You won't be able to find a bottle of cocoa butter from the Olympic Peninsula of Portland after this, dude, I'm not messing with power lines, not even for a horse leather swimming. I'm not doing that. Yeah, obviously, you didn't pay too much attention because it hasn't worked out too well for you now with the thrift shop equipment. Right. It appears they're like a shitload of casual fish dabblers in Vegas, apparently, and the vast majority of them cannot cast.

Good morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome to Bend, the fishing podcast that cannot eat cheese without pretending it's someone's birthday so we can get another sombrero.

I'm Joe Somali, a Miles Nulty. And I have never once in my life eaten at a cheese.

But I did just. That's a lie. It's a lie. True.

I saw you put this in and I was like, I never did that. But I did. I did just now do a Google search so I could know what the hell we're talking about. And Chickie's has not existed in this country for for 15 years now.

I don't know if you know that. So it looks like I never will get to eat at one.

I also have no idea where it is you're going with this thing where they're all gone, like they've been gone around where I live for a long time, but they're all gone. There's no tags left in the in the United States.

Bankrupt, gone in thousand four, though apparently you can still find them in Austria, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait if you really need to fix.

I can't believe it was 2004 was the last time I hated it. Man, that's depressing.

You also just kind of messed up my whole plan, like throwing this bummer news about like the very loose theme I was going for with this episode is frivolous celebration. You know, like like some of us used to do that a crappy Mexican restaurant chains because it's not spring.

So we're clear, but it is now at least officially March. And that's at least a step in the right direction. Yes.

For me at the end of February is worth celebrating, in my opinion. And this episode, it's like that lame office party you get like right before you get married.

I mean, it's kind of awkward and everyone encircles you in the common area and you toast with a plastic cup of champagne.

And I get really, really bad cake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's strange, but I could get you away from from reality for a minute, but you do still have like TPS reports to finish before you dip for two weeks and have the real party.

So like that's where we are in terms of the show today as well as like spring, like it's more like it's not spring.

We're getting there. And look for the record, right. Listen, we love ice fishing. Ice fishing is awesome. In fact, late March ice is some of the best ice. We know this, but I'm just tired of talking about it. And I want my open water. That's what I want.

Yep. Yep. No, that's fair. I'm I'm also sick. Like, I do have some open water, but I'm sick of of when I go find it, having to dodge errant chunks of shelf ice that always drift just below the surface, then you can't really see them and they're always threatening to take you out at the knees. Or at least that's that's my experience. So in honor of of the impending reality that we hope will be spring.

Oh, that's right. Yes, that's right. Yes, right.

Ghost of Rick James. And we are bringing in the almost kind of soon to be spring.

We all hope by giving one of you some really cool shit to throw. Mm hmm. That's right. You need to listen up. You need to pay attention right now. Do not fast forward, you know how we've been monitoring those degenerate angler and bent podcast hash tags on the gram.

Right. So for exactly one week, there's going to be more up for grabs than stickers for using those.

OK, our buddy Brant Hashimoto Hashimoto Concepts has graciously donated four packs of his amazing hand powered soft plastic swim baits, plus one of his H.E. for hard swim baits to be given to the hashtag of our choosing.

So sweet. You guys are also looking.

So I'm going to say and and that alone is cool. But even better, the winner gets to have the paint job on the hard beat done to spec.

So you want a bluegill that looks like it just snu to the cloud Cheeto dust. You got it. You can have that. Or maybe you can, I don't know, maybe you prefer a swim be somehow themed around the 1984 classic movie Breakin Two Electric Boogaloo.

This is what you've been waiting to see. Likes to be that actually was my favorite movie when I was five years old and yeah, yeah, I competed in the first grade talent show as a break dancer.

But whatever your fetish happens to be, whatever you're into, Brit will turn it into allure just for you.

Oh, man, I want you to win so we can do a boogaloo lure you've got between right now on March 5th and when the next episode of Bente drops on Friday, March 12th.

To qualify, though, the shot with the tag or tags has to be posted in that time frame and we'll be monitoring that.

He Dangler and Bente podcast tags and we'll post a winner on our Instagram accounts the morning of Saturday the 13th.

So impress us with a fish, make us laugh, make us gasp.

Show us something ridiculous in your garage.

Anything goes kind of almost almost amusing if you if you if you regularly listen to the show, you know what we don't want to see but do surprise us.

That's always good. And I just want to say huge. Thanks again to Brant for offering discounts if you want to scope out his work. And I really do recommend that you do that, check him out at at Hashimoto Concepts. His stuff is super fishy, but also it's just it's just pretty. Oh, yeah. Well made. It's just nice to look at, you know, it's gorgeous. Yep.

And and perhaps you're one of those people who doesn't really fish lures. That's cool. That's fine.

Maybe maybe don't tag anything this week if that's you don't tag and I disagree.

I disagree with me. You can still appreciate one of the beautiful lures, even if you are one of those live bait disciples and and you just have every intention of rolling right on through hard water and open water with your bucket of minnows. No judgment here. We have you covered, too, in this week's installment of Fin Clips, where we tell you everything about a fish you never knew you cared about.

Joe is going to shine some light on the fathead minnow. And sure, we've all probably stabbed, decapitated jig trolled and suffocated dozens, if not hundreds of them.

But what do you really know about it? Have you really taken the time to appreciate this ubiquitous baitfish? How much thought do you give to the bait in your bucket? Probably not much, right? I mean, you can't wait to throw a shot of that football yellow perch on Instagram, dropping yet another comment about the gorgeous body of the vibrant golden oranges. You change your profile picture to you holding a slab croppy, but never is there. Social media thanks and praise given to the live bait that may have caught it.

So today I'm shining the spotlight on the fathead minnow swimming in your Florelle.

And even though you won't treat the next dozen you by any differently, you're going to look at them differently while your impaling them on a hook.

Fathead minnows are members of the Trinity family. Sound familiar? Of course not.

You don't know Latin, but you are familiar with other members of this family, like the common carp and perhaps the barbel. This family also includes true minnows. And see, many people just refer to any tiny bait fish as a minnow, but that's not accurate. Mud minnows, as an example, aren't minnows at all. They're killing fish. Glass minnows aren't minnows either. That's just a catch all term for anchovies and silversides. But fatheads are the real deal directly related to the monstrous Colorado Pike Minnow, the largest true minnow that swims in U.S. waters.

The fatheads natural range is pretty massive, stretching from Chihuahua, Mexico, as far north as Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. It also extends all the way east to the U.S. coast and Canadian Maritimes.

Of course, these days, fat head minnows are everywhere, including Pacific Coast bodies of water and drainages from transportation thanks to their popularity as a baitfish, but also because they are some extremely tough little bastards. Fathead minnows can pretty much handle any curveball Mother Nature throws at them.

They can survive in water with extremely low oxygen levels. They can thrive in extremely dirty or turbid water. They can withstand high levels of acidity. And all this toughness, of course, makes them a great bait fish because of your bubbler dies while you're enjoying the moons over my hammy at Denny's or you're looking for action in that sewage filled pond behind that Denny's, these little swimmers are going to go strong and perform well.

But that toughness actually has greater value than just helping you secure fish fry fodder. The fathead minnow is used by biologists as an indicator species. Think of it as an aquatic canary in the coal mine. Essentially, fatheads can handle so much more chemical exposure than other species that if the fatted population is getting distressed in a particular waterway known to have any sort of toxicity issues, it's a sign to biologists that things are getting really bad.

In fact, the EPA guidelines outline the use of fatheads for the evaluation of acute and chronic toxicity of samples or chemical species, invertebrate animals. And speaking of chemicals, how about this? Fatheads also have something called epidermal club cells that secrete an alarm substance. Any time those shallow lying cells are damaged, such as when a predator species bites or eats a fathead, that alarm just flows, signaling all the other fatheads in the immediate area to swim away or hide.

Furthermore, let's say there's a, I don't know, Pickrell that just munched a bunch of fatheads that Pickrell is now coated with that alarm substance, too.

So now the fatheads will recognize that particular fish as a threat, hopefully before it gets the chance to eat any more of them. Most good bait shop sell fat had minnows these days. But what if you don't have a good bait shop close to home?

Well, perhaps you have a pet smart. You know, there's little pinkish orange fish they call rosy reds that they sell as feeders super cheap.

Those are fathead minnows, one hundred percent genetically identical to the Bait Shop variety. Now, that coloration trait can occur naturally. It was actually an Arkansas bait fish farm that figured out how to make it dominant in 1985, sending billions of bright orange fatheads off to death by aquarium cichlid across the country.

Now, it's worth noting that before using Rosies, check your local bait regulations.

While unlike goldfish, roses are fair game in most places, some states are even specific.

Counties outlaw them same time.

I've also been in many bait shops that sell bright roses right alongside the natural color fatheads, and I've even known a few croppy in stockier trout fellers that saw them orange ones out fish them natural ones ten to one.

It's also worth noting that Pet Shop Roses aren't usually as hearty as Bait Shop fatheads, mainly because good bait shops actually care out their bait and keep their minnows and chilled water, whereas pet store roses tend to swim in room temperature or even heated water.

Now, both those water temperatures, hot and cold, are perfectly acceptable to the fatheads. But don't be shocked if you take pet store roses out to the pond in winter, only for them to be shocked to death when you send them down, thereby not dancing around on that hook long enough for you to achieve insta glory or to produce anything. The dredge through that house. Audrey Seafood Bredar burning a hole in the. Bantry back at the ranch. Who knew the tiny little little fatheads that you see in every in every area did Bait Shop were so environmentally significant?

I see that I didn't know. And dude, that that alarm response, that's fast. It's fascinating. It's also.

Yeah, if you think about it too much to give you overthink about it, it's kind of depressing because like imagine two fatheads rigged up and dangling close together and one one just catches a whiff of the other one's alarm juices like, oh no, I should I should really get the hell out of here.

But I got this I got this hook stuck in my face.

So I guess I guess I'm just going to get eaten, too. I'm done. That's morbid.

And that would suck. I will admit, though, I got I got kind of lost research in that one.

And we don't give enough thought to our live baits like it's good to take a deep dove into what's in your bait bucket.

You're right. That is true in general. But in this particular episode right now, this week, that is not true because you're bringing in the bait fish by the bucket for this one. Yeah.

If I'm not mistaken, you recently attended the the annual Bunker Symposium and Chili Cook off in Atlantic City. Did you not? Did that happen?

I did. I did. Yes.

And we'll go from tiny Sweetwater baitfish to foot long salty baitfish. In fact, in other good news, striper season just opened in Jersey March one.

So this is good timing anyway. Yeah. Every year the greatest serve Jonkers in Jersey meet at the Atlantic City. Mariotte Or to be more specific, the loading dock behind the Atlantic City.

Marryat To discuss the state of menhaden or what we call bunker around here. It's a it's a really great event. It usually runs until ten, ten, thirty or whenever security kicks everyone off the property. Anyway, it would take me forever to go through all the meeting minutes, but I did get a chance to sit down in person with frequent contributor and surf casting legend Bob the Garbage Man, Brittania, not a Iraqi.

I want the minutes, please. I think whatever the hell those were, it would be highly entertaining.

But since you're not going to give us those, I can only imagine that I'm sure Bob waxed eloquently on that in a bunker. Biomass conservation efforts or something, didn't he? No, no, not at all.

He refused to discuss anything related to that on record, but I did get him to commit to recording a trivia segment with me.

You've 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.

Right today on trivia, we have an incredibly special guest. I am actually sitting face to face special.

You broke out all this Mickey Mouse equipment from the thrift shop for me. You don't like the equipment. This is garbage. I've seen better shit at karaoke night.

OK, as I was saying, I am sitting face to face in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with legendary stripper chunkin expert Bob Brittania, not a news guy who is better known up and down the entire stripper coast as Bob the garbage man.

And it is such an honor to have you here. I feel very much like I'm sitting in the presence of pure greatness.

Well, you are, but I wish I could tell you the same. You don't look like a fish a day in your life, OK?

That's that's not accurate. But for for what it is worth, having grown up sufficient in New Jersey, I still despite that comment, Bob, would say that you were one of my childhood idols.

Obviously, you didn't pay too much attention because it hasn't worked out too well for you now with the thrift shop equipment.

Right, right.

Anyway, for better or worse, you have been catching trophy stripers up and down, wrecked the entire coast, and you have shared the beaches with many legendary surf casters over the years.

That correct? Yeah. Yeah, if you want to call them that. But most of those guys, you know, it was complete bums.

OK, regardless, I've got a question for you today that sort of ties into that vast network of notable anglers that you fish with.

Well, what the hell? Hold on a second.

Yeah, just to reiterate whether I get your question right or wrong, you're still giving me a ride over to the bus depot like you promised, right?

Yeah, that's the deal that we hit. The bus is leaving in forty minutes. I will honor that deal. And I understand your time is thirty nine minutes, then let's get on with it.

Yeah, OK. That's what I'm saying. Here's your question. In September nineteen eighty two. Al McReynolds. Oh Jesus Christ.

Yeah, go ahead. Al McReynolds caught a seventy eight point eight pound striped bass off the jetty, Vermont Avenue right here in Atlantic City, New Jersey, that stood as the all tackle world record for almost 30 years.

Please tell me the question is, do I think he really caught it? That is not the question. When I was actually going because he didn't what I was actually going to ask is who held the record before McReynolds?

And I've got some multiple choice for you.

Was it a Tony Stata and is Jeff the Janetta but before him?

I was actually Stan the bookkeeper, and before that, habia the Russian and gas station, Billi broke it twice each in the same night.

All right. That's not a quote. Not according to my research. And I'll also add two nights after Al McReynolds didn't catch that bass, my friend Artie Melda caught a seventy nine in the exact same place.

Huh. I mean, I'm I'm kind of basen. I was kind of basing my choices off the official record, and that's fine. But the bus is leaving in 40 minutes. So we done here.

And just like that, striper fishing history has been rewritten. Yes, you did. Did you get him to the bus station on time at least? No. No, he changed his mind.

He decided he'd rather me give him a ride to a boarded up nail salon in a completely abandoned shopping center. It just left him there and didn't ask any questions, you know, it was just that's just generally wise when it's better that way, you probably don't want to know the answers.

But you know what? We're going to we're going to move on from that. And hopefully we managed to cobble together some answers that you do want to hear to questions you hadn't thought about, because it's time for Fish News. That escalated quickly. All right, I positively have to give a shout out at the top here to listener Ryan Mottley.

Now, you may recall that I said not long ago it was my belief that getting lucky the night before a fishing trip in the bedroom was good luck. Yet pleasuring yourself the night before a fishing trip was bad luck.

Yeah, that was your contribution to our fishing superstitions episode.

Jerrabomberra Barlinnie. Well, I might have some good news for you guys. OK, see, Ryan has been trying to catch himself, his first wild Oregon steelhead.

And when he heard my theory, he decided to put it to the test. And according to him, he even got his fiancee on board with this like he would give her notice in the days ahead of a steelhead pursuit. And she was game like she was down like, let's see if this works.

Right, but ready, honey? Yeah, but he just he just kept scratching like it was not it was not working despite his and her efforts. So then his fiancee goes out of town, he wants to fish. So as he put it, he had a date with his right hand in the name of science.

And next day, bang, wild steelhead. That's his first one.

So it turns out you're wrong. The basically this is a correction that you're not giving us right here.

It is not, because to me, it's very obvious what's happening here. OK, all Ryan has really proven is that my my theory is reversed on the West Coast.

It's like, oh, girl, flip. So my way works on the east side. His way works on the west. And I mean, considering we're talking wild style here, which we all know isn't easy to catch anymore, know every Walgreens in Oregon is selling out of cocoa butter today. You know it.

You won't be able to find a bottle of cocoa butter from the Olympic Peninsula Portland after this. And oh, no, I. I also have Ryan.

I mean, thanks. However, I also have to say, kind of like shame on you, because dude, if your fiance was willing to get busy every time you wanted to go fishing, why why would you ruin that. Like, why why would you why would you make that? Why would you say all this and ruin that?

I think he's making a questionable choice there.

I agree with you, because to make it worse, he even wrote in the email, and I'm quoting here now, that I've discovered my newfound luck. I'm questioning whether the wedding even needs to happen. Dude, no, no, no, no, I appreciate. No, no, no, that's it. So best start with the one thing we agree on is disagreeing with that. So best of luck to you, Ryan.

But but thanks for that. Thanks for doing that.

In the name of science, we all we all appreciate, I think more science, more more research is needed on this particular topic. I don't I don't buy Joe's conclusion that it's a left coast, right coast popularity thing, I think is Joe's unwillingness to admit when he's wrong. But I, on the other hand, am totally capable of admitting my faults.

And when I'm wrong, I smell a correction. Yeah, this one's dumb, too.

So last week I talked about the the coal mining situation over there, up there in Canada.

And I think I got most of the information, like the hard stuff I got. Right. Aha.

But the easy stuff, I screwed up. So I completely mispronounced the name of the town around which all of this. Certainly it's it's more Moretown I know it's called Lethbridge but I called it Lethbridge for some reason that I don't know. And and some of our very silent lobbyists, some of our very polite neighbors from the North wrote in very nicely, correct me.

I mean, if I had if I had done that works, they had something in Jersey, I would have got hate mail.

But but no, they're like, thanks so much. It was really great.

You know, it's actually so thank you for that.

And I apologize for screwing up the basics, but hopefully I didn't mess up any of the big stuff with that out of the way, the housekeeping done, we are now going to move on to Fish News and you will remember that this is a competition. Neither Joe or myself know what the other one is bringing the table. And we are trying to compete for the hearts and the mind and and really the love of Phil, the engineer we're trying to make will make him love us with our stories.

So with that, it's it's your week to lead off, man. What do you what do you got? Something good?

I think I have some good things here. One is one is poignant and one is completely stupid. So we'll start with poignant. Perfect.

And we're going to head over to Maine for a little lake trout curfuffle that's causing quite a stir.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Have we we've done it again. Oh, man. We had a good run. We did have a good run.

We did shit, we've crossed swords. I'm actually disappointed it wasn't your lead off, because then I would have been like, well, at least I don't have to do two stories this week.

All right. All right, all right. Well, OK. At least we can both talk about it and it's bound to happen time to time. Bring it on. I was where I was worried about this one.

So we first found this story a little over a week ago.

And since the the original drop, there have been follow ups. And all of this, at least from my sources, are coming from the Bangor Daily News. Yep. And a few weekends ago, the annual Sebago Lake Fishing Derby took place. And this is an event that draws a lot of anglers onto the ice.

And a few days after the tournament, local resident Kurt Christiansen went out on the ice and discovered piles of dead lake trout frozen on the ice around where where holes had obviously been drilled during the tourney. And according to the story, he found more than 100 fish left behind on the ice. And naturally, this infuriated him and he viewed it as wanton waste.

And he speculates that during the tournament, this angler or group of anglers was just looking for big fish to weigh in and discarding everything else.

Now, just hearing all that, you're kind of like, oh, what a bunch of ass clowns.

But there is a little bit more to this. OK, so this is this is from the story.

Technically, lake trout are an invasive species. They're non-native to sebago. The state stock them there in the 1970s and now they compete with native landlock salmon for food, especially smelt. Earlier this month, the Fisheries and Wildlife Department encouraged anglers to keep as many lake trout as they want. And here's a quote I find interesting from Mark Laddy. A spokesman for Maine's Wildlife Department says while a catch and release message was important several decades ago, we saw more fishing pressure and higher harvest rates by anglers.

Present day fisheries rely on harvest by anglers to maintain healthy fish populations and to achieve size quality management goals. The Derby is part of the effort to remove trout from Sebago, Lot said.

So we can have healthy salmon populations now. If you missed it, what what he basically just said there in a nutshell was that back in the day people fished for food and today they don't do that nearly enough.

And sort of the adoptive hardcore catch and release mentality, at least at this particular lake, has ended up hurting the native salmon population because the Lakers are so much more aggressive. And what what Laddy also said in the original story is that while he understands, you know, seeing these fish is not a eses, it's not ideal.

But in a year with good ice, anglers can catch upwards of 10000 lake trout at Spago in a single year. So 100 fish on the ice doesn't amount to much. It's just a fraction, he says. And to be clear, and I'm sure we agree on this, I don't condone leaving one dead Lakers on the ice. But I see parallels here with other things, namely snakeheads and Asian carp. And when the message you're sending is kill them all because you're helping, certain people are going to cling to that very, very tightly.

And I mean, I can't tell you how many times I found dead snakeheads that had been whacked in the head or stabbed and just thrown up onto the bank down here. So you catch them, you don't want to eat them, but the state is telling you to kill them all. So as far as you're concerned, you're you're doing a service and you kill as many as you can.

But the sad thing here is that the organization you're going to get there. OK, good. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Now I'm OK.

Don't worry. Do you want to split this one up? Do you want to take over from here? Can I can I jump in for a minute or so?

There are a couple elements there. There's also I also want to bring in you mentioned that this was initially reported on in the Bangor Daily News. Right. And then there was a follow up op ed that was written. Yes.

Right. Yes. And and and I feel like I feel like I want to I want to drop a quote in from that op ed, because I think it's it's important to think about this. So so John Holyoake wrote in an op ed and I'm just going to quote him, and this is in reference to leaving those those piles of fish on the ice.

He said, when anglers act like this and show such disregard for the species they're targeting, they cast a cloud over all of us who enjoy spending a day on the water. Many of us love ice fishing, but there are plenty of others who would rather see us all go away. Why?

Fisheries conservationists will tell you that ICE anglers have the reputation of being game hogs and killing way too many fish lake dwellers who live on the shores year round will tell you that many ice anglers are slobs leaving beer cans, trash and human waste on the ice when their day of fishing is done. Now, I don't totally agree with everything that Holyoake wrote there, but I think his central point is really important to the story. Right. And so, you know, to what you said, they were being asked to to remove lots of legro from the system, but leaving piles of dead fish on the ice feeds negative stereotypes about all anglers and particularly about ice anglers.

So there's an optics thing here at play. It is.

And I'm actually I know we crossed swords here, but I'm enjoying this because I was going to get there, too. And I read his story.

And I mean, you know, he was even talking about how it's common to hear guys say, well, the Eagles got to eat, just leave them out here for the Eagles.

There's a lot of excuses flying around as to why you would do that.

But the problem is, according to to the story, there is no wanton waste law for fish in Maine. So.

Exactly. It's kind of like from the state's perspective, it's like this doesn't look good. But I also can't get you for anything because I told you to kill all these.

And there's so yeah, they didn't do anything wrong.

They didn't do anything wrong, legally speaking. Yeah, it is pure optics now. I'm sure we would have both gotten here.

But if there's one sort of sad thing about this before you before you get into that camera, just the one I want to give you a little bit more setup. I know I'm upset you. I promise I'm setting you up for it. I'm not going to steal your thunder on it because we totally agree.

But I feel like we have to put ourselves in the position of those anglers. Right. So you're out there, you're being told by the management agency, kill all the lake trout you can under twenty six inches, help us out, help us manage this population.

You hear that? And you have a banner day. You get one hundred fish, whatever, 100 plus fish. I can kind of understand maybe you don't want to clean a hundred fish, one hundred small liquors, I can understand that. I don't know if I condone wasting them. I don't know if I personally could bring myself to do that.

I'd have to be in the situation to really know. Yeah, I could not have I don't think I could.

But like but I understand that tension of being like, man, I want to be fishing and I'm catching these fish and they're asking me to pull them out.

But I don't know if I want to clean all these, but at the very least, take them home, like, just dispose of them quietly. Hmm.

Don't don't feed into this perception of anglers as as a problem. Right. And so up until that moment, I was I was kind of like, understand, I wouldn't have I definitely wouldn't have done what these folks did, but I could kind of understand it. But there's one more wrinkle to this story. That was a good one hundred percent convinces me that whomever did this are just complete and total assets. No doubt in my mind.

Yes. Yes. That I'm glad I waited.

The sad thing that I was just set up for is that the organization running the tournament was fully aware that the state was promoting the taking of as many Lakers as you wanted.

So they were set up to take donations of all unwanted lake trout, and they had worked out a deal with a local processing plant to clean them and freeze them.

And all of that lake trout was being donated to local food pantries.

So now, like, at minimum, say what you want about these guys. That's extremely lazy and selfish. Like you want to kill three wheelbarrows full have at it.

But like, holy shit, the tournament is giving you the out for your extra fish. All you had to do is get them over there all.

You can't even be bothered to drag the fish across the ice. Are you serious. Yeah.

To one, just do the right thing. And for another, donate fish that are going to be used to feed people who need food. Like what's wrong with you. Yeah.

Yeah. So if you just took that one element out you could, you could sort of formulate some weak argument. But with that they're like there's no excuse for that. And I don't know I don't know if you dug in any of the social commentary on this, but a little bit it's surprisingly mixed. I mean, you have a lot of people who are just straight out appalled.

But there's there's also some who are like, yeah, deal with it. That's what the state wants.

They want them all dead. So it's a little mixed. It's a lot more mixed than you think.

Know that the guy who initially, you know, broke the story, KRISTIANSEN he's the one who put it up on Facebook. And you would I would have thought that the people would come to him and. Yeah, man, that's that's that's rough. But back there.

Yeah, I you're talking to deaf ears here. That's what they want. That's what they encourage. So, I mean, we don't certainly have an answer here, but it's like this weird conundrum and sort of just speaks to mixed messaging. And like I said, I've seen that with snakeheads. When you tell somebody and in some cases those, it was by law, like if you catch that, you kill that.

Yeah, it's very hard to convert everyone to eating them. I know how delicious they are. Most people don't. If they catch one, it's dead on the bank. I see it all the time, but that's kind of what you asked for.

So it's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, hey, we had to cross over again eventually and I enjoyed it. It was a good story.

Was too good. I was actually glad to take that one with you because that.

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My transition is that is that I'm going to kind of keep us on the topic of dead freshwater fish, the cats, that's that's my my transition here, at least that transition to much hair like dead fish, dead fish.

I'll tell you about that. What do you got on dead fish this week? You know, do that to your point. This isn't the best. Like, hey, it's Friday and we're trying to have a good time story.

But, yeah, it's still worth talking about. I'm I'm not apologizing for it, but it's it's not the it's not the biggest. I have one of those. Don't worry.

OK, listen, we're ending on a sad note. So a consortium of 16 different conservation groups published a report last week titled World's Forgotten Fishes.

And this one's it's a bummer, man. It's a bummer. It also got me thinking differently about fish.

Usually when when we hear about fish stocks, like on a planetary scale, it's oceanic species that dominate the conversation.

But this report focuses on the global status of freshwater fishes. And it's both truly fascinating. And it's a compilation of information about various freshwater fish around the globe and their importance, as well as deeply, deeply depressing.

So we'll go with the bad news first.

OK, I'm prepared to be deeply depressed. There you go. I you were warned freshwater fish are in far worse shape as a whole than I.

And probably most of us realize 80 species of freshwater fish have already been declared extinct. And for the record, this isn't like an over there somewhere else problem. Right. One quarter of the extinct freshwater species used to live right here in the U.S. and it's also not a like a back in the day problem. Like, well, we did terrible things before, but now we fix them. No, no, no. Sixteen fish went extinct last year.

Really. Thirty percent of all freshwater species on the planet are currently facing risk of extinction.

Think about that for just one sec.

That's nearly one third of all the things that swim in freshwater at risk extinction. Populations of migratory freshwater fish have fallen 76 percent since 1970, and big fish, the ones that grow over 70 pounds and are sometimes referred to as mega fish, are at six percent. Of their historic populations, so apologies to Phil here, because I'm about to make some extra work for him, but I just got to state this plainly. That's the. Yeah, I'm kind of like my jaws hanging, yeah, this is not good.

This is this is terrible. I warn you, I'm also formulating questions, but you have more to get through, the primary takeaways from this report are obviously pretty damn concerning.

But I also learned a bunch of really interesting information about freshwater fishes that I just I never knew before. For example, despite the fact that fresh water makes up just one percent of the world's aquatic habitat, more than half of global fish species live in freshwater. Yeah, 99 percent of the water on earth is saltwater, but the majority of the biodiversity is found in that other one percent. I did not know that. Really? Damn, yeah. There are more than 18000 different kinds of fish that live in freshwater for at least part of their lives, meaning that freshwater fish make up almost a quarter of the world's vertebrate species.

And and that's just the ones we know about, we're still finding all kinds of new freshwater fishes. Good news for you, Joe. Last year, a new snakehead was identified. The dragon snake had bad news. They live in underground caves in southern India. So don't they're going to be casting frogs at the minute.

I saw those. I saw they'll get here eventually. Give it a couple years. All right.

Over the past decade, an average of two new species of freshwater fish have been identified every week to fish a week.

OK, but isn't that sort of canceling out? It's like one a week goes extinct, but we find two new ones. I don't think that's the actually I think we're OK.

It's better we're better than good with that information. That's how I absorb news pieces, which is why you're so much better at this than me.

The good news is we find two new finding more. They're not being created. They're they're making two new ones a week.

We're just finding them some other fun facts, maybe news. I didn't.

There are five types of freshwater sharks, one in Australia, one in New Guinea, one in Myanmar, one in Borneo and one in India.

Nope, I only knew they were freshwater sharks. I was not clued in to the amount five different kinds. And researchers actually know hardly anything about them, except, you know, that they're critically endangered. That's about all we know.

Right. So and the other piece that I took away from this is, again, most time when we think about fisheries on the global scale and we think about commercial fish harvest or the importance of fish in feeding people, we talk about the ocean. Yeah, but without freshwater fish as a food source, hundreds of millions of people would go hungry. This isn't just like a there's an element to this that is truly impacting communities. Yeah, so. I'm just providing you with the highlights of this conservation report, and you probably know this conservation reports are just strange documents.

And I know that because I've helped write a couple, they have to do this.

This very tenuous balancing act where they describe the situation in hand is as dire enough that it needs to be addressed immediately, but not so dire that everyone reading it will just give up and figure the whole thing's lost cause. So why bother doing it in the first place?

Yeah, yeah. These reports need to provide solutions that seem realistic and grounded in research, but not so complicated or detailed that the average schmo can't understand what they're talking about through like a handful of simple bullet points. Right. They've got to this is a serious balancing act. I like I like a good bullet point. Exactly.

But I'm not judging. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a yes.

Reading the actual New York Times. I don't have time.

And when you dig into those bullet point solutions on these conservation reports, that's where you usually find the bias of the sponsoring organizations. That's where that's that that starts to creep in. Right.

And that's one of the most interesting parts about this particular report. The primary organization responsible for putting this together was the World Wildlife Fund.

WWF is not that country hunters and anglers or the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership or American Sport Fishing Association or any of the conservation groups that champion anglers as parts of the solution. Right. But in this report, they did. Hmm. The report spends an entire section giving props to anglers.

It explains how recreational fishing generates 100 billion dollars every year and how much of that money goes into local economies who are the stewards of our freshwater resources.

It tells little stories because, again, it's all about storytelling, getting people engaged. So it tells a story about the humpbacked masire, which has been drawing tourist anglers and their money to India for the past 50 years, and how the income generated from those traveling anglers has transformed former poachers into fishing guides. Yeah, the same people who were once decimating this fish population in order to survive are now incentivized to protect them in order to make a living.

And the report explains how similar cases are playing out in sensitive freshwater ecosystems all over the world.

But the fact that anglers are important stewards of a fisheries or that angling is a net positive to fish populations is not news to anyone listening to this podcast. Right? Right.

But for us to be explicitly recognized in this particular report marks a change in how the more mainstream conservation groups are talking about anglers they really use to look at us as the enemy is right. We were the sadists who were out to torture innocent creatures for fun and kill us.

But I don't know, man, it seems like they've finally come around like I'm not I'm not going to hold my breath for a sponsorship call from PETA, but I'm I'm really happy to see that we're getting our due from WWF, at least like it feels like a turning point to me.

I think that's great, man. And I agree with what you're saying.

I'd like to have that recognizing that that what we do is is more beneficial than harmful is terrific.

But the thing that has stuck with me from the early part of this report, you said 16 fish, freshwater fish went extinct in our country last year.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Of the 80 fish that have been declared extinct. Right. 16 went extinct last year. That's what I said. Sure.

That's what she said. I thought you said they were. They were. They were in America. No, I said a quarter of them were in America. And maybe I misspoke. Of the eighty fish. Almost twenty. Yeah, no, I said it right.

A quarter of the extinct freshwater species used to live in the US. Sixteen went extinct last year. You're you're conflating two different things. OK, it seems like math with too many numbers.

Too many to understand. But let me let me break down simply. Eighty freshwater fish already extinct about a quarter, about 20 of those used to live in the US. Sixteen total globally went extinct last year. Gotcha. OK, like, what are some of the species? And here's why I ask that. Right.

Because I'm racking my brain trying to like, think of one for lack of a better way to put it, that matters to anglers. So like it leads me to believe, like, are these like, you know, minnow and Gobe type species?

Like what what are some of the recent ones that that we recognize as this?

Does the piece give that? I'm just curious.

There aren't so many recent ones that anglers would care about in the US. Right. A lot of the ones in the U.S. are kind of the smaller ones, but some of the older ones to go extinct in the US. Did you ever know of a thing called the silver trout?

Surely did not. Did not. Whether it was a native, it was an East Coast trout species native only North America got no catch one. Yeah, OK. How long's that been? I've never heard of that before ever. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

I think it was in the thirties. But the, the more recent one like the big one from last year, was the Chinese paddlefish going extinct.

Oh OK. That was the big one that got news in terms of extinctions from last year.

But I mean, there's a whole list, right? If you look at the study that lists all the eighty that have gone extinct and and a lot of them are are definitely the smaller things, the dates and the gobies and the stuff you might not notice, but not all of them. Right.

And certainly not to downplay that. I'm not saying like, oh, it's just days and like, whatever, man, you know, long is down the hall.

Yeah, no, no. And, you know, what can you say it's great to not be the bad guys in the situation. But I mean, it's still a pretty depressing situates, super depressing.

It's super depressing. But I will say I didn't I didn't have time to cover it all. There are those bullet points that lay out. Here are the things that we can do. All is not lost. If we make some changes will be OK. I mean, the big ones are pretty obvious. Stop damming rivers and stop using them like toilets. And, you know, things will get better. Well, that's Wady.

That gives us a lot, a lot to think about. So I'll I'll and I said we're going to end with some fun.

I'll end with a fish that if you saw in person you'd want to make extinct immediately, like with a shotgun.

OK, all right.

Instantly. OK, and this is a this so we're on the same page. This is a dumb story. I just can't leave it alone. But it has unlike what you've just done, it has no value. OK, I'm just telling you that now you will not come away more enriched as an angler. But this just has to be done because several people forwarded me this story. But I have to give the shout out to listener Matt Wagner.

He sent it first so he gets the nod. And this is making some rounds.

But I'm using bro Bible dotcom as the source, which is obviously no as credible as The Washington Post or something.

All right. So it's one of these headline Deformed Shark with Human Face. Looks like it came straight from your nightmares.

Now, I'm going to stop there for a sec because you know these headlines, this is the bullshit that's meant to grab non nature oriented people like you. Remember a while back I had a similar story with fish, with a human face, looked at me funny or whatever the hell it was from Malaysia.

We did a deformed shark one at some point. Yeah.

And it's like I'm looking at this fish with a human face and like it's this big news, weekly world news. And I'm like, it's a stargazer.

What's a big this is a stargazer.

I like taking a practical approach to these. It's not a big deal. And the two mouth trout that I swear did not have two mouths, its little underfeeding mandible just got ripped out.

But I don't gravitate to these.

But this one's next level, OK, this is this one's next level. So just for. Fun, here are the opening lines of this article, which I'm reading word for word, typos and all.

OK, I don't want to sound like an alarmist with everything that's been happening lately, but it certainly look like the gates to hell is leaking sea monsters again. And those gates can be found somewhere deep in the Indian Ocean. OK, now here's now you have no preconceived knowledge of this, right, like you do not? No, I don't. I know nothing about this because you haven't seen the photo yet. Just hang on. No, here's what happened.

According to the story, a commercial fisherman near Rody now and no idea where that is caught, a shark in his trawler net.

Normally, the sharks are released alive, but by the time he got this one into the boat, it had died. So he kept it not wanting to waste it. And when he went to clean this shark, he found that it was pregnant. And inside there were three pups, two of which were completely normal. And then you had this mutant deformed shark. And it's very easy to describe.

OK, so if you just picture like a normal baby shark, like something like a gray reef shark, like a common just shark shark, but instead of its eyes being on the side of its head, they're under its snout, just above its mouth.

And you're like, dude, I swear, we already covered the story like three months ago. No, no, I have to go now. Was like it was the same set up a guy on a trawler in Indonesia pulled up a shark, died, found pups inside, and one of them was like deformed into a cyclops. So the setup is is exactly the same.

It's the same setup which which tells me that both these stories could be largely bullshit. But this is not a Cyclops. I remember that now. And Cyclops had one eye. I remember that this is different. Bear with me. Right.

So so you think like, OK, it's got eyes under under its head and you're like, oh, OK, that's weird. And if it were swimming naturally horizontally, I guess it would just look like a baby shark with no eyes. But the photos show this thing vertically laying on its back, which gives you the illusion that this is a land creature that walks on two legs and its fins are like little arm flippers.

And it is one of the creepiest, most terrifying things I have ever seen. And I'm I'm sending you the photo right now. I want your reaction to this. Oh, my God, that is not the same shark we covered.

Or know what the story is so similar, it's making me think that we're just getting sucked into sharks, mutant shark like photo shops, maybe.

I don't know if there are a lot of mutant sharks coming out of Indonesia these days. I don't I don't know.

OK, so here's from the story. It says, It's unclear if this shark came straight from our nightmares or if it looks like something that a toddler would make with Plato during arts and crafts time at daycare.

And to me, that's accurate.

Like to me, I see like a Gumby character. It is like we never knew about because it had been like locked in a psych ward for decades or something.

And it's got like a hint of Casper the Friendly Ghost and like a touch of St. Puft Marshmallow Man. But to my eye, it's pure evil.

And I'll put the photo on Instagram today. Dude, it could literally be the same shark story with different photos that have been Photoshopped.

We might have been sucked right into that. Yeah, but but this is definitely like new in the news.

So I think I believe you. It's a different it's different than the Cyclops shark. I just the setup is so similar that I'm like I feel like we're getting suckered here.

Maybe we are, but I don't care, because when you see this photo, I implore you to imagine, like, you've woken up in the middle of the night and this thing is standing in the middle of your bedroom upright. It says nothing. It says nothing.

It just slowly cocks its head to one side before attacking. It is terrifying. And I usually explain away all these natural oddities. This one is straight up terrifying.

And by the way, the guy who caught it thinks it's lucky and will be preserving it to keep in his bedroom.

Mhm. Yeah. So that's it. I definitely don't want that in my bedroom, so it's it's become he's apparently he's making money from people stopping to look at it. So, I mean, good for him. It could be a better living than shark trawling over there. I don't know.

No doubt. But tourism play right on. Yeah.

Well, Phil, I guess Phil's kind of just going to have to base this off of either are two independents or maybe we both win because we worked so well together on the crossover.

We'll see what Phil has to say and then not transition into the the bin. And we'll be looking up in the trees instead of down on the water for this one. For at least attempting to bring some levity into that bummer of a Fish News segment, Joe Somali is the winner. Food, waste, extinction, nightmare, sharks.

I could really go for a river horse segment right about now.

There it is. Oh, we're sticking with the sailboat now, OK?

OK, why did you put the head to the. You don't know what I'm getting at. What? You didn't have to be so hurtful with me. So angry.

All right. So we've got a slightly different spin on the sale been this week. Normally we use this space, as you guys know, to make fun of something fishy posted in an online classifieds forum. But thanks to a listener e-mail, we're using it this week to basically give props to a young man's side hustle. That's what we're doing here.

Oh, yeah. And deservedly so. So listener Matt Colly emailed us to tell us about his son, Sawyer. This kid is just he is our kind of hustler.

He runs totally.

He runs a little lur racket on his local lakes, kind of like what you might have heard about some kids doing on golf courses, but just so much cooler.

Before we get to the details, though, this the story has echoes of a Fish News segment we did a while ago about birds getting tangled in lost fishing gear. And if you remember, we did this whole thing where we encourage everyone to pick up the shit you find hanging in trees when you go fishing.

But I think it's safe to say that even the more conscientious and and frugal of us, we tend to stick to the low hanging fruit when it comes to trees said sadly, that's accurate.

I mean, like if I buy a Dangler in easy reach, I'll absolutely grab it and do my part.

But I, I mean, I feel like a schmuck for saying this, but if getting something out of a tree requires like climbing or physics equations or tools or it's going to take more than three minutes away from my fishing, I probably float on by like I'm just I'm not built for four tree climbing.

So it would have to be like a really rare or spending lure.

And again, this is terrible, too. But I'm just being honest. I'm not I'm not really, like, hard up for lures or flies.

So even if there's a perfectly good Rapallo up there, I'm not risking like a fight with Mr. Gravity, who usually wins over, like, one more original floater. I guess.

Just honest, I hear that I don't mind a little tree climbing when I see stuff, I try and grab it. But I know I miss a bunch of stuff.

The ones that get me are the power lines strung across the river. Oh, yeah.

And because those always have like the mother lode cornucopia of shiny hanging things and Munno spiderwebs. But I'm not messing with power lines like not going for a not even for a horse leather swimmable.

I'm not doing that. But anyway. You'll fish under him though, right? Oh yeah. Buzzing Oh, every every power line in every river is fish.

That is really you're catching something under there like a brain tumor.

But anyway, go ahead back back to the topic at hand. Back on track here.

Matt sent us an email titled Tree Fishing and explained that his son Sawyer is really into retrieving lost lures from the trees around their local lakes, which sounds cute, like it sounds kind of adorable, but Matt also attached a photo of one of his kids recent hauls.

And it's not cute. It's jaw dropping like it's amazing. Yeah. He claims in the email that this pile we saw photo of represents just a couple days effort and no joke. There are dozens of quality beads. We're talking like hundreds of dollars worth of gear easily. And this is not a rusted out pile of gas station snow rigs. These are no quality brand name goods that look fresh out the package, like maybe throw in one time. Right, right into a tree.

Yeah, they're pristine. Right. And and my question was this. How is he getting all these fates like. Right. Like, these are not laws that people just walk away from, you know, if they're even remotely accessible.

And then the original email Matt mentioned, SOYER only does this in the winter and doesn't get in the water. So I assume I just naturally assumed, OK, he's walking the tree line once these ponds and lakes freeze, right?

Yep. He's he's using the ice. Yeah.

I mean, I've seen people do that. Turns out that is completely incorrect because we did we did a little follow up and wouldn't you know it, Matt and Sawyer live in Las Vegas.

So there's no ice in Vegas. But fun fact, which I didn't know it, but I also don't really think about it. The leaves do still fall off the trees in the winter in Las Vegas.

Deciduous trees, dude. I know. But honestly, I thought all the trees, they were plastic, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I didn't even know that they were real. Everything else.

There's plastic. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah.

So, OK, so the the the real leaves in Vegas do fall off and it makes the picking better and easier. So Matt writes, Soyer amazes me with his creative ways of getting laws out. He used to use a 30 foot. Collapse will Painter's poll that he rigged with a few magnets and raiser's, the razor cuts the line and the hook would then stick to the magnet, but that got too unwieldy. So now he just uses a cut piece of bamboo.

This kid is MacGyver. He's like he's like MacGyver and Inspector Gadget that goes fishing. I'm just super impressed.

And Dr. Klaw, throw him in there.

And we're not the only ones who recognize Sawyer's intellect, because these are these are, well, trafficked places.

These are they sound like urban porn. So, you know, obviously people see him doing this. You see a kid walking around with a 30 foot painter's pole rigged with razors and magnets. And so I want to know what he's doing.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

So so people follow him around and then ask to buy the lures. These pull it out and and according to again, according to Matt, sort of keeps most of the lures for himself because, you know, he never he never knows what he's going to need stock up.

But he has sold a few back to the people who lost him. He calls it a finder's fee, which is. Atta boy. Perfect. Yes. Yeah, perfect.

Pure, pure Vegas hustle, man.

I totally so good. Yeah. Yeah. And even though, I mean, Vegas isn't exactly what you'd call a super fishy town. Right. But it does have a pretty big population. And Matt says Sawyer is operating at public ponds that have bass and get a winter trout stocking, which was telling because that explains the mash up of tiny inline spinners all the way up.

There's like striper sized jerk baits while just in an insane array.

But it appears they're like a shitload of casual fish.

Dabblers in Vegas apparently pounding the piss out of this water and the vast majority of them cannot cast at all.

No seems no fear whatsoever.

Burwood soldiers get it from what we can derive from that. It doesn't change my opinion that I have. I have no love for Vegas whatsoever.

Yeah, me either. Sorry, Matt and Sawyer, I don't know. They're just not my place. It's not a no. I have friends there. Love you all. Death, just not my place.

But if I'm ever forced to go back as I have in the past, I can tell you I will be skipping the casinos and I will be hollering at Matt to see if his kid will take me fishing. Sawyer We did. We appreciate your moxie and your entrepreneurial spirit. We should mention. I feel like we should also mention that Sawyer offered to send us some of his recent haul. You did specify no swim baits or WOPR blockers, which is just sound.

Those stay in his personal stash. But I want to respond to that here and say now, man, you were good, you have earned those. You should keep them and be on the lookout for some sweet ass stickers to boot.

Well, Miles is speaking for himself. I would take the Whopper propers if you were willing.

I mean, I can pass up a Whopper. Whopper. Yeah. Good stuff, though, man. And remember, if you find something ridiculous, fish or fishing related for sale online, be it on Facebook, offer up Kajiji or the Dark Web. Should a link to Ben at the meeting or dotcom, if we use your submission on the show, will set you up with a little bent swag.

So in that giant selection of recovered laws where pretty much all styles of bait were represented, did you happen to notice which one was missing? I did. I did.

I had one in particular that I think was missing.

So if you guys want to know what it is, you're in luck, because in this week's End of the Line segment, Miles is going to tell you all about that one bait apparently not dangling in the trees at that kid's personal treasure trove.

Vegas, OK.

It's a story of a different kind of hustle and the power of Internet chatter.

It's not loud enough, but. The debate is perhaps the only loser in the past 50 years to define a whole new category of Bates', the story of this loser demonstrates how the tackle industry has changed, but also proves that new losers don't need high tech injected mold, plastics or robotic inserts to get bit, etc.. It looks deceptively simple. It's a skirt, a jig with a hexagonal metal blade attached to the eye. The brilliance behind this design only reveals itself when phished that bleed because the jig to vibrate and wiggle.

It also clacks against the big head producing sound and flesh. So the chatter is like a swinging crank beat spinner bait hybrid.

Like all my favorite ENDERLIN stories, this one starts in a home workshop, Ronnie Davis spent his career as a research and development lab technician at a company, The Design Tire Materials after retirement. In 1998, Davis turned his attention to bass fishing.

I guess I'm different than most fishermen in the way that when I go to the lake bass fishing, there's not about law on the end of my life, no matter what it really is. It's something I've created or altered to the point that wherever I'm facing the fish saying that before from anybody but me. For more than a decade, Davis tinkered with the concept that would eventually become the debate.

His inspiration came from an early 1960s leuer called the Walker Special, a hexagonal chunk of metal with a couple treble hooks attached that Louis didn't really take off. But Davis never forgot how its particular shape wobbled in the water. He figured that if he could find a way to incorporate it into a jig, he'd be able to impart that same movement in a more versatile and weightless. Ray Davis never considered selling his inventions. He just kind of like building stuff and wanted an edge in the local tournaments around his hometown of Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Davis, his son Ron, however, saw commercial potential. For a couple of years, the two had friendly disagreements over bringing the lure to market, the younger Davis wanted to start selling the debates while the older was never satisfied, musos convinced that he could improve the design. In 2004, Ron Davis finally convinced his father that the lure was ready. Ron quit his job as a tennis pro and founded Ra'ed Bates their first year. The company sold only 5000 charter baits, but Ron had confidence not just in the potential of his father's design, but in his own understanding of how the bass industry was shifting.

For generations, new baits got popular through fishing media. As I've talked about in previous episodes, lures like the Repeal Floating Minnow or The Devil's Horse gained much of their traction in the market from Write-Ups and national magazines. More modern designs like rubber worms and spinnerets found their way into the psyche of anglers through Saturday morning fishing shows. Ron Davis was prescient enough to see that bass heads in the early 2000s were tuning into something different on Saturday's tournament standings.

Ron gave Chad Roberts to up and coming pros. In 2005, one of those anglers, Brian Thrift, won the coanchor division of an FLW event using the Chaturvedi. But he didn't tell anybody about it. Afterward, Ron called him hat in hand and asked if to please let people know what he was throwing the next time he did well with the bait, thrift faced the dilemma. The debate was a bit of a secret weapon, something he had confidence in that virtually no one else on the tour had.

And as a young tournament angler trying to build a career, that's a significant advantage. But he liked and respected the Daviss and wanted to see them succeed. So he agreed that he would. Eight months later, Thrift fished and won his first FLW tournament as a pro on Lake Okeechobee. He caught fish over eight pounds every day of the tournament and had several days where he caught multiple fish over eight pounds, all ungettable. He kept his promise to run and openly talked about the new lure he was using.

In the next FLW event, four of the top 10 finishers were using cheddar baits. Word spread across the Internet almost instantly in a matter of days. Red had received orders for a half million units, and their projected annual sales went from 100000 lures to two million. There was just one problem that had no possible way of filling all those orders. So Ron contacted Zemun Fishing Products, a South Carolina based company that at the time manufactured and distributed Lur components, Brad Luers and Zemun reached an agreement to brand and distribute baits, allowing them to dramatically increase production capacity and fill all the incoming orders.

And this is probably the spot where you expect the happily ever after to come in. But that isn't actually the end. Not really.

Remember how enshroud the chatter by talking about how simple it is? Well, that simplicity meant that just about anyone with basic tools and know how could make their own. Six months after Chaturvedi became the darling of the best tournament scene, there were 70 different knockoffs for sale, which was a problem for a bait and a brand that was just starting to take off. You remember the genius who invented the spinner bait? Yeah, neither do I and and neither does anyone else, because though whoever that was may have been a hell of a lure inventor, they weren't all that business savvy.

But see, the Daviss, they are they filed several patent applications in 2004, including a patent on metal blades attached directly to the eyes of Waita Jughead's. Though it took nearly five years and reported 100000 dollars, the Daviss were awarded those patents. Bronze spent years tracking down intellectual property infringements. Even after the Daviss sold Chaturvedi to Zemun in 2008, Ron continued sending out cease and desist orders. Everyone in the business knows not to mess with Jacobites in 2016.

Rick Clun, one of Basili tournament using a homemade Chaturvedi knockoff. Afterwards, he told the cameras that his cloudy, windy conditions.

I say we're not going to trickster. Too bad it's just a Tanabata copy that I don't sell them and say, Hey, man, I like what they do. They make you name, they see you. And they said, I wish all companies could do that and protect stuff in this business.

Zemun went from being a mid-sized leuer component maker to one of the big names in Modern was the Daviss sold the chatbot for an undisclosed amount. But enough that Ron will never have to go back to being a tennis pro. His father, Ronnie, is still designing lures and still convinced that his beat the lure that changed bass fishing completely can be improved.

There's got to be other ways to create the same type action without infringing on the original Chaturvedi pat. And that's what I've been waiting for this this many years, somebody has got to do it better. So that's all we got for you this week as you continue counting down the spring, remember, if you catch a record Strieber, don't bother submitting it to the AGFA. You won't survive the apocalypse, but fathead minnows will. And all it takes to be a hustler is a bamboo stick or the foresight to patent something before you try to make a buck off it.

Nice. Yes. Keep those Selborne items, bar nomination, awkward photos, comments, critiques and just about anything else you feel like sending coming to us at Bent at the Meat Eater Dotcom. Yes, please do.

And don't forget your use of the Degenerate Angler and Bente podcast. Hash tags over the next week could put you on the path to pre glory with those soft beats and custom hard swim bait from Yoshimoto concepts.

I'm not eligible, but I'm going to take back my break and two one earlier and say that if I won, I'd have the hard bait painted like Tigra look.

How about you? I'd ask for a magic eye pattern that reveals an image of Willem Dafoe.