machinery for whuppin, big fish. And apparently for this story, Hemingway was a big overall fan.

He had a lot of overall reels made. In fact, a vintage Italian ever all became real is high on my list of personal vintage tackle desires.

I'm just extremely poor, so I don't know if I will ever happen anyway.

This is from the story debuting in December. The handcrafted nine eight flywheels coming in the mahogany box and are packed in freshly planed wood shavings, smelling the way you'd expect anything. Hemingway to smell. Earthy, warm, woodsy.

Which makes me wonder, do you Hemingway do sit around and talk about what you think?

Papa smelled like that all the time. OK, all right. It continues. The author's only surviving fly rods and the inshore collection fly rise share similar craftsmanship. Designer Anthony Toro spent sixty hours forming each to piece eight foot stick from Tonken Bamboo, including wrapping its nickel silver Farrell's in black kimono Japanese silk thread and attaching a real seat built of titanium and a base and fighting what made of West Indian mahogany in Spanish cedar.

Now I looked up this entire collection, which also includes some conventional offshore reels and even a custom Willy Robert's flat skiff, a Hemingway flat skiff. Here's a price list. As you would imagine, the fly rod and reel come as a set for forty five hundred dollars.

And guess what? They're already sold out per the website. They're already sold out the flat skiff. Ninety five thousand dollars. And then you've got the offshore reels starting at a measly 750 because I guess they need something for the lowly unrefined low budget ballyhoo puller.

And listen, I understand that all this shit has been developed for people with stupid money, and that's fine. That's totally fine. But I also am willing to bet there are like those Hemingway people I'm talking about out there, that while they may not be able to afford any of this either would just love to have it like they'd be all about being decked out. In Hemingway gear, and I look at that ever all fly real and dude, it is gorgeous, like I'm sure it's one of the best made flywheels ever.

However, like, as much as I want an ever all in my collection, I wouldn't be able to show up like in the Louisiana Delta to chase redfish with my Hemingway logo. Real. I couldn't do it. Couldn't do it.

I'd have to put a green sticker over the Hemingway graphic.

So there you go. Just a little little thing from that from the Journal and I'll let you.

You're going to come at me hard here. I'm not. But if you still need a Christmas present, ideas, everybody, you're not going to come at you at all.

In fact, I'm not going to say much because I don't think there's a place for Hemingway debate.

But I will say that I think Hemingway would absolutely hate everything about that.

I think he is rolling over in his grave.

Nothing about him was like embracing any of that pomp and circumstance. Elitist bullshit.

Yeah, that was his that was the replica of his boat at the bass pro shops in the Keys. He didn't want that. No. So I think the fact that his name is being profited off of that way to do people with more money than sense I think would piss him off. That's fair.

That's fair. Fair debate. Hemingway later. I have not read much of it. So you'll win.

Yeah, I have no. I have no connection between that story and this one, so I'm not even going to try, I'm just going to swap.

Dr. Karen Osborn, a zoologist from the Smithsonian Institute, primarily studies invertebrates, very deep sea invertebrates, to be specific, as part of a research, she takes pictures of critters in the deepest parts of the ocean. And even though she's usually focused on really, really tiny organisms, she'll take pictures of just about whatever she can find down there because, you know, you don't see much right to take what you can get.

Exactly.

So Osborne kept photographing this one particular fish, the Pheng tooth, which looked exactly like you imagine. But every image she took, she could only see the silhouette and not the fish itself. OK, I kept trying to take pictures of it, Osborne told Wired magazine. And I was just getting these silhouettes.

They were terrible. This happened enough times that she figured something weird was going on and decided to investigate further because that's what scientists do. So she captured some of these fish and she analyzed them. Turned out the problem wasn't her photography skills. These fish make really terrible models because their skin actually absorbs and traps ninety nine point five percent of the light that hits it.

They're layered, living, swimming, black holes without all the vacuous gravity and supermassive weird.

Yeah, cool.

So Dr. Osborne discovered these fish have very distinct arrangements of melanin in their skin, melanin being the compound that gives skin pigment melanin is stored and transported by organelles called Malalas Ohm's. The Milonov zones in these fish are arranged in such a way that light bounces around between them. Instead of reflecting back out, they've created effectively a structural light trap, Dr. Osborne told the website inverse. But they've done it using just the shape of the pigment that's in there, which is so cool and so efficient.

We're harnessing this for military. Something like this is Knot's. Yeah, and and it's an incredibly useful adaptation for the fish because it renders them virtually invisible to both predators and prey since they live more than 600 feet below the surface where there's almost no structure for them to use as cover, they basically carry their cover around with them all the time.

But now hold up. Some of you who are thinking ahead might be wondering, like, you know what? Why does this matter if these fish live so far down that the sun doesn't reach them? Right. Like, how would that help them out? All right. Well, check this out.

So many deep water species create their own light. Sources called bioluminescence and both predators and prey use that. And for an example, like imagine that classic angler fish that we all found learned about. We were kids, right?

It's that my kid's got a stuffed one in the other room. Exactly right.

It's a glowing lure that hangs off of its head. Right. And anglerfish, by the way, also have this special light absorbing skin.

And that's what makes their rules work. If the light from their little glowing lures actually lit up their freaky looking faces, no crayfish wouldn't even come close to them and it wouldn't work out. So, you know, when you think of fish in shallow water environments where there's a lot of sunlight, a lot of those fish have adapted mirrored scales or translucent bodies, and that's what they use to hide. But mirrored scales and translucence are easily visible under a bioluminescent light source so they don't work in the deep.

This unique pigmentation that Dr. Ausborn observed absorbs the light the deep water fish create and therefore makes a perfect camouflage. Once Dr. Ausborn and her colleagues started digging into this, they found 16 different species of fish with the trait, many of which are not even related to each other.

So like a bunch of unrelated fish evolved the same trait independently because it works even cooler, at least, at least to me. Some of these fish have this ultra black coating lining their guts. And the theory for that goes that it would block the bioluminescent light from the fish they've just eaten. Whoa. Right. Yeah, man, you know, and it seems like such a cliche thing to say, but you know how people like we know more about space than we do about our oceans.

Yeah, we do like June the year 2020. And we just figure this out.

I mean, that's rad. That's really cool. And to your point, yes. The team doctor, all of our team think this might help, like might have Biodesign applications and it might create better telescopes or cameras. There might be some application for blocking light pollution. And yes, it might lead to some of the whole nuclear submarine disappear. Yes, yes, yes. That's how we do.

We just we just take nature and then turn it into a weapon.

Like, I don't really have like much like like I just I'm that was one of the most fascinating of your science stories yet that was really like that's really interesting.

I could not I knew the moment I saw that one, I was like, oh, I'm writing this one up. There's no question this one this one's going in the podcast, man.

And then, I mean, it's always fascinates me, too, just that anybody can put that level of study into anything that lives that deep because you can't bring them up a lot. Like they couldn't bring them up alive, right?

No, no. They had to had to kill them and to analyze them.

But the other piece of the story, and I don't wanna go too far off on this, but this is like such a classic example of why scientists are interesting to me and how their brains work.

This is not what this person studies. She studies invertebrate. She studies tiny things, but she has the kind of mind where she noticed, like, wow, I wouldn't yeah, I could only get silhouettes of this fish. Hmm. I better study that. Like, I just I love that. Just the ability to or the choice to be so aware of what you're looking at and know that it then leads to an avenue for discovery. I just think that's so valuable.

And I respect people who have that so much super cool, super cool story.

Phil, what are you going to do, man? You got by yet you got a new fish species. You got expensive Hemingway here. Yeah.

Truck trash trout and dead bass, dead bass. Man, it's going to be a tough decision. But as soon as we hear from Phil to see who won this week's news showdown, we're going to go over to a fan favorite awkward moments in angling and make a dude regret that he sent us this photo.

Miles, as much as I appreciated the update on all of the crazy shit happening in the deepest trenches of the ocean, the winner this week is Joe Somali.

Joe, I really related to your stocking dilemma story as I'm currently editing this podcast from the utility closet of a target waiting for them to stock their store with PlayStation fives. We're going to take a picture of a blogger on. So who is our victim this week in awkward moments in angling? I also have to say that we have a tendency to flimflam the name between awkward moments and angling. Sometimes we say awkward moments and fishing. You people know what we're talking about.

It's the same it's the same segment anyway.

Yeah. Yeah, you get it. I think they're smart enough to follow that.

I give I give our listeners that much credit.

Yeah, but that's very unprofessional for us to keep changing the name. But that's our problem. Anyway, on the chopping block this week is Mr. Dave.

So Becky or so back one of those is right. I hope I'm saying your name right, dude. Now, Dave wrote us a very nice note about the podcast and his experiences at a Pantera show, The Pantera. You guys love it and just kind of slipped this shot in as like a little addendum. And after some discussion of the Crows soundtrack and how his buds would also go out of their way to play music on jukeboxes, that would just piss off the entire bar, he kind of did the old like, oh, by the way, here's a photo.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

By the way, I also happened to have this little gem in the way that you might enjoy and like when you kept reading the email, didn't say much about the photo.

You just like it was just like a little bit of a breadcrumb, just kind of teased up.

And it was perfect because there's there's so much that we could say about this photo. Like we could we could honestly do we could take up the rest of the show depending on the source.

We won't. But we could. Yeah, we're not going to. But yes, we could. So that's right. And here's what Dave wrote.

OK, below you'll find a very awkward photo of me circa nineteen eighty nine in the north woods of Wisconsin, proving I was Oggi Metal and a virgin, but thought I was cool.

I was all right. I believe it was right.

And I will say I think it also proves that he was a very, very high.

I'm not judging and I don't mean to like read this based on appearances or whatever, but like, it kind of looks like Dave could barely hold his bloodshot eyes open as that shutter clicks, like there's just these little slits of eyes. I could be wrong.

Like maybe there was a bright flash. Maybe he was looking into the sun. I don't know. But he looks pretty baked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So so Dave in nineteen eighty nine. Right. He had long blond hair with like flippy flappy feathery wings. And who comes to mind right away. I don't know why, but it's Duff McKagan from Guns and Roses.

There's a lot of Guns N Roses. Yeah. Yeah.

And but the facial expression is more like an Axl Rose kind of. I don't give a shit right for sure.

And this is this is probably offensive to Dave, considering we both know he's a Pantera fan. So he's Pantera fans. He's all about Phil Anselmo. And we're calling it was 89. It was eighty nine. He was might not got there yet.

I'm calling it like I see it. Anyway, he's wearing a classic 80s foam trucker hat and the photo is very washed out like over flash, so I can't make out what's on the hat, but I'm sure if I could it would be another point of ridicule. But I can't see it. Dave, you can fill us in later, but it's OK because the rest of the ensemble leaves plenty to talk about.

Man, it does. And we will cover that. But first, we should mention it is a fishing picture. Yes. Theoretically, this is about fishing.

It's the Dave's holding to pike vertically, one in each hand, and there's no consistency to the hold, which also, again, supports my theory that he was bait.

He's got like he's got one under the gill plate and then he's got the other, just like with the clamp down behind the head.

And neither of these are particularly big fish. Right. But that's OK. Yeah, I have plenty of those flights to from my my my childhood.

But they are mostly obscuring what appears to be a Bart Simpson T-shirt, which is perfect for that.

That era nails it. I cannot tell exactly which version of the popular Bart Simpson T-shirt.

Either way, it's either Colbung Édouard or don't have a Kalmen like those are your only options for those of you who were there as an added bonus, Dave's got his his fold sunglasses hanging down from the color of the shirt.

And again, not the greatest photo. I can't tell if they're aviator's or blue blockers, you know, like those big sunglasses that the old people, like my dad would sit around the reading glasses when they went fishing because it would polarise them.

I was kind of thinking like he was going for Terminator glasses. Oh, the blades. Because remember when that was cool, like the Terminator, you know, the ugly blades.

Of course I remember. But this would have been years after TI one and not yet two.

So I don't know. That's very unsubstantiated that say look like but it's, it's really the waist down.

It kind of takes the cake here. It's Dave's Southern Hemisphere. It's a southern hemisphere of Dave. And I recognize this style of shorts because I lived in this era. But I'm struggling like I don't even know. What you'd call them, like what you don't know? Oh, I do. Those, my friend, are gems. Absolutely. 100 percent. Those are gems like you guys out in Jersey had your Zumiez or whatever. But those of us living in the surf culture, we had jams and they're similar.

They're similar in that they had the obnoxious busi patterns in the neon colors and all that other stuff.

But they were short shorts. Yes, they were parachute pants. They were short shorts.

And and so now, you know, also I did look this up similar to zubaz jams are still around and still available in case you're looking to diversify your summertime wardrobe. You should have held on it then.

They're probably worth some vintage, some coin in the vintage clothing. So, no, I had shorts that looked like that. I just don't remember calling them jams anyway. So we have the geometric shorts going on. But Dave's also wearing bicycle shorts. And I know this because they're extending past the jams. And like, you're a couple of years older than me.

I think Dave is too, like an eighty nine.

My mom was still dressing me, but like, was that a look like it's like a very faith. No more from hell.

Hell no. You did not just do that. You did not you did not just disparage Mike Patton in my presence. That guy's a genius.

I didn't say I wasn't a genius, but when I look, if someone if someone's going to do that, that would have been an Anthony Kiedis move.

OK, no, that's right. I see. OK, that's fair. That's what I would say. Red Hot Chili Peppers. But I can't I don't think that was a thing. At least I didn't know that was a thing. I never did that. But the point you're making, despite my taking issue with digging on on my iPad and your point is valid, the bike shorts, they really are perplexing. Yes. And they like they make the whole ensemble kind of difficult to pin down.

Yeah. It was kind of making sense. And then and then you got like the bike shorts. Right. I and if you work if you try and take the thing as a whole and you work from the top down, Dave goes from that kind of badass.

You know, he's got tough hair and the Axl Rose snarl to the Bart Simpson kind of childish. Sure. And then and then we get into the bottom half.

Yeah. With the spandex sticking almost to his knees. And I feel like he's he's a long way from finding his confidence at that point. Like it just a general sense.

Yeah. But anyway, we do love this shot. Yes. And can resonate with the shot and we cannot thank you enough Dave for sending it. We promise we're going to get a little token of appreciation headed your way just as soon as you get us your physical address and we promise not to show up your house unannounced.

And don't forget, you can now see Dave shot on me and Miles Instagram pages. That's Attwater Miles and at Jadot, Somali one thirty eight. And if you want the chance to be roasted here, send your embarrassing fishing photos to Brent at the meat eater dotcom.

Oh, man, this is definitely one of the best segment ideas we've had, so totally we've all made such such bad choices in our younger fishing exploits and yet we were so proud of ourselves.

We kinda like captured on film. I know.

And you look at a lot of these photos and you remember when they were taken at the time, it's like you were so proud of that shot and thought it was so cool and then you thought it was awkward. And now, like, you have to classify these as historical gems, like they're all just historical gems, timetabled.

They really are. I couldn't have said it any better. There are gems.

And speaking of gems from the past, before we bid you all a fond farewell, Joe is going to dig into a classic fly whose name has been corrupted, shall we say.

You really nailed it for this week's End of the Line segment. It's got it all.

Booze, drugs, crime, sex and even sufficient to say it's not loud enough, but. The Mickey Finn streamer is very simple, it's tied on a long chank hook and that shank is covered in silver tinsel, sometimes ribbed for her pleasure, sometimes not. Three small pinches of Buchtel are tied in at the head, one yellow, one red, then another yellow to create a little hotdog in a bun effect.

And that's it. No feathers, no flesh, no pickles, no relish. Buchtel tinsel and a tapered head of black thread.

It's what you would call a classic Atlantic salmon style tie.

And it's been around as long as other notables in the category such as the Magog smell Black Ghost and Blue Charm. Oddly, my end of the line nod to the mickey has little to do with it being a personal fish killer. But I can't get to that part until we talk about the flies. Rather bizarre and most likely, at least partially bullshit laced passed. According to my research, it was developed in the 19th century by Charles Langevin, a noted tyre based in Quebec, and originally it was called the red and yellow for obvious reasons.

Now here's where it gets weird. So pay attention. Apparently, in the same general time frame, there was a saloonkeeper in Chicago named Mickey Finn who concocted a tranquilizer of sorts that some news sources referred to as knockout drops, that he would slip into the cocktails of unsuspecting patrons and then robbed them once they were passed out.

This is, of course, where we get the term slip him a Mickey, which is kind of a classier old school, cool way of saying somebody got Rufina over at the fantasy Shoba for a time. The red and yellow was supposedly renamed the Langbehn after its creator, but that never really caught on.

So fast forward to the 1930s and now the fly is also sometimes referred to as the assassin.

That's thanks to outdoor writer John Aldan Knight, who coined the term in his writings. Now his writings caught the attention of another writer, Greg Clark of the Toronto Star, who went on a fishing trip with Knight to see what this assassin fly was all about.

And they caught a ton of fish.

So when Clarke wrote up his account, he proclaimed the fly was as dangerous as a Mickey Finn, and the name has stuck and remains today.

There are also some rumors that the fly's name is somehow tied to legendary silent film actor Rudolph Valentino, who is believed to have been killed by a Mickey Finn cocktail that he received after pissing off a waiter.

But that's unsubstantiated compared to the rest of this, which is sort of substantiated.

At least the Mickey Finn takes me back to my early teen years when my friend Mark, who was the best man at my wedding, and I were just figuring out this whole fly-Fishing thing.

This was years before the junkyard dog, drunk and disorderly, double deceiver, icepick, Chihuly sex dungeon, pearl necklace, SCOP Zila and 10000 other flies.

I love to fish nowadays. They didn't exist. Then we had Mickey Fins muddler menos woolly bugger's and maybe a black ghost tied with poor quality feathers. Those made up the streamer corner of our one tiny fly box. Now the bugger's we figured out worked real quick. The muddler was my go to steamer for years, but for whatever reason, we really didn't catch a whole lot on those Mickey fins.

Maybe that's because we didn't give them a fair shake or didn't really know how to present them. But regardless, it became somewhat of an inside joke during tough days when our bugger's and muddler and pheasant tails weren't really getting it done, one of us would inevitably suggest on the way home that we probably should have been throwing Mickey Fins all day. Ironically, it was not an aha moment on a trout stream that turned me back onto the Mickey Finn years later.

It was an aha moment on the Strieber surf right around the time I was getting infatuated with stripping big meat for big Brownes.

It's common in surf casting to rig a light to see ruffly on a drop or loop ahead of your plug or metal. The light fly doesn't hinder casting or the action of the main lure, and it creates the illusion of one bigger bait fish chasing a tinier bait fish.

So not all the time, but from time to time, an extra dirty water or enshroud are being finicky and I think offering a buffet of size options might be beneficial.

I might tie a little drop or loop ahead of my double D, slip them a little extra making.

That is all we have for you this week, but for the budding YouTube tubers out there looking to harvest ideas for your channels, we explained how not to toast sandwiches on a Mr. Buddy heater, the true origins of donkey sauce, how to turn a mediocre bottom feeder into a multibillion dollar industry and the fly.

You should absolutely never under any circumstances discuss at a bar. Yeah, don't do that.

Not good. Not good.

We hope all of you find something interesting, worthwhile and productive to do this weekend. But if that doesn't pan out, go check out the meat eaters YouTube channel and get caught up on the Ferhat iStore. I promise it's the best ice fishing show you've ever seen.

And after you've done that, they'll send an email to Bente at the Meat Eater Dotcom. Tell us what you've been up to lately. Let us know what you crave and what you loathe. Keep those bar nominations, awkward fishing photos, Selborne submissions and your mother's maiden names coming. We collect and archive all of them. And we do love hearing from you so much that we do.

And remember, ice fishing really is more than just a justification for drinking.

Yeah, it's a justification for drinking and eating five brats, kielbasa, Italian sausages, depending on where you live in a single afternoon.