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You can't predict anything. Presented by Onex Hunt, creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Know where you stand with Onex. All right, Cal, tell me again what you're reading about. Oh, I got doing all my deep dive research for the week.

I came across this Kansas City Star article about a guy who was, like many Americans right now, exploring our national parks.

He'd been to several of them and appears he was picking up natural mementos from from each park. Sure. No, I got no problem.

Yet he was driving through Yellowstone and Park.

Ranger flagged him down because he had strapped to the top of the vehicle, something like nice branches that still had pine cones on them.

You know, like people steal this stuff to make, like, wreaths and centerpieces and things like that.

But it's illegal to take out national parks. And the guy volunteered the information.

He's like, oh, well. You know, I'm just on my way home, I've been traveling national parks for three weeks. And the ranger is like, really? Well, could I look inside your vehicle? For any other natural objects and the guys is like, yes, but just so you know, you're going to find some stuff and it was definitely not from other national parks.

So, yeah, like pieces. I like to clear one thing off before you look.

It's like she pops the hatch on this taho Chevy Tahoe and, you know, there's like the giant pine cones.

Yeah. From Yeah. The Republican National Park. Right.

Well obviously these came from and then had, you know, petrified wood and 10 large pine cones, five pine cones with seeds, five large pieces of petrified tree, 63 rocks, a black and blue feather, a live plant with roots still attached, seven pounds of marijuana to a large bag of psilocybin mushrooms.

Five thousand dollars in cash, two handguns, guns ready for you, ready for a cross-country trip, man.

And I was just laughing and thinking, this is a good story for everybody to keep in mind. The next time they get stuck behind some vehicle that's like blocking both lanes of traffic, mysteriously taken pictures of like a prairie dog or something like what could be so interesting.

We had a guy, a guy rode in with a good weed story where. This, like he says, big fan of the show, big fan of the podcast, big fan of the show, and he wanted to send a story about his mountain lion sighting. So he's in. He's close to the Ohio Michigan line and he points out that lately they're building a quarry and doing a lot of dynamiting in a quarry. And so he feels that this dynamiting in this quarry is displacing wildlife.

And he explains that him and his brother were up on the roof shooting pop cans out towards the woods, which they like doing a lot. And his brother had been smoking a lot of weed. In the sunset. And his brother is so high that he thinks that his eyes are playing tricks on him, but his brother says he notices a naked man. Run on all fours across the backyard by the tree line. They both get freaked out and they want to go investigate, so he grabs his Henry twenty two and his brother grabs it would split Maul and they go out to the tree line.

And sure enough, here's a mountain lion, they get stricken with absolute fear.

He fires his twenty 22 in the direction of the mountain lion and doesn't think he hit it. And then he ran off. And he asks, you guys heard about any large predators in the area? So there's a that's all that's how there's a mountain lion sighting.

That would be an interesting T-shirt design, right.

Where it's like if you think you see this, it could be this naked man on all fours. Mountain lions, probably a cougar. Mm hmm. So Oliver here, first time on the show.

Absolutely. I'm glad to finally meet you. Came in from California.

Yes, sir. Didn't expect to be here.

Tell people what your group is real quick. So I got another news item I want to share with a story that you'll appreciate my groove.

I don't even like to go fishing a whole bunch. I fish a ton, you know, a lot and just try to find a new adventure no matter where I am. So whether that's back home in California and try and doing things that are out of my comfort zone or float in the Yellowstone River for the first time and trying to throw a big plastic fish in the sea.

Oh, so you were trying to fish. You were taking your largemouth your California largemouth bass tactics. Yeah. Did you catch giants?

I got bit and the line broke. Sure wasn't a rock or something. Probably was. And I mean, who knows though.

So so you didn't you didn't you didn't take a fly pole and tried at all.

There was a fly rod in the boat, but apparently a set up for disaster because there was like some kind of like backlash that was like wound over it or something. So Carina was like struggling with it at first. And then some random special with you.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you're like a like a river rat now.

So, no, I didn't get a chance at you pick up the fly rod, which I was excited to try because I only done it a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah. But I did also want to see what was potentially swimming in that river, what the really big lure that I'm sure they've never seen before.

A good way to do that. And I just recently discovered this is you get a snorkel and mask, um, you just go down the damn river, right.

You find out everything, right. You find out all the secrets. Absolutely. All the secrets. Yeah.

I fished with people know where there's holes that have fish. But the dude that goes through the snorkel mask knows where in the hole like. With with alarming specificity, right, like what is going on in there? Yeah, I got that perspective fishing on the Sacramento River for big striped bass this past winter and one of the guys spear fishes. So he same deal. He knows he knows exactly where these where they go.

He's like, you know that one rock well to the left of that one rock. And about six inches back, they like to hold their right now, you know what is up.

So when we bring a snorkel, that's how like we were talking earlier about how I figured out some years ago where those big ones hold in the rapids. Oh, right. That's exactly how that happened.

Really was snorkeling through and being like, holy shit, that's a huge fish sitting right at the bottom of that rapide if I was boatbuilder.

I would build a baby so hard to knock the scratched up, I would build a glass bottom boat, that would be that would be a sketchy property glass Biram drift boat. And then I'll be very, very careful about where I wrote it.

And I would know all secrets.

I mean, I think I don't know if I'd go for see through bottom, I'd have a little replaceable window because you're gonna scratch it up.

There's no way you're going to not you could have a recessed fish I. Yeah, like dealing smack on there, yes, that had a siren like I like this.

Yeah, I like what is going on everywhere you went.

Oliver, you appreciate the story. The guy. So this guy writes in, he lives on a pond and pond is managed for trout. But some some derelict introduced largemouth bass into the pond in the ponds, all mad. So he likes to eat them the large rallies, he likes to eat the big largemouth because you're spot, if you catch one, you're supposed to kill it because it's supposed to be trout. They used to have Brooking's and Browns there and the trout in the bass kill them all.

Then they put in rainbows and now they're trying to kill all the bass. Anyhow, if it's big eats. If it's small, he. Fires up in the bushes. For Raccoon's what not to eat it, and he says he catches one the other day. And. Goes to fling it to the bank, but it slips out of his hand, mid stroke. Hits a hornet's nest, falls into the water, and then the Hornet comes down and attacks him with his name Bill Dence, no, he didn't say his name, but that's like some weird karma shit right there.

Yeah, he totally hit a hornet's nest or the bass and the bass got away anyway.

I think we talked about this earlier out of touch back on this, some dudes found out, did you hear about this? Some dudes found it. Old school. If I was you, I would be reporting on this. Oh, and Kal's we can review.

This is dudes in Michigan found L'Ecole OK?

Yeah. Yeah. And it was like I was like, wow, some guy threw it in there. Modern time.

I don't know, perfect scope, but a perfect it is a six by six ball, 220 years old, and they they they're saying it's an eastern Alabama, native Michigan, extinct species, southern native out from southern Michigan 220 years ago.

Big ass bull.

Yeah, I was debating the other day, just yesterday, I was debating someone who was pointing out like, how could we delist wolves when they're not recovered, when they're only recovered across such a small bit of their range? Mm hmm.

And I pointed out that we've only recovered elk on about 14 percent of the range. Now, bighorn sheep is like six, you know, and no one says we shouldn't be chasing after elk. Yeah, southern Michigan, big ass bull matchable.

Yeah, no, that was that was quite, quite the find that that really solidifies that saying of like, well, I like fish in here because you never know what you're going to get.

So was it in a riverbed. Was that going to look in a lake. Yeah, I like how they already got a theory what happened to it. Got stuck in the mud and got stuck in the mud.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I was not that a died on the ice. Yeah. I mean there's so many ways that I could have gone it. Yeah. So anyways I don't know. Got stuck in the mud.

Oh they also buy a car or guys driving his car in Tennessee gets hit with a white bass.

The state of Tennessee is like, well we don't see a lot of these types of wildlife collisions.

What do you think happened? Someone threw it at him. Well, here's the best part, right? They're like, well, our theory is that an eagle. Fought an Osprey over your car and the Osprey had to release its fish to get away, and then it fell and hit your car.

That's valid. Of course, there has to be a it can't just be a fish fell out of the talons of which happens all the time.

Yeah, but it's just there.

There is an air to air combat scenario over your vehicle. To be fair, though, I used to see that all the time. Guiding Osprey would grab a fish out of the river and the Eagles just waiting because the Osprey is such a better predator in the river. And you will just hang back. I'll wait for you to do the work and then I'm going to steal it from you. Yes. So that does happen.

Happens a lot. A lot. Justin in L.A.. No, L.A.. Yeah. A little more on this real quick.

Hotels like. Dude was moving an anchor for a swim float. Got hung up on the anchor sold in Lake near Fenton, Michigan, became hooked on the anchor of a swim platform. Drug up the anchor, here it is. Yeah, dad is now in the same little piece I'm reading. They did donate it to some kind of local museum I hung at my house. Oh, I know I had a hard time.

I would have a very difficult time because I have a very difficult time doing the right thing now. Body, mind. He I won't let me touch on this real quick in the same piece, so they also recently in a riverbed there, uncovered two vertebra. From a Bailen whale, what? And the only thing they can think is that they were brought in that like the Hopewell culture, one of the you know, they were brought in as a thing that was cool, right?

When I was I think I mentioned this before, but when I was doing research on historic range of Buffalo in the U.S., you want to talk about something that's barely dudes ran into Buffalo in Washington, D.C..

New Orleans, Adam. New Orleans near the Texas coast. Now, that's something I can see getting stuck in the mud. You know, people had counted a thousand of them in what is now Nashville. I can see that. They don't have the same protection. That's true.

Now, these bailing anyways, when I was working on looking at trying to map out that range, people used to include New York as historic range, New York State. And at that conclusion, I think, you know, it dates back to the discovery of two schools in New York. Both had cultural markings on them. People now think that someone is brought yeah, someone thought their cool. Yeah, so these Bailen whale vertebrae were like some kind of, you know, the best explanation being of some kind of trade item.

I mean, so many artifacts from animals and critters wound up doing that, right, like I think I think a good example that when I was digging in on Freshwater Drum and they were finding those the otolith bones.

Yeah. Like all the way on the other side of the country where they're not even close to a vet. They've never lived. There's no evidence of ever lived over there.

But in archaeological dig sites, they often find those otolith bones from freshwater drum mixed in abalone shells in the interior.

Yep. Assuming that it was some form of currency or a talisman or something. Now, what was it getting at about these vertebra? Was it something else going to about. I mean, from what I read, I think I think that's, you know, it could have been just a cool trade item, could have been used as like some sort of a vessel.

Um. But I don't think that's the only real. I don't think that's the only way or evidence that there is in that part of the country, too, that's the other interesting part for people dragging stuff home.

Yes, but and then they go ahead. Something about whales making it up.

Rivers to a certain degree to. Not there. No, not there. No, no, no, not there. But like if you look in and, like, getting stranded, dying way up rivers.

Yeah, like Maine has a couple of circumstances. Like ORCA's is going way up. River California has some whales that have gone way up river and into desalinated water. Got you.

Yeah. Well, as you mentioned about keeping horded and stuff for yourself or giving its museums a body mind thought he on public land.

And lo and behold, he looks in the riverbed and hears the mammoth molar. Then he looks in about 30 inches away. Here's another mammoth molar both facing up. And like, what are the chances of that, and then he's like, oh, my gosh, it's like the whole, you know, it's the whole damn skull.

Wow. But what's sticking out of the two molars?

He said it was about like he just I can't really describe something like the tip of his one cam on his bow to the other cam on his bow apart.

Then he gets the really scrutinized and Onex and realizes, in fact, he's not on public land, so he's in a little bit of a conundrum and eventually goes to the land owner was saying, you know, I was kind of accidentally on your property.

It couldn't help but notice that it wound up in the museum.

Like that guy was cool about it.

I donated it out of Horded that this friend of yours that you speak of is like the Mother Teresa of people who find cool shit and leave it where it's supposed to be.

Yeah. Like he has he's one of the he's not that old or, you know, I'm talking about. Yeah, but he's got like a photo album of like. Oh, do you like dinosaur teeth.

Do you like just like that.

He's a he's a magnet for crazy shit. Oh. You'd find more crazy shit. I don't know. He's like some people got an eye for it, you know. Yeah.

He's got like a fine tuned crazy shit detector in his brain.

Oh man.

It just you spend a couple of minutes looking at that book like I'm just going to live in a trailer here in eastern Montana and wander the earth.

A quick couple of updates on the last movement. This is the anti surface shiting movement. Some people wrote in as we talked about it, this is a guy who like crusades, he's made it his life mission to crusade against. Taking a growler out on the surface of the earth and then doing nothing to masquerade, nothing to. Tuck, you know, tuck it in, I'll say that in areas where there's no fire damage, I feel the epitome of courtesy is to dig a cat hole.

Defecate in the cat hole. Then burn the TV. But you got to care about fire danger. The only thing that I've been meaning to say on this is they're.

Are certain places on Earth, basically in most of your Western states where the microbial layer, the ability for things to be broken down in an efficient manner can be very, very close to the surface of the earth?

Yeah, just ask that old school. Yes. Yes. The bottom of that lake digging a cat hole sometimes beyond four inches is going to preserve. You're going to you're going to end up being the author of a preserved specimen that somebody can go look at a hundred thousand years from now.

But yeah, so that's just something like that doesn't mean you can't flip a rock and burning the t shirt in certain environments, even flipping a rock, you're probably going to make out like a coprolite.

Yes, but coprolite is the word. I am more concerned with the aesthetics. Absolutely, I don't think there's anything inherently icky about a buried human v.c. But I think that there's something icky about a surface human. Oh, I'll tell you this coming from a man who has had collections of animal feces.

But I don't like the human ones. I don't like ones from dogs.

I don't like ones from people running this dog around right now where, you know, you got a curious puppy. Phil's had this experience like, you know, some of the trailheads, river access sites around here. It's like you got to sprint that puppy through. You know, the shit zone where people feel comfortable, like sneaking into the woods. Yeah, and I get down to the river really fast because that puppy, I'm going to find it needed and lick your face.

Exactly.

Anyway, the dude wrote in a piece of feedback about a. surface poop anticipation as the guy wrote in instead of calling the cat hole.

It's called an asshole. Entire shithole. Looks that's pretty good. That is a good joke. Now another guy said. I had mentioned who like. For every A.I. there, a pro oh, come on. Well, I was saying, like, is there actually a pro sophisticating movement?

Oh, there there is. There is there is like an organized movement in Jordt. No, not they're not organized. But he says Georgia and Alabama, he knows he doesn't. He says he gets he tries to get distance from these people, but he knows them.

He knows of them turkey hunters in Georgia and Alabama who use.

Taking a growler in strategic locations as a way to discourage competition.

Oh, so they might go to like a little park and trailhead area and duke it up real good thinking that it just sends people elsewhere.

Oh, that's terrible. Primal. Yeah, terrible. Yeah. That is like thinking marking territory. Yeah.

So you remember we got some beta on a blacktail spot. And there were no real black tails there when her onalaska the last time, you're like, Yeah, but I'm pretty sure.

And then, like in the spot where we were kind of anchor in the boat and canoe and in. There's. There was some like very much like, yes, somebody has been successful here, it was like bailing twine and a pelvis or something.

Oh, oh yes. This means calling you one thing. Yes. Yeah. Nowadays, it's kind of a shame. But nowadays it's those goddamn latex gloves, man. Oh, yeah. People got something.

They put those gloves on because they're like icky and then they leave the gloves laying.

I like the latex glove thing as far as to walk because I'm terrible at washing my hands way better these days with covid. Sure.

But then I go the opposite way and I'm washing my latex gloves for like for a long time.

Like it's yeah, I keep them around and then I have cooking latex gloves too for like mixing burger and doing stuff like that in the kitchen.

And I always wonder if those two gloves ever met. The last bit of a follow up on the last movement. Guy from Utah, he works in the therapeutic wilderness industry. And they call him surfies. Service in his industry is a lot of service. Because you wind up with kids that are too lazy, scared, uncomfortable to use the group latrine, they get spooked off the group latrine. And I could tell you that my five year old doesn't like the outhouse at our fish shack.

And when he he does, he'd rather go out and dig a cat hole if you force him to use the. Like the hours thing, it's like a classic outhouse with no door, so you just looking out into the rain forest, which is nice, and then we got a barrel that we cut in half, set the barrel down on the hole. So you got the plywood with the hole cut, right. Then you got a half a barrel cut, plastic barrel, half the barrel cut and laid on there.

A hole cut in the. Barrel and on that is screwed, the toilet seat. Nice one.

He'll make you sit there with a stick and wrap that barrel till the everlasting last fly comes out of there like he does, he is deathly afraid of sitting on that thing with flies in there.

So you come up and just beat that barrel to get all the flies out and then he'll sit down. So I know what he's talking about. Like, some kid is the one they don't like group latrines. So he'll say they'll go out, they'll sneak off and go lay a surfie. Then you got to go out, find them all.

Oh, and round them up. And he says that night they call when someone does it.

That night they're called a night panther, he says he says it's real cold and you just get up out of your bag or whatever sleet bag and you go out and you do Late Night Panther, he'll actually put a stick into it.

I like a little flag, no, a handle, because it freezes over night like a popsicle sticks put a stick into it.

So not only does the market, not only the market's location freezes at night, you go over and just grab the stick and then you can haul it over and get yourself a good place to put it.

That's pretty smart. Yeah.

Put pops up called signs off by saying, don't let them don't let the Panthers bite. No, no, not for that. What what now about latex gloves? I don't mean to be down on them.

I swear I had some on the other day because we were Boutcher, Cariboo, the Nats or so on, just like you can't even, like, backs your hands.

They like your hand. You can't even like you could be like, oh, you know, there's no thing you could say to describe the Nats. There's no like clouds. Like there's no. Just it's just horrible now and I put latex gloves on because they like your knuckles so bad. Yeah. So just for terminology sake, are we talking about the little biting flies like the White Sox? No. Talking about the no seams? No, these are no seams, but you can see them.

These are no seams the size of Skeeter's.

Oh. No, I don't. You know, there's so many, like regional names where black flies, white socks, Nat definitely like a slash and lap dip. OK.

In this one, you can see it when you can skylight them, you see them all around your damn head, they skylight, they they look like a mosquito that big, but they bite like a NCM, but they're a lap fly family, I don't know, Cariboo all around their eyes.

I don't know how they could see. All right, I got you that sounds miserable, though. And then you're in the tussocks, you know, a tough situation. Yeah. So the tussocks here got a relief of like twenty four inches from the Mosse to the top of the tussock. And you should care when they just they land down in the snow. They're like, you're actually working on a sub-surface. There's no way to get them out of there where you're if you're standing on a toss that you're like bending over down to try to get.

That's where plain miserable and it's just wet in hot. Turns out otherwise, a pleasurable experience, just the worst like and it's always such spongy ground when you're in those cells, he's like, you can't get any good perch. Everything is like, yeah, the bugs are interesting.

Cariboo related fact for you. I mean, it'd be it's from that Farley Mowat book that old old dirt gave me. Oh, you mean his, like, classic Never Cry Wolf?

No, not the dear people. Yeah. So, like, I wrote like 24 books.

I've read a hand. It's so funny. They just like, fall in your lap every 10 years or so.

That's why it's bad for me anyway. But he's talking about how the Eskimo group that he's living with. Up in the barren land, the food that they consume. Is awful, some gut and the front shoulder's awful, awful, awful.

I know, but I didn't know I wanted you to fail.

Yeah, I was just saying it that way so people would track what you're saying. Yeah. You know, it probably won't surprise you, but I do get beat up over the way I talk and pronounce certain things, but.

Yeah. You coverture you.

I try to get the definition, but you hit it off at the pass by saying like I probably. Yeah. Messed it up.

So they take the shoulders for their own personal consumption and then the hindquarters. Like the big hams are what the dogs get at home, and it goes as far as to say like the hams are.

Going to sustain a person in the Barens. Yeah, but then the knot of connective tissue and collagen or whatever. Yeah, and they don't like it because it's not chewy. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, neck meat, shoulder meat, slow, slow cook stuff is awesome.

But, you know, obviously flat iron steaks are fantastic too. And they're cooked. Right.

We had a guy yarning. I had a toothpick Eskimo. I got on top of this for tell us that his favorite part, you know, the giant tendon, the hooks to the.

Like the. The thoracic yeah, process, what is it called? Yeah, they got a vertebra, the big ass thing that shoots upward. Yeah, big fan, but it's not a fan, right? Is it a process? Or is it a I knew this at one point in time. Does a name for that. I don't I I don't know why we're talking about a vertebra, there's like that it's you know, they're like 11, 12 inches long on a bison.

Moose have huge ones. Anyways, the tendon that holds the head up.

So when your skin is something you find that big yellow. He's like, that's good. That's nice and chewy. It's like I'll say, I bet it is, I can't say I've ever got down on that one.

Yeah, not talking about things being tender as good. Chewy is good. Yeah. All right. Good enough for USRAP. Oh, I want to I want to follow up on this. This we all almost went down the latex gloves thing. And I genuinely have this question because Carl was talking about using them in the kitchen and I have used them for butchering animals. I've used them in that context. I get why they fit there. But you're talking about mixing burger mix and sausage, and I've always just washed my hands really well before I did before and after doing so.

What's the think? Is the extent of it burgers and sausage for me? I mean, washing your hands well again is going to do it as long as folks cook their food pretty much for any circumstance. But my hands are always beat up fairly dirty.

And then when I'm really in there mixing sausage, especially if you're using like fine ingredients, like I toasted up a bunch of coriander for that sausage I gave you and then and turn that into a powder before I mixed it in there.

And you get like mix like hell in order to distribute that stuff, especially because I add fat into the sausage too.

So it's real tacky.

And I can just feel like if I didn't wear gloves, I could just feel the hairs on my hands getting sucked off into that sausage and whatever scraps and shit I have to do to protect the sausage.

Not yourself. Correct. And yeah, as we've talked about many, many times, that's the number one thing I give away is sausage.

Yeah.

Like even though it is very expensive, a giant pain in the ass to make.

But, you know, people are going to use it though. It's nothing to do with it. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't want your little hairs and fingernails in there.

I'll tell you. Hot tip. Those same stupid dudes. They because, you know, it's like 20 below 30 below muskox out there and march, they bring wall liners and oversized latex gloves. Oh, to butcher. Yeah, that shit man is nice.

Oh, yeah. All right. So good on gloves. Yeah. I don't like I'm not I don't like there's something unappetizing to me. You know, nowadays every food service person, even when you're watching, like barbecue shows, like if you're in a place like in the gym and they got the TV on and there's no volume, so you never know what's going on.

You can kind of track the TV show and they're doing make a barbecue, even they wear those giant plastic food service ones, not the ones that fit.

Right. But the giant clown hand ones, it's just not appetizing.

No, I'd rather have your damn hand in there for plus, like the the environment that's going on between your skin and the glove is never an appetizing thing, as you always know what that's like.

Yeah. It's just like it just looks so medical. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when you describe it as an environment, yeah, tell that really like that calls up that wet, soupy images. Yeah.

And I don't want to go out of there in the hallway.

Here's the other thing, too, is the whole glove thing everywhere. And all the food service people wearing gloves now makes it that when I have someone over for dinner and I go to like, dress the salad, I like to give it a good hand toss. Oh, yeah, right. So now they're sitting there, you know, and maybe it's someone like a work person. I don't know that. Well, I'm hosting an out of town guest and they're sitting there and I want to do my salad.

And I'm like, Listen, man, I'm not going to TONC this summit just because you're here.

I'm going to handle it. Are they like, you know, I mean, I feel like that's so used to the whole glove deal that then they're like, why are his hands in there?

Like that, who cares? I don't believe that you care.

Well, it occurs to me I wouldn't be talking about it fair, maybe just like feel like the special, the special, because it's got some of Steve's skin flakes.

My hair's skin flakes I want. We got to move on to what we're supposed to talk about. Dast boat season to the. We're to talk about it, so the guys who really did it, Miles, do for me, do for me a recap of.

Doszpot, season one, season one, like tell what it was, what is it, what is it? All right. For those of you who don't know, we wanted to make a fishing show that didn't feel like every other fishing show.

And we we all have this love for all boats, particularly old aluminum boats.

Like most of the folks I know, I certainly did. I think most people in this room got their starts fishing old, relatively crappy aluminum boats, but that represent once upon a time was called about a boat, about exactly.

It was just a boat. But that little Raybans boat, you'd be like, oh, I can imagine I'm calling it Dave because I don't know. I can imagine what it looks like, but we didn't care if they were nice like that.

That boat was your passage off the shore as a young kid. Angler like that was a huge jump forward. So we decided to make a fishing show that featured an old. Relatively crappy aluminum boat, and we went and legitimately this was there was no artifice to this, we bought one of the worst aluminum boats we could find sight unseen off of Craigslist from a very interesting dude named Tony in central Texas. And and then we took that boat and we sent it around the southeast with different anglers to different fisheries.

And we gave them each a day to try and do some kind of modification on that boat to make it better for the fishing they wanted to do.

And then they had to try and figure it out, fix it up like the dickens. Yeah. I mean, some are better than others. They weren't all entirely successful because, I mean, we you had you had a day, but it went from.

Went from having like kind of like a barely running motor. Oh, that was effectively inoperable.

It's night and day. That boat is sweet now. I mean, from all the things we did from from reinforcing the trains and putting on a new motor, build another casting deck, which which Carl did a fantastic job on, we put a polling platform on there. We we got some electronics on there. Oliver put a very nice trolly motor on that thing. Honda. Forestdale, yeah. Got a Honda for stroke on there that ran beautifully.

And that was a successful repower when I can look down at the hole and watch it waving like a waterbed.

OK, we're boogying. Yeah. Oh.

And by the end, we actually had that thing tricked out with the center console and like, it's it's a sweet boat now.

And then we auctioned it off. Yeah. To raise money for Calì special project. Well I didn't I, I helped select the special project but it is.

Well you brought it to my attention. Yes. Yeah.

A special land access project, Shiloh Pond in Maine. Yeah. That cow identified as needing a boost to get across the finish line, basically purchasing a.

Purchasing a piece of land that has historically been open access, but it was never, never made official long term, it was a private chunk that provided access to ever wanted to go out there.

And there's a group that wanted to purchase it outright, make it forever public.

Yeah, hunting and fishing location. So we sold the damn boat. Yes.

And what was the final and is 14 grand. I felt like that's like a break even amount for the boat. Oh yeah.

Steel. Yeah. I now know nothing against the guy that bought it. I know he's a real nice guy. Should have raffled it. Yeah.

But the problem with the Ravelli we looked at that the, the legal issues of trying to hold a raffle across all the different states were were daunting, you know, but I now have reason to believe I now have fact based.

Info.

That suggests for something like that, you will do for X oh, I believe it, on a raffle, I believe it will give me Inch'Allah involved one right now cald you know where that's sitting right now.

I don't think we should be showing made on your show with my fingers. No. Yes, that's where that sits right now. Man, you know, in that boat we don't travel, we did a raffle, no, man, I wish we could have and I would have liked the fact that it would have given everybody an equal chance and not just the highest bidder.

Got it. Not no. Nothing against who got it.

And I'm very happy about where the boats go. I'll give you a back rub, but I like the egalitarian nature of the good ol raffle.

Yeah. So here so season two, that was all based. How do you define where season one was based?

I mean, taxes that were calling it the Southeast, but that's not entirely right. It was it was Texas, Florida and Georgia. Yeah. South ish.

Yeah. Southeast ish. Yeah.

Nine and picking our spots based on interesting people, interesting fisheries and interesting stories. We really wanted to focus on not just, you know, the same old spots I been we had some of those and some of the species that you're expecting, but we also wanted to like get something that's more some more layers of interest to it other than like, hey, we want to fish. Yeah. Because you can find that on any fishing show. Season two takes place in upper Midwest.

Great Lakes. Yes, it does. It say yeah, the boat. So the boats are very personal to me because I. I kind of explain the story in the show, but. I'll talk about this bowl a bit, my. My old man was born in the south side of Chicago, Little Italy, and. He got older and got into hunting and fishing and stuff by mostly by going off to fight in the war and then always dreamed of going up and like getting a place in the wilderness.

Which happened to be like, you know, four hours north Michigan, but it's all relative. And at the time it was, you know, it was kind of a wild sort of place. And so before I was born, my mom, old man, go up to. Look at this house that I was born in, my mom still lives there today, and the way my old man tells it, he. He goes to look at the house, but there's no one there.

So he looks around at the house and there's no one's living in the house, there's a summer cottage and there's a boat out front and he takes the boat out in the lake. And as he tells it, as he tells it, he caught a five pound large mouth, which is a monster for that. Well, here's that's the thing. We always tell the story.

But now I'm like, how could it be that the only five pound bass ever after thousands of days, thousands of days of fishing that lake, spring, summer, fall, winter. Everybody we knew. OK, my mom's been in that house the forty six years I've been alive. How come that was the biggest bastard ever got caught? Like, why would it be that that that, you know, what happened to him pictorially?

So I don't know. I think it was a nice bath. I think he got like a 20 inch bass and it. Sir, seem like a five pounder, but you could go five pounds, theoretically. If he said for me, like, wow, but anyways, anyways, I don't know, we got a big like what? You know, there's a length chart which I know are off, right, because we do what we like, do the length weight thing out of habit, and then we actually just weigh the halibut totally.

And it's done with other fish, too. But what's a five pound bag supposed to be? How many? It's 24.

It really depends on their build. Yeah, I know that time of year. I think the largemouth bass are probably the worst fish to try to plug in any of the old formulas, really.

There's so many vario because their fitness varies. Absolutely. Like what they're eating varies and density of weight. Like a fish from Clearlake, California is probably like twice as heavy from the mercury content in the water alone.

But like they really pick a fish.

Oh, that's a nice three pounder and put on a scale and it's almost five. You're like with them like that doesn't compute. So I see all these tapes and measuring devices with a formula like, oh, a 20 incher is a five pounder maybe.

Got you right. Maybe. Yeah.

And chasing big bars across the country now a twenty five inch really well-built largemouth in California is going to go nine ten pound. No really. Yeah. Because it's all girth like they got the fat deposits on the top.

You got shoulders, tails are thick, like they're literally maxed out. Then I go to Texas and hammer these giant fish with these monster heads, but their bodies are like windsock. So I've got like a twenty seven inch like huge bass like looking at it side profile, always hanging on in scale and it's like seven 1/2 pounds with the.

I feel robbed because all you know, sorry, don't want to go back and start weighing all these damn bastards, I have to.

Yeah, that's that's unfortunate thing, you know, I don't you. He called five pomace. All right, guys, everybody knows one season is kicked off, people are headed to the woods with rifles in hand, and you all know that I've been shooting Weatherbee rifles for a long time now, and they're my go to for great American made rifles made by a family owned company.

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Well, working and working on our Wall ISPA, trying to figure that stuff out. That big one that I caught in the spring. Yeah, I taped that very accurately weighed it. With, you know, with my scale that I weigh everything with, so that's kind of my baseline. I'm sure you could poke holes in whether or not that's accurate.

And then I got one that was three and a half inches shorter here a week ago.

And there's only. Just shy of a pound difference between that 27 and a half inch fish and a 24 inch fish got you. And I thought, well, that kind of seems not quite right. Has to do with how Fati is built out, so the old man catches his bassinet in the you know, every story becomes like an epiphany story. Over time, he has an epiphany. And buys the house. That I was born in. Down the beach is another World War Two veteran kind of named John Gary and I say kind of only because he got stationed in Canada.

During World War Two and all they did was shoot deer.

It sounds like he spent World War Two shooting deer in Canada and he had this boat that was built. He had a Starcraft Bassmaster olive green built in 1973.

So the year before I was born and John Gary was like. All the kids around the lake, the fish, it was like January is like the fish and mentor, he had a net to catch beach minnows, sand minnows. He had a beach. Sandy hung up. You could go down there and get medals of John. He'd like rig your rod up. He'd untangle your shit. He he kept lists of all the books he read. He read a lot like John Grisham, he type stuff he keep a list of.

He got two list, a list of all the books he read. And in all the days he fished and he would log. On a minimum, one hundred and seventy, but usually over 200 days a year loud, we like to say they do that, but not many people actually do that. He fish 200 days a year. A lot of time on the water. He would fish so reliably that when I was trap and snapping turtles, I could go by his house at 11.

And get fishheads is like he just knew that he first and he knew that he had fishheads and he would he just he loved his wife and then she passed away and he would fish more and he could eat. Like, he'd cooked large meals, like he he'd fly large meals and cook them scales down on a grilled Cellcom and milk and cook them scales down on the grill, kind of like redfish style.

Yeah, they'd go out and fish, perch and bluegill, I mean, these old guys. And he hung a lot of old drink.

He was a big drinker, too. You need to sell the flays because there was a fish market.

In our county, and they would illegally sell. Any fish at the fish market owner could plausibly, legally have, and since there was like perche fisheries in Canada and aquaculture facilities that they bluegill, he could be like he could have cover for that.

So they were a lot of times sell their fish to the fish guy. And, man, they just. Their asses off, and he always had this boat and he had on a haul out and we used to actually go, he had a crank or things, you lift you boat out of the water. And he had his own boat ramp. The only private boat ramp on the lake. He had the first Meeink I ever caught. I caught.

It was muskrats that built the den under the boat ramp and I caught my first mink out of that and anyhow, just a very influential figure growing up, and that's whose boat it was, OK? He died and he got sick.

He's almost dead. Anyhow, we bought his boat. And it went to live my mom's pole barn and my mom's pole barn for oh. 13, 14 years, she started to get a little nervous because she had been registering it the whole time, because she didn't think she thought it was bad to have an unregistered boat in your barn, and she eventually wanted that boat out of there.

It was right at the time. I was like, nah, we'll use it for season two. So that's the boat.

How old were you when you started fishing out of that? Oh, you know, I was always around like we used to catch more than we fished in it. We would catch bowheads. Is the brand accepted out of the bricks that the boat haul out sad, but like it was just, oh, the boat was always there, like, you know, you'd go out with John in the boat, he'd show you how to catch croppies. They're just around.

It was always around red. And that's the boat. That's such a great story.

And a wonderful boat, by the way. It's a huge upgrade. Yes, absolutely. I say one last tidbit about John Kerry. He would cut up oranges. And freeze them the wedges, so that when he came home from fishing and poured a glass of vodka. He would then fill it full of frozen orange wedges, hot tip. Hmm, that's great. Those guys those guys drank a lot, man. OK. He called his his he had his fish and stuff on the beach and he called it the Redneck Riviera because it's that out there and finish getting drunk.

Finished getting drunk after fishing around Anchorage.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Laboe was I mean, you guys will all see it when you watch the show. But that boat was was a whole lot of fun to work on and to fish out of and just see it.

And here's what I think compared to the one before it's smaller, which there was a little tighter quarter, real small. It's a real small boat, like it's narrow and short. It's real tight quarters. But I feel like 14, 14 feet. Yeah, 14 feet.

And also, like, again, extra Neira.

I didn't measure the like Donald Gunwale Beam, but there's not much there. And but I feel like that forced people to be a little bit more efficient in how they set it up when they fished out of it like the other one, there's enough space to just kind of blow up. And there was just shit everywhere. This year it seemed like I was like, wait a minute, we don't have any space.

So they had to be more thoughtful and they had to plan it out better and just seemed to work out like the interactions with the boat were good. Absolutely great season one. But I feel like they were better season to like everybody who left us.

Man, I love this boat. I'd want to fish out of the boat.

I think a great takeaway from being on both seasons and seeing the differences in those two platforms is I had the perspective of a lesser craft that made me appreciate just a little bit of an upgrade as far as that new platform represented.

It's like, oh, I can it was hard enough last season. This is my job just became a little bit easier. And I think that's an opportunity with this whole like Doszpot like theme in concept is to show that there's learning opportunities from fishing in a piece of shit, because when you get into something that's not, then you don't have any excuses anymore.

I made me deal with crap like my first boat was a two hundred dollars or two hundred fifty dollar purchase off Craigslist up in Big Bear, covered in pine needles. I don't know how I got that trailer home down to the to the L.A. area, but like that feeling of getting off the bank was a real thing. Now that whole new world is opened up to me and I learned how to fish out of a piece of crap with just a trauma memory getting blown all over these lakes when the wind picks up this down a third.

So when I'm in a bass boat, even if it's like a small eighteen nineteen footer. Oh, like a 1982 Ranger or something, I know what it's like to fish out of a legit piece of crap so it doesn't faze me anymore. Yeah. And it's just like you're complaining about the wind, like this thing is like an aircraft carrier.

So I think people that jump straight into nice platforms and vessels and boats like straight out of high school or whatever, like good on them. But I feel like they're getting cheated because they don't know what it's like. It's hard to break up with it.

Yeah, right. It's hard to appreciate what you end up having. That's right. Or even.

No, like learn how to.

I feel like the learn all the learning I did about how to get one of those old boats to be an effective fishing tool is super useful now, even in a nicer boat, because I can think about like how do I how can I set this up to be more efficient? How what changes can I make? What can I easily do, even though it's already great compared to what I'm used to? You've had to figure all that out in the past, I think I think most people who fish seriously have come through that.

And it's like, yeah, all right, I know how to get out this boat. I know the things I need to do. And that's part of the satisfaction and the fun.

Yeah. Especially to rig it out for many, many different fisheries. Yeah, I'm just your main home stretch.

I'm going to be buying some raffle tickets for Docx Boat. Oh yeah.

There's something about that thing because it's usually I don't know if I might be to say it might be too like heartbreaking for me to see it go for a grown adult, like running the tiller back there.

If you throw your weight around, like you can turn you can help turn the boat by leaning.

Yeah, well, that boat flies.

And so there's something about that where I was like, God, maybe this is the design to put a jet on this thing. And it could be.

It may be like a Fort Peck, get some big water on it and then also run up the river to maybe, I don't know, that boat goes 30 miles an hour, never in his life gone 30 miles.

I feel like you're going so fast. A local so far.

So, Joe, Somalis here. He's here, but not here. It's virtually here.

Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, as a as a Doszpot rookie. So I was not around for season one. Having watched the first one, I was very nervous going into our mission with the new boat.

But I got to say, me and Tim Landwehr, who we fished in and fished with in my episode, both walked away from that going, this boat is freaking awesome. Like, I personally would like to have that boat.

And I saw one here about a month ago.

I'd never seen that boat in my life that that exact same boat, Starcraft Bassmaster.

And there's a river in North Jersey, kind of like a shady part of the area here.

We pike fishing and there's these old shacks and these weird houses back there. It's kind of like the hills have eyes and people just pile old pontoon boats and jet skis back there. And we're coming around the corner. Sure enough, man. Same exact boat only with a center console and the wheel wheel in the center. Oh, really? Yep.

Tell people about the the fisher you went and checked out for for season two. Yeah. Loban. And I'll tell you this. I want you to know now I fish for smallmouth in that river, including right below the secret dam, OK. So when I go to turn it up there, don't act like that. I stole it from some stupid show.

This is a classic fishing conversation and I've been there for years. Let me establish my credentials here. I know where you're at. I've been up there forever. Yeah.

So we we fished the Menominee River in northern Wisconsin on the border with the with Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and I feel like we got off really lucky because on Fabrication Day it's like, well, we have to float this thing down a very shallow rocky river. So fabricating just get everything the hell off of it. Just strip it down to absolute bare bones. And Miles, you were talking about how it gets narrow in the front like it's got a weird beam and that weird sort of choke point in front of this boat.

Yeah. We don't even have to bolt the Yeti down, man. Just just shove that thing right in there, locked in the place. And that was our rowers seat.

But we went in we went into it thinking like there's no way this is going to work. And within a couple of miles, it was it was cumbersome to throw that thing. It didn't respond at all. You couldn't like, you know, crab crawl it and crab walk it, but like, no trouble. And for just two guys, it was awesome to fish out of. We had like all the room in the world. It was it was it was killer.

You guys cause a big begins. We did.

And it was it was slow by the standards of the dudes we were fishing with. But I mean, they were some of the biggest smallmouth I've ever caught on the fly. And it's in the super shallow, clear water and they call them passive feeders.

So you think of these smallmouth as being aggressive all the time and they throw basically big dry flies, foam, Chernobyl type things they call wigglers. And they're like, now you just keep putting it out there and it'll get over top of one. And it's just such an easy meal. Dragonfly, whatever he thinks it is, that these these big fish on the bottom will just say, oh, I can't pass that up, and they just come up and just nip it.

So you're watching these twenty plus inch fish coming up and just sipping these tiny flies. It was it was some of the most bad ass small mouth fish and I've ever done that.

Why what makes it a what's that term passive feeder. I mean how passive are you went up and ate something off the surface.

Well, in other words, like they're just kind of not in kill mode. They're not chasing bad around. They're not particularly in an ambush spot, you know, and they're just kind of laying they're lazy. But there's so many dragonflies and damsels and stuff out there that it's like you're laying in bed and someone comes by the appetizer tray.

Yeah, like you like that one, because it's sure it's exactly the way I'll take it. Just trying to slow me down. Yeah.

Yeah. Same deal. And it's been cool because I learned a lot and I've since done that with fish here. Caught fish that way out here so. So, Joe, real quick, when you imparting any emotion to those to those fliers, or were you just straight drifting them?

No, you move them, but but barely.

And, you know, it kind of translates over to Poppa's to a lot of guys throw foam and wood poppers. Like the biggest thing when you slap down one of these foam wigglers or a popper, those guys are like the slap is pop number one. So people like to lay that stuff out and just pop, pop, pop and make it move right away. It's like, no, the slap is pop one. So with these wiggly bugs, you'd slap it down and let it go and they would just say, just move it barely.

So they have these long rubber legs coming off the sides. And you would just twitch the line. I mean, move the rod tip an inch, two inches just to make it move forward and just let those legs flex. And that's all you would do to your drift. Ran out, pick it up and put it down again, down all these soft banks now when you guys are out there fishing.

You mentioned how you kind of credit them with. These are dudes it all went out, you know, grew up in the Midwest, went out West to be child guides and shit, and they learned about drift boats and thrown flies and whatnot. And then they came back to their homeland and took that technology. To start, catch big ass bass out of the lake or out of the river, do you buy that? Do you think they really, like, invented that fishery or that method?

I wouldn't say they invented it. And I don't know if they would say they necessarily invented it either. But I think, you know, so many people are used to fishing, smallmouth and really big rivers or deep lakes that it's a fairly unique situation, having these giant fish in a fairly small river that reads a lot more like a trout stream. So I think because of that situation. They probably perfected it, they were just in the perfect place where they had that sort of experimental grounds to play with big dry flies, whereas guys in Pennsylvania, Michigan or whatever, maybe they were just working their bugs and poppers like they have been forever.

So I think just the whole scenario let those dudes really perfect that. And in fairness, it's not to say they're the only ones to do that. There are some very good guys in Michigan, smallmouth guides. They do the same thing, but they've honed this sort of very fancy, much more trought like presentation than than the aggressive stuff most people think you need for smallmouth.

Do you know that there's an East Coast dude? He's got a book like Fishing River SMALLMOUTH and Fishing Streams SMALLMOUTH. I got his books, I probably have it here, too. I'm telling you, man, I have never in my life learn something from a fishing book, but he's got those maps. Listen. Well, you have my son. Thanks for that.

To your fish. No, I don't mean like that. No, I have Joe and I. OK, that was different than, say, I have Joe's I have Joe's surf fishing.

But I don't mean that. I've learned a lot about like rigs and.

OK, but hear me out here. You know what I mean is, you know, where people draw a map and it's like a stare. It's like here's a river and it shows like fish here, fish here, fish here. Huh?

Right now I the greater detail, I would usually be like somewhat skeptical of that illustration.

Like, I just wouldn't it wouldn't I wouldn't be like, oh, OK, and then go to a river and be like, hey, this is just like in the book and then pass there, you know?

I mean, yeah, but he was like the fish, the Delaware over your way for small man, big nice small mouth.

And I looking at his book and where he put his X's all the time, I was like, I'm canoeing past shitloads of according to this guy, I'm canoeing past shitloads of smallmouth. And I started casting to where he would put his X's. Behind rocks and catch and bass that I would have never known whether they were there, because I would be like, oh, you go to the big deep bends.

Yeah. You know, and that's, of course, you know, any idiot would know. And then you'd then you'd go down two more miles of river, not do anything because you're waiting for, like, the next thing. And meanwhile, every one of those rocks, not every one of them, but like smallmouth, all the crazy spots, man.

Well, smallmouth and child, love your book.

Actually, it's OK because like looking back, I feel like I wrote that when I was 12.

It was so long, but I bought that book not knowing you were I bought the book not knowing you were who you were. Yeah, there was served up to me when I was trying to figure out surf casting.

Yeah, well that's cool.

No, that's but to get back to what you're saying about the X's on the map, I mean, I think people get pigeonholed into that with a lot of stuff, smallmouth and trought and what we were doing in Wisconsin plays right into that.

Yeah. Your average, your average dude, he's going to go for the deep and the slower bends, the deep hole, the honey hole, when if you really know what you're doing and learn from guys like I fished with in Wisconsin, it doesn't make sense for a 20 inch smallmouth to be where we were catching them. But you're dealing with guys who understand why. And that's why it was so Eye-Opening to.

Yeah, it may have been. I see that a lot to a trout like nighttime mass fishing for trout.

They are not where you catch them at night is typically not where you catch them during the day. They move and you know, everybody goes for the community hall and don't realize how much fish move around on a daily basis. Kevin and Oliver, you guys want help explain this to me, man. Kevin, you grew up in Moscow country, but you never fished Muskie now.

Never did, because it seems like everybody always fish him in the fall. And I was I was hunting.

You called the big Bollon near an idea. Sure did anyhow. Sure, we'll get to that maybe later. Never forgot. Did you guys have Tiger Tiger Muskies?

Yeah, I think those hybrids, but it's like Midwestern lakes and especially in the lake near the Twin Cities, too, like there's all these fisheries that everybody was fish and I just never got into when I was a little kid.

It was cool, it was cool to go see that happen, you know, with all this like a new thing, it's like a new thing. Everybody's all fired up. But like in my grandpa's day, they fished Muskie by that. Take this. They used the harness rigged chipmunks.

No, that's fantastic. That's awesome. They would they would harness Riggo Chipmunk.

And roll it out into the middle of the lake and put it on a little piece of wood, and it wouldn't it wouldn't want to jump off.

Course not.

I'm just telling you, man, I didn't do this and it wouldn't want to jump off you then go to the beach and wait a while and then pull the chipmunk off the board. And that's how they would fish Muskie one of the ways they would fish Muskie and just watch it kind of, servicewomen say, wait for something to blow up and wait for something to grab it, then would you rotate that out with a fresh one if you made it back to shore?

I don't know. But I know that you have a little breather. You've earned your freedom.

My grandpa would also they would they would do a lot of things that even unnerved even me, which is they would they would talk about that when you find a big largemouth on its bed. What you do is you go dig around on the logs and you find a salamander. Because everybody knows you're a salamander and dropping out of the bed, it'll eat the salamander. And they would take little frogs and hook them. And have those be swimming around a lot of just stuff that wouldn't fly, wouldn't fly.

Well, you're talking about about musky fishing becoming popular and cool now.

And I think, you know, something we didn't really have time to cover on in that episode, as much as I would have wanted to, is how much that has to do with the fact that monkey populations have made a significant rebound because they're doing less well.

They're dumping them all the lakes is what I think. It's hard to point to one fact now. It's because they're dumping them into all the lakes.

Man, I would I would say that there's like certain strains like all this lakes got to the ballyhoo strain or whatever, you know, and it's like everybody's excited about it.

And yes, it's it's like lakes drains, the big one, the Great Lakes Drain, and then the one from that river right up in that same area. I'm blanking on the name of that river strain.

That's a big one that like grows faster but doesn't get as big. But anyway, you're right. There's OK.

That one's from Miles, aren't there? Pokot out muskies out there, too. Those are those Great Lakes. Yes, I believe those are the oak like those ones you see from St. Clair have a lot of those like heavy polka dot patterns and they show the states are buying them and dumping them in the lakes, hopefully.

Yeah, but all those are giants, right, though. They get big and you got all into this solver.

I did. And I come at it with a completely different perspective because I was pretty much from L.A. my whole life and we don't have any muskies or Essiac species anywhere near us. So as a young naughties, nothing. Now there's one like I think it's called Lake Davis in Northern California. Somehow Northern Pike got into and like it was like a big deal. They they pretty much poison the lake to try to start over. They're still there, but they're just like this weird thing about them.

But we don't have any exposure to them except through the content, like TV shows, magazines, watching and in TV show.

As a young kid on a Saturday morning, did you grow up like did you grow up sitting around L.A. watching fishing shows? Yeah, man. Yeah.

Tell your story. I heard it yesterday, right?

Yeah. My story is a little different than most. And just to give you a little context of who I was, I've never met my father. So watching all this content of like this very heavily father, son, uncle, son, some type of paternal figure and young child as an entry point into fishing was not me. And I just happened to randomly stumble upon it, and we talk about it in Episode four of Season one as well, how I got started in fishing, but it was just kind of random.

I was 10 year old kid on a family picnic at a regional park just outside of L.A. If you guys are fans of Bill and Ted's excellent adventures, it's putting some leg on the other side of the freeway from San Dimas High School.

All right. Spot burned. Yeah, good luck with that one. And that's that that's a place that is always been challenging.

And we were there on a busy weekend. It might have been an Easter weekend. It was a spring. There's frogs in the in the reeds and stuff as being a 10 year old catching things and came across a pile of discarded fishing line. And back then, I guess littering must have been a problem, as I remember seeing signs of like, hey, don't throw fishing trash on the shoreline because it was there.

And I went through it and I found a couple of those, like Eagle Claw spelled hooks, kind of like Schmick's and untangled probably three to four feet of it.

And, you know, the only exposure I had to fishing as a suburban like L.A. County kid was what I saw on TV. Right, whether it was a Yogi Bear cartoon fishing or, you know, some kind of yeah, like some kind of reference in some TV show like Family Matters and Urkel and them going through the ice, that's why I don't want to ever go ice fishing, because I was traumatized as a young kid because of that show.

But I didn't know what I was doing. But I had enough sense to like take that three to four feet of untangled line, wrap it around the end of a stick. And I knew I could find earthworms under rocks. So I went to the little creek that fed down into the south shoreline, sure enough, found some earthworms, thrown my little party cup and walked my little happy 10 year old ass to the fishing pier where people were fishing. And I had my little entourage of cousins with me and pin a worm on that hook and just threw it over the end of the dock.

Dropshot.

No, actually, no, wait. Fly line is what we call it on the West Coast.

So it's literally just your line, a hook in your bait. And my my cousins got bored after five or ten minutes and I was going back on my whatever.

I'm just going to hang out here and just kind of started like dozing off into, you know, to me, the wilderness right at this lake. And and before you know it, I, I feel that telltale like dum dum dum.

And in that moment I went to just react and I try to like, pull out whatever this creature was in.

That shitty line broke and it was probably a blue. You ready, Sunfish? Most likely. And but in that moment, especially since I didn't capture it, I was just totally like just fascinated by, like, what the hell just happened. Like, I need to know, like that sense of mystery really drove me to want to come back to try to successfully catch whatever that was.

And I spent that whole week researching every fishing publication I could in the West Corvino Public Library because my mom would take me to the library every day after school and I would just just read the Dewey Decimal System and all it was.

And it's funny because, like, you guys are very entrenched in the fly-Fishing side of things.

And a lot of that stuff that was available to me and even outside of L.A. was fly-fishing stuff like terms like match the hatch and like reading water, like even though I didn't really have ways to apply it, like those are really like prominent in my like just my art as a fisherman. So I went back out there, flooded my grandma's garden because I knew, like, if you flood the dirt, worms are going to come out. And she was pissed, but I flooded it, got a whole coffee can, full awarenesses.

I saw. I saw that's what people put worms in. So we got coffee cans. Let's do this. And went back out there to talk my mom into spending 14. Ninety nine at the Kmart across the street from the library. Got me a crappy little Shakespeare spin class combo with its little tackle box and everything. And I was tying overhead knots because I didn't know how to tie a knot. Like all that stuff I saw in the encyclopedia was too complicated for me to to digest.

So literally a couple of overhand knots, like a little drop or loop, similar to a dropshot, but like a little bit of a leader coming off like a three way syllable, very crude, and spent all day on that pier.

And didn't just know it was it was like, Kevin, bluegill, fishing, there's just nothing going on. No, I'm just kidding. But that's what you get for squad cars. But at the end of the day, sun's falling. And maybe this is why I still love fishing afternoons and evenings, more so than mornings is as that sun was falling, I felt another tick. And I win in a bullhead that way, there was like man validation on my dad, that was awesome.

I did it and that's led me to sitting here with you guys in Bozeman, Montana.

So, yeah, it's to me as a West Coast like fishing junkie, seeing this like giant freshwater fish with these gnarly teeth and the tactics that these guys in some far off land, which is the Midwest to me, was like, man, that looks so dope, like I'll never probably get a chance to go do that. Like, this is fascinating.

The Midwest, it was like it seemed like America. It couldn't be further from my world.

It really couldn't be like, you know, getting past like an hour outside of downtown L.A. to go fishing was an adventure and like not something that I was fortunate to really experience. So to to see myself actually fishing for a Moscow lunch didn't really register in my head until.

It's a great name. It's a great name. They should rebrand back to what they used to be.

Yeah. Moscow lunch, Musker lunch. It's great. It's a great like animal.

They're amazing. And the fact that, like, Kevin grew up like totally like in one of the meccas of it and didn't partake in it. It was fascinating to me because, like, I love all styles of fishing and I'll always be a heavy bass fisherman, but like, I want to catch the apex and know systems. They're the apex, like they're they're the top dog. And seeing a four to six foot fish engaging with your hunk of artificial chipmunk both sides is an exhilarating experience.

And you just got driving out there to go. Yeah, well, I started driving around the country chasing big bass and I started chasing big smallmouth the last four years and got into that. And then I would kind of just randomly encounter muskies, wild bass fishing. And last year made a really concerted effort to dedicate like two to three months of just chasing a proper musk and like trying to apply different lur styles and techniques and just trying things that this established Muskie fishing culture may not have tried.

Because I saw something in that that culture that reminded me of a lot of the different fisheries in the different regions. I've got to like, engage with and penetrate. It's like they kind of pigeonhole themselves, like Joe is talking about, like in so many ways, like everybody's so afraid of missing out like that. Famo keeps them from experimenting and stepping outside of the norm because they don't want to waste a day.

Right. Because they know excluder works and lur works. So if I try Z I might have wasted that day. For that cast, right, and when you're dealing with the fish of 10000 thousand cast, that's a high opportunity cost.

Have you ever counted up how many cast it takes to catch Muskie? Well, that's skew, too, because I also count on the first cast of the day once it's on the today.

I do. I got a cast ten thousand more times. Right. So, like, does that reset OK?

And I've also called them back to back casts. So but like on average, I would say like like 10000 cast would be optimistic. No, this is what I was curious about.

Like how many cars, how many cars have you really counted up? I have no idea. How many cars does a person do?

Have you ever calculated it? Yeah, actually someone like at a trade show in Italy gave me, like, this little like my cast counting device thing.

Do they have smart rods now that will count that for you.

Yeah, I try on your musky fish because I watched you musky fish and you have a very polished cast. Thank you. It looks like you've done it a lot, I must say. Ten thousand times. We've done it a lot of times.

Well, I saw parallels in the musky fishing, especially on the gear side to things I've been doing my whole life, whether that's inshore saltwater fishing in Southern California or throwing a big, like lure for giant largemouth. Like the only thing I really had to account for on the gear side and the technical side is those teeth. So experimenting with leader configurations, materials, connection like options, that was my biggest hurdle because I needed to be able to still fish those lures and articulate them in a way to trigger a bite, but not be hindered from like oversized leaders or big barrel swivels to connect my line like little nuances that were affecting how I can, like, really maximize that hopeful potential opportunity I get once a day on.

Return to class numbers, though, man, it's a lot.

How many know how many can you really walk out in an hour?

And it depends on the fishing style because there are times when I'm like burning a bait back. So I'm that that cast takes a lot less time than if I'm like really taking my time and fishing an area methodically, like some of my cast can take like five to 10 minutes. If I know if fish lives on a piece of cover, like, I will soak a big soft plastic, realistic bait down there. And eventually that fish may like engage with it versus form on a new body of water like boat like I need to cover ground looking for an aggressive fish.

Why did you guys go to Lake you never fished before? I think that's part of the beauty of fishing is diving into the unknown.

But if I had if I was making a thing, I'd want to watch fish, right? Yeah, it is a balance. Right. You blame that on me, Oliver. It's OK. OK, cool. Miles made me fish there. We fish those lakes.

I probably would have chose different places, but I didn't know.

So like that that mystery was alluring to me that he ca will do.

I did catch one so it worked out.

Here's I don't really have a group of musky, but here's I just want to tell you what I fear about muskies. I fear that it's not the fish. I don't blame the fish for anything. I fear that the human the emerging perception of muskies is playing into the Gulf, a fixation of fishing. Hmm, and that the people who think that it's naughty to eat a fish will become so numerous that that will become the norm. And in the dystopian future.

It'll be that there's just it's just more like that, that that natural resources, that stuff that you eat will become more fringe. And it'll be that like, oh, yeah, I see where I'd want to go fishing, but why would you want to hurt a fish? And so that's like in the long game, I fear the golf of of fishing. I can see a little lose its connection to being a food acquisition tool right now.

I will make this observation about the musky community. And they remind me so much of like the trophy largemouth community, like those fish are so revered and so valuable. And those experiences that they provide us as anglers is that there's like an overprotecting like vibe I get those guys will hammer you on fish handling and care and this and a third. But it's OK for me to stick a seven foot treble hook in its face. Yeah, like where do we draw the line?

And we really didn't want to hurt it. Right. You stay home. That's it. Yeah, but I know how.

See that's what. Oh go ahead. I'm just going to say that's what was in the Midwest growing up. That was like the old timers thought process. You know, it was like, oh, I'm not going to go fish. I can't eat them. You know, when I was a young dude, I just remember I'm talking about muskies is like these ferocious predators that they were killing their bluegills. Right. So we always fish for food growing up.

But then my younger brother Ian started fish for muskies when I was when I was gone already out West.

And that that transition from like, oh, we can fish for these and we can still go catch bluegills and eat sort of is the norm. Now, I would say that's kind of what we we showed, you know.

But there, Steve, I understand what you're saying about the muskies and the attitude about them. But I mean, you don't think that's been going on long enough now that it's not a concern? I mean, they're not the only one. Right? Tapin a lot of guys like to fish for them, but they don't eat them. Bonefish, same thing. It hasn't stopped people from doing TARP in one day and mangrove Stamper's the next. So they had something to take to the restaurant in the keys to eat.

Yeah.

Here's why I fear it, Joe. If you go. I know because even things like it's even emerging with catfish.

We're just becoming like like a fish that has always been regarded as a blue collar food fish.

OK, the zevin people now, where it's like if you catch a big catfish is kind of naughty that you ate it. And the rivers that there's a 15 day like maybe a bag limit of 15 channels a day, and then you got like the local Cat Fishers Association lobbying to have it be one today. Right, so there's a there's a drift and when it starts going after things like that, yeah, I just like, you know, any little piece of it I'm not worried about with the general sense of the minute you get people who golf Afie a fish.

Even when there's no real like there's no sort of like biology behind it, like this review time by the Menominee River, like, oh, you know, you can't keep fish out the Menominee, you know, because you'll destroy the fishery. Fish and Game apparently doesn't know that.

Yeah, no, you're right, because you can still keep one, so if that was the truth, I guess what you're saying is they would just make the whole thing no kill, which they haven't.

Yeah, like I like who. And so when people start to take where you have, like, a team of biologists out there whose job and you have a mandate.

From the state to manage fisheries in perpetuity, right, they can't run fisheries into the ground, not supposed to, it happens, but you're not supposed to that these people can look and be like, yes, we feel that you can catch whatever the hell channels channel Cassaday out of some river, but then you wind up having other outside forces come in like, never mind what you found.

We like catching them and letting them go. And our life will get better if the if the the hillbillies they come out here to eat catfish weren't able to do that. I would have more fun golfing with these fish. See, I think that just like I don't know, I don't like it, man, I don't like that. I think it probably stems more from what social media and the Internet have done to fishing. I think, like I look at that with flatheads, like there's a ton of flatheads in the school river in Philly, huge culture in Internet forums and groups on flat heading there.

And yeah, nobody ever talks about killing one and eating one there, because I think that they would rather have them for an Instagram post than quietly take them home and cook them, even though, like, personally, I'd make an Instagram post out of cooking them.

Right.

Well, you build an entire business. Exactly. That's why we're all here. But there is like to say so.

Yes. This this should make you upset.

No, not really. Leered in Laoghaire is fine, too, but there's parts of bodies of water and there's certain times throughout history that that attitude is very appropriate and there's times where it's very inappropriate.

And some of this is based around, well, you got to return those big ones because those are the effective breeding fish.

Now, certain circumstances, we need all the effective breeding fish doing what they can. Because that fishery is in trouble and we need those numbers and there's there's all these other fascinating factors that I'm learning more and more about every day, sometimes we just need numbers in order to keep other fish out of the system.

And you're going to have to deal with eight inch trout instead of 18 inch trout because we just need that mass taken up in the river. But there's this other time where it's like, boy, the reason we have a bunch of trout in here is because nobody's keeping them. And this damn catch and release ethos and folks hooked on dry flies and no bait is what is keeping this river where it's at. And unfortunately, like the really conservation, because it isn't truly about what is best for the fish in this instance.

Right. It also takes into account recreation and economics and that the social media, what people want and like, you know, what people think about their fishery and what needs to happen. It takes there's a big lag between the biological data and what people think and when those to meet, you know what I mean? It's like.

You mean like when you do surveys, everybody says they would like to catch more bigger fish. Yes.

It's like that deal down on the snake, right where Idaho Fish and Game is like, great.

Well, we need to do is kill a lot of rainbows and everybody's like, oh, we don't really want to do that. You know, it's like, well, you want more cutthroat and bigger fish.

We need to kill a lot of rainbows. Now, you're still not doing it. OK, we're going to pay you to do it. And you can keep as many as you want. Oh, you're still not doing it.

OK, well, we're going to pay you to do it. You can keep as many as you want and then you can give them to us and we'll give them to a food bank. Oh, you're still not doing it. OK, well, jeez. Well, that's when you got to go to the move that happens now.

And that is it's illegal to let them go alive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and there are fishery's like that, yeah. Yes, you can't let it go a alive right flaming gorge right now. Right, which is Berbatov you catch a but you got to keep it illegal to let it go.

Yeah. Yeah. But I want to ask this question with specifically back to the muskies. Right.

And we talk about a lot, we talk about how the dollars that are spent on tags and license sales go toward things that we believe in and management practices that are important. Right. And so if you want to talk about Fisher, let's just take Greenbay as an example.

There are in the last 10 years, really five. But let's go back 10 years that has become known as a deep one of the places to go for trophy muskies. Like if you want to catch a 50 incher, that's the place you go in Green Bay. Yes. And that has led to a significant influx of people coming there buying those licenses because they want to catch those fish guilty.

And and and that that is bringing in revenue dollars that are going toward management and conservation. If those big fish weren't there, if people didn't want to get their picture taken with that 50 inch fish. You could I think there's a clear argument you can make that there would be a loss of revenue toward conservation of management of those fisheries. Sure, I think there's value there.

I get I'm not argue with the Gulf War for tribal or tribal people. Men. Yeah.

And I associate with and empathize with and feel inclined to look out for the interests of. A group of people. And there are layers to it. And that the tightest core is like the person whose interests I want to advocate on behalf of would be the person who views wildlife management as being a combination of.

Maximizing suitable habitat, maximizing wildlife populations in order to allow sustainable use, sustainable extraction, and they're still going to get that picture, just the fish is going to be kind of covered in mud and have a dense forest.

So a little bit of water.

And so just like raising kids, you have a child now? Yes. OK, any little thing, right? They look at you kind of roll their eyes, right. You're like, is that in and of itself the end of the world? No, but I noticed it.

I noticed it. I didn't like it. And then they kind of do this. And you're like, is that in and of itself mean that my kids are derelict?

No. Did I like it? No. It's what I look like. All these little pieces of this, like the musky thing I went out Muskett when we were I know so.

And when we used to catch tiger muskies, we'd be bummed out when they weren't legal size.

Yeah. So in and of itself, is this little thing going to like ruin the Wild Foods world. No, but do I like it a little suspicious of it. I think, I think the suspicion is fair. I'm not, I'm not arguing that point. I'm really not. And I've I mean, you talk about the Snake River. I used to cover these stories all the time when I was writing for fly fishing magazines because it was fun to piss off people and talk about that.

Like the Beaverhead. I did a whole thing on the Beaverhead and how stunted those fish are and how the biologists are begging people, you know, they were trying to talk about making a seventy five fish a day limit.

No, seriously. And they give a dude a ticket if he had seventy six. But I was like down to the bottom of the cooler. Damn it. It was an interesting conversation with his biologists. It's like seventy five fishermen. Like you can't get people to keep three. What makes you think the going to seventy five. They're going to, they're going to do it. He's like because I'm trying to bring in a different group of anglers, I'm not going to convince these guys to go.

Won't take one to get seventy five. But if I advertise like hey you can keep seventy five fish a day here, I'm going to get a different group of anglers that's coming in and they're going to feel cooler. Yeah. You're going to have some bloody knuckle do take notice if you like. There must be something going on. I need to find out about the big hole right next to the Beaver Beaverhead I was reading in the Montana Fishing Game magazine.

I should clarify. They didn't change it. Seventy five. That never happened just so everybody like that didn't go through.

But that was what they wanted to do.

Big hole regulations were ten pounds of fish plus one per person per day, plus one plus four plus not one pound, but plus one fish.

Do you have any idea what that was meant to do?

I don't even know who I could talk to.

I'll I'll figure that out though, because that has obviously stuck with me. Some guy called his representative and said, well, I caught ten pounds. Then I caught a real giant and, well, just let it go and he's like, what we'll do is we'll just the regulations say ten pounds plus one, right?

Like, great.

Next, put your food aside at the beginning of the day and then you can. But if you really want to, you just can't stomach letting go. They still keep. Yeah.

Keep him to. So but you had a monkey for the show? Yeah, yeah, the stars aligned, saw little window in that morning and we got one. You know, it's hard.

One of the hardest things for cameramen to do. Capture the moment they always catch you reeling, but they don't catch the hookups because what are the odds? Ten thousand cars, what are the odds that are low?

They're low. I asked for four days minimum for this shoot initially. When we first give you we got three.

Yeah, but like I have to I have to jump in and add just give props because on our shoot they had a camera guy, this crew, he swore he was on my fly on every single Dreft the entire time we were there. He's like, if that gets eaten I will not miss it.

Did he hold up, hold up to the. I think he got all the eats. I really do. Yeah.

Big shout out to Bryce and Brian Gregson.

You're going for there. Yeah, I was, I was going for Paul Burke on that list was because he was on that fly the entire day.

Kevin Hollander, I got a question for you. Kevin Harland. Why is that? When I was reviewing. The cut, the added. Are they messing with you or they make it be that you never even catch a bluegill? Probably. I definitely posted some fish. I was just there for the jokes. I think they make it seem like when you guys switch to bluegill fishing, which is my style of fish, and they make it seem like Oliver is just.

Blowing them up. Yeah, I was trying to make a point with the whole leach slip, and it didn't really work out, so he's trying to wrap the Midwest to the fullest.

He stuck with it.

Are did you or did you not catch a you? I said I put my in my notes. I put like, did he really not catch a bluegill? Yeah. So I got some bluegills. Good.

I think you saw about one scene. Yes. Remember that one scene where like we first watch the bluegill and Olva put on dropshot the dropshot. Redwater And it was that first time Kevin where like that in that one hole you really did blank.

But I think it was it was like from there on out you never got another like you got into him.

But in that one hole. Yeah. It didn't look good for you. Yeah.

That's Paul said he was going to make me look bad but might I got a call. What, how happy were to catch. Like did it strike you as you know to catch a monkey out there.

Really like about time. Are you thinking man we got lucky.

I've spent a lot of time fishing them in the last 18 months now, and I knew that catching one on film with all the pressures that come with it was not going to be easy. But I felt good about our odds, like I put in that time and I gained some confidence in that that fishing style and I wasn't surprised by it. You know, I felt like we should have had another chance at a truly big fish that didn't come. Can you tell people about the the figure deal?

Yeah. Which is like what you want to know about it?

Well, just explain to people the strategy of the figure. You only throw a figure eight when you see it. You don't do it every time.

So this is going back to kind of like that law and like that mysticism.

That was Maisky fishing to a California kid. Right. Like all the figure eight, like, what is this?

And it's this boat side mechanic that accounts for the behavior of these muskies where they'll track your bait all the way to the boat. And if you can maintain that fish, just focus on your lure, even boat side, you stand a pretty high chance of getting it to still bite your lower.

So it's like basically staring at you, staring at you.

I mean, even like your whole rod is in the water, like it's crazy because, like, that just seems so foreign to so many different fishing cultures.

And it's very prominent in musky fishing tours, like some fisheries like Lake of the Woods. They say like two thirds of your bites actually come boat side. Like you'll suck those fish up from a long cast and you can expect it to actually make it like kill attempt at some point on the at the boat. And for me, that that was the first time I actually caught one doing it after tens of thousands of repetitions and failed repetitions. And I think part of that was because of where I was doing most of my musky fishing was really high visibility, clear water.

Those fish would see us and the boat and spook, like by the time I went into the first turn versus like Lake of the Woods is much like dirtier water. So they I don't think they are as skittish. And I got my first one after watching this 45 inch musky follow my freaking white poodle looking leuer like around and around and around. And we're all like, dude, it's still there.

And on the first the fourth turn, it actually got in the water just like cut in circles of the rod.

Right.

And I'm going like high like away from the boat. And I'm changing elevations and like trying to pump it on the turns, like just trying to get it to trigger and watching this fish just engage with my thing as I'm walking it in like this big circle four times around. And when it actually made the the commitment, we were all kind of like, oh, shit, it's got it.

Like, this is a real thing and it's a fascinating fishing technique and one that I've actually previously applied with largemouth bass fishing. And it's not as like aggressive like a figure eight and most of the time actually doing like Oval's. Yeah, because those bigger fish apparently have a harder time, like turning on a dime and have got big predatory, like skittish, like Wari like educate air conditioned fish to make a mistake with inches of line off my Ratib. I did it yesterday on the Yellowstone, got a brown shout to eat my jerk bait because I was trying to burn it in to make a cast that a snag.

And there's like nineteen inch brown trout just beelines it like fast as hell and Bogside. I didn't, I was about to go into a figure eight turn because I've just built that into my mechanics. It didn't even give me a chance, it just snuffed it like right at the end of my to like two was sick. But I've actually started incorporating it like on some other fishing, like escapades, like Murray cod fishing in Australia, barramundi like it's a it's a underutilized fishing style for all fish.

Yeah. But like the musky guys, like you have to make that boat side mechanic at least one revolution, especially in like low light or low visibility situations, whether the water is dirty or nighttime fishing because you don't know if there's one on it or not. And sometimes you'll suck one in Antetokounmpo under the boat. And then, like on the six Cast Lead or something, you could just hide under the boat. He's been there the whole time, potentially.

Yeah, they do that.

So you're supposed to do it every time in it. It's kind of like that Murphy's Law thing. Every time someone that's super green to musky fishing comes on my boat and I'm trying to like, tell them, figuring every time at least one revolution, because that'll give you time to kind of like watch and see if there is one in the area and everybody gets lazy. Man, it's a mental focus thing.

Like and the one time they don't do it, guess what happens? It's a big old, big old was on it. And maybe if you had actually gone into a turn, it could have made it, but you never gave it that shot and you just blew your shot for the day, you know, potentially. So it's an exercise of like this mental focus and hyper focus. And that's what drew me into it as a fishing like culture, because that's like right up my alley with, like the low engagement I'm expecting and living trophy bass fishing, like I'm trying to catch a fish at most people on average will never see all the time.

So I have to maintain this level of hyper focus. And for me, like the musky fishing, I was like, oh, you're just a dumbass guy from California. You don't you're not going to do any good. Like you're going to throw that thing.

No. Here, man.

Throw this throw these two things that every other musky fisherman I've ever talked to told me to throw. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. You go rogue. Yeah, I went rogue, I stuck some good fish and had a lot of fun, like learning the process and failing on my own and trying to pick and choose from these hard core, musky guys who I respect so much as a culture was a type of angler. But like at the same time, how do you know that there isn't a better way to catch a musket or a different?

Because you went and talked to everybody at the flower shop, Oliver, they told you what's up? Absolutely.

What's the use? Yeah, man, you can you can skip all that stuff, right? Yeah, I enjoy the process of learning. And unfortunately, experience and failure is the best way to learn. Yeah, it really is, until you actually, like, live it and can have that opportunity to make that adjustment on your next opportunity.

Yeah, I think hearing stuff is great, but then making it your own is particularly helpful, man. Totally, because I think when you're doing something with confidence, you do it differently and do it better, slightly differently and better.

Feeling with confidence, right. Is is a huge part of it. And nobody like the amount of people that have the stomach for failure over and over again is just not a lot of folks like that.

They're like, I need some success, though.

We're talking to we're talking to the baseball player, Pete Alonzo. He saw about the psychology of baseball players and being the batter. He says baseball is a game of failure. It is all failures if you can succeed 10 percent of the time. You might be regarded as phenomenal. 90 percent failure. Yeah. So it's like you get really used to this now, every time you get up to the plate, like Bam Homer, Bam Homer, right.

Okay. Have a good career. That's a homer as well, because I'm doing the math. Like, if you're batting hundred, you're not you're not doing that. Right. Great. You better me, but I can't remember what the hell no said. But he said he out of ten three. Three hundred is like a Hall of Fame batting. Oh no doubt. Yeah. Yeah. 30 percent maybe.

He said your amazing point being he's like it's more typical to fail at bat. Absolutely. Than it is to succeed at bat. I think that applies for anything that's hard to do, anything that is like revered shouldn't be easy because no one care, you know, if you, like, blew your fishing boat.

You don't have come on bluegill.

You heard me say, man, I love fishing. I love it.

Now, why wasn't you guys were incapable of catching the big mouth buffalo?

I mean, you can't put the two guys. It was it was me. Well, you can see the cow was smarter than me.

Is like that. Looks stupid. I'm not going to do that. You go ahead before you try, like.

Most of them I mean, people do catch them. Yes, yeah, they shoot a lot of those issues in the river.

There's and certainly like in the more the moving water as opposed to, like, the this stagnant stuff, I I'm not putting anybody down here.

But like that that is very doable, very well within the realm of what people would consider success like not that much of a trick, but going out on the big water with the big old fish.

Very doable as well, but that is going to take a lot a lot of failure to figure out what were you trying to do. All right. So I feel like I should give a little context on what this fish is, because not that people know, not that they're very seasoned. They think they're looking at a cart.

Right. And just so everybody knows, big mouth buffalo are not carp. They're not even related to carp. They're the world's largest sucker. And there they are, native fish in North America and they're incredibly cool.

And I used to support a commercial fishery. They did? Yeah. I've not eaten one. I've heard they're very delicious. We have ribs on them really. Well, there's guys in Wisconsin, take the ribs, clean the fish, and they take the ribs, leave it on the bone, brush it with barbecue sauce and grill it. And then you suck the ribs clean like you eat pork ribs.

Nice. Yeah, it's good. Still a commercial fish in Tennessee. Oh, it is. Yeah. Yeah.

And I believe Louisiana as well. Yeah.

The last I could find, which wasn't super contemporary, but the last commercial fishing report I found from Louisiana, they were a small percentage of the commercial fish, but they were they still were representative there.

But anyhow, we learned about these fish. I think I think you actually turn me on to that Calì. You turn me on to that that study that came out in twenty nineteen. Oh.

And because I can't remember what it was, but memories of the fish, old fish, oldest known fashion in the US, freshwater fish, yeah, there was this assumption that they lived like the same length as other soccer species.

So 20, 30 years. But no one had ever tested that. There are rough fish. They don't get much attention. No one had really studied them much at all. And then this guy named Alec Lachmann decided he was going to do a study. He was going to pull out otolith bones from some of these fish and age them from from in his home turf in Detroit lakes and discovered, first of all, the oldest fish he found was 112.

And second of all, couldn't really find any fish under 80 years old in that system.

And it was because the system had gone to shit. Right. And so there was no successful reproduction anymore, which is all fish that were born prior to going to shit.

Wasn't it something like that? Well, they don't know. Like it had been.

The others there's you know, with all things, it's like, OK, well, here we found this, we can make a lot of speculative ideas like, well, that fish landed on your car because two birds were having a fight, you know.

Oh, this elk got stuck in the mud. That's how it ended up on your boat anchors for your dog. Right. And so that's where they're at with this.

And, you know, so they do have some funding. They're going to release another paper coming up.

But, yeah, the the idea is something has happened that has limited recruitment. So there is, they think some some successful spawning, but there is no successful recruitment mean, meaning that eggs are being produced and and laid, but they are not, you know, rearing a new age class of fish. And that that's happening in very, very limited doses as compared to other populations that are successfully spawning and having successful recruitment outside of this system. They know that the suckerfish can have some pretty amazing migrations for spawning, and they know that that can't happen in this system that they're looking at right now.

Do you know due to some manmade factors? Got you. So they're like, oh, this could be something. And if they look at the fact that they have 80 to 100 and 12 year old fish, it lines up very well with how some of these waterways have been manipulated.

Yeah, there are a couple of things that look, that one is changing the hydrology, putting in dams and things like that. But the other thing is right around that time was when common carp showed up and common carp fill a similar niche in the ecosystem as these fish, they don't just look alike, they feed similarly, they spawn similarly, even though they're not at all related, they're in the same places doing some similar things. So it could be that it's because of the changes to this waterway.

It could be the introduction to this of this invasive species. It could be considering they know that these fish can be over 100 years old and still be capable of spawning, still be pretty fit in good shape. They may be fish that don't successfully recruit every year or even every 10 years, but they just don't know yet. So it's still unknown.

People just figured this out last year. So this research is brand new and we got to go hang out with the dude who's doing this research and get to get to meet some of these fish.

Say he's interested in what he's doing would be a gross understatement.

What is he what does this individual feel about the fact that people go out and fill garbage cans and dumpsters full of car and probably are mixing in all kinds of big mouth buffalo in there?

Yeah, I would say he doesn't like it, but there's part of him. He has a an interesting brain for sure.

There's part of him that knows that these people value that fish even if it's just to shoot. And that could in turn be valuable to keeping this fish around.

When I was out both fishing with Jared Fink in Wisconsin, they you could definitely tell because if you knew what you're looking at, you would know a big mouth buffalo when you saw it. And they would like it. Yes.

Yeah. They still shoot it. Yeah. Yeah. But they would prefer to get it and that would be like a eaten one. Yeah.

And that's one of the amazing things that really came to light because we talked with a, you know, a guy who, you know, like anybody who really gets turned on to some kind of fishing or hunting like started both fish in about fifteen years ago.

And then he. Kind of figured out how to be the best bow fisherman and got really, really invested into it, and he holds the big mouth buffalo in very high regard to the point where it used to be that that is the fish he would target to where it wasn't sporting for him to go after carp. And so but he still likes to shoot them.

But he has seen firsthand that the population is going down go, but there are some challenges associated with this, you know, big old fish that are much more desirable from like a sporting aspect, which, again, could be, you know, something that you could harness for the preservation of this species. It's the what were you guys trying to do? We were well, we were trying to do two things. One, we wanted to go meet this dude and learn about these fish because we got turned on to the story.

We think it's fascinating. And in this Detroit Lakes area where we were focusing part of our story, you know, that's the area where they can't find fish or hardly any fish under 80 years old. And I think was 10 years ago, it became legal to both fish at night with no limit. And so guys are pulling out thousands of pounds of fish.

You know, we were talking about this is that yeah, I get 500 pounds. And I used to be on a regular basis and now they're not seen them of big mouth buffalo, big mouth, buffalo, not carp, not carp. They 500 pounds a midnite. This is this is what we were told. Not anymore. Now he's like, man, I remember ten years ago you go out, you go out for a few hours, you literally fill your boat.

Now you go out, you might see a couple. And and so they're they're seeing a dramatic change because these fish aren't reproducing. And the boat fishers really want to shoot them because they think it's really fun. It's great sport. So they would call it instead of saying they're going carp shooting, they would go buffalo shoot. Well, they'll shoot. They'll shoot carp or dogfish or sheepshead or other things as well. But Buffalo were like the prime target.

They were apparently the most challenging fish and they fought the hardest. So those are the ones that they wanted to get. But were they were they garbage animal?

Yeah. Yeah. So they're still thrown in a dumpster by and when I'm out on the field where it helps you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the exception.

I mean, really, if you especially if you look at the gross poundage, the exception to the rule would be eating them.

Yeah, I went to a bowl fishing tournament one time, kind of covering a bowl fishing tournament and just everything, a new dumpster man.

And it was a lot of carp, but it was also a lot of native fish. Yeah, tons along those ghoga.

Yeah. The Cavalo fish. Dogfish. Into a dumpster for I went to a shark tournament one time and they fill a dumpster, they filled two dumpsters, really blue sharks?

No, you know, two dumpsters. That sort of Tennessee regulations allow you to dump those things back into the waterway that you got me on, which. To me, it seems more appropriate than throwing them in a landfill somewhere, at least to get nutrients going back into the system somehow, some way, but it is just it's hard not to see it all as very wasteful.

If you can put if you can go into a fishery and put slot limits in place, you can ask hunters not to shoot female bears. Right. You can request the hunters don't shoot nannies on mountain goat hunts.

Shit that takes like a trained eye to figure out you put antler restrictions in place being like it's got to have three points on one side, whatever. Like you can ask people to have like a little to have a discerning eye. Why not just have it be that like, yeah, you can shoot Karpe Shukar. That's that's what they're talking about here.

And we got to have a really I felt like it was an interesting and productive conversation with a couple of hardcore BO fishers who loved to shoot Buffalo and Alec Lachmann, this biologist, and have a dialogue in place that was really more about, hey, we need to talk to we need to talk about finding a way to manage these fish, because this is not sustainable. No one's pointing anybody out is like, you're the bad guy, you're the good guy, whatever.

In fact, shooting carp out of there might really help these fish. So by all means, don't stop Bo fishing. But let's think about how we manage these fish because this is not sustainable, but because this research is so new. You know, how long that stuff takes to filter into actual regulation. It hasn't gotten there yet. And so my hope is that by maybe making this episode, having this conversation, we're getting more people to talk about it.

The thing that this can't be is it can't be a situation where we're pointing the finger at both fishers and saying, you guys are screwed this up because that's not the case. Both fishers aren't the ones that are preventing these fish from recruiting. They're just doing what they love to do.

And if it was all this small and. It's just like additive stuff, yeah, yeah, but if we can get that community on board with, like, hey, yeah, we do want to manage these fish because I want my kids to be able to shoot them.

That's just a broader coalition of folks trying to figure this problem out instead of analyzing it and breaking it up.

And you're looking at like, you know, the the leave the big ones alone type adage, the old big ones are the successful spawners.

Well, that's literally all that's left. And these big females, these 100 year old females, like you're talking millions of eggs on the spawn.

So potentially, you know, laying off them and figuring out what is going to lead to successful recruitment could be a relatively fast turnaround to.

So it's not like a next generation type of thing.

Yeah, I grew up Bonefish and things like the Bonefish. I still bonefish now, now and then. I do think that the thing that kind of like justifies.

The thing that justifies Bo fishing when you're just Bo fishing to shoot fish and throw them away is that you're dealing with a non-native deleterious non-native species.

So it's like shooting carp. You know, if you went to any fisheries manager, any serious fisheries manager in the country and said if you could wave a magic wand and make the common carp vanish from these waters, they would all wave it.

Yes, right. Everyone would wave it.

You're not going to go find a fisheries manager, a serious fisheries manager and say, like, if you could wave a magic wand and make big mouth buffalo vanish from their native range, no one's going to wave the damn want.

No. So I just don't like the same way that when you're both fish and you're not allowed to shoot large mammals, you're not allowed to shoot. Yellow perch now allowed to shoot walleye wipes, wipes, wipes, and I don't know, man, I don't think it's like blaming as blaming a but just like it's like a real management oversight.

It's like if you're shooting stuff because you want to throw it into a dumpster, shoot something we don't want.

Yeah, but I think I think there's an education problem here because a lot of people do think they are carp because people call them buffalo carp. And and those same bull fishes we were talking to said like we thought we were doing the lakes a favor.

We thought we were removing a problem species until this guy came along and told us we were wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's not. It is funny to you because you're like, oh yeah, I can see, you know, it's hard to you're either going to give a kid a ticket for mistaking this fish for carp. But then it's like all the other things that we do, right? You can only shoot one hand Malad and they're flying at twenty five miles an hour.

So are you really going to give a ticket, get a ticket for shooting two? Yes. Yeah. My mother is dead. But then there's all these other things in wildlife management. Right?

Like I've talked to people who are pro mountain go as pro mountain goat as it could possibly be.

And they're like, well, yeah, the tags got to be either sex because you don't want some kid not, you know, misidentifying a nanny for Billy.

I'm like, well, yeah, but it's pretty frickin easy to identifiability if you put yourself in the right situation. Just as Pete Munich, who made the world's greatest video about how to tell a nanny from a really great video.

Yeah. And and that's always just been a stumper for me. I'm like, is it that much of a stretch to ask? I mean, their their testicle sack is about the size of a cantaloupe and they seem to be real proud of it.

On the goat thing.

There are interesting ways they deal with it where there's units in Alaska. They give out to either sex tag. Yes, mandatory reporting, so you have to report your animal, you have to bring it in for reporting, if you shoot a nanny, you don't you're not eligible for the draw for five years or seven years or something. If you shoot a billy, you're up to bat next year.

That is fantastic. So they haven't made it like they haven't made it wrong. But they've definitely and I'll tell you what, when I hunted that unit. That to put it over the edge, for me, there are consequences. I was like, man, they really, really don't want you to shoot in L.A. and then we did. Yeah. And it was that little thing.

I like the fact that that little shame they put into it, it's like a little shame with some teeth makes a difference.

Yeah.

Now the recreational aspect of Buffalo, Miles and I talked about this quite a bit. Yeah. I was kind of laughing, you know, and like. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

You know, I if I were in this system and I'd really exploited all there is to exploit, I could see how I could get really into trying to trick these things consistently.

But I'm just I'm not there yet, you know, but it is really freaking funny to sit there and do the color commentary while Miles is fish and his ass off for him.

Are you trying to say, oh, yeah, also fishing and and we should clarify in the lake, these fish again, they're older than my grandparents. Like, there's not anything they haven't seen. They've been shot at with bows. Like there's nothing that I'm going to do that they're not going to notice. Right. And these fish will you'll move in. You'll find them circling in the shallow bays.

I'm like, OK, I've got one. I see one gouge right over there. They can't hear me, but they just start whispering.

Anyway, I try and make a cast and leedham and drop that they own they're filter feeders.

So you got to throw small, small stuff at them. Right.

I wasn't fishing a fly rod because I wanted to be cool with fly rod. That was the only way I could get a bait small enough to trick them.

So they're they're not going to pick up a lead for him? No, not according to I mean. Well, I won't say no.

The stomach analysis is really there's lots of like micro crustaceans.

And then there is these oddball things that can kind of theorize on of like, you know, his cousin has got to in this same bay on crank baits.

Oh, yeah.

OK, so every once in a while they will attack something. But but primarily when you're seeing these fish, you can watch them because clear water, they're just cruising through.

And just like a whale or a whale shark, they're opening, they're big wide mouths and they're just sucking in whatever's in front of them. Yeah. And just keep going. So they're not going to move to take something. You can you put a leaf worm out there, but they're not going to like turn and eat it. You have to get something that looks appropriate.

You can tell from his face or he can suck it in an accident. Correct.

But it's not necessarily on accident. Right. You want it to look like a little sub aquatic insect, the things that they're eating.

But he would be not going to avoid it then to just inhale it. Yeah. Type of thing.

What would happen then? I would set the hook and it would be game on. But you didn't in theory. In so in the in the lake.

I don't know what happened in theory. I mean what would happen.

Oh what would happen is that these fish would see us and they go from like happily feeding about a foot under the surface. They'd as soon as they see the boat they drop down like to six feet and then they did not air arrange.

Yeah. Because you've been flinging arrows at them or they too far out horizontal. Do you get you get act for you for sure.

Yeah, for sure. So they're up at the surface doing that and they're like near near the summit.

Did they call them. Yeah. Yeah. Not sucking mud up. No they don't have a downturn mouth. Sorry girls you say. Actually their mouth, unlike a lot of those fish, actually faces forward. It's not a downturn. Mouth like it like a not a red rag, a red horse sucker or a lot of those other sucker species that are that are really paudie. It's a forward facing mouth. Yeah.

If you if you people out there want to go way back in time. We did a Meat Eater episode many, many, many years ago, Turkey Hunt, but we did go out at night and shoot some big mouth buffalo.

Mm. Long ago. But in Wisconsin, what we did do, though, was we then chased them around on the Mississippi River where they are spawning more successfully and there are more of them. And we hooked up with this other dude who consistently catches them. And we did hook a few there. And yeah, I still got my ass kicked.

I broke when they came on board and I broke one off. I straighten the hook out on another one. Another one just just it didn't stick. It was it was maddening. But it was also like, I got to go back. I'm so happy they were doing those fish were more like.

So the ones in the lakes were like 15 to 40 pounds. The ones in the river were like five to 12.

So they're smaller fish, 15 to 40.

Yeah, huge fish, but you'd see that fly drop down in front of them because it's pretty darn clear, you know, and you watch that Buffalo would like either just like sink below it or just like go to the side of it or whatever.

And we were and I'm like, yeah, that fish is thinking, oh, I'm quahogs.

I remember when those came out, I had there's a possibility that I might have had one eat on that lake or I might have just lost it. Either way, Hook didn't stick. I can't I can't prove it one way or the other.

But I had one moment of, like, hope. And by a moment, I mean like a split screen.

Are you using what you were using to troll motor on this boat to come up on them?

Oh, yeah. Yes, sneaking up on and like they know that noise. Yeah, Charlie Motor like one power. Yeah, he came out in nineteen thirty four. Some of those guys like I remember that.

I think those, those, those old fish just put a man I call was smarter. He was standing in the back throwing a little jig head and catching everything else while I just made a fool out of myself.

Goldminer Somali that wow.

First time I've ever known a goat minnow. And that thing is catches a wide variety of fish very consistently.

What tell me a couple things. You did catch cut some, you know, different pan fish species cut some croppy.

I did bass and you walli dogs.

No, we agree. Well, no, I don't think we had a couple pike yeah, but yeah, it's funny, like catching those croppy.

And so the one thing I didn't know but makes complete sense is those sunfish hybridise. Mm hmm. And somebody got a hybrid bluegill, Redbeard, Slater, Redington.

That's terrible. So we got that real weird one.

But anyway, it was a big, big sunfish. Cool looking, so.

All right. Episodes we haven't discussed, but Don is going to skim through them. Yeah, when we got our episode, yeah, I thought a little bit about it later out right near my home. So, you know, we used to calculate, you know, like go troll, quote, the big lake, Lake Michigan growing up and we went out with a friend of mine who's a charter captain who normally fishes a boat or they put out what was he telling me, seven naked fish, like 20 rods.

Yeah.

He says more normal is seventeen to the point where they have lines with with using. I mean, the slow down riggers, planning boards, deep-sea, divers, they're usually fishing lines 60 yards out each side of the boat, so they're covering one hundred and twenty yards of water. What? Yeah.

Oh, because they have an array of, like I said, down riggers straight down. Then the next step out of the running deep-sea divers. And they sometimes put so much lineout that the deep-sea divers bang in the bottom really under one hundred and twenty feet of water, the dipsy dive or dredge and all the sand is like in waves out there. And that deep-sea divers hitting the top of all those sand waves.

And then beyond that, you get plainer boards one, two and three.

So, yeah, they got their running with 15 hooks, 15 lines in one hundred and twenty yards wide swath. And you can imagine they locate a couple of fish.

I mean, the thing that I think about that is like the other boats, like don't go within one hundred and twenty yards of any other boat. Yeah. They're real, like cautious of the boats. But so here he is. We are run and how many we run in five.

Covered maybe about 30 yards swath of water. So he is very frustrated, but still he's a late catch catching machine.

We still call out fish. Yeah, look like you guys did pretty well. We had a great time.

And that little boat was fun, man. So it's like, you know, like when I was a kid, you know, we had a troll. We had a big lake boat, which had to be a Starcraft and.

Two to four foot waves, you'd almost kind of think about not going four to six you like, there's no way to to forward would zero to two is cool on the day we went out glass.

Like, never have, never happens, I mean, never happens when you're planning a trip, six months, you know, it's like it happens, but it doesn't happen when you're like, we will fish on June seven, you know, and then, like, you show up on June seven, like like certainly it'll be like the worst day of the year, but no glass. Glass.

Now, that was amazing. I lost five out of my seven planned days on Green Bay, musky fishing last fall because of the weather. Yeah. And I was on a 20 foot bass boat that we say Gordon Lightfoot wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

He offers a synopsis of all the Great Lakes and he says, Lake Michigan steams like a young man's dreams. It's islands and bays are for sportsmen, not Roday. He was correct. We had great fish.

And then our very own Danielle Pruitt goes out with Frank Smethurst Smethurst and they fish loves me. I wish Smethurst was here. They catch a variety of fish.

They're targeting another fish of ill repute, the freshwater from the sheepshead. Yeah, another much maligned native fish.

That was a fun one. That was a really fun episode. And then. Talked about Johnny oh, and Johnny did in my home state, in his home state. Johnny did the. The fishing trip that elicits eye rolls for many people, which is when they have a thing, happens in Michigan where you get the max hatch.

And they'll cover your garage door if you have, like an overhead light above your garage, you'll wake up in the morning and Mayflies are covering your garage door. There's like local legend of the roads getting so slick with mayfly smashed mayflies that cars careen off the road and crash.

It's the real thing, bringing out the snow plows. Clear. Yeah, big ass, you know, big ass mayflies.

And you you'd see them. And you talk about how sometimes, you know, yeah. You got a snow plow the roads to get the maple, which I never saw happen.

But it's like a thing I've heard about it. I always thought that had to be B.S..

And when you go up to fish the hex hatch, which we did, you go up and you stay in the dark and get mauled by mosquitoes and you listen to a fish down and go in the dark and you're like, oh, no, Kastoria.

That sounded like it was that way. Sounded like it was out in the river. Yeah. He goes and does that fish? Johnny drew the short he goes, but he went with the dude who actually has success. That is not the kind of thing I didn't growing up there.

It didn't strike me as the kind of thing that you just went up and did on a whim. It seemed that the kind that you got to kind of like study it.

Yeah, there's a lot to it, I think, trying to to target any hatch. There's so many factors as to when those those insects hatch and when the fish choose to eat them, that you've got to be really dialed in to even give yourself a chance. And even then, it's a crapshoot.

Yeah, like climbing down off some bridge, wading through the mosquitoes to stay in the dark down there listening. It's hard to like. Yeah, yeah. I will stay till one or two. Have you tried. Oh yeah. Yeah I'll stay till one or two. Maybe day break in about love.

You're like yeah I'm cold. This sucks. Yeah. Let's go. I think I heard one. Yeah.

Yeah.

We definitely gave you on the, the short straw on that one but he winds out with the tanker. Oh yeah.

I don't want to ruin the Storin story and that's the episodes. Yeah. We had six episodes.

I think we small talk about how they, how they, how people can go watch them. If these are going to start the first one is going to be available starting September 13th.

They are on the Meat Eater YouTube channel or you can get there through the website, the media dot com and we're going to keep releasing them every week, a new episode every week till we run out every Sunday and I think 11:00 a.m. Montana time. So check them out. Whether you like the first season, definitely check them out. If you didn't see the first season, Archibold go back, catch up March second season Doss Boat, Season two Doce boat.

Couldn't call those boats and people would be able to find it. Yeah, we weren't allowed. We worked it in the. You worked it. I got to say you worked the docks but I didn't come up with it. You didn't know. Should I come up with that. I don't know who came. Josh Brustein came up with that. Josh was up with all kinds of funny little sentences. Yeah. That would make was he works best sub sentence.

He works best shorter than a sentence frame.

He's very good at when it comes to putting one or two words together. He excels. But there's anything wrong with his sentences.

But he does. Partial sentences is where his sweet spot sits.

It's all that marketing background. Yeah, brevity.

Quick. Two words. Two words. I was a good one. I was given.

All right, Oliver, thanks for coming by. These are having a great to have you here. Yeah. You participated in a bunch of our stuff. Now it's rad. Appreciate that.

And is doing awesome things. And real quick, tell people how to go find out about you if they want to see your stuff. Oh gosh. Take pick your poison. Hopefully meteor. Dotcom. All right. You know, Doszpot one and two. There's a lot of me on YouTube. Instagram. What's your handle on social. So you can find me on my personal handles. It's all over. I spelled N'Gai and then you can look at a bunch of the big bass streams stuff we've done as well.

When people mess up your last name, what do they go with? Oh, gosh, it's it's a crapshoot. Just give me one. Naggy Negi Negi Nawin.

I don't know where to get that and it's Kngwarreye.

I think you're underselling them. And it's not just the big bash dreams. There's big dreams like you got. If you're interested in seeing Oliver and his friends catch giant fish, you can see them do it all over the world. Big Pike, Murray cod, big barramundi. It's a YouTube channel where you.

Yeah. Yes, but fish and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So the big Bass Dreams channel has the most of it. And then I launched my own personal channel this year as well. So there's even big pipe dreams on their big blue yule dreams.

I mean, if it's if it's catchable, we want the biggest one.

I mean, that's the point. Right? So it's it's pretty wild.

You and I find a real annoying about travel fishing pages on Instagram. No, tell me people don't tell you what the frickin species is. It's like, hey, my TV, my record best, whatever you want to call.

Yeah, I follow Rob Allen spearfishing. Yeah. Spearfish. Africa is like a lot of South African company. I'm like, if you would just start over, tell me what I am looking at. Yes, drives me crazy.

I would be appreciative, but I'm just going through Oliver's page here, and he does.

I was like, oh, I wonder what that fish is. And he actually says it's spotted Babatz. Oh, so he's good about it.

Yeah, it's a total Sokal fish there. So there's a whole subculture of that. That's cool. And he lives in southern Cal. That's a pretty fish. Yeah. Super eight ounce for ounce. Probably the hardest fighting and tenacious fish I've encountered. Cool.

And one of the things I appreciate, like when you were done in Australia and you were catching all those cool fish, you didn't just say what they were, but you dive into some of like the basic biology of those fish and why they were interesting. And like I mean, don't get me wrong, I like big fish. But having that extra context of why they're cool, right.

Just to me augments the experience of seeing it. Yeah. And I'm looking at you right here.

Is that a giant snakehead thing? What is it? No, I was looking at the skin of something like as close as it's big. Small. Oh.

Also looking at a corner of the skin. Yeah.

That is that thing so fat. It's not not a real good looking fish. Nothing makes a whole ton of fish up, don't fat shame the fish we eat.

Yeah, check it out online right now. Yeah, and you're sitting right here. It's like metaphysical. All right, guys. Joe, I know you're way over there and wherever the hell you want to add.

No, that just it was really fun to be a part of the new Doszpot and awesome trip. And I'm really excited for this to come out.

Kevin Arlanda. Yeah, Sam, you're so distracted by wanting to go home. I know I'm getting itchy over here. They should let me be a part. That was a fun trip. Always great to Fisht and see that intensity man is awesome. So looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

If it's not too late, I'm going to have if it's not too late, I'm going to get in there and try to have you catch a couple of bood. Yeah.

Yeah I get that added in there and I have scoured scour the footage and I'll tack on it all over you and I need to fish together man.

We need to make that happen. Absolutely. Let's talk about it later today. We shall. All right, guys. Thanks, everyone.