Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:02]

He's also not wearing socks inside those work boots because he used his socks to wipe his ass, she literally looked like she was going to have a heart attack because this was her prized little poodle. If I had used my 10 inch orgo, your Bixler would be gone. I live in Washington State and we have hogs for steel and I catch them all the time and avoid game officers while I take a picture of them and put them back. Good morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome to the fishing podcast that cooked up a story and dropped the six of you in a meat grinder, leaving you wondering what happened to it because it used to be a podcast you could trust when asking for detailed directions to fishing spots.

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I'm Joe Somali. Miles and Miles Nalty. Was was that was that a predator efforts? Yes, it was. It was it was, yes, a predator. And it was an obscure one because really it's just my my roundabout way.

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So I didn't it's my roundabout way of saying.

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The theme for this week's show is Carl Weathers, ladies and gentlemen. So the theme, I'll be all right, you threw me, but the theme sounds it sounds a little questionable and as was the yeah, it's sort of I mean, no more questionable than the reference you started with. But you know what, dude? I'll play good. I'm in play. I'm down. I'm just thinking about this, though. I would say, though, that for the record, I probably would have skipped the Saturday Night Live clip that you that you started with.

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I think I would have used this one instead, because he his name is Carl Weathers and he's my new acting teacher. And lindsy he's teaching me all these valuable life lessons.

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OK, touché. Touché. I love. I love. I love the Arrested Development angle you took there.

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So there's this. Does this mean you're in ZWANE We're going to akal whether show because I don't want to play I want to clarify something to our listeners.

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Like we don't think about this shit weeks in advance. Often the theme like it's like sometimes hours before we record it.

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So this is not some it was I was putting this together and I was like, Carl Weathers.

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That's the theme dude that I mean, if nothing else, I'm like I'm very, very invested in seeing exactly how how you're going to go about trying to pull this one together.

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So, yeah, I mean, I'll play I take that as a compliment from you, man. And I feel we can both appreciate the challenge of loosely based on a fishing podcast episode on like a rated out 80s movie star.

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What could possibly go wrong?

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Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

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You know, I respect a rating challenge and a feat such as this, and I wish you nothing but luck. But before I even let you really get started, I'm going to sidetrack you because that's what we do to each other. And and I'm going to tell you that a story I once had a neighbor, like when I was in my twenties and and this neighbor had a golden retriever named Action Jackson. Oh, no shit. Cool. Yeah.

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True story. And so action Jackson, of course, in the cult classic Carl Weathers film from nineteen eighty eight.

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That is so over the top, it's like it's almost a parody of its genre of the action movie. It's, it's so bad. It's good. I don't know it's good but it is what it is like you. That was when action movies peaked and then went over the top and that's the clip that we just played. Also came from that movie for the record and.

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I personally have always thought that action Jackson might have been the best dog name, it's good time it's up there.

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It was like this huge golden retriever that was always standing in the backyard barking at people. And I was like, you have the perfect name. And and I'm just going to point out that I might be foreshadowing some things you're going to bring in later.

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I see what you did there. That was good.

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But look, I don't need luck. I'm going to tell Carl Weathers episode here today. It's done.

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May not be good, but it's done.

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We're committed anyway. It's happened. Yeah, it's happened. It's happening.

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If I had to to peg a real theme, maybe a subtheme like a sub.

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Carl Weathers theme to this week's show, I guess it could be perseverance, which that harkens back to that old weekly word of yours, perseverating. Yeah, those. I liked that one, though.

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You were not such a fan. When I first I remember my first record, I was like, what do you think?

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You're like me. Sure. So I'm glad I'm glad to hear that you came around on that one. Fine. Yeah.

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You admit that I was right. I have, I, I have.

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But probably because it just suits my own needs this. So, you know, this week you're going to have to persevere through a few more Carl Weathers references, whether you like him or not. The smell of rain coolers, that's something else.

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What else?

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We got a lure that might cause permanent ligament damage in your shoulders. And the the stereotypical in short, Cabela Schopper are all things.

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Yep. We got things coming.

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Before we get there, though, you will have to persevere through one of the thing where we're leading off with a I don't know, dude, I never to describe a most uncomfortable that's good yet phenomenal angler, particularly when it comes to Walli or anything in the Great Lakes.

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You know, I would go so far as to call to call Ross arrogant. Yeah. Think I think that's fair. He's arrogant and you know, that's a quality. You might want a fishing guide. I'll say that, too. I think I think it's good.

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I want to feel like if if I'm hiring the guy, I want the guy who's, like, overconfident, that we're going to catch fish, not the guy who's like, oh, I don't know, maybe Drew.

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That's good. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Anyway, Ross, Russ Roberts is back this week for the Smooth Move segment. Our our favorite time to let guides and captains tell humorous stories are just bitch about things. Clients do whatever they feel like telling us. And Russ is going to tell us about his favorite cocktail recipe that marries whiskey before sunup with lap dogs and atrial fibrillation.

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Oh, I don't know why. Why did you do? Joining us today on Smooth Moves, one of my all time favorite people. That's a bold statement. I know. I know. I'm seeing him on a screen right now in the look of shock.

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Captain Ross Robertson, big water fishing. How are you, my friend?

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Friend. I mean, right now I'm just overwhelmed.

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I feel like I feel overwhelmed because you showed up wearing a hat that says smooth moves. Yeah, that is good.

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Did you do this? Was there was that thought through or just a complete accident?

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I mean, I'm just a human train wreck, so probably not. But I mean, smooth suspension seats.

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I mean, seriously, I like it so much. I'll let you plug the sponsor because I'm like, man, he sat down with this. This reminds me of the time I forced you to wear a hat that says, get over yourself.

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You remember that? That was good, too.

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Anyway, so again, I'm just saying that's on Brand in more ways than one.

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But yeah, yeah, I have no problem with it. People, you know, it's just funny. Like people think me and you hate each other. It's funny.

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It is true when I'm just like yeah I can tolerate you is the thing that's tolerable. Yeah. You said my semi tolerable friend because I remember friends too.

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I referred to you as that many times. My semi tolerable friend Ross Robertson Semi-solid, a friend, Ross Robertson.

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Do remind the listeners how many years you've got it now guiding for the Wileys there on Lake?

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You know, I don't know exactly, but it's either twenty one or twenty two.

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So I'm very excited to finally get a smooth move story from you, because I know there's many, I've heard many. But you've got one shot, so hit us with the best man. What do you got.

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I got a lot of them. Well some of them we probably couldn't talk on here because you guys are not PC. But let's just be honest.

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Some of these things aren't meant for nowhere. You can go into the record books, but when people are drinking on the boat, it's a no go for me. You know, I'll drink one or a dozen with you, but that's just a no go. So I'm out there fishing and I've got a guy that I realized from somehow from time we took off till the time we basically set up this dude is hitting a flask and he is snookered. So I basically cancel the day.

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So it kind of make a little bit of an excuse just to go down.

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But I'm sure. So you cut you cut your day short. He was bad enough like by 90 percent because I mean, this is he almost knocks me out of the boat. As soon as we're getting ready to set up a notch, it's game over like this is this is a bad deal. I'm sure my insurance guys cringing right now. So anyhow, I burnam back in and it was middle of the week. And so there's like nobody really around where tie a tie up with a dock.

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It's on a river and useful information for a second. So I'd literally run to get my truck. I turn around and look in. This guy's like I can he does. It's not that far away. He is untying the ropes and he's like, all clear.

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And the boat is now like banging and sliding almost. Thankfully, there's untied you from the dock of the ramp on a river. And now it's not good any place, but it's really bad a river. And it's also middle of the week. There's nobody around like I try to use launches where there's nobody around. Right. So fortunately, there is a courtesy doctor. I'm going to say a hundred and ten feet long. I literally run. I mean, it was like a movie deal.

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I run like Forrest would jump on the boat, literally almost breaking rods in the front deck. I'd get in there and get it under power and tie it back up. As you can imagine, I got pissed at this point and about really done with the life. So the other guy who is not snickered, who's one of my regular guys and still fishes with me, he's like, oh, no, he's just he's just he knows I'm not ready to go ape mode on this deal.

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So so now I get it. I tell him, hey, listen, meet me in the parking lot. We're going to get your stuff on the boat. I'm going home. Game over there, try and take me to breakfast, lunch or whatever I'm done. Pay me where I am because I don't want to go to jail. I'm going to go home and stuff. So I'm top of the deal here. I'm waiting. I can't find I don't see him.

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I don't see him now. Where he had to park was down one hundred yards away or something like that. I'm looking I don't see see him coming. So I'm like, screw it. I'm going to drive my boat and truck in the car parking, which is, you know, there's barely there's not really a return on do any of that. But I'm just like done over with this. So I drive down there and there's a little car in front of me which I almost go apeshit on.

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And then I realize it's like some eighty year old husband and wife. And I realized then that the wife is out and she's standing in front of the car. So I get out now and I'm in a place that's like a semi in a in a school parking lot. This is logistically this doesn't all work.

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And I look out at this woman, it looks like she's having a heart attack. She is just like got her hand over my what's going on when I look down and here's my dude laying flat on the ground in front of their car and I'm like, did you get smoked by the car? I mean, what's going on? And then I realize, like, he's got this thing and he sits up and he's petting this dog. But all you can see is of Rufous here is just this little tiny.

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It looks like a lollipop. And because he's his arms are so big, he's a lady in it from from of Mice and Men.

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Absolutely. He has this dog in a death grip but doesn't even realize it because he's that right. And this woman is like, oh, my dog. And I've got to basically go up there and be like, let let go of that dog for a chick, you and your Dohm, and because this guy could kick the shit out of us, I mean, he's a bit.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, hold on. Hold on. I got the check. Was the dog OK? Yeah. Well, I mean, having a Rufous apparently. I mean, I didn't do a vet check anything on it, but she went home, she got in the car with a nice little old lady. Should not have a heart attack. I think that was probably the biggest thing in this whole deal because she literally looked like she was going to have a heart attack because this was her prized little poodle.

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I got to say, man, for all the ways that this story could have gone, it really ended as well as it could.

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You did the track star sprint and and leap God, your boat back didn't take anybody out in the parking lot. The lady, old lady didn't die and the dog was OK. And best of all, you didn't get into fisticuffs with your client. I, I really couldn't have seen this ending any other way that was positive.

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So I'd say that's I like positive stuff. I mean, there are a few that my. You just exude positivity, huh. Yeah, there's a few. But my, my lawyer and my insurance agent suggested we not talk about it.

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So I mean, I feel like that this is good. So just in case that one shook you to the core case, you were on the edge of your seat worrying about the well-being of Rufus the poodle.

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Just in case I was a messed up story, it was it was so let's heal. Here's Carl Weathers to sing you back to a happy place.

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What about a rainbow? Have you ever noticed? I do not feel healed. I do not feel put back together. I do not feel like of duty.

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Of all the Carl Weathers clips like you could have gone rocky, you could have gone predator, you could have gone Happy Gilmore, Hurricane Smith. And and you went with that. That was where you went.

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You know why? Because I stumbled onto it accidentally. And just first of all, we don't give enough credit to niños SNL monologues.

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And just just based on watching Corales Niños SNL monologue, I'm sure that was a horrible episode of the show.

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Like it was a terrible monologue. I feel like they might have been hard up for people at the time, but I love the obscurity of it.

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That's why I chose and that's where I have to I do have to give you credit because I'm giving you full points for not being obvious. That was not where I would have gone at all. And also credit there. And you know what? I'm going to thank you, because you kind of tied me up because the book that I'm going to drop in this week's installment of Frickin Philistines is also not the obvious choice, though it is one of the best essay collections I've read in a long time to Folkston.

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

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I love a good essay collection. It's kind of like the tinder of literature, reading a single essay doesn't require much commitment. You can grab a cup of coffee, share a few minutes of conversation and then get on with your day or maybe you're having a good time. Coffee turns into lunch and you set the book aside after several hours already looking forward to the next date.

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Or coffee rolls into lunch, after which you lose track of time completely take the book to bed with you and devour the whole thing. I appreciate options, good chance I'll review many essay collections, but I'm starting out with one that's kind of underground fish like you mean it by David Zoubi. I'll be the first to admit that the title leaves something to be desired, and the copy could have used a more stringent ED, but if you can set those two criticisms aside, you'll get to experience one of the best fishing books you've never heard of.

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The book spends Most of Zoe's Life, a series of vignettes held together by two strands fishing and the attendant strange characters he attracts from his Lebanese family on the Virginia coast to his contemporary itinerant ramblings in Homer, Alaska, Zoubi collects a cast of people to eclectic, to be entirely fictional and fishing tales too humble to be made up. That humility is really my favorite aspect of zubaz writing. Too many authors, especially those of us who write about conquest pursuits like fishing and hunting, use the space between covers to argue their dominance or show off superior skill.

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You'll find none of that here. Mostly you'll find a person trying to make sense of his own major tragedies and minor successes through fishing. His family's immigrant shame, the decay of his hometown after the closing of shipyard's, the sting of giving away fishing secrets to sell tackle a disappointing career, a doomed relationship, a series of canine companions that just never last long enough. It sounds depressing, I know. But it's not. Zogby gets his readers through all that heaviness the same way he gets through it, exceptional fishing stories featuring fascinating supporting characters, though to be fair, he throws in some great duck hunting stories to.

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Every time the narrative starts to feel like really sad, you're transported to a Wyoming river or an Alaskan beach with a rod in your hands and a dog at your heels waiting to chase salmon or trout or seals or sticks, anyone who has ever felt fishing become escapism and perhaps wondered at what point it tips from being a healthy outdoor pursuit to a self-destructive avoidance tactic will relate to this book. But it's not all deep water navel gazing, Zuby also turns his raised critiques outward from time to time, as in this section of an essay titled At The Cabelas.

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The story of Capello's is one of the true rags to riches tales woven into the fabric of Americana. In 1961, Dick Cabela was working at his parent's furniture store in Nebraska when he accompanied his father to Chicago with the purpose to buy more inventory in a water damaged warehouse, he stumbled upon some cheap handmade flyers from Japan. He knew they were too cheap to pass up, so he bought several thousand. His first ad ran in the Casper Tribune. Only one person answered.

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His next ad ran in Field and Stream. It read five hand tied fishing flies free 25 cent postage and handling. This ad did the trick.

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Dick and Mary Cabela spent their free time filling out orders on their kitchen table. They collected the names and addresses of their first customers on recipe cards and sent them future offers. Regrettably, these were the first catalogs the birth of a revolution. The flies in the postage to send them back to customers only cost to Cabelas 14 cents. So they made a profit of 11 cents on each order they filled. There really were no free flies. There never were.

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This was the humble beginning of America's biggest outdoor gear company, the world's foremost outfitter we know today. While wandering around in search of the canine department, I found an Alaskan moose, he was a full body mounted. His paddles were the color of maple syrup. The hide seemed large enough to project a movie on his flanks. He was standing in a tumbling stream beside faux boulders, and to my amazement, there were actual rainbow trout in the stream weaving in and out of the mousses.

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Spindly legs appeared over what passes a beaver dam and looked down at the fish.

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There were large rainbows, some of them pushing 20 inches or so. The kind of fish you catch on the North Platte in March. If you can stand the wind and the cold, the smell of the creek, the raw exposed scent of rotten fish struck me as original. A large man grazing on peanut brittle. He had just purchased, leaned over beside me and looked down to. Those are some nice things, he said, a bit of brittle fell from his mouth and the trout scrambled for it.

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The spell was broken just like that, but that is the danger of simulacra the experience itself. Just walking into the store has become the outing. The goal going to the Cabelas replaces the need to climb a mountain or find a gross beak in your binoculars. A trip to Cabelas. Any cabelas does not ask that you risk mosquitoes or a night on the uncomfortable ground. It only asked that you shop drowsily, impulsively. It asks that you sign up for the in-store newsletter, a Cabelas credit card.

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It asks that you fill your carts in your arms with products, that you haul them away happily and contented, as if the adventures within these vaulted showrooms, not some other place without you, won't find this book at your local bookstore, unfortunately. So you'll have to turn to the cabelas of the book world. Good old Amazon to get a copy. Once you get past that unpleasantness, though, I think you'll only be disappointed when you find yourself staring at the back cover, wishing there was another essay to read.

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I got to admit, no lie, that book sounds incredible, and you did pick the perfect passage because I can relate to that so much and it's so terrible that he's right, you know what I'm saying?

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Like, oh, yeah. When the cabel opened up out here in Pennsylvania, people set up campers in the parking lot like they came for the weekend to the Bela's instead of really in the camper into the wild. Absolutely. Yeah.

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And every time I'd go out there, there'd be another restaurant built up or another shopping center. It's just like all these things sprouted around that. And you just come spend the weekend at the Cabelas. That's what you did. I could never figure it out. Kind of unrelated. My wife visited that Karvelas with me exactly one time and her takeaway was that she had probably never walked through as many fart clouds in a single day before. That was what she took away from Rockefeller's peanut brittle and hot dogs are not good for the U.S..

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Now, that's what I'll say. And men like Dave nailed it on that one. And and a full disclosure, he's someone who I call an acquaintance. I think he's a really good guy in addition to being a good writer. But that is both a depressing and completely accurate passage. And I feel like one that that all of us sort of as an outdoor community need to need to marinate on for a minute. And all of you out there should buy and read that book for sure.

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This is good. And Zuby, I think, is a sorely underrated writer. I used to edit his stuff when I worked at Greatest Sporting Journal, and it was like one of those ones when I saw his name in my email, I would I would know something good was coming and I wasn't going to want to beat my head against the wall. And I always look forward to it. Oh, yeah, I can see why, man.

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And I got to give you credit. You were the king of finding like this the sort of underground dudes that write really, really great stuff. And this is a great example.

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Sadly, though, I'm probably never going to read fish like you mean it, because I. I don't do well with dogs dying.

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Well, there's not like I should clarify, it's not like a dramatic dog. Death is a part of the book.

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It's just like you see a series of dogs like once these fish with one dog and then the next story is a different dog and you know, like, OK, so he doesn't he doesn't detail the dying of dog.

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No, no. This is not like a Merle's Ora kind of situation.

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I may read it now that I know that, OK, because I can't do I look, I can watch with his arm, get torn off and feel nothing but dogs dying is my kryptonite.

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So hopefully you've not conjured any kryptonite that will block me from emerging victorious in this week's current events battle.

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Let's do some fish news, Bishnu. That escalated quickly. All right, I just have one very tiny baby shout out this week. I just I have to do this. You remember last week we did the awkward moments in England with Alex Reid as a young boy and how he was.

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How could I forget? Yeah, he was posing with the bluegill after just having pissed his pants. Yeah.

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He wrote in after last week's show to just let me know that same exact day. He also took his first dump in the woods.

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So in that photo that we ran, he's also not wearing socks inside those work boots, those little work boots, because he used his socks to wipe his ass.

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Oh, so that's like a little addendum to to the pants. Awkward photo.

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That's all I got. I'm like I have to I have to. That that need the world needs to hear that. So.

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Alex, Alex had no idea what he was getting into when he allowed us into his personal history, but he loved it.

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He's like, thanks for the five minutes of fame. Also I shit in the woods and wipe my ass with my socks. So he just he fed that. He didn't have to he didn't have to offer that up, but he did.

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And I appreciate it. No, the dude is a masochist. I'm not going to. Yeah. I can't have any housekeeping after that.

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We've we've we've soiled the whole segment. Oh.

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But up we are going to do news just a little differently this week. We're not we're not like totally stepping out is going to feel familiar. We're going to switch it up a little bit.

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So Joe and I, we're each going to do just one single story. And then after that, we're going to bring in a special guest who's who's going to cover a more in-depth piece of news for us. And that's a that's that's a piece of news that neither Joe nor I wanted to have any personal involvement with whatsoever, for reasons that will become clear when you hear it, just so you know. So don't change up. But we consider doing this more.

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It's not bad to have have somebody on every once in a while.

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So we're trying something here to try to the people who know more than we so wrecked. But despite all that, despite the changes, this is still a competition. And neither Joe nor I know what the other one's bringing to the table. And at the end, our illustrious audio engineer, Phil will pick a winner. Just this week, he'll have three options instead of two. And and Joe, you got the lead off this week, but you only have one shot at it, one shot.

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So you better you better be bringing the goods, man.

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Yeah, well, I hope, you know, it's one of the way like, the story's not amazing, but the talking points after the debate it brings up, I think is good, something everybody can get behind. So this is from for the win dotcom. That's part of USA Today headline Angler Breaks Fifty year old catfish record catch stirs controversy. So what happened here? Back in September, North Carolina angler John Stone caught himself a twenty three pound, five ounce channel cat, which that's a big that's that is a large channel catfish.

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I mean, I don't I don't care who you are. Twenty three pounds, five ounces is a really good fish.

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And he filled out all the proper paperwork and submitted it for state record. Now, here's the thing. The previous record was twenty three pounds, four ounces. And it has stood since nineteen seventy. All right. So fifty years.

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But late this January, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission certified Stone's catch. And here's the fun part. Not only has it beaten the 50 year record by a mere ounce, it was caught in a private pond.

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And as you might imagine, people are going ballistic over this, especially since that previous 50 year record came from a public lake. So when when NCW are posted a photo and announce the certification on its Facebook page, all hell broke loose in the comments.

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And while I mean some were supportive, you know, some were supportive, but most women are calling it out as straight up cheating, claiming, you know, Stone grew the fish, calling it a farmed catfish and so on and so forth.

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Now, a little more here to add another layer of drama, another story on a different site about this.

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Catch notes that Stone is an at large wildlife commissioner. So people are even more pissed off. That he'd even try and have this certified because of that position, and I looked at all the stories related to this that that popped up in the news feed and I can't seem to find one where St. is is quoted or defending himself or anything like that. But frankly, if you really stop, he doesn't need to write because regardless of how you feel, North Carolina certifies fish from private water.

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You know, you might not like it, but there's there's no shadiness or wrongdoing on their end as far as they're concerned.

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They don't care what kind of water it came out of. You know, and in my opinion, I certainly understand the frustration here.

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But I also think it's fair to say there are so many details that we don't know. So it's hard to make a judgment call. I mean, just as an example, right. If, in fact, Stone has been hand feeding this cat for years in a private pond, essentially growing it.

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Yeah, that's totally lame and stupid, but nobody has made an official claim of that yet.

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Now, on the flip side. A lot of people have private water, lots of them, right? So if I bought property with a pond on it and it coughed up, say, a state record bass, why would that not count?

[00:28:59]

I haven't manipulated those fish or fed them. It was just there. Maybe it was an old farm pond that's been there since that was farmland. And now I bought my McMansion in North Carolina. There's a huge bass in there.

[00:29:09]

But what people are saying is that it's not right to claim a record from water that not everyone can access. And that's certainly a very gray area. And there's no battle here. It's basically just people spouting off. But it's a gray area, at least in terms of legality, ethically different story based on the case. Right. And just to to put a personal touch on it for years, I belong to a private trout club in North Jersey.

[00:29:35]

And the fish, they're there. I mean, did we fed them with automatic deer feeders?

[00:29:39]

Right. Or just spit out the food, keep them private, privately stocked.

[00:29:44]

And it was what I used to call the land of make believe. And it was like somewhere to get your jollies in the middle of winter.

[00:29:50]

And I'm fairly confident I broke the New Jersey State brook trout record at least twice as many years ago. Right now, technically, technically, I could have weighed that fish in and claim that record.

[00:30:04]

And honestly, in a way, it would have been more legit maybe than a private pond fish, because theoretically that fish was free to leave our private section of stream and go wherever it wanted. The food kept it there, but that fish could have went wherever it wanted.

[00:30:17]

And I, I it could have easily ended up caught in a public stretch of that same stream.

[00:30:22]

But I have had I would have literally beaten my own ass if I ever even thought about doing that.

[00:30:29]

It wasn't to me, was it. No, it wasn't on the little you were you were part of that club, I hope. No, no.

[00:30:35]

This is Jerry little Jase, Pennsylvania. I thought you said sorry. I heard about this North Jersey.

[00:30:40]

No, it's not a little dry debacle, but to me, I was like I was holding this fish going got what a lame loser move that would be. But it would have counted. The state wouldn't have said, you can't do that.

[00:30:51]

And the irony in that is if that fish did leave that stretch our stretch and get caught by some eight year old kid five miles down river, I would have been like, good for him, get that record, you know what I mean?

[00:31:03]

So it's it's there's so much debate there.

[00:31:07]

I get the frustration, but it's hard to say, you know, it's the thing or the reason that it's that we're both kind of I think responding to this the same way is that we just don't care that much about the record thing. Like, that's not that's not and I'm not trying to put this out of the judgment of the people who do, because I get that a lot of people, they augment their enjoyment of fishing by putting particular goals on themselves and and working through those with constraints, which is what records are all about, right?

[00:31:36]

Yeah. Like this size fish on this line. That's what makes it fun for me. Cool. You do that. That's not how I approach joy of fishing. Right.

[00:31:44]

So this becomes like a pretty academic and kind of well, not taught entirely subjective debate. It was legal. He can do it right, Right, right. Should he have done it now? Now there's there's where you can go round and round around, but can he do it? Absolutely. He did it. He can. So, yeah, get over it.

[00:32:04]

If it makes you mad and you're 100 percent right, if you really, like, peel the layers away of why there's debate here for you and I, you're correct. I don't give a damn about record fish. Like, the only way I don't really care about a state record fish.

[00:32:17]

I'll even take it a step further. And I'm going to annoy some people that are listening to this right now. But, you know, a lot of fish just have citations, too, like citation catches.

[00:32:26]

I don't know if that's a thing out west, but out here, it's like it's like in New Jersey as an example. It's like they'll say, if you want a Pickerel citation for the year, the fish has to be over 23 inches like they designate all these different fish, all these different lanson.

[00:32:40]

And if you catch one and send him a photo like you get a citation to put on your wall, there are people who have like hundreds of citations, like, damn, dude, you need that that bad, like they post on Facebook.

[00:32:51]

I got another citation, white perch. Now the site got four citation pickrell.

[00:32:56]

They still have all their like ribbons and trophies from high school sports. Yes. So like the citation, I'm sorry, that's like the bottom of the barrel.

[00:33:06]

For me to care about a record, it would have to be something so mind blowing, like I would have to catch the next world record striped bass or something like really covid something it something storeyed.

[00:33:17]

Yeah. Like class records. I'm sorry.

[00:33:19]

I don't care. No. And I mean, look, we talked about that hole. We dug into that culture when we reviewed Money Burke's new book. And and this also makes me probably maybe think of a previous book of Montebourg, which was Sal Belly, which was all about there was a whole chapter in there about a guy trying to grow the world record largemouth bass, like intentionally and with a lot of chemistry and science. Like, what do you have your private pond for?

[00:33:42]

I'm trying to grow the record largemouth, watch it grow and then catch it and break the record. Yep. Also legal. Is it anything I want anything to do with. No. Has the guy ever succeeded? No. But now that's that's sort of the extreme extent that these things can go to.

[00:34:00]

And unless we change the rules somewhere and say like private ponds don't count, it only works on public water, then this debate continues to be just kind of moot.

[00:34:10]

You're not going to do that, right? You know, you're not going to do that. So we don't really know the full story here. But either way, like when it comes down to it, he didn't do anything wrong. Yeah. You know, so deal with it. You know, I think it's lame, but deal with it.

[00:34:22]

My my story actually ties into that because it's also about a large fish that will annoy the crap out of quite a few people listening. So for my news story this week, we're checking in with Lakeville, Minnesota. And I just got to say really quick, that's got to be the most literal town name in the entire state. It's it's kind of like how they named my adopted home state, Montana, which means mountains in Spanish, or there's a town in Idaho called Tonia that sits right in the shadow of the Grand Teton.

[00:34:54]

Anyway, so this story comes to us from Northland Outdoors and it comes by way of listener Caleb Prader or Predator. I don't know, I'm butchering it. But either way, thank you, Caleb. Thanks for it for sending along. Before I get into this, though, I feel like I have to give you personally a trigger warning, because the following story may cause you extreme frustration, anger, envy, a general sense that the world is a deeply, deeply unfair place.

[00:35:22]

So if you need to prepare yourself in some way to receive the information I'm about to embark, do so now or just take off your headphones or whatever you do for the next couple nights.

[00:35:30]

Is it about light Clark craft giving away 100 boats for free to people or not?

[00:35:34]

It's not. It might be worse than that for you. So, I mean, if you're going to stick around, just deep breathing, that's all I got.

[00:35:41]

All right. So this story is about John. And I'm going to there would be a lot of butchered last names there, but it's still that the stories about John Coup's Nilla and his buddy Ben Saryan, John and Ben went out ice fishing a couple of weeks ago on Lake Charlie, where John keeps a permanent ice house in the winter. John owns a cabin on nearby Lake, Idaho, where he spends most weekends. These names are going to be important later.

[00:36:06]

So to make notes, I am. But he prefers to fish on the smaller lake.

[00:36:11]

Charlie OK, OK. So John and Ben and Ben's dad, Carl, got up nice and early and got out of the ice house and they're fishing over about six feet of water. And by seven a.m. they were into a solid sunfish bite. Just just having a good time yardman.

[00:36:28]

Yeah. And they're, you know, they're small sunfish, but they're having fun.

[00:36:32]

And after a while, they notice some pich were staging around the Pan Fish School and they started seeing Pike take swipes at the hook bluegills as they were bringing them up, you know, and yeah, you know, dude, I know you've been in the situation and anybody else has been in the situation knows it's a pretty fun game. Oh, yeah.

[00:36:49]

It's a little Estamira. It's like a video game. Yeah, it's Devils the. You could get a little fish and then you're like, oh, I got one, I'm going to let them swim around a little and see if the big pike whacks at.

[00:37:00]

It's fun. It's fun, right? Totally dirty, maybe, but fun. So and every once in a while when you're doing that up with Pike or other big, big fish, people grab on to one and it won't let go. Or sometimes I've even seen them like fully inhale the smaller fish headfirst into the spines, get stuck in their throat and and now you're fighting this big pike on really like tackle. Yeah, it's just a good time.

[00:37:24]

It just it's a good time. So that's what John and Ben were up to on this particular day. And at some point, Johnny Manziel and a twenty seven inch pipe, which I'm sure was super fun. So that's the scene that's going on. This is this is what's happening in the ice house. And anybody yet? No, no.

[00:37:42]

They're just they're just they're just having a nice morning ice fishing and playing God with the food chain. What's going on then all of a sudden?

[00:37:52]

There, flasher starts sliding across the floor of the House. And luckily, it gets wedged in the whole. It's Ben's Fleischer, Ben grabs grabs a hold of flash and he pulls it back a little. And then he and John see a huge fish hanging on to the transducer itself. Just below the surface. And thinking quickly been lifted up slowly on the transducer cable, the fish's head came up into the hole. John grabbed it behind the gill plate and pulled out a 50 plus inch musky.

[00:38:28]

On the transducer, hmm, after they pulled it up, the fish continued to bite down on that transducer because they're told told Nordlund outdoors, it was honestly a minute and a half before that thing let go. I kind of tickled its mouth, hoping it would open and it didn't.

[00:38:48]

So what a I mean, it'll be it's a crazy story, but it's just it's so unfair to all the people who have spent years of their lives working their butts off trying to catch a 50 inch.

[00:39:01]

But it's so unfair.

[00:39:03]

Now, I understand why you think this would this would anger me so much.

[00:39:07]

But frankly, it doesn't anger me at all, because this is this is how this shit happens with muskies. Like, I know. I'm convinced that if I'm ever going to catch a 50 plus inch Maskey, if I that's ever going to happen for me, chances are it's going to be a miracle because it's going to bite some Hottentot or something that I'm throwing for smallmouth.

[00:39:26]

Well, this so that's crazy enough as it is. But there's there's one more wrinkle that makes this even more hard to believe.

[00:39:34]

True, but hard to believe so and possibly even more unfair, depending on how you want to look at it, because like Charlie, the little lake where they're fishing. It's not supposed to muskies in it. The dinar has never stocked muskies there, huh? It does, however, connect to larger Lake Ida, and you'll remember that's where John has a cabin, the small channel.

[00:39:55]

But the DNR has never stocked muskies in Lake Ida either. They have stocked muskies in Lake Mille Toño, which connects to the opposite side of Ida from Charlie. So I looked this up on Google Maps and that fish, that fish made just a ridiculous journey because these are not like tiny little short channels where they connect right next to each other.

[00:40:23]

We're talking like fifty to a thousand foot long, super small little skinny water channels, each of which cuts through a culvert under a county road. So this fish went on like a serious walkabout to get there, only to be caught by biting and hanging onto a flasher transducer. And if that story doesn't prove how cruel and callous the fates of fishing are, I do not know what will be.

[00:40:49]

So OK, so a couple of things here, right? First of all, I hear you on the on the walkabout, but and I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I'm pretty sure musky grow fairly slowly. So fish that big. It ain't young. Right.

[00:41:04]

It's also that part doesn't doesn't freak me out because if it's that big, it's had a whole lot of time to get to where it ended up.

[00:41:12]

Yep. Right. But here's the other thing. If this happened to me, say say I was the guy and it bit the transducer and I pulled up this musky while I would be like, holy shit, I can't believe that just happened. It would not count as mine. No, no, no trophy.

[00:41:29]

Mirsky agreed, so agreed. And I'm not I'm not saying that to take away anything from these guys, but more in the sense of like. Well, yeah, every once in a while this goofy stuff happens. And here's this impossible fish to catch chewing on a transducer. But like, that's still not even catching one by accident on smallmouth tackle or something. It'd be awesome.

[00:41:49]

I would love it, but I want to catch my big, musky fishing for a big musk.

[00:41:54]

Of course, you know, I don't think these guys are claiming, like, luchador big must be there because it's just a crazy story.

[00:42:01]

And there's even when there's one final thing I got to say that I just love how many things had to come together to make this happen. So in the past, John has used a 10 inch auger to drill holes in the ice, but he just recently bought a brand new auger with a nine inch blade.

[00:42:16]

And and he was quoted as saying, if I use my 10 inch auger, your slower would be gone.

[00:42:25]

Well, you know, one one last point of no. Right? I think I think the part we're missing here, it's one thing that he's chewing on the transducer cable.

[00:42:33]

But also, man, I know a lot of captains, especially salty guys, that if they're at a certain shallow depth like, say, 20 feet of water or less bottom fishing or whatever it is, they'll kill the sonar because a lot of people believe that that ping, that that signal actually screws with the fishing, you know, in certain situations.

[00:42:54]

So it's like another level to me, because here's this thing down there, like transmitting. You have to wonder if there was something that tweaked that fish and like. Would it have hit it if it wasn't on, you know, or was like something about that signal, put an electromagnetic field in the water or something like that? I don't know.

[00:43:11]

It's just another one of those things that that adds to how mysterious and complex a puzzle is with what fish will eat and when and why we can never figure it out, which is why we keep doing it.

[00:43:22]

Well, I'll have to put some electromagnets on my musky flies or something.

[00:43:34]

For the first time, hopefully not the last time here on Fish News, we're going to shut up and kind of kind of at least pass the mic to our buddy and meat eaters fishing editor Sam Malone.

[00:43:43]

Right now, it's kind of like how real news drugs kick it to the guy in the field to to bring some more light to a very big story then Miles.

[00:43:51]

Or I could bring it on our own. Sam, what's going on, man, thanks for thanks for stopping doing real work and coming to talk to us a little bit.

[00:44:01]

It's nice to have somebody here besides me and Miles for a change in the news space. Well, thanks for pulling me away from my real work to talk about some interesting stuff. I mean, you know, this is technically we do have you here to talk about your real work because because this is one of those stories that we weren't able to cover and and shouldn't be covering because it's super regionally focused.

[00:44:22]

And we need to I mean, fact is, everybody, we need to bring in the big guns and someone who was a local on this story.

[00:44:29]

Otherwise we would have looked like a bunch of jerks really talking about this when asked, told by somebody where this hits close to home, you know, you'd be like Milestone's telling Strieber stories. This just doesn't work. Just a word. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:42]

Well, Miles can always be our Hawaii correspondent. This is true. Yeah.

[00:44:46]

We have a lot to cover there. Really? What, like two stories so far. Anyway, with that, Sam's got a really interesting piece for us and yeah, I don't know everything yet. Got Sam. I know the basics and I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring.

[00:45:00]

And just to just to be clear, this ran on the median income. That's where this this all precipitates from. Yep. OK, Sam. Yeah.

[00:45:07]

So back in December, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced they aren't going to allow anglers to fish for steelhead out of boats on most of the coastal rivers this season, as well as banning bait and barb hooks. But but that's nothing new. So there's a lot of people are probably aware native steelhead runs have been in the shitter for the last four years. I mean, going back a lot further than that, but like especially bad and like even and predicted to be even shittier this year.

[00:45:36]

And some folks are even speculating that these populations are on the brink of extinction. But WDW believes that they'll be able to reduce the recreational catch rate by about 50 percent with these new regulations.

[00:45:49]

But obviously, a lot of people are super pissed about this, especially guides. They had a protest parade through forks a few weeks ago and it changed. Dog petition to change these rules has gathered 5000 signatures and boats are basically how guided steelhead trips work.

[00:46:08]

The guide, Rosa Drift boat, a raft right next to or right on top of the program holding lies and clients run through with plugs or drift gear, bobbers and worms, bobber dog rigs, jig's indicator, nymphet rigs, you name it, but it's really effective. One study showed that guided anglers on a soul that caught some 80 percent of the steelhead caught in that river that year. So as you mentioned, I wrote an article about this for the Meat Eater website a few weeks ago, and that got people a bit stirred up.

[00:46:39]

But like my message was this. You're in hiding right now, aren't you?

[00:46:45]

I mean, you're in an undisclosed location. Yeah. Don't know. In there. And be somewhere somewhere safe house.

[00:46:51]

Yeah. Witness protection program. But I'm standing by that message, guys. And my message was, think you don't like Washington's new regs, just you wait until the federal government gets involved.

[00:47:05]

So to take a step back, I caught my first winter on steelhead while skipping class during my senior year of high school up in the Skagit River.

[00:47:14]

Good source. Just two months later, two months later, the entire Puget Sound distinct population segment of steelhead were listed under the Endangered Species Act. The schedule didn't reopen for its world famous late winter fishery for a decade and still hit or miss whether or not they'll have a season. And they're probably not going to have one this year. And the Skykomish, the Stillaguamish, the Snoqualmie and a shitload of other rivers that start with the letter s still haven't been reopened.

[00:47:45]

The Washington coast in the Olympic Peninsula is one of only four Steelhead Meadow populations in the lower 48 that haven't yet come under the umbrella of the feds. Pretty much everything else is listed under the Endangered Species Act already.

[00:47:58]

So there's a lot of different factors at play with why steelhead runs have fallen to fractions of a percent of their historical abundance.

[00:48:07]

Yeah, we've covered a ton of them on here. Yeah, that's the frequent news item. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:48:12]

And people people love to speculate wildly about what it is. And one thing's for certain, it's never it's never anyone. It's never that person's fault.

[00:48:22]

Right. Right, right, right, right. I don't know it's wrong, but it's not me. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. It's not me. It couldn't be me having read your story though.

[00:48:30]

Like the crux of what what you're saying and what you know is that as harsh as this isn't as upsetting as it is to people, it's it's better than having the federal government come in and say nothing. No fishing. No, just shut it down completely.

[00:48:47]

Exactly. And I mean, the Endangered Species Act is is designed to function kind of as the iron fist of the federal. Slamming down to prevent extinction, its famously severe I mean, like look at the controversy that's been going on around spotted owls for 30 years, but it's also arguably effective if you look at species like wolves that have been recently delisted. But that same severity also makes it an effective deterrent. Like if you look back at 2015, 11 states and groups as far apart as environmentalists and real developers and ranchers and hunters came together to design plans to save the greater sage grouse throughout the intermountain west.

[00:49:28]

Yeah, yeah.

[00:49:29]

And then and then later that year, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed the grouse for listing, they ruled them to be, quote, warranted, but precluded, which is basically an admission. That's a big problem. But the states are on top of it so they can put their resources elsewhere. So that's exactly what Washington is trying to do with his boat fishing ban.

[00:49:49]

And, you know, after publishing this article, my name is kind of being trashed like from the hump tulips to the ho and back again.

[00:49:58]

I'm just trying to point this out to people like I don't love this rule either. You know, I have a ton of friends who are guides and I want to see them continue making a living.

[00:50:08]

But like and this really messed up my own plans, too. But I'm just really worried that if an essay listing comes down, this fishery is going to evaporate. And that's like not a Bukidnon thing. Like there are some of the litigious wild fish groups that have already said that they're going to petition the US Fish and Wildlife Service under a more amenable Biden administration to list the coastal steelhead stock.

[00:50:32]

And you know what? Like they're going to get it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:38]

So I just have I just have one question, because this is not my world, admittedly, right. I'm not as fluent on the West Coast as you guys are.

[00:50:46]

But before we get into because we're going to I want to I want you to read some of the things people have saying and saying about you specifically. I believe you've you've cued up some comments that we'll get into. But this is just a question more out of ignorance. I mean, this system has been in place elsewhere out there for a long time. Like the Deschutes. You cannot fish from a boat on the Deschutes.

[00:51:06]

Most of the Sakinah system, too. Yeah, yeah. You're right about the Deschutes and like and like Steelhead Valhalla in around Terris, British Columbia. Nobody fishes from boats for steelhead and haven't for a long time.

[00:51:18]

And to to clarify, it's not that you can't put a boat on these rivers, you just can't fish out of it. So like I experience on Deschutes, you can use your boat to go from point A to point B, but then you have to get out and fish, right?

[00:51:31]

Correct. Correct. And that's how a lot of people already do it. And there's also a valid argument to be made here that like, you know, the the bogus Scheele is not the Deschutes. You know, they're state banks that are covered in rocks and moss and it's very dangerous. A lot of the a lot of the Steelhead seasons, the rivers will barely ever come into shape, like, not be too muddy to fish. Right. And so, like, a lot of people are arguing, like, what about elderly people?

[00:52:01]

What about young people? What about disabled anglers? And like, I get that man in and in.

[00:52:06]

Originally, there weren't concessions for those people, but I have heard that WDW is changing their tune there.

[00:52:14]

And so that's that's good to hear because like, I've got buddies out there who are still fish and rowand people down the rivers in their 70s and. Right. And young folks and people who can't walk well like that. I feel like I feel like it's very fair that the rules are a little bit different there. But like the fact of the matter is like.

[00:52:35]

WDW had to do something like the status quo here has failed and restricting recreational anglers is the only tool they have available. They can't stop the Japanese high seas trawlers. They can't stop the tribes. They can't stop warm water in the North Pacific. And in these rules have been getting more and more restrictive for decades.

[00:52:59]

So, like, if you didn't see this coming or something like this coming, you just haven't been paying attention. And the last thing I want to say is kind of where we're coming from here, where I'm coming from here, I suppose it's like it's a big part of our ethos, that meat eater to have respect for and deference to biologists and wildlife managers. They have a tough job and too many hunters and anglers have shit talk to them for too long.

[00:53:22]

Like, I'm not happy about this decision, but I understand why it was made. And I hesitate to second guess a game agency that is trying to save a game species from extinction. And there have been public forums and public comment periods throughout all of this process, but very few people were willing to tune in until something happened that they didn't like. So like last thing I want to say to anybody who who who hates me over this is like if you don't like this rule, I get involved in the process and be part of the solution.

[00:53:50]

Yelling at me is not going to accomplish anything. And I just really don't feel like steel has still had anything like. But we owe the steelhead like all we can do to keep them around and we definitely owe it to the generations to follow. Like my best friend, one of my best friends who have been fish and steelhead with for 15 years, had a son this year and he is convinced that his son won't be able to fish native steelhead with us on the Olympic Peninsula.

[00:54:16]

And that breaks my heart, man. And I just I just feel like I feel like, you know, at least at least they're trying at least at least some measure of attempt is being made to save these fish. Yeah.

[00:54:29]

And I think I think a couple of things that we got thrown here before we before we close up. One, if you if you don't know anything about this particular subculture of anglers in this particular area, they might be the most divided and angry group of fishermen that I've ever come across to. And that's important for those of you who don't know about this. The other thing is, in your article that I read on some of those systems, all these fish are getting caught at least once, and some of them are getting caught multiple times, according to the statistics.

[00:54:58]

And I think that's an important point. Throw it. It's like the escapement, getting past the nets, but they're all getting caught and released by anglers and that has an impact. And and before we let you go, because we want you to tell us some of the the awful hate mail that you've gotten, because we find that entertaining.

[00:55:13]

But I should point out, the three different friends of mine, after reading your article, reached out to me and and like said straight up like, hey, man, is is Sam OK?

[00:55:24]

Is this is anyone going to people are trying to hurt him.

[00:55:29]

So, like, I think before we close out, Sam, why don't you want to give us an example of the kind of crazy feedback you're getting from people and how upset they are because you were trying to tell this what I consider to be a journalistic story about the state of things.

[00:55:42]

Yeah. And, you know, and before I do that, Miles, I. I am OK.

[00:55:46]

And thanks for asking, but you're OK right now because nobody knows where you are, right?

[00:55:51]

Yeah. The safe house. But, you know, I, I heard from one of the top guides out there the other day and I was totally expecting him to thrash me. And we had a really great conversation about this and found a lot of middle ground. And so I do believe that a lot of rational people are kind of seeing what's happening here in its totality, not just kind of what's in front of their face. And I have gotten more positive comments and negative.

[00:56:18]

Just read the negative. Just read the negative. So we're happy to hear that. But we want to hear the train wreck.

[00:56:24]

So this fella said, you ever research South American king salmon and how they got there? I mean, really researched it. See, you are spewing propaganda and a rhetoric. Dot, dot.

[00:56:37]

The simple problem is there aren't brought steelhead. The simple solution, all caps, more steelhead. Furthermore, DFW has funded twenty five to forty percent yearly by federal endangered species moneys, therefore they would go bankrupt if wild fish ever came back. Also, research the Quinault misspelled, it is amazing how they get all Seim returns on all these warm weather years and with all the bad Netz Quinault is the best steelhead fishery in the entire Pacific Northwest. And he closes by saying something distasteful about my friend and employer, Steven Rinella, that I would rather not repeat.

[00:57:27]

I think we shouldn't. I got time for one more. You got one more. Just short. Really cutting good one. Whether the spelling is right or not. I also got this one.

[00:57:37]

Bullshit. I live in Washington State and we have hogs for steelhead, I catch them all the time and avoid game officers while I take a picture of them and put them back.

[00:57:49]

But I can't argue with that kind of science that we can spend so much more time reading those shorties, because I'm sure there are some good ones.

[00:57:58]

But dude, it's a great article. It was an important article. And we're happy that you came on to talk to us about it here. I'm also going to say, Phil, that Sam is eligible for a win this week.

[00:58:10]

I think I think any one of us could win based on the work we've done here. And, you know, I know who I'd vote for.

[00:58:17]

And it wouldn't be me or you, Joe, but you'd make your choice. Oh, great. We'll see what Phil has to say.

[00:58:22]

And then we're going to move into trivia with our good buddy Robert Hawkins. For obvious reasons, Sam Lundgren, you're the winner of Fish News, but Miles, don't sell your story short. I mean, it had everything suspense, mystery, action. Put that all together and you got a stew going.

[00:58:49]

You got to be highly skilled for these shows. You understand it? Yes, I do understand you. Well, first, there you. Very smart man. Yes, I am. All right.

[00:58:58]

Joining us today to play a little trivia, my good buddy, Mr. Robert Hawkins, owner of Bob Mitchell's fly shop in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bobby Nacho's, as you're known. How are you doing, my friend? I'm great. How are you guys?

[00:59:10]

We are we are doing well. We're going to have a little fun today. So just just to fill everybody in. The month was November, the year 2015 when you, sir, caught a 57 inch muskie on Millas lake on the fly, claiming the current world record fly caught Muskie. And you and I over the years have talked about this ad nauseum. And you've talked to so many other people about it. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you are tired of talking about it, fair to say.

[00:59:38]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're not going to talk about it now either.

[00:59:44]

This is just the jumping off point. For your first trivia question today.

[00:59:47]

I hope that you are ready to play at just north of one hundred thirty two thousand acres. MillerCoors is the second largest lake in Minnesota. And I'd say it has a pretty solid reputation as a top fishing destination, not just in your home state, but also around the country. Would you agree with that? Agree.

[01:00:05]

OK, so the question is, how many current Minnesota state record fish do you think were plucked from the mighty waters of Malek's?

[01:00:16]

Is it A 11, B for C zero or D one?

[01:00:22]

Ominous for four.

[01:00:27]

So you're going you're going low number there. If that's your final answer, that is incorrect.

[01:00:33]

The answer is zero. Wow.

[01:00:35]

Presently there are no state record fish in Minnesota. Okay, I'm from Malac, which I found very interesting because it's one of the most heavily fished bodies of water there. And I hear all kinds of good things.

[01:00:46]

But a quick follow up to that. I happened to notice while doing research that Minnesota's current state record, Muskie measured fifty six inches and weighed fifty four pounds and has stood since 1957 from Lake Winnebago. And I'm sure you know all about that.

[01:01:02]

Yeah, but I mean, dude, technically you beat that on the fly and I understand you had no intention of keeping that fish, but had you you would hold the state record spot right now, would you not?

[01:01:15]

Tanyalee the thing with Minnesota as they do it by weight and not by length. Right. And the girth on that on the of a gorgeous fish may have outdone my fish by maybe a pound or two. So mine may have been a pound or two short of what that fish weighed, if that makes sense.

[01:01:35]

OK, so we'll never know. But the potential definitely exists. Yeah. I mean, it was for Minnesota state record fish to be fly caught. Yep, yep, yep.

[01:01:44]

OK, that's impressive. That's OK. All right. So we'll get off the record fish. We'll go to another video that you were in because there's, there's awesome video of that fish being caught. But there's another clip out there. In fact, we used it in the promo video to announce the launch of Ben in which you were being filmed in the final throes of cleaning a Yeti cooler in which beef jerky sandwiches and other assorted edibles had been marinating with the lid closed for, what was it, two months?

[01:02:09]

Two weeks, something like that, at least?

[01:02:11]

Well, at least a couple, three weeks. But my garage gets my garage is like one hundred and twenty degrees in the summer, so maybe two weeks at one hundred twenty degrees, two weeks at hundred.

[01:02:24]

And it's jerky sandwiches, anything. Was there anything else.

[01:02:27]

What was in there.

[01:02:28]

I want know what those contents were that created such a putrid epic dry heaves.

[01:02:33]

You know, there's always loose potato chips with water sloshing around. There's, you know, half spilled beers usually in there, probably some grapes that we thought we were. And I need to be healthy. But, you know, I have never heard somebody retch quite like that.

[01:02:52]

We might have to repost that on our on our social mind.

[01:02:55]

I think we do. I think we do. And it sounds to me like a primordial soup, like you might have actually spawned some new creatures, new life that never before existed on this planet came out of that cooler.

[01:03:05]

It's so unfortunate what Aaron miss like all that was like the he caught the tail end of the video.

[01:03:11]

It was so much more before that even to us.

[01:03:17]

So we came across. So this is kind of a goofy little question, but we're all going to learn something from it. So based on that experience, which of the following is not recommended for use in removing foul odor? From your cooler, is it a charcoal briquettes, baby powder, C, cat litter, D, baking soda to those is not recommended for removing incredibly foul odors from, for the record, stank.

[01:03:45]

I don't know the answers to these either. So I'm puzzling over this. What you are.

[01:03:51]

Well, I'm going to say, I mean, charcoals. I'm going to say cat litter because it probably has some sort of like chemical in it that's not supposed to be in your cooler.

[01:04:00]

Maybe actually, the made up one here is baby powder. All the rest are recommended, at least on the interweb is for removing rank odor from your cooler. However, I will say the most common one, the one I see use most. Any guesses?

[01:04:16]

Maybe bleach, charcoal, bleach is disinfecting. We're just talking about like there's like such an embedded stink in there. You're just trying to get odor out, not necessarily disinfect.

[01:04:27]

And yes, charcoal, charcoal briquettes. So fun fact. If you ever have a mishap like Mr. Hawkins here, get you some of them.

[01:04:36]

Kingsford, fill that sucker up, close the lid and let it marinate for a few days.

[01:04:40]

Anyway, this has been really fun. And we thank you so much for playing today.

[01:04:44]

Thank you so much. Enthusiasm. That's what we like here on BET.

[01:04:59]

Do I think we I think we need to bring back and and re share that video of Hawkins dry over the cooler because it's well, it's just so gross and guttural and yet it's informative. There's a lesson there. There's a lesson there, but there's a lesson there.

[01:05:18]

Yeah, it's a quick lesson at the end. Will we share the video this week? Speaking of gutteral, right. I once fished a law that made me make guttural noises and also made me dry heave. Allah Hawkins'.

[01:05:31]

I learned that just this week, something I learned from from this week's End the Line segment. So Joe's Joe's going to mimic his good friend Bobby. Nacho's there and he's going to get all gross and guttural and informative. He's going to give you some tips on what you should never do when getting into the chopper in the Amazon if it's not loud enough, MC.

[01:05:59]

Perhaps you're very familiar with the woodchopper. It's also very possible you've never heard of it.

[01:06:05]

I liken this lure to a great band with a devout cult following that tried to get a major label record deal for decades, only to eventually burn out, leaving a smattering of even lesser known cover bands in its wake.

[01:06:18]

The Woodchopper is a top watter heartbeat, and while they've been made in many sizes, the six to eight inch models were the most common. The design is rather simple. You've got a painted, cigar shaped body and at the tail between that body in the rear treble hook is an oversized metal double blade propeller.

[01:06:35]

Like many beats featured here, there is some haze and merch to the story of the woodchopper, but my research points to it being an original creation of Ozark Mountain Lures.

[01:06:45]

It debuted in the 1950s and was primarily marketed as a musky bait.

[01:06:50]

Ozarks design actually featured a propeller at the head and the tail.

[01:06:54]

And while there's not tons of info on the inner webs about these early versions, I get the sense that aside from catching muskies, these top waters became Sleeper's, if you will, for giant largemouth bass as well.

[01:07:06]

The woodchopper was designed to be versatile.

[01:07:08]

You could steadily reel one in, making those blades buzz in the body wake. You could slow roll a chopper to create a lazy bubble trail, or you could violently snap a woodchopper to make a Ripsaw racket on the surface.

[01:07:20]

And it's that last dance move that pushes our story forward.

[01:07:23]

The Wood Choppers design has arguably inspired and influenced many other successful bates', perhaps most notably the WOPR flopper. But just as my beloved Misfits inspired bands like Metallica that would go on to have platinum records and make billions of dollars, the woodchopper by itself never really achieved superstardom. Still, Lur Gensen owner, Phil Gensen, saw potential and purchased the woodchopper design from Ozark Mountain Lures in 1991. Once leR Jensen took over, they quickly got rid of that front propeller.

[01:07:54]

In the late 80s and early 90s, Peacocke bass fishing in the Amazon was getting more and more attention from American anglers.

[01:08:00]

And what they learned was that the sound of a woodchopper being jerked across the surface in mckewon bursts created an auditory Khil cue for monster peacocks better than anything else.

[01:08:12]

Now I'm guessing here, but removing the front prop created less resistance, allowing early pioneers to rip those choppers a little harder and a little faster. Shortly after, Johnson purchased the woodchopper and angler by the name of Doc Lawson broke the all tackle world record for peacocks with a twenty seven pounder using the law in short order, allergens and woodchopper became standard kit for Amazon. Peacock hunters looking for big dogs, in fact, is one piece I read suggested if you showed up in the Amazon without wood choppers, you are labeled a complete novice throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s between the rise of the Internet and more large operations opening in South America, peacock fishing in the Amazon slowly morphed from a game for the rich and fortunate to pretty affordable to more people and the wood shopper's reputation as the trophy peacock law only strengthened.

[01:09:03]

But it didn't strengthen enough. Apparently. In 2006, Phil Jensen sold his entire company to Rapallo, and by 2011, the lure Gensen woodchopper was out of production because despite the lures prominence in the peacock scene, the small market of Amazon bound anglers simply generated too little money to justify its place in the catalog.

[01:09:22]

And by then it seemed nobody was really using a woodchopper for anything but Peacocke Bass.

[01:09:28]

I finally got to the Amazon in 2015 and sure enough, there wasn't a Jensen Wood shop or anywhere in sight. But as it often goes with defunct plug's a small batch makers steps in to fill the void. The lodge I stayed at set us up with Rip Roller's pretty much carbon copies of wood choppers made by high roller lures out of Gainesville, Florida.

[01:09:47]

Now, having spent years watching videos of massive peacocks crushing shoppers, I couldn't wait to fish them.

[01:09:53]

But then I did a very dumb thing.

[01:09:55]

My first night at the Lodge, me and the fellows got our drink on and we failed to drink any water between the adult beds.

[01:10:01]

So the next morning, while my excitement overrode any hangover and I was pretty bright eyed and bushy tailed when I made my first cast with a rip roller started chugging.

[01:10:11]

Things took a turn harder, sir, is all our guide said. So I ripped that Loehr harder. More hard, sir, he said after my second retrieve. And that's when I realized to work a roller, a chopper like you're supposed to, you're going to burn out the arms and shoulders. Now, normally, I'd say bring the pain. But within an hour, the remnant Bouis dehydration in one hundred and ten degree heat at the equator caught up to me and I about collapsed with my head spinning.

[01:10:38]

I slugged three quarters back to back and then fought to keep those down.

[01:10:41]

And then I think I just kind of laid on the deck for a good long while until I recovered. Lesson learned about hard liquor in the Amazon and sidenote, I fish that rip roller right proper for the rest of the trip. And while I stuck a couple, my biggest peacocke, a thirteen pounder hit a big storm chugalug.

[01:10:58]

Which I probably could have worked effectively, being like full blown lemi drunk, so that's all the time we have this week.

[01:11:12]

If you happen to just fast forward through the entire show and get to this very spot, you missed a deep dive into Carl Weathers and his biography could not touch with a ten foot surf, right?

[01:11:23]

Oh, and you sure did. But listen, don't miss out on your chance to be on this show. Keep those bar nominations, Selborne items in awkward photos rolling into bent at the median income. Remember, if we use anything you send, you will get a sweet little care package of stickers from us or just say hi, say what's up?

[01:11:43]

Or you guys suck, whatever, whatever you want. And don't forget, we got eyes on those degenerate Engler and Bent podcast hashtags. You can get stickers if you grab our attention that way too.

[01:11:54]

Yeah. And once you realize your minimal fishing successes aren't producing the Graham worthy shot that catches our attention, you're going to give that shit up.

[01:12:01]

You can concentrate on golf.

[01:12:03]

Finally, I've been waiting for a happy Gilmore reference this entire episode.