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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 111: Inside the Dark House
Play Episode
1h45m
Interior Alaska- Steven Rinella talks with Bryce Myers, Brandt Meixell, Joe Zych, Dirt Myth, and Janis Putelis.
Subjects Discussed: chopping big-assed holes in the ice; correlations between TV sizes and amounts of TV watched; Minnesota: the most ice-fishingest state in the world; ice fishing's PR problem; eelpouts, lawyers, and burbot; circumpolar species; prepping bait; here comes one now!; the relative qualities of fish flesh; and more.
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Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, okay, coming at you not shirtless but extremely bundled up. Is it fair to say that, um, are we in south central? Would be like too far north to be out of south central Alaska? I feel like we're closer interior. Yeah, i'd say this is interior. I can say, I can say we're interior Alaska, and I'm not being like a melodramatic. On a lake, perched over a spear hole, it's about three ft of ice on the lake. We have a whole chopped through the ice. It's about three and a half by two and a half feet. Would you say, looking at a bottom, we're on about eight ft about eight ft of water. The hole we have in the ice is about the size of a big screen TV. Not like a guy that's like way into TV watching, but it's a big screen TV for a person who watches a fair bit of TV but not too much. What sort of become the norm I think for the American household, right? Yeah, But now then you walk into a house and you'd be like these models watch a lot of TV. Yeah, based on how big that TV is, this guy's watching too much of it. This would be like we got a hole about the size of Yeah. You appreciate TV, you respect it for its value, but you haven't overvalued it. And we're on a slope looking down eight feet of water. It's kind of a sandy slope. The slope peters off, some weeds are picking up, and we are spearing for whitefish. There's two species hanging around. We have seen that when you guys, uh. The first one he saw when he dropped that little underwater camera a humpback. We've seen so far to humpback white fish, and have seeing quite a number of round whitefish. They're about they look a lot like a mountain whitefish if you're familiar with those, and they're about like a smallish mountain whitefish, but not so small that you can throw it back. But there are better eating white fish in the mountain whitefish, and the humpbacks would be like a big lake whitefish. Is that fair brand? So far, we have put two of these whitefish on the ice, and we've also picked up lake trout in a big bourbon, fourteen pound bourbon. You wait him out a fourteen pound bourbon and that's to take so far today, right, A big smoking bourbon and then a in a laker. Probably the best bourbon of the trip. Oh yeah, definitely the best bourbon of the trip. Um. Yeah, and it's yeah and so yeah, it's the middle of day. It's what one o'clock now, two o'clock. Yeah, it's still seven hours till prime time. Seven hours still prime time now. Um. I want everyone to introduce themselves and tell your name and how many years you've been ice fishing? Joe? Uh, Jo's ch z y h really? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't caught your last name. Joe's zich. Yeah. Most people call him Joe's zurch from where I don't know, because they just can't live with the zitch. They gotta be like, it's gotta be zerch joe'sitch. What where's your grandparents? Are great grandparents hail from? Oh? I got you. I can see that. And I've been ice fishing for twenty eight years probably how old are you? Okay? Okay? Bryce names Bryce Myers and uh I've only been ice fishing for about seven or eight years. Ever since I met Joe. He was the one that took me out for the first time, took you under his wing pretty much. So I'll get to why Joel's ice fish for twenty eight years. But why, uh what? What prevented you from ice fish and the rest of your life? Um? Originally from Boise, Idaho, and not a whole lot of ice down there to fish off of. So like a little south of ice fishing, Yeah, definitely. I think they do some ice fishing up north. But I wouldn't drive that far to go ice fishing when I was living down there. So it's not like when you go into attack shopping boys. He just not, Um, you don't. You don't see ice fishing gear, not that I remember. I don't think so, at least not around the Boys area when I was down there. But you were an angler, Yes, you grew up fishing, Yes. Did you grew up hunting? Um? Not as much? Mostly small game, UM birds, stuff like that, not a not a lot of big game. And then he became an you became a hard water angler after come moving to Alaska. Yeah, pretty much. Joe said, you want to go fish one day? It's that sure. I bought a cheap little rod and after that day went out. I bought myself an augurt An ice house and was hooked. And now here you are with a big pair of ice fishing bibs on working a tube jig down the hole. Tranlu in whitefish. Yeah, okay, Nie, uh the honest, But tell us and I've been ice fishing for I could probably still just until instead of saying in years, I can just probably give you the amount of days that I understand. Why did you not fishing Michigan? You guys are the only people I know I didn't fish. Dude, I don't know. You'd have to ask my dad that question. I'm not I'm not gonna blame my dad, but I'm gonna say that they're like it has to do with something with the fact that, like, my dad just wasn't a big fisherman, never has been, isn't now like almost skipped the generation. Like anyone who traps, hunts and fishes. Anyone who hunts fishes, anyone who fishes, who knows what else they do, right, But like, it's weird to meet someone who grew up in a hunting family who didn't fish, especially in the state of Michigan. But the Latvians probably eat a ton of fish. Yeah, they do, No I knew. I mean we would go out. There was a kalamazoo Um Latvian Hunting and Fishing Club. I think my dad belonged to it, and so yeah, we go out and visit there. They'd have a annual ice fish in derby tournament. We'd go out and check them, you know, meet them, but we never did the fishing. We've got there to say hi. So yeah, less than ten days on the ice, less than ten days as a hard water angler. Is that total? Or is that saying ten day days ago? Was your first time out? Yeah, I messed around a little bit last year in Montana. What are your general impressions? Oh, I dig it. It's been It's been harder than I thought it was gonna be harder physically, mostly because I'm bringing kids along. And so I went on there one day to Kanyan Ferry. It's blowing thirty and by the time I had the hole to drill, my kids were like, all right, that's an unbelievab Yeah. I've since then, I've had people tell me like, yeah, if you're gonna go out there, you'd have to have a shact. Well, you guys, the right day. Yeah, I've seen it nice out there, but generally it's like windy enough where you're losing five gallon buckets right Like you leave a five gallon bucket unattended and all of a sudden it's just gone. No, the ice is scraped almost clean, don't get snow on top. People come out there. It's so windy that people come out an ice sail. Where do you make like a little boat that has like basing on skates? Never see this? Oh yeah, that's a windy as ice fishing lake right there. Uh Brant Brant Mixel ice fish in my whole life from the get go, from the get go. Um, and then I've been ice. Yeah, I've been. I'm forty four years old. I'veen I like sabbing ice fishing for forty four years. My mom and dad, I'll point out, for their honeymoon, rented a living ice shanty that was the ice fished for their honeymoon. So um, I was even even the egg and then the egg and the mixings, the mixings that went into producing me had a deep familiarity with hard water angland before they even came together and combined to make my component parts. Deep tradition in ice Angland. Now, Uh, you guys are from I would say probably what I think to be like the ice fish in this state Minnesota. Yeah, I would tend to agree. I was flying in recently. I flew, Uh, I was flying until Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and on the flight over over Minnesota, we passed over some big lakes and it was right at dark, right at dusk, and you can see the lake just lit up with lanterns. It's little ice shin villages all over ice communities. Do you think it's mostly like a place like Minnesota where people really hit ice fish and heavy? Is it like is it because people are miserable and bored in the winter or do you think it's something else? Like do you meet people who only ice fish? Yes? Actually that they're not generalist anglers. I mean, I don't think it's be very common for someone who ice fish is a lot to not open water fish. But I there certainly are people that like are dedicated ice fisherman that don't do much open water fishing. Yeah, it's like, uh, it's more associated with drinking. It's frequently associated with drinking, but it's also you know, there's some different styles of people. There's people that love ice fishing that I don't really care if they catch anything or if the fishing is good. They more care about the drinking because they want to just go drink on the ice because it's fun. But then there's people that like want to catch fish and try hard, but they often are drinking too. Not always. The roosts that bring it up is I feel like there's always been a there's a like in the non ice fishing world, which is a big world, okay, of people that don't ice fish. There's a perception of ice like like ice fishing had, say, a perception problem. Grumpy old man. Yeah, people aren't. Yeah, it could be that you think that did it. That's what I thought of before I even ice fished. It's a horrible representation of what it actually is. Like lazy anglers who aren't successful. I mean, if you are coming in, okay, we got a round whitefish coming in bad angle right now, I think you're just gonna have to You want me to wing it, let him walk, I don't turn into the day. I gotta stroke at him here, take it all right? He might come back, Yeah, come on, come once. Can you see him stiggling, jiggling, jiggling. No, I just watch his tailgalay, he was going back behind us. Yeah, he was kind of like he wasn't like booking. I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back through. It seems like he was looking at the jig. But they just like to circle it some times. Man, I was just thinking we would do. It's been a little bit, we want it, no almost excitement. Would you would have taken that poke, Steve, Well, I'm at it. I'm in a different spot than you. I would have taken the poke. No one would. I now know me too, But no, I think if I was in your shoes, out of waited, thinking he might hook or whatever. But now I reviewed in my mind, I would have taken a hail Mary, just one more past, like duck hunting, let him get closer exactly. Oh so, anyways, Bryce, the first thing you thought was that movie Grumpy Old Man. Yeah, that's that's exactly what I had in mind for not only Minnesotan's but I and so uh so it's so long, real quick they refresh my memory? How do they depict the actual angling in the and the like with a couple of old men sitting around drinking beer and not catching ship. But I feel like the movie doesn't. Actually, no, it's about one of them is like kind of a little bit potsy. And then it was like a lady and they both like her. She goes to the one. You figure she's gonna go for the other one gets a little piste, start pranking each other, putting fish in each other's trucks. That's right. It started sounding a lot like growing up. So when you got invited out of ice fish and why didn't you? Uh, why didn't you? You were like, oh, so this is what I'm getting into. I'm going out and it's gonna be two old men caught in a love triangle. It's not exactly. I mean, I guess I just hadn't really considered going out ice fishing. I never had this stuff. I wasn't gonna just wing it and spending you know, three d bucks on an auger try to chip through the ice, Swiss a spud bar or something. But when you guys first went out, what was your what we're going for? Oh? It was just the stock fish or around anchorage the first lake. We went to his beer caned lake and just went out and just see what we can catch, and it wounded up being like not exciting, No, it was very exciting. Yeah. We uh we didn't have any of the vax lars or any of the fish finders. Uh yeah, vex lar is like a it's a it's a it's a sonar esque apparatus that kind of tells you what's going down but down below your whole. But yeah, so we didn't have any of those, and fishing in the blind and even then still just we caught countless fish and uh, they're almost all dollies, aren't they. I think, so, yeah, dollies are the stock rainbows. And then you were hooked. Oh yeah yeah. Right after that, like I said, just went out and started buying ice fishing stuff and now I've got my own arsenal because that's what I think. I feel like, like I was saying, like in the non ice fishing world, there's this idea that it's uh like super boring, and I think, but they're because they're looking at people that there's like these different kind of anglers. You have your drunkards, there's three kinds of ice. You had your drunkards, you had your hardcore fishermen. That were out to catch fish. And then you had your drunkards who were hardcore fishermen and out to catch fish. And I like associated with I knew about many of the the drunkards. I would see a lot of the people who were out there but uh, no real interest in catching fish. But it's like the social aspect of it, you know, and like to go drink on the ice. But then my in my father's social circle, there having to be a lot of the drunkards who are hardcore about catching fish. And they would be like, there's like the kind of guy who comes out on the ice. He sets up his shanny without doing any work. He just kind of randomly is out there, drills a hole through the ice, lowers his thing down, and that is that is where he's going to be. That's the weekend. And it's like he's just opening it up to fate. It'll turn out, it won't turn out. Then there's the kind of guy who goes out and drills a dozen holes before he does anything anything, and this man will be the man that catches fish because they're taken to it that same level of devotion and passion that what you think like the best open water Angler would take to it. Yeah, it doesn't hold it be drilled on this lake so far, So yeah, takes a lot longer. Ice fishing, when you're trying to find depth changes because basically, if you want to see the depth, you gotta joe hole at every spot. Yeah. You know, my brothers talk about the way you like, the way ice fisherman perceives the body of water is so much different the way in open water Angler perceives it, because he says that he perceives the body of water just basically has like cylinders, Like when you're out on a lake in the old water, you kind of think of the whole lake. But he's like, I just think of it as that I basically drill my whole and I imagine that cylinder extends down to the bottom, and I just think about like that spot, and then I move over and I make like another like theoretical cylinder they're gonna think about. But you can't be that you're just checking out the whole place, because you're just like picking. You know, you can't troll, you can't cast, you're not like working a drop off. You just have to be where you're like committing to, like a specific thick spot and picking your spot is really important, but you have a lot less data to go off of to pick your spot because you're not passing over with a fish find or getting like a really good sense of where everything is. But brand your thing is like drilled millions of holes yep ice troll ice troll oftentimes send a camera down there to have a look, check out specific habitat up front, trying to find edges, micro habitat to find the spot on the spot, and then on top of that, you you need to go in there and take a poke. And here we have like the visual element where we have a big gass spirit hole and we're in shallow water, so you see all the things that go on that you otherwise won't be aware of. For instance, last night we had we were jigging for bourbon through a hole in the ice where we could actually look down and see because we put a light so we could look underwater, and had seven bourbon come up to investigate the jig. This is a big predatory fish that like will suck back six seven inch fish no problem. Seven of them throughout the course of the night came up and whipped and sniffed the jig or passed through under the jig. If you were fishing without the looking hole, you would get the sense that there was no activity and nothing at all going on. If you can have a vex lyre unless you have a vex llyr, explain the vex ler. So vex are basically a depth finder fish finder, um, if you don't have a camera, which we normally don't have a camera, so we'll use that to check all the depths, but basically is a circle and then will sound the bottom and have a real dark red line where the bottom is. And then as your jig your jigs normally like green Cane, your jig going up and down when you jake, you can watch her the light on it go up and down. And then as a fish comes in for like eel pole, they'll come up from the bottom generally, so you'll see a red line come up from the bottom, red line and then follow the jig. It's like a video game, match up the lines and you. But the thing about it's like it's like they're very responsive, so it's kind of real time. Like there's a delay with sonar, yeah, like a regular boat sonar. Yeah, that you really have it like a display screen, and it's kind of like tracking your history. It's just like a real time portrayal of what's going on, to the point where if you lift your ride to work your jig, you're watching like an exact replication of where your jigs at in the time. There's no delay whatsoever. But I can't believe, like going my whole life and not ever using those things, I can't believe it either. I don't know how you like ice fishing. You don't have a vex flor. I don't know. I guess I just like it like a deeper old timy ways, just like when you're just fishing blind, you never know if there's a fish under you, Like with the vexil or, at least you know if there's fish down there or not at all times. That's like a thing that comes up with people griping about technologies like that, well that this is a very old school technology to like my grandpa had on it was it wasn't colored, but yeah, my dad had one that was like an LCD screen. Didn't work real well in the cold at all. There's just gray black and white scale. But you know, but you're familiar with the people that will say, oh, it takes all the challenge out of it, right, And I think like stuff like that can increase effectiveness. But a thing that'll always point out to people when having like this conversation about whether it's son a or whatever else, is you learn a lot more like it enhances your understanding of the environment and what's around you and how it all relates. Absolutely, so you're like, you like, it's not like you have It's not like, oh, now that I have this device like a like a GPS, I know or not. Sorry, Now that I have a sonar device when I'm fishing, I can just turn my brain off and now I don't need to learn anything about fish. It's like having a sonar has taught me shiploads about fish because you understand like where they are when they're they're not hitting, when they're there and are hitting, and you come away with it. If you stripped it away from me, now, if whatever it became illegal to have it, I would be like, well, thank God for the time that I had with it, because I learned so much usable stuff about how fish operate. Yeah, how did jig? How fast do you when they come in and they don't bite, you go up, make them chase up, you go down to the bottom, they'll go down. What size jigs working? Um, it gives you a lot more information if you don't have a flash or you're just hoping something bites your jig, And some days that works great. But when you're going in of new lakes and find a new territory and I want to get something dialed in, it's a it's a good tool. But there's like flasher we should explain as a synonym for the x L the brand name. Yeah, vex Lar's brand name. So when you like, when I was younger, though, if you like, if you were going to strike out to go ice fishing, heading out the door, it would be typically a very like rudimentary setup. So that was your child, Yeah, so well, no, it depends on the pends ont to what level we were going out. So like, for instance, if it was if we're going out to ice fish to lake you grew up on, you could go as simple as this. You'd have a bucket and in that bucket you would have one or two rods in your pocket, you'd have a chew tin full of maggots, you'd have a little film canister full of jigs and then if the ice was like six inches or less, you'd carry with your spud to chop a hole. And depending on the air tamp, you might not even have a scooper to strain out the ice chunks, and you'd be like our ice fishing like that, like basically nothing twenty bucks for the stuff, or you'd go out expedition grade fishing where all of a sudden it's you're introducing like we have thousands of dollars with the stuff with us right now alone. Yeah, So I mean it can like it like takes ice, Angland takes many different uh takes many different kind of forms, you know. And I think this kind of winds up being that like the level of passion you bring to it, or how much you're dying to catch a fish. But out here you guys are like I think that you guys doing Alaska is different than most people too, as you kind of do like a sort of like expedition ish outing, like explain where we are now. You don't have to tell like where we are, but sort of like talk about what it goes in to get to a place like this and be prepped up for a place like this. So we had uh several hours on the road and then about snowmobile run um into the lake, rigged up for everything for from start small end to fish up, so spearing whitefish, all that gear, jigging lake trout and bourbon and tip up fishing for bourbon. Yep. Now the ice fish like kind of like a main I'm gonna talk about a little bit about the different apparatus is that people used to catch fish through the ice. Like as a kid, we would mostly jig for perch and bluegills or pan fish croppy's perch, bluegills. But then you'd have, like for big fish, you have this thing called a tip up. And the tip up is what do you guys do you guys? Have you guys called you guys use the word dead stick for tip up? No? No, when you guys say dead stick, what's that mean? It's a rod that's not being jaked, just a piece of bait. That's your term for a dead that's a term for a dead stick. That's a love term for a dead stick. A rod not being jigged, just hanging in the water, usually next to like you'll be jigging a tube jag in one hole, and then you have this other rod that just has a piece of bait on it, not moving at all, and that's your dead stick. That's a term I hadn't heard. We would just call that like a rod over there with some bait on it or something like that. But like so a tip up is. This is what tip up is. And there's many different companies that make tippos, but a tip of b I know where to begin to describe a tip of spool line spool line that has a spool of line in which a spring loaded flag holds the line in place until a fish bites. Then the fish can free spool and the flag goes up, so you know you have a bite and you can watch it from a distance and you take Depending on your area's regulations, like in so Lakes, you could put a live fish on the hook, like not in Alaska. Nowhere in Alaska can't use live bait and freshwater at all anywhere in the whole damn state, which is weird because usually like rules here are a bit more lax. But like in the Midwest, most places you can use live baiting. Um The argument against like what they don't want when people prohibit live bait. What they're generally trying to prohibit. They're trying to prohibit you purposefully or inadvertently introducing species of fish in the bodies of water where they don't belong, so that you would like take some suckers or whatever, shin or sucker, some kind of fish, and you catch them out of one lake or buy them somewhere, drive to an area where that fish is no is not a native fish, and you fish, and you get done, and you dump your bait down the hole. And you just did what they call bucket biology and introduced a new species of fish into an ecosystem where it didn't previously exist, and a lot of fish get moved around that way. And also that you would introduce diseases into waters that you don't normally fish. But like growing up Michigan, like no one's gonna set a tip up. No one in their right mind is gonna set a tip up in Michigan that doesn't have a live fish on the end. So you rig a live fish, you hook them generally like right kind of under the dorsal fin, and you send them down under the water and you set your tip up up and so you get that thing set to the right depth if you want it, and we used to you know, we'd fish piked six ft off the bottom. However, you gonna set it up and then you position the flag so that when a fish hits the thing and starts pulling line, the flag pops up, and you might be able to set anywhere from two to six tip ups out and you put them all up. Everyone sits around, shuffles around on the ice, talks. A lot of people then begin getting drunk, and then eventually a flag comes up, and someone else flag flag and you run over there and lift the thing up with a hand line the fish up, and that is like, because the unknown factor, that is one of the more exciting things on this planet. Absolutely, and it's hard to appreciate how fun it is to see a flag pop until you've done it, and once you've done it, you love it. It's just it's like there's been times when there's just like a flag sitting in one of our sleds. We're not using it right, but that flag, for whatever reason, is popping up in the air. You just see a flag in the air, and that instinct in your body is triggered that you've developed over a lifetime of waiting for flags to pop uh as young as youngsters, we would sometimes like most of the rules on tipops are usually this varies, but generally it needs to be that you're like tending it okay and needs to be your like in your immediate control. How do they word it, usually closely attended, closely attended and not just attended, meaning you can't go set them somewhere and come back the next day to see what you caught. Generally, I'm sure there's exceptions of this, but generally you gotta keep an eye on it. So when the ice when we were kids, we did this now and then when the ice was good for ice skating, we would be able to set our tip ups way far apart because you could see them from a long ways away, and then you just would skate around checking them and it was like kind of like like hockey with fish, just moving around chasing tip ups. But typically you just like set them out, you scare them kind of out through the ice around your shanny and observe them. And that's tip up fishing, and what we've been doing at night for Bourbon Like bourb it's a weird fish because I want to cover here we've been taught with. It's a whole bunch of different names. Like did't already talk about different names from Bourbon? No? Okay? Like the official name is what brand? The scientific scientific name? Load of LOADA? How's it spelled? L O t A? Really? Load of LOADA? Were you're like? What you know that fish? As? Might depend a little bit on where you're from. I when I first heard of the fish, I heard of it as a lying but I became suspicious of that name only later when I learned about the saltwater ling cod. But people call him a ling even though it's a freshwater cod. People will call them and eel pout, which you've heard that in Minnesota. That's the main term. Someone told me it's the main term. I think if you live south of Highway to Yeah, once you get like the first time I ever heard anyone refer doing as lawyers was Lake of the Woods area, so like getting into closer to Canada, I think that term might have more of a Canadian origin. Yeah, I heard. Okay, that's interesting because my friend Doug Derhn, who lives in West Wisconsin, he had spent time living in Door Peninsula. They definitely call him lawyers there, he says, they call him, Yeah, he he knew that the guys there referred him as lawyers. The first time I ever heard the fish referred to as a lawyer was not far off Door Peninsula, but it was fishing out of Garden Peninsula in Michigan's up which kind of thumbs down southward. And the guys out on the peninsula call him lawyers. And as he explained to me, he's like, do you want to know why they called a lawyer? And he opened it up and showed me that it's heart sits right next to its vent or. One might stay like because they'd say, like, the heart's right close to the asshole. That's how you know it's a lawyer. So that was what they called lawyers when I first heard of the fish. Even though I grew up in a state that has some in the big northern waters, we didn't catch him where we ice fished. We never talked about him. I got to Montana, and they call him lying in Montana. Then they learned those bourbon and they learned that some of you boys call him eel pouts. And then there's another word. If you look in fish books. I haven't heard anybody ever call him is clench. And on the East coast they call him cusk. Oh, maybe that's it. Did we see clench though, I haven't never heard of cusp the East coast the usk like New Hampshire, that's what they call him out there. Either way, if you're from the south and you don't know about this, it's because it's a northern tier fish. It's the fish is distributed across the north so and around the globe and around oh yeah, like yeah, talk about that brand, Like what a circumpolar speaking circumpolar? So they're uh on multiple continents across the northern part of the globe. Other examples of circumpolar critters would be polar bears. Polar bears, well, brown bears, grizzly bears are circumpolar, were circumpolar. The blue muscle is circumpolar. I believe that the Northern Pike, but there's like some variations, but the Northern Pike. Find so a circumpolar thing would be like imagine a certain latitude band. Um, if you just take that latitude band and wrap it around the whole earth, you'll find that species are very closely related critters all within that same latitude band wrapped around the whole earth, so circumpolar fish. And you're saying too that they've been extra pated in places from Europe. I think there's been areas where they've been over fished in Europe, which is funny because in Minnesota, where you boys are from, you were saying that a guy might be want to pull a bourbon on the ice and leave it land. Yeah. I saw that we did have um permanent ice jacks and relax. When I was younger, I remember seeing just piles of these things, and no one liked them because they leave their um their rat oreels down at night and then you pile would come fight the line and then tangle all the lines up when they're trying to fish for walleyes. Oh, so that's why. That's that's why I didn't like them. They're ugly and I don't think they're at least especially and as a kid, there was not a reputation for them being good to eat, and I never even tried eating one until I moved to Alaska. There's no walleyes here. You gotta ice fish for something. Figured out that not only are Bourbon fun to catch and much similar to walleye fishing, but they're absolutely delicious. Yeah, and not just that, but I remember, like guys that commercial fishermen have an ability in some places where they're like, had our commercial white fish seasons did, they'll even be able to market the bourbon. So the tricky part about bourbon the first time I started catching bourbon through the ice that I've never called a bourbon, not through the ice, but the first place we start doing we would go out, there's a lake, we'd go fish, We go fish for perch during the daytime, and then it gets to be dusk, and you would have like a narrow window of opportunity around dusk time to set up tip ups and catch the bourbon because their bite like perch, you cannot catch a perch at dark Like there's some fish that don't want to eat when it's dark out and some fish that don't want to eat when it's light out. Yeah, pike, the pike bite ends, the perch bite ends. You can get bass to eat at night. Bourbon liked to eat at dusk, even though it was caught a tanker at noon today. But you know what I'm saying, like a general thing, man, a general thing. So we've been doing is going out and at night out here on this lake and an interior Alaska setting up tip ups, which we explained earlier for bourbon and real quick, can you guys explain like the rags around, ah, how many lines you're allowed to use when and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, there is by water body in uh, most of the state, you're whatever the daily limit is, are allowed to put down that many hooks um on any water bodies where it's more so on pretty much any water body, you can fish two lines for any species of fish through the ice. Um. On places where you're allowed more than to keep more than two bourbons in a day, you can have as many hooks down as is the limit. But um, as soon as you do that, you're only fishing for bourbon. So then there's additional regulations about hook size and the bait resting on the bottom and different um criteria to try to I think limit buy a catch of other species. Yeah. That's the thing that I feel like we talked about this error day. It's the thing that's not well understood by people who don't hunt and fish the like how like tightly regulated in detail oriented. The regulations are around all kinds of like harvest of wild resources. So I'm trying to tike a way to approach like the thing you're talking about with hook size. So, like as Brand was saying a minute ago, you can fish when your ice fishing, just generally ice fishing where you're trying to hope to catch a variety of species, you can fish two rods. The minute you commit that you're only fishing bourbon. It's like, okay, now that you've committed the only fishing bourbon, you can jump up and put five. It depends on the lake. Yeah, on a lot of On a lot of lakes, it's five a day. Um in some areas and some like in rivers it's fifteen a day. Okay, So let's say let's just say we were in a lake that's five a day. That's an easy number to work with. So all of a sudden you're like, no, no, no no, man, I'm only after bourbon. So they're like, okay. The regulations basically say to you, okay, since you're only catching bourbon, we're gonna make sure that you're only catching bourbon. At that point, they dictate to you that you have to have a hook with a three quarter inch gape greater than greater than three quarter inch gape, and your bait has to be laying on the bottom of the resting on the bottom. So what they're trying to do there is be like, Okay, if you're making a player where you're really just doing this, we're gonna allow you to have more lines, but we're gonna do added regulations on top of that to prevent, like you said a minute ago, from catching by catch. So when we've been setting up at night, we're going out and putting down like enough tip ups where it's hard to keep track comy tip ups you have down like where you're kind of wandering around the dark a little bit trying to find them all because the snow so damn deep. When you dig it out and drill a hole through the ice, you your your tip up sort of subsurface and they can vanish on you and explain what you do, like how you get bait and how you prep your bait for bourbon. Ah, we mainly you do a personal use. Uh hooligan, I'm gonna open the event. You're getting warm, should we turn the heater off? The back. He sweating that. Let me open this other one too? Did you pause it? No? What were what were you talking about? Oh? How we get a bait? Yeah, candlefish bait. Yeah. We go out dip net in and uh we're all right, so go ahead, we dip net our hooligan in the spring and package them some of them. About that for mix. People have no idea what we're talking about. They're a smell there, you know, some fair number of people probably familiar with like rainbow smell in the Great Lakes region. They're also a smell, but they're larger and oilier. Um, they're common. One of their common names is candlefish because you get so much oil out of them because if you dry them out, you can light them like a candle, which I still haven't tried. Like I'm not exactly sure which end you're supposed to light, but um um, I didn't know that. I thought it was because you could render out oil that was flammable. So it's mainly that. But you can, from what I understand, you can dry them out and they'll burn like for an extended period of time off that oil. And like the they have two spellings. I'm gathering one must be the kind of official spelling, which is e U C h A L O N. Yeah, hooligan. Oh that's I don't think it's actually pronounced hooligan. I think it's pronounced you lican, youlicon. Yeah. But then there's a popularized spelling which is wholigan, like those hooligans who keep vandalizing my car. H O O l I g A n or candlefish and it's an anagramous fish lives out in the ocean, runs up the river's spawn and there's so many that I've never done this. I've done it for rainbow smell years ago a fair bit. But they're running up so much that you're just dipping blind. You're dipping a net blind into the water. Yeah. And they spawn in the lower reaches of silty rivers, typically social silt, right, So there are rivers that you don't really have any visibility in any ways. Um, there's some exceptions to that, but so it's mainly you're blind dipping. But when it's good, uh, you're getting good numbers in each in each swipe with the net, and it's just a small like a bait net. I don't know what twelve or fourteen inch diameter. Y's probably yes, probably about twelve I think. And you and you scoop down and go with the basket with the mouth and that aiming down river and swipe down with the current to catch them coming up. Did you ever when you're growing up, did you guys drop net for smelt? No? I did very little that. Um. I didn't really grow up in the Great Lakes area, so oh really, well, yeah, I guess not. Yeah, you were way far away from the Great Lakes, so uh yeah, like fishing rainbows smelt, we would dip net like what brands talking about. But usually site fishing now and then you have to blind up. Usually you have landed, you put up, you'd sink a pole. You'd wait out into a stream close to the mouth, or floating into the into the lake and drive a pole into the mud and hanging lantern from the pole, and you'd wait there and waiters and you see the shadows coming by and you dip them like that. Or you go out to pier walls and drop a thirty six by thirties centchions square net on the bottom of the lake near the mouth, and when schools would pass over, you'd lit that drop net up and catch them. And you could if you had it dial and had your kind of gear right adjusted to the sensitivity the fish. Like ofttimes you have to run pretty thin monofilment and have your mash be the right color where it matched on the bottom, or they wouldn't go over it. But once you got dialed, you could catch like extraordinary numbers of smell like that, like I was talking about one night we caught there's people catch them anymore news. I remember a night in particularly we caught eight five gallon buckets of rainbow smell. And they're very good to eat. Oh my god, they're good. But the candle fish or Jolians, they don't. They don't have this quite the reputation of rainbow smell. No, there are people that really like to eat them. Um, but they're oilier and uh, they're larger, so the bones are a little bit more prominent when you're biting into them, and they don't crisp up nice like when Danny cooks him, my brother cooks him. He cleans them like a smell, which you eat him a whole, just take the guts out. He fries them like a smell. But then he puts them on a on a cooling rack in his oven that sits over a baking sheet, and then he puts it that on three degrees and puts them in there for twenty minutes to drip all the oil out. And when you pull that thing on, that bacon sheet is full of oil. And then he eats the candlefish. And my wife, yeah, my wife anything. Man. My wife was like, not big into candlefish, but she'll eat you know what I mean, She's pretty good about stuff. And the first one I tried to eat, I cut a stick and tried to cook it over a fire, and after gutting it and everything, the as it was cooking, all the oil just basically squeezed it right off the stick and fell into the fire that greasy Yeah, And as the meat firmed up, it just squeezed it right off. So to get back around on the bait, you're primarily when you go out for Julians, you're primarily going out for bait, which you used for hall a bit and everything. Yeah, And I mean, herring is a great bait, but um, there's not as many opportunities to catch it yourself. So you're looking at a lot of money, dude, it is so expensive. Buying hearing is expensive man. Yep, So this is a it's a great bait fish that um for residents. There's there's no limit on that fishery. Are non residents allowed to dip hooligans? No, not at all. Nope, it's a it's a personal used fishery, so it's limited to residents. Okay, so then walk through how you turn it into bourbon bait. Uh. This is pretty a labor process. I like to Brian. I like to Brian my bait Joe and Bryce. I like to use more fresh as frozen natural because you um, because aesthetically your performance. I don't like getting blue dye all over my hands. I think this brand's hands are blue or green whatever the hot colors for the day, or red some days. So you guys are going, you're like taking your candlefish freeze them in galon size ziplocks. Yeah. I like the vacuum seal a bunch just in a single layer until I get sick of doing it because I think it keeps them fresher. And they thought out quicker. Um. But at some point you just gotta be done process, you know. And when you got fifteen gallons of that stuffs of hooligan, or however much you want. I normally just go with cooler not like half the size of a regular beer cooler, and I'll fill that up full and then that's formally good for me. That takes how long to net that? Uh, fifteen minutes sometimes okay, so it could be like hot and heavy. Oh yeah, and it's like we'll talk about Brian and bait for a minute. So I like to brian bait for a few reasons. One is it helps to firm it up. Hooligan can be soft. Um, so it's a the basic component in in a brine as salt um that helps to draw moisture out of the out of the meat and firm it up. And then I also like to add various cents and dies and um, mainly because I just don't have that much. I don't get to fish all that often. And uh, there's time well relatively like relative to how much you wish you fish, So I want to make a count when I go out. Yeah, I got you, um, but you're not a half assord Nope. And if there's any uh, there's any little thing that might help help you catch a couple more on a given day. I like to try it. So you're using salt the firm the thing up, and then you can buy it commercially produce like bait enhancements. Yeah, you can buy commercially produced brines that are already have a die in them, or you can make there's different recipes with adding different things into your brine to do the firmness. And then so you can make your own brine with your own materials, which is usually like salt and powdered milk, um and water, and then you can add hairy oil or die turn it whatever color you want um or buy the stuff that's already made up commercial. Now have you been Brian and helibut bait too? I have. I started doing that a salt, but I never do any of other stuff to it. It's what I like to do is brine it in a liquid brine and then drain it off the liquid and then put just straight salt on it and that will help keep it firm and keep it from freezing, which when you're out ice fishing, it's annoying when your bait's freezing. Um using rock salt or just regular like table salt actually use table salt, you know, at your cabin. See, we usually use rock salt, but I think that the finer salt helps the coat it better, um more surface area. So these hooligans then are blue Candy, Blue candyd He's already gone. He's already gone. Well, I mean he kind of came into the zone just enough so I could see him. And where did he come from? The deep? I just did a one eight back in there. How did they change in their attit? Shoot so much? Lately? We're in a real suck stretch here. Man, We're do yeah, but they're just not coming in and lingering little pass throughs. No, at least we know they're around. You know what I'm talking about? TV earlier would be like if you're watching TV and just now and then the program flickered on, right, and then it flickered off again. That's what this is like. And it flickers on and you're like, there's like an action scene happening, and then it flickers off. You're like, oh man, what happened? Heartbreaking? So catching Bourbon? Now, do you how convinced are you that Bourbon liked to be down deep? I'm real convinced of that. But that you think that the evening, the low light triggers of Bourbon, He's gonna come up and hunt the shallows, come up, spend the daylight, uh, not moving around, not being very active in deep water, and then coming up in the shallow flash to chase bait fish and feed they you know, they they're a bottom. They relate to the bottom there. They kind of have that rough, rough fish look to them, maybe like a catfish. So they you could see how there'd be a perception that they're like this lazy, scavenging bottom feeder fish um, which is possibly another reason you know, slimy bottom feed or why they get that nicknamed lawyer. But they um, they're actually they feed mainly on live fish and there it's like the kind of lawyer who has a billboard in Las Vegas. In a fight, call me. But they're very aggressive. So and uh, except for last night, I guess under our hole they wanted to we found seven that were not at all aggressive. They're curious, but not aggressive. So it seems um, it seems like a kind of an unassailable truth that Bourbon liked to live down deep during the daylight hours and then as the sun goes down, they come up shallow to hunt. Do you feel that's pretty true. Yeah, I think that's pretty standard in lakes in particular, in lakes in particular. So what we do is to fish them. You're going out and at dusk setting up your tip ups in the deepest we've been running has been water up to as shallow as where that fish has to be bumping his head on the ice as he swims around, like you wouldn't really think there's enough room for it to fit under there. Yeah, it's like like, I mean literally a gap of twelve or sixteen inches between the bottom of the ice and the mud, and you have a bait land there, and there's fish that are swimming around and that narrow that narrow gap of free water hunting or spurting eggs because it's like the spawn time of year and you set them all up and then you either get like wham bam or just the stillness. Yeah, we've seen, we've seen both. So the first night we set up, by the end of the night we had ten ten bourbon big fish from what to what inches, Well, the top end would be fourteen pounds is the biggest so far. The small end to be what like three or four pounds. Yeah, there're going whitefish O skirt in the edge? What is he doing up there? Come on, lure him down. I think we gotta make no, no move to where no. I think we gotta move with the jig away from this beer hole. So when they skirt the edge, they come under us. I completely disagree because we've had somebody come up. We've had somebody come up. The smell of the thing not for the last couple of hours think about it like this brand Let's say, okay, I want to pay I wanna just just bring into the debate here. We haven't attracted basically, just have like a rig that you would use to catch a whitefish. Little what's that a little jig? Yeah, we have a little jig with a little flasher above it, and a little jig is tipped with the with the wax worm, and we're jigging it and in the center of the big spirit hole. And we've had quite a number of whitefish literally come up to the thing, oddly not bite it, but just come up to it and put their nose against it. Some come under it, some come along to the side. But it seems to be the last couple, I've kind of skirted around the edge. Brandt thinks that we would go a drill one right there. Yep, that's him coming back. Shoot it. I might side shoot him because he's not playing it, playing the ball with us. Oh, this is gonna be a tough shot. Holy cow, he's still Is he gonna come back? He's just holding tight and he's standing there. We're not standing you know what I mean? Like if a hold? Can you see him still? Do you still see him? Yeah? I still see him? Is he looking this way? He's like right underneath you. Brand He's just messing around right up in the zone. Is he coming in? I'm not quite. Do you still see him? Yeah? Really? Yeah, he's right there. Try going down to the bottom with the naft the jig allway to the surface, one or the other. Try that just for a minute. He's gonna come right up to the hole and oh my gosh, I've never seen that in all the years of ice fishing. What's the fish doing? Now? I he he went away, He'll be back. I'm gonna laughing. He kind of eats that wax he has floating down there. I hope he does. That's a natural, nice natural presentation. Yeah, that's beautiful suggesting since they seem to be skirting the edge, he's suggesting going and drilling a hole over yonder, thinking that as a skirt the edge, it'll bring him right below the spear hole. I feel it would just make it the bee that when fish are investigating it, there's so much more out of sight. Where is he now? Oh? I see him here? You know what he's gonna. Oh, he's coming in. I might go for him. Oh you want to try and brant? Oh did he spook? He might. I don't think he would have spooked here. Hold that again, because he was at least up against the bottom there, which makes him like a little bit more pinnable. I'm not saying, like, put it far away, and maybe even if if we just put it like three ft away, we'd still be able to see it, but it would give it would let them. You know, they're kind of staying like five ft away from it, except for the ones that come up and smell it. Are the ones that come up underneath it, right, But that hasn't been happening lately. What was that top about how my idea is horrible? Yeah, but even before that bourbon coming up shoutout of fee. So yeah, so you can like lay by like a considerable bunch of poundage on bourbon meat. And I think about a bourbon it looks like we don't really get into what they look like. I think it looks like a frog and a snake made love, where you have a very bull It's fishy, for sure. It's like indisputably fishy, but has has bullfrog qualities to the head, and the body is that of a like an eel like snake like body covered in definitely snake headish snake headish do you snake when you feel them? They're not snake headsh But I think if you just looked at two pictures of the two fish, oh you mean like not a snake's head but a snakehead fish. Yeah, for sure, they have similarities with like a bull fin two. And they got that fin, like the dorsal fin runs down the whole length of the thing. And then he's got like a bottom what can you think it is in the bottom is basically along his entire bottom. He also looks like a bow fin, you know that fish, dog dog fish or bofen A lot in common appearance with a bow fin, but flesh wise dramatically better. And they're covered in frog skin, Yeah, slimy skin, like like more of a froggish skin than you'd find on say, a catfish. When you go to cleanup bourbon, you can just make a cut through the skin and peel the skin off with a pair of players, and then you got all the tail meat. So from the vent back you can just kind of flay it off like a flay. From the vent forward, you you're peeling off big backstraps kind of. And the ribs are weird because the ribs don't curve down but just kind of goes straight out, so you're actually flaying off like a like a sizeable chunk of meat. And the way that you always hear it described is is described as poor man's lobster. White fish right underneath you, right underneath you. No, jake down, not see it. You'll find him. Oh all right, got him? This is a risky shot. Do you think he's gonna turn it? All? Right? Wait, that's a tough shot. Yeah, that's a tough shot. Kind of getting out of it. Oh, you gotta be kidding me? Who did that? Not? Someone's going swimming. You know, earlier I was naming off all the names that there are for bourbon, which is endlessly fascinating to me. But when we're naming names, after I named, did some people call it poor man's lobster? No? I didn't talk about that. The reason folks call it poor man's lobster is because a sort of the preferred way to eat bourbon is to prepare herrot like lobster, where you take the meat and boil it like you're doing a lobster boil, dip it and melted butter um, and just eat it boiled. But the thing that I can't figure out is, you know you've had like you've been to salmon boils and other kind of fish boils, Like do you think that the bourbon Like if I, let's say I took a chunk of walleye and a chunk of bourbon and boil them both, do you feel that you would eat the bourbon and be like man, that is better suited to this preparation than walleye. I've often wondered that because there's not really many fish species that you cook like that, just drop it in boiling water for a minute, in pieces um it does have a lot of distinct lobster like text your flavor. You feel like it full on does? Oh it does. I mean it's like I don't know that he goes we eat them that way, but I don't know why we eat him that way because I just eat that works. They're called poor Man's lobster. Oh I think. I mean they taste like a saltwater fish more than a freshwater fish. So you feel that that's I'm definitely like, I definitely that's how I think about cooking them for shut man. Do you guys fry them too? Though I've never fried. I don't. I've never fried one of my life. Yeah, I fried them. Um, Usually I just don't have that much. So it's a bit of a novelty. And so it's just cool to cut them up into little they're like when you when you cross cut those backstraps, it's like little scallops and then drop those in the salty boiling water quick and dip them in butter. And I mean, it's it's cool, and it's like, rarely have people that you're serving it to ever even ever had it or heard of a bourbon before. So our friend Randy was saying that bourbons were so despised where he grew up in Minnesota among wall fisherman that if you caught a bourbon, people would go drill a new hole as the the whole, as the whole the hole had been tainted by the presence of that fish. But like and Wally are good, But I feel like people like I think almost I think Wally are better than they actually are. But there's a lot of fishers as good as Wallet. You're not gonna get any in a fish house full of minies out and as no one's gonna agree with you on that one. But like, did they feel like the Wallet is just like, like absolutely good? I think what people like when it, like Wally is wal They don't have any muddy taste. You don't need to do any extra kind of trimming, and it's just clean, white, benign. Right. It's the hallibit of the fresh water. Meaning that's like it's a blank slate. There's no fish. Oh nice one. Oh that's a good one. See it. Okay, okay, okay, Chord, I got you, I got you, I got you. I got That's not good. No, but it didn't spook him somehow. Podcast Chord went into the spirit man. He's kind of out of my zone though, he's going down. I got the spear three four ft in it, did you really? Yeah? It was a cock got shot yep. Oh, he's on here all right, poe him up. Nice work, that was shot, Holy mackerel. That's how we do it. Careful, careful, careful. There we go, got him. I was impressed. Impressive underneath underneath us. Yeah, that was like see my sports analogies, I'm they're so data. I feel like that was like Larry Bird, right, that was like a trick shot. There we go. That's impressive. Here you go throw them outside, starting to get decent numbers. Nice? Nice, nice? So what happened there was the embraser Bricey and Breser. You feel like you sucked him in. I feel like you're do you feel like you're in the driver's seat right now? Ah? Sometimes, But then again, I can't tell if I'm bringing them in or spooking them away, So you don't like you're not getting the sense that like you're uh that they're coming like eyeball on that thing. Ah. Some of them do, but some of them just don't really seem to care about what I'm doing here, But why are they showing up? Then here's what I'd like to no more than anything, if you let's say all of us each had a hole like this, would we all be seeing about the same. Yeah, it's just like a total of random distribution of fish that happen to be passing through or creating a little micro environment, you know, with the jig and the light. The light difference, I guess probably doesn't look too No, it hasn't looked different from their perspective. And yes, either way, what this happened is whitefish came in. It was a little bit noncommittal. Um, A lot of guys were thinking, Uh, you know, Steve, he's a great man. I don't think he can pull this off. Uh, I think he's finally met his match. And in and in the end, I came through. That fish was far enough underneath us that I could not see it. Steve was leaning over the whole, looking under us and throwing backwards, and I couldn't even see the fish, nor that the spear stuck. It is how far under as it was. It was like a shot from three ten ten ft behind the three point line. Yes, exactly exactly eleven ft. Uh, where were so Helmett? That those bit of action there we're talking about eating relative oh that I was saying. I was saying that a walleye. And this is not the bash on Wall because I love I like I like everything about Wall. I like catch them looking at him, love eating them. But I'm saying it's kind of like a hall a bit type fish where it's sort of a blank slate. It's like white flesh flakes, nice clean tasting. You can kind of do anything with it. No one's going to eat it and be offended by it, you know, but I feel like, well, to me, I don't know, you guys should describe it. You guys are probably eating more than I have. But never had walleye before in my life. Well, I've never even caught wall. There's only two Minnesota, because it's not a wall in Alaska. No, no, or I don't know if they're an I don't definitely. Where I was in the red in the reservoir systems, being in Minnesota and eating a lot of while I thought, I think that's what it tasted like because to me a little that I've eat it. When I taste it, I don't taste to me, then you know if you're if you're a lover of hell, but don't get mad at me. But to me, it's a little on the bland side. It's such a blank slate or wally. There is some flavor there. There's a sweetness maybe too. I agree sweetness. You feel the wallet has more flavor than hell of It, definitely, and I think it has a better consistency. I think you'd rather have a pound of Wall than a pound of hell of It any day. I mean, I don't know that I wouldn't, but I think if you went and pulled most Americans, there's not going to agree with that. But brand give your take on what Wall I taste like. Um. I think Johanna summed it up pretty good there. I think they're they're mild, so they don't have a fishy taste. They don't have a strong flavor at all. Um. They can take on whatever season means you want to flavor them with. But they have a bit of a sweetness and their firm and um as opposed to halibt that can get if you cook it like a touch too long, you can get a little dry or even kind of threaded like chicken can, whereas Whalleye fish straight down, straight down, Get him at the jig. Come on the nice round one, Come on eagle, nice nice right in that lift up gentle you got and then swinging this way. Nice shot with your reactions. Oh no, that was exciting to say. Oh about a miss. Oh look at that right in the nice shot you're stoned him looking he's out and he's not even flapping his tail. Yeah, bring him up. Oh man, the brain Yanna the plug us, nice shot, Nice shot. Man. Okay, first one, we'll talk up the lot. Be honest, is batting a thousand lifetimes? Next time we see John, this is gonna have a hat, says the dark House Sama. Nice shot. Okay, back to Wally because we're gonna get the whitefish edibility soon, very soon. Joe, do you have any thoughts on the flavor of Walleye. No, I mean, like, see what's saying. Most people would probably prefer hal that over while, but I'm with Brandt. I like the Wally more. And I don't know if that's because it's not as readily available to us up here, or if it's because I just like the texture better. You mean because in Alaska it turned around without bumping into a helibot for a bag of helibut place. Yeah, it's so along that lines and how it matters what's most abundant. So when I was back in Minnesota ice fishing with buddy's this winner, I brought, you know how, a bit to share with everyone and salmon. And none of my Minnesota buddies who catch walleyes all the time, they all thought I was crazy saying that I like, well, I better than hal but it they say, oh, how, but it's better out of town because they don't have it. It's different, but they have a freezer full the walleye. Yeah. When I say that the fish is approachable or like, people like it and it's a blank slate, what I mean is this is like, okay, take a fish like mackerel. Okay, for a lot of people, it's too oily, too dark, too strong flavored. But there are people who are gonna like, know how to cook it and wind up loving it so much that it makes for the detractors. And I think with halibit or walleye, there's people who kind of I don't generally like fish, Like I'm not a fish person, But I like wallee, I'm not a fish person by like halibut because it's it's just a kind of a and I'm not talking down on it or being mean about it, but I'm saying it's kind of a safe mild like it doesn't inspire a lot of it doesn't inspire a ton of love, and it doesn't inspire a ton of hate, except for it inspires a lot of love. True, And I think bourbon falls right into that same category. It means what a mild white meat that um isn't strong, but has a good natural flavor in a good texture, in a good texture with whitefish. See, so hold on, come when I add something to this whole, Uh poor man's lobster. Oh yeah, poor Man's lost. When I was where in an old Tuscanini and be a great Colorado, That's where he got the name long tang Yanni because he manned the long tongs at the Tuscany in the grill and he had to set a long tongs and long tang yanni. Um, we're bringing a fish called the monkfish. And that was also that's got a good liver. Referred to it to as uh poor man's lobster. It was no, yeh monkfish liver monthfish flesh monthfish. I never heard that, and again I have. I mean I don't fit. You know, it's like I don't fish for him, so we don't talk about him as much. But that's just yeah, I've never heard that before. Hey, Brent, can you touch on? Can you touch on bourbon liver? Kind of like start out by how they have a gigantic liver and proceed from there. Yeah. So everyone's familiar with cod liver oil right, um, And so as we've talked about, bourbon are the only species of freshwater CODs, so they have the same trade of a very large and oily or fatty liver. Um that it can be cooked in a few ways. It's I think it's a it's a delicacy in some places. I think, um, in France, I think bourbon liver is popular freshwater bourbon liver of course freshwater, but freshwater fish liver um. And so I've just recently started doing this as I learned about it. But um, because you heard about bourbon liver eating or just because you're like, well, hey, it's got a big liver like a cod I'm gonna try to cook it. I actually because I heard about it as bourbon. It was introduced as well. It's a cod, so it's similar. But the way that I've done it the last couple of years is just slice thin and then drop it in an ungreased frying pan and the dry pan a dry pan, and that um there's so much oil in that liver, it'll just create its own grease. It'll render out, and then you're basically just frying it in its own oil and it'll just it'll crisp up, real nice um on both sides. So you're just just kind of zapping it once you get oil in there, and you don't want to overheat that oil because I made that mistake and it smells fairly bad. But when you just just brown it, it kind of crispss up and it's it's not gamey at all. Like it's a real nice flavor and that just add a little bit of salt. It's good. It's good. Do you ever drink the oil afterward or is that too strong? I have not that that oil has definitely some flavor to it. There must be too um fish oil. Stories years ago, I was down in you know the species of asiatic carp that have gotten into the Mississippi drainage. It was like several. So there's big head silver that's kind of the primary ones, the flying carp being the silvers. And there's another one big head carp. And these are carp that they we're using to clean aquaculture facilities. So these are like herbivorous carp um filter feet, like yeah, filter feeding carp that they would put in these aquaculture facilities where they're raising catfish or tlapia, and they'd use the carp to maintain the tanks. And during flooding, uh, you know, the the aquaculture facilities will be like overrun with water. The carp escape and get out into the main Stem river channel. Now they're all over in the and then some of these stretches of the river. The primary biomass of fishing these rivers is these carp So there's been a lot of brew how about what to do with them. And there are some commercial fishermen that are operating um up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and I think some other branches of it as well, netting these carp up and they're sending them overseas to Israel for the filth fish and various other processed fish preparations, and people for a while, we're thinking, oh, if we could just catch them all, um, we'll take care of the problem. And so they would set requirements where they want to be able to catch all the carp out but not destroy the game fish. So they would come out and say like, okay, you can use whatever inch mesh net. You can use a four inch mesh net to catch carp, thinking that your game fish can be small enough to fit through the mesh. And they could go into these areas and pretty much remove and in very specific areas in certain situations, they could go in and put a real dent on the large introduced carp. But what they would find then is you would still have the same oundage of carp in the watershed. It would just be the poundedge would be comprised of much smaller fish brass, a much larger fish than just this ongoing problem. If you want to go read about it, you can go read about all the different thoughts in it. One of the most pressing issues around these introduced carp species is that they will get up into the Great Lakes Watershed. Now you know, of course the Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee. Right, these all flow, these all wind up flowing into the Mississippi fish. Fish spooked the jig just too aggressive? You drop it on the ground. Yeah, I was well starting to pick it up again, and then you guys started yelling fair. So I tried to set it on the bottom. And you'm intending that line a little bit for me. Okay, maybe just hang it there and just stop digging it. I don't know, man, I kind of like that. I don't know. I feel like, well, like when when the fish comes in, dropping it to the ground like a quick movement, scaring the bejeebas out of him. So I'm off on a little bit of a side, don't hear about. It's gonna continue for a minute, because a big fear about these asiatic carp that have invaded the Mississippi drainage. Areas straight down that another one that's a different one. That's a bad angle. I might wait, No, he's not even a contender anymore. I have a shot at him. Do you take it? Well? You might, man, that line, that's a big angle. He's right blow us now, Oh, definitely dodged a was skidadlan. As that thing was coming down, he moved it. Sure seemed like a holy mackerel. I thought I had him. Who's up? Be honest? Is up? No? I'm up. So a fear with these asiatic carve species that have gone and invaded this river system is that they would get into the Great Lakes. And what I was saying is like, so the Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, like everything flows into Mississippi. Um the river that Ben met the writer Ben Metcalf calls the American Heartworm and flows out into the Gulf of Mexico, you know, in New Orleans, around New Orleans. So the Great Lakes, that whole system flows out through the St. Lawrence sea Way into the Atlantic. But years ago they made a shipping canal to connect the Great Lakes Watershed to the Mississippi Watershed. So you can now do what you would not have been able to do, you know a hundred years ago. Do you know when they dug that canal two hundred years ago? I don't wanna mess that up. Two hundred years ago, you'd not have been able to go up to Mississippi and finagle your way into the Great Lakes. There's different watersheds, but they made an artificial connecting point. And they're afraid that these carps that are now in this river and the Mississippi drainage will make the jump by going through this shipping canal and invading the Great Lakes. And what they've done to prevent this from happening is the Army Corps of Engineers runs an electoral barrier. So there's a bunch of water there that they have, like an electrified water that's meant to prevent fish from wanting across that barrier. And that's what's what's that I said, no ship, Yeah, that's what they have to keep. That's what they installed to keep these cart from coming in invading the Great Lakes. So there's been a real thing like what are we gonna do with all these damn carp So people have been kicking around different ideas of how to make it a marketable And this guy had built this facility where he was going to start. Everybody was all, you know, everybody's always talking about eating Omega three fatty acids, people like cod liver oil. It's a like you can extract fat from these cart So I went to visit this little mobile processing facility that he was beginning to test out, and he wanted to get I think it was like f D A approval to be able to make this carp oil and put it in pill form. And I go down there to see his facility and he's showing me he's got like a bottle of oil that he's extracted from his cart and you smell it smells just like cod liver pills, cod liver oil um. And I have a little sip of it and it was like pretty peppery and like very cod liver oily. And they're going and investigate this little like centrifuge type machine he's using to make this stuff. You couldn't have fit another maggot net thing, man. I remember being like this kind of turned offs. I felt a little bit like I'd been duped into eating maggot oil. I mean, it was just like he hadn't been cleaning to think it was the nastiest thing. I don't know if that every guy ever got it off the ground, but I was like a weird case scenario with that stuff. But the other thing that was not weird, yeh do you remember up on now Nevak Island when we were fishing to i'm cod through the ice. Do you remember eating those livers dipped in seal oil? That was not bad? Yeah, So the Eskimo of noon novak um like tom cod liver, which is probably another one that's very similar but very small fish. So we've covered bourbon up and down on eating I want to know, touch on eating whitefish, and this is like a one where they're not all universally appreciated because people have I feel like people have the same from a table fair stance. People kind of have a similar perspective of Mountain whitefish, which is the white fish living like anyone who's fished the West knows him as being a fish of the trout streams. But whereas rainbow try if you're fishing in the Rockies, you catch a rainbow trout, that's a non native fish that's been introduced into that system by you know, out of barrels unless you're on the Pacific Slope. If you're on the Pacific Slope, you can have native rainbows, but anything that flows east, absolutely you're fishing a non native fish species. When you're fishing brown trout, you're fishing a non native that's a European trout. So when people think they're in some pristine Western thing catching brown trout and rainbow trout, you're catching fish that got dumped into the place out of a barrel. It's basically like it's kind of like a make it's a little bit of a make believe fish. But living there alongside him is mountain white fish, which looks strikingly similar to the round fish that we're eating here and or catching here in Mountain whitefish are like a lot of people don't like them, like all the trout fishing. You've done your honest what has been So do your general take on what people think of mountain whitefish. Oh, they h eat him, like them those Minnesotan street the eel pout. I mean they I've seen guys just give them the death squeeze and act like they release them, to give them the desk squeeze. Throw him on the bank so the birds eat them. I mean, just no respect at all. Who eat them? Until I talk to you? When they do that, are they thinking that that it's gonna make more room for more non native fish by getting rid of that fish? Yes, like they don't want him competing with the They don't want the natives competing with the non natives. They don't. Yeah, well they don't. Yeah. The sport fish, the ones that jump right, the suckers get the same treatment. Yeah, we started eating them because we would take them in, brine them and smoke them and make like whitefish dip out of him. Uh. Chef Eduardo Garcia smokes them and puts them in empanadas. Little danker two. Yeah, he came in hot and crazy. I'm not evenna get ready for him. Him. He looked like he was running from a big bourbon. Did he come and go? He just came in like hen. That was just a pass through. Many tend the line for him. Yeah, I got it. Well it's under your boot right now. So that's good. So that's kind of like the Mountain white fishers. I think it's a pretty good fish, but it's weird because there's so much variability and whitefish. So like in the Great Lakes you have the lake white fish, which has a commercial market that is like a phenomenal fish, very white texture, but it's bony and you gotta debone it here. I think that a lot of one. You can cut a full on filet off of it. You can cut a full on yeah, you you can go in and take them and take a lake white fish, which your highly respected. So in the Great Lakes, lake whitefish are as easily as esteemed as walleye, perhaps more so. And there's a limited the Chippewa uh UM hold some commercial license that they use trap nets to kate to catch lake whitefish, and they and then they market the caviar as well, and they catch some big gas bourbon as bycatch in those trap nets, but other people target them and they have a really good reputation. You can flamem, but you have one line of pin bones that you got to remove on a white fish. But yeah, they're excellent fried as sandwiches. They export them, eat them in Europe. Good fish up here. This is like they use allow them to feed dogs and stuff. That's not true, you know, I don't honestly know. I think that um. Historically, whitefish were an important source of food, uh primarily in the winter because it was a fish that was catchable in the winter, and I believe in that used as dog food. But with nets or traps um, I'm not sure how much fish is used as dog food now just people don't run sled dogs and stuff as much anymore. Um. I mean there's areas where people do I know that there's you know, certainly some fish is used to feed dogs. Um. And I think there's people that use white fish for it. What's the general like in Alaska, what's the general reception of the speed of of whitefish's table fair in Alaska? I think it's uh a little bit unknown. I mean, I think, for one thing, I think whitefish is kind of overshadowed by all the other great tasting fish we have. And as far as like the sport side of things, there's just not that many people that get after it for whitefish. Um. There's some personal use or subsistence fisheries, like in the Chattanika you can spear them as they're spawning in the fall and people that people do that. Um. And there are there's some subsistence uh netting in some parts of the state for whitefish. Oh, huge bourbon, huge bourbon jig. That was he paying attention? He didn't He wasn't he was moving. That was a big fish. Holy cow, I didn't even see it. Yeah, he went right under you. Bryce was as big as that that that fourteen pounder pretty close that it was in that size class. Definitely, no way that was cool. Oh man, I watschall have seen it. They're out cruising our edge that were set up on? What's that? You got him on? Dirt? Just open that window? Oh you got him on, you got him filmed, he's got he's got him, he's got him on the hook. Oh nice yot dirt. How big is it? You're exaggerating, but it's a dandy dirt. So you don't need a flasher. All that talk about maxis I don't know. Good job dirt, that's a giant. Oh we're in here working. Garrett's out there just fishing. So right, so you were like had a camera aim and down making pretty pictures as is your job, and you were fishing, which is not your job, and all of sudden, whamole there he was. That's good work. Do you guys feel that when he went by that he was headed to his dad like he had a mission. He was on a line of that jing. You stole that fish from us. That's a nice fish. That's probably like a like like a twelve pound berd bit eight. So he went out and looked at, so he's not even close to the fourteen or nice work, nice work laying, buy some meals, all right, Shut the windows back to spearing, get the dark house back in action. Oh no, what are you talking about, man, Keep jagging, keep stacking them up. We'll be able to snag it up. So there's a book I'm reading right now called The Land of Feast and Famine, and it's about uh fur trappers who were working around Great Slave Lake in the I think in the thirties the twenties, late twenties, and uh Man for they're like because he's a guy eyes that had are traveling by canoe and they had to carry their sled dogs with them in the canoe because they're traveling into the trapping grounds. And then when everything freezes up, they make sleds and the dogs pull the sleds. So they spent most of their time in the summertime fishing whitefish with nets to keep you know, the dogs fed every night. And then when it starts to freeze up in the winter, when they know they can keep fish frozen, then they just net whitefish in order to feed the dogs throughout the winter. In order to feed themselves throughout the winter and also to use some for trapping bait. And these guys will go in this book, they talk about periods where they're going literally months eating nothing but whitefish cooked on a spit over a fire, in the intense cravings that you would get living that lifestyle. But he would say that the thing could get over. Like Stephenson talks about this too, is like you can get over salt. Like they are, taste for salt is an acquired taste. And you say, when you go months and months and those salt, you lose that feeling of wishing you had salt on your meat. And when Stephenson would travel into the village like Eskimo villages, they would just make sure to put because they were always worried about everyone eating their food, and they would put extra salt on their food because they know that the people who didn't use salt would never be able to eat even moderately salted food. And it was a way to make your food unpalatable to people to put a little bit of salt on it because that level of acquired. But this guy that was living for months on just whitefish, their cravings would be for red meat and like that would be the thing that they wish they had, And when wait and wait for was to get caribou because it would offset like how off you felt just eating nothing but whitefish. But the way I'll be cooking these white fish were catching right now is just brian them, hold and smoke. Yep, it's because it's the perfect fish for it. It's oily, it's like a little bit bony, but when you smoke it, it loosens the flesh up, so you can peel the flesh off and it leaves a skeleton. It looks like something you can put like in a museum display, like something styl faster than cat would be walking around like you just like the meat peels away and you have like the perfect little skeleton. All I do is like I slit them up from the belly to the chin, take out the guts, cut the gills out, but leave the head on. Trust them by putting a little string around the back of their neck under their gill, cover out their mouth and tie a loop in it and just hang them in the smoke or smoke like that. Freaking love those things. How long are you? Brian them for eight hours sometimes overnight like salt and the water salt sugar, Brian salt sugar. I'll sometimes put honey in there. You see people putting all like, oh a sprig of time. I just think that like that stuff is like it does not right, it doesn't pass into the meat. I don't think. I think that people put a lot of stuff in fish Brian's that there's no way you can taste later. I put rum and fish Brian's, like when I do dry Brian's, I'll put rum in there. I've seen where you can slice up fennel and put alcohol on it and wind up getting like a fennel taste to it. I think a lot of people put a lot of aromatics and stuff into into Brian's, the Brian fish, and there's no way that that flavor is carrying over in the necessary quantity where you can taste it above the taste of just like smoke brine and smoke fish. I think garlic I think you can get because garlic has a strong taste, but putting like a sprig of green herbs and I just I just feel like when you see that kind of stuff, it's like, come on, it looks pretty, but it doesn't really matter. But Yeah, that that's how I would definitely go about cooking these roundies. And in lake trout, the other fish we have on the ice right now, is often criticized for being a tad oily, and it's one of those fish that, like some people are dismissive of, but then people that love it really love it. Matt, my brother this year smoked up some lake trout and brought it out, and my god, as the stuff gets smoked, I think it's a great fish smoked. Joe, tell uh, talk real quick about what your reluctance is about killing big lakers. So, I don't like to kill big lakers because they're a pretty long live fish and it takes them a while to get to the size to actually be able to like spawn. So and if you catch, say amid thirty inch laker, it's probably fifteen years eighteen years old, something like that, and I just I feel bad killing big fish like that, the old ones. Yeah, you're a fish yellow I rock fish. That's different. I don't know why it's a different because it's a hundred years old, because I don't know why. I like you, who knows, I don't know what why there's a difference between. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the flavor. Maybe if the lake trout tasted as good as a Yellow I rock you'd be whacking them. Well, I don't know if we'd have a lake trout left at that. Yeah, if a laker was because the Yellow I Rockers is a phenomenal fish. If a lake was that good. Is it just because you're kind of like I don't really like them and they're old, and those two things combined makes me not want to kill them. I think so. And I've tried them before. Um, like you said, they're good smoke, So if we do get a small one and I have to keep it, I wouldn't mind trying smoking it. But the times I've had it before I tried to have cooked, I've just done it wrong, or the other person who's cooking it and didn't prepare it right. Maybe it's left you feeling why even yeah, why even give them the death the death stroke? I've pickled him and thought they were okay, But I think pickled pikes better. You like pickling northern is better? Yeah? Man, I just have never mind, Like I just don't mind like bait. I don't mind baked lake trout like smoked lake trout. But I feel like I have like a little bit higher tolerances for for gaminess or just yeah, like I just I kind of like, um, you know, I think I'm gonna saying, Man, I think there's some stuff there's like I don't think it's everything's job to taste perfect, right, It's just something that's it's like interesting the mass with it to experiment with it, you know, if something isn't absolutely perfect, I don't feel like that it was like an inconvenience, you know what I mean. I don't mind cooking something and then being like, yeah, you know, next time, I'm gonna try this. I feel like that in and of itself is like a little bit educational warrants se messing around. There's some things that messed with like common Carp. I've messed him a few times, and in the end I just have come to I've done it enough and had enough disappointment where now I just don't feel like messing with common cart, right, And you'll still find guys that like think that common oh you gotta do this, and fish cakes, You're right, you can basically turn it into a completely other substance with the addition of everything in your kitchen. But I don't look at him and feel uh you know, I mean, I just don't look at him and see food. But I still look at Laker and I'm like, yeah, man, that's like a food fish. All right? Brand you got any concluding final thoughts as we sit here and watch the the live screen TV. Oh it's there last night, I'm excited. I hope it turns on again. Yeah, we had a we had Our first night was on fire and last night was just you don't call it on fire. Relatively, I'm saying he a hole and didn't got one bit the tipops tipops are going off, and when I'm saying I'm fire on fire, I'm informing that by what happened the next night. So with two nights to compare to, I think we had one night that was on fire and one night that was on ice, although we still saw a lot of fish. So if something, some unexplainable thing or something that some smart person might know about pressure or moon phase or light, you know whatever, turn them off last night, hopefully that's which goes the other way to night, and I think it would be pretty fun. Every fisherman has their own thing. But I do feel, as do a lot of anglers, that I think the parametric pressure has major implications for fish. Yeah, that's my gut instinct is a high pressure system will shut the bite off on bourbon, on bourbon. I think you think high pressure shuts lakers down. Pressure fires northerns up. In my opinion, all right, Bryce, you in concluding thoughts brands concluding thoughts the holes we have a good night of fishing. Well, I I obviously agree with that as well. You're hoping for a good night of fishing. Yeah, something a little better than yesterday. Um, hopefully we can jig a couple more up tonight like the first night too, and we probably got another hour of spearing for it. It's too dark, we just throw that light down. Well, they just quit coming after a while last night last night we shined the light down and never saw in their white fish once it got dark. I don't know what they do. They go somewhere in laylow. Joe, I want people to appreciate the eel pout and not treat him like the Minnesota ice fishing. Whileye guys just kinda if you do get a chance to go out for him, try cooking it up because I think they're really good. Would you go so far as to think that you're gonna start the North American eel pout Alliance for the North American eel pout found I don't know about that far, but you do want people to know that it deserves your respect. Yeah, And it's not just a trash fish that swims on the bottom of lakes picking up garbage. Yeah, any wild thing, any wild thing that you would be so lucky as to have that wild thing grace you with its presence, right, warrants a level of admiration and respect, whether or not you think it's a good thing to eat or not. With some invasive species like excluding that, but generally Yeah, to sort of wantingly um to kind of like wantingly destroy a native species of fish out of some misguided notion that you're gonna be like improving other fisheries by disturbing a system that has been intact for tens of thousands of years. That you're killing this fish for no reasons somehow gonna like, uh, alter things for the better is a little absurd. Not you, but I'm just talking about a mug that would that would leave an eel pot on the ice. Yeah, out of disdain for it, Johnny, I don't have any concluders. Man. My concluder is just hoping more whitefish turn up for it gets dark. Yeah, it'd be nice, be nice to get a couple more shots each, but um yeah, i'd like to I can dovetail off that a little bit. And just I was thinking, as we're getting ready for the concluding thoughts here that I was thinking, man, just another species to add to the list of like wild game where people are like, oh, that thing socks socks sucks, socks socks sucks. And then finally I'm like, oh, trying to guess what donet suck actually break? And I was gonna say, like, make a short list, and then I'm counting off in my head. I'm like, well, I've heard that about elk. I've probably heard that about deer and moves and candle and animal and bears, mountain lions, and by golly, if like some who are these people that, how however long ago like started this thing where they were hunters and fishermen, they were sportsmen, and all of a sudden they're like, you know, not like that, and to eat them it's gonna start saying they suck. Yeah, it was. It was some sort of like dramatic shift that came out of having too many chickens growing. For him, it was like a thing that it came out of. It came out of being spoiled by abundance of other stuff that people can start to have, like disdain for or negative feelings about the resources. Yeah. So my concluding thought is, next time you hear someone tell you that something so and so it is no good to eat, try it. Oh, find a good recipe. Yeah, if I didn't eat everything that someone told me it was no good to eat, Yeah, you you just scratch off of the wild harvest out there. All right, that's all. Thank you for joining
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