00:00:02 Speaker 1: It's a sunfish. Jay stopped calling the police. They're busy arresting your friends for throwing hands in the parking lot of the Cumberland Farms. I'm gonna go with murder Hut. One medieval theory suggested the fules were the transmogrified forms of the bastard children of priests and married women, fleeing persecution through shape shifting. And remember, the only appropriate gift response to anything by the Coogan Squad is Jesus eating the city. Good morning, degenerate anglers. Welcome to Bent the Fishing podcast that heckles rent a cops but respects the real cops. I'm Joe Surmelli Miles Nulty, and even though I have been handcuffed and placed in the back of squad cars twice, I have never technically been arrested. Oh yeah, I feel like I'm gonna lose street crad here, but neither of I. I have not been arrested nor written in a cop car, which I feel like is as a young man ends rite of passage. But I do still chuckle with a few friends about a party I was at rated by the cops. That's the closest I can come and I had a buddy that used to get off on um going to house parties and hiding perishable items throughout the house, you know what I mean, like take the bologna out of the fridge and drop it in a box of corn flakes. And uh, as this very upset officer was lecturing a room full of drunk kids, he looks up and there's a giant polish sausage hanging from the chandelier, dangling like an inch above his head, and the whole room just lost it. And uh, you know, he was just he was He was just more upset though. So that's that's my cops story. Uh, that's a good image. I feel bad for that guy. Oh man. Yeah, what a terrible, terrible job breaking up kids house parties and they could be doing real work. Uh. Speaking of police, this podcast is fueled by Black Rifle Coffee, and besides supporting original fishing podcasts, Black Rifle also supports local police. Proceeds from their Thin Blue Line series go to law enforcement officers and their families in need. Yeah, Black Rifles Coffee Club keeps us caffeinated even when we forget to stop at the store on our way back from fishing super convenient. Just head on over to Black Rifle Coffee dot com back slash Meat Eater, let them know what you like, and they make sure you're steadily stocked. And just like this podcast, those guys represent the whole country. There to Eastern and Western regional roasting facilities, ensure that your beans are always freshman. Use the discount code meat either at check out and they'll take off your first order, which is very nice of them. It is it is, and uh, I'm drinking some coffee right now, and it is. It's delicious. I'm just gonna just gonna admit that, all right before we dig into the show. Joe, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta talk something through with you. I had this experience last week and I just can't shake it. And I just I just want to see what your take on it is, all right, So hey on, I mean, we'll get all psychological on. Yeah, let's see if we can break this one down. Dr Joe. I went fishing with some friends, uh, and we were on the Madison this is last week, and it was one of those days where everything was just kind of lining up right. We had we had that fall light that we get out here, and the hills were just glowing gold beau. It was really nice to fish were super active. They were eating on the surface, they were eating subsurface. They were just on the chow. It was one of those days. It was great. Uh. And so we're fishing far so good. I don't I don't see the problem yet. So far so good. We're fishing out of my boat. So, you know, even though it's it's it's the cool season and the water was very cold. I was not wearing waiters because I had no intention of getting out of that boat. We're boat fishing, you know. So we're anchored up on this midriver spot and I hook a fish a couple of headshakes, and it comes to the surface and rolls, and I get a good look at it. It's like a solid two foot trop maybe a little bigger. It was. It was a big fish, right, It was definitely the biggest fish of the day. And then as soon as it rolls, it takes off downstream right mid current, and like I'm I'm I'm into my backing on the first run, which almost never happens with trout. Right, Like, this is a good fish. So I know in this moment. What I need to do. I need to just hurtle my ass over the gunnal right in the middle of that cold as river and chase the fish down right, like I have to be swimming and splashing. I have to like get that fish and no matter what. Okay, there was no time in this situation for me to wait for my buddy to pull the anchor and chase them down right, Like I got this fish on a small hook, it's on light line, and I'm I've done this plenty of times. I know what's about to happen. Fish that big, that much current, that much line out, It's either gonna break off straight in the hook or pull free, and it's gonna happen in any second. So I'm standing there, yeah exactly, and you know, like there's no confusion as to what's about to happen. So I'm standing there, I'm watching the last turns of line come off my reel, and I'm like having this conversation with myself in my head. I'm like, jump, jump in do it. You're gonna lose this fish, Go get it. Jump. But I just stood there, like having this internal battle with myself, like I didn't want to spend the rest of the day soaking, wet and freezing my ass off. But I also didn't want to lose this really good fish because because it's just because I'm too soft to deal with a little discomfort. And this is the battle, like the tension that's raging in my head as I watched the last couple of turns come off the reel and go, I'm about to lose his fish, Like I know that there was a time when I would have not even thought about it, Like I just would have gone over the side of the boat. Come in the water. I'm getting the fish, like I've I'm sacrificing my body that face should coming to me. I don't care what it takes, like I'll swim. But I didn't do that, And now I'm left wondering, like what changed form in me? Like do I is it that I care less about catching fish than I used to? Like do I have less to prove to myself for the world? Like am I just getting lame? Am I getting smarter? I honestly can't figure it out, and it has been messing with my head ever since. I'm gonna help you. I'm about to help you right now I'll bill you my hourly rates. Would this have been the biggest trout you ever caught? No? God, no, I mean it was a really nice fish, Like, it was a very big fish. It was a legitimately large fish from Montana. But no, I'm very lucky. I've caught a lot of big trout. It would not have been my biggest. Okay, there you go. Okay, so I think the decision was subliminally made based on experience, right, because you and I hear me. Do you think I'm getting smarter? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of right. You and I are both lucky enough to have caught lots of fishing lots of places. Right As an example, like, I'm not willing to freeze my ass off and diving in after like a brown. Okay, probably not even a twenty two. So unless at this point I was convinced like this is the biggest brown I've ever hooked, A true milestone, you know what I mean. I look at it like, dude, I've done my time in terms of freezing and soaking over the years. So if I lose the two like, i'll, you know, good chance I'll stick another one of those. You know, So this one this one's going to get away for for my comfort. However, um yeah, I mean, if you're one of those people that only gauges the value of a trip by what you have to show for it on Instagram, it's a different story. You're not. Well, you're not one of those people, you know, but we know someone, we know somebody who is Who is that person? Oh? I don't know? Yah, don't don't do it. Yeah, we have to. Yes, we're gonna do it. Now. Listen, We've heard from a number of you about our inclusion of Internet sensation Lance Vying our podcast, and uh, man, I'm gonna tell you it reeks of current American politics, because man, you guys are staunchly divided. There is no middle ground from the two camps we are learning it is that those camps are either love or hate. There is no middle, and I know where I sit. By the way, we've kind of thoroughly been enjoying some of the hates though, right because they say ship like Lance needs to go and if you're actually paying this idiot, I feel bad for you. So listen, we're listening to you, guys. Okay, we're absorbing your feedback and we've decided to change up the Lance format a bit, uh, and we're only gonna focus on the wants and needs of his true fans and going forward, just have him answer the many questions you guys have been sending in. So if you have a question for Lance, okay, whether it's personal or you're like you know, asking asking for a friend, go ahead and send that to Bent at the meat eater dot com. The land, to the boats, to the like to the sea being up the inn on that. But John Boyd Land, what's up? Brain farts? Today's question comes from at throw Down Fishing Underscore, Inc. He writes, Hey, Land, just the sound of your voice makes me want to beat you mercilessly. I'm curious, though, what do you consider best practices for posting gifts as comments on social media? Great question, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I mean one of my pictures of worth a thousand dollars in free tackle, but hashtag hate the player, not the game anyway. Thanks to the magic of jifts, not only do you have the option to post a picture as a response, you can also post an animated picture which makes it like sophisticated or whatever. The critical thing to remember is that a gift is supposed to make people think. Don't be obvious. Here's a quick quiz. Someone throws up a shot of what they consider a hog bass, like a four to five pounder. The proper gift response would be a stone called Steve Austin chugging a gallon of milk. Be Kanye West clapping behind the words Kanye approves. See Mr Bean fainting and D Samuel Jackson and paulp Fiction saying look at the big brains on Brad. If you answered D Samuel Jackson and pulp fiction saying look at the big brains on Brad, you could not be more incorrect. The answer is C Mr Bean fainting. Why because it leaves room for interpretation. Is Mr Bean feigning because he's so impressed by your hog bass? Or is Mr Bean feigning because he's sick of idiots like you ruining the internet By posting small fish that you consider big You want the poster to lose sleep, ignore his alarm, and thus show a plate for his shift at Burger king hashtag only whopper you'll ever see. So that's it for this week. I throw it on fishing inc I hope this lesson gave you something to think about what you're sitting around the KOI pon you keep posting on your instant stories and remember the only appropriate gift response to anything by the Google squad is Jesus healing the sick. All right, I've said it before, I'm gonna say it again. I am among the large ranks of people who lose hope in the future of humanity every single time we bring him on the show Man Game over Man, Game over Strong. That's that's strong. I mean, maybe it's because I'm a total trouglodyte and I'm terrible at social media. I'd rather read words on dead Tree skin than screens. But I just can't find anything to like about that guy. I don't know, I hear what you're saying, right, but I appreciate the service he provides. Right, So everyone wants to know how to make it as an internet fisherman so they don't have to have a real job, you know. But the people who have done that successfully, they're not exactly given seminars and spilling their guts. They're not telling you the secret to just being an internet fisherman. So it's kind of like I don't really care about euro nymphing either, but I've had to edit many articles about it through my career because apparently other people do. So that's a fair point. And maybe Lance will become like the Tony Robbins of internet fishing. Who knows. I believe I've already once called him that he definitely is. And look luckily for you, though, like we don't. We don't keep you around for your social media prowess, so you're off the hook with now. We keep you around because of your deep and seemingly unending knowledge of fish species, which you are about to demonstrate in this week's edition of fin Clips. This is the part of the show where we profile a fish species, usually one we think is more interesting than most people realize. How much do you know about American eels? If you're like most of us, probably not much. Before sushi got popular here, the only use we had for freshwater eels was impaling their young for striper bait. These days, you can get barbecue deal over sushi race in all fifty states, and if you don't eat nagi, you're missing out. Seriously, it's delicious. Freshwater eels are also one of the coolest fish on the continent. Some people get hung up on the whole four ft long underwater snake look they have going, but don't rush to judgment until all the facts are in. I'm pretty sure Joe is going to tell me that I have it all wrong on eels, since once again the guy out west is trying to talk about an East Coast fish and the truth is that I've never actually caught a freshwater eel, but I have been really fascinated by them ever since I learned that they have mysterious orgies at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. But I'll get to that later. I might stress might have hooked an American eel once. I was fishing the Kennebec River in Maine catching cookie cutter trout on San Juan worms when I hooked into something that was most definitely not a foot long rainbow. It ripped downstream and had me nearly spooled before the line finally snapped. Later that night at the bar, I was having a few drinks and telling one of the locals the story about the giant trout that I lost that day, and after hearing my details, he told me that wasn't a trout. It was a goddamn eel. So even though I can't prove it, I'm saying I hooked the neil once and it kicked my ass. But getting back to the whole Bermuda triangle orgy thing, American eels, like their European cousins, are catadromous, meaning they live their adult lives and fresh water, but spawn in the ocean. Basically the exact opposite of salmon and steelhead. That makes studying their reproduction really challenging. So for thousands of years people have been trying to figure out exactly where and how Atlantic eels spawn. According to the writer Lucy Cook, whose book The Truth About Animals Is When You should absolutely consider reading quote, Aristotle was obsessed with eel genitals. Way back in the fourth century BC. Aristotle was hacking away at eels in his laboratory on the Greek island of Les Bus in a fruitless search for any evidence of genitalia. Since Aristotle couldn't find their sex parts, he concluded wrongly that baby eels emerge fully formed from what mud, no parentage required. Aristotle was far from the last person to invent an elaborate story to explain the genesis of infant eels. Try as they might, early naturalists could never figure out how or where eels reproduced. In the absence of real expan asians, they came up with some very creative hypotheses. Eels emerge from the gills of other fishes, from the fresh morning dew during certain months, from electrical disturbances, from the thatching of roofs after a rainstorm. They reproduce by rubbing themselves against rocks, and that quote the scrapings come to life. One medieval theory suggested that eels were the transmogrified forms of the bastard children of priests and married women fleeing persecution through shape shifting. These go on and on, and while it's always fun to laugh at the ignorance of ancient scientists from our smug positions in the future, the truth is that we still don't know for sure how big eels make little eels. But here's what we do know, or or what we think we know. Atlantic eels start their life as an egg, no bigger than a grain of rice. These tiny eggs suspend in the depths of an underwater forest and the Saragasso Sea, the deepest saltiest slice of the Atlantic Ocean, located smack in the middle of the me To Triangle. Over the next seven months to three years, they undergo two complete metamorphoses and travel four thousand miles to the rivers of North America and Europe. Once there, they wriggle upstream and bury themselves in substrate, eating absolutely everything that gets in their way, bugs, fish, mice, birds, whatever. Then, anywhere from six to thirty years later, they make the return trip back to the Saragasso, undergoing yet another metamorphosis and developing sexual organs somewhere along the way. Researchers think that once they arrive, they intertwine in giant wriggling bowls of mass population in the darkest steps of the ocean, but no one actually knows this for sure, because no eel has ever been tracked all the way to its mating grounds, and no wild fertilized eggs have ever been found. But why do we care, Well, besides the fact that most people like a good mystery, eels are important fish in American history, similar to the shad we covered in a previous episode. American eels fed both the Native people and the early Europeans in North America, although Turkey probably wasn't actually part of the first Thanksgiving eels were. Today eel stocks are crashing in some places by as much as due to the same things that are hurting so many other migratory fish damns over fishing and pollution. If we understood eel sex, we might be able to better manage our stocks or breathe them in captivity and take some of the pressure off wild fisheries. This isn't even close to the full story on freshwater eels. To learn more, including the heavily armed gangs that are running the illicit eel trade, check out the story I wrote over at the meat eater dot com called Barroom Banter Mysterious Eel sex in the Bermida Triangle. I just feel the need to to ask, man, like, why do you always take the East Coast species for this? Like you know that is my turf and uh, I just you know, stay in your lane, man, what do you know? What do you know about eels? You just admitted that you've never caught one? Well, I know, I know that they're delicious and creepy looking and everything else I read either in books or on the internet. So the delicious. I think it is debatable, Like I don't mind the sushi, but it's that it's all right. I don't know. But look, I know I used to catch I used to catch eels fairly frequently as a kid. But it's it's weird. It's really not that common anymore. And they're all dying. That's why I think they're dying because all the Italian stallions out here caught them up. Because I think somebody once told me eel plays a big role in their Christmas Eve dinners for people with ties to the Old Country. But I'll tell you what, dude, I'm gonna do a finc clips on Grayling or west Slope, east side, yellow orange, cut through whatever the niche species you have at they will see how you love kids. We'll go today. Man, I am fascinated by the things I can't have, like so many of us. Your Eastern all your Eastern species seem like weirdly exotic to me, even though they're totally normal to you. And you guys have you guys have legitimately cool fish man like, it's not all three eyed blinky's that nuclear wastewater outlets. So I think you should take this as a compliment and not get all annoyed about it. Well, no, it's it's a lot of those though. I mean I could if you have you ever come out here and want three eyed, blinky nuclear fish, I know where to find them. Um. And you know, maybe it's only fair since Eastern anglers have been kind of exploiting your fish for generations. You know me. But we wouldn't do nearly as good of a job of exploiting those fish if it weren't for the fact that every what is it like, third person who lives in Montana is a fishing guide. Loo think those are the most those are the most recent stats, you know. And since that's the case, we have no shortage of fishing people to call when we're bored and want to ask stupid questions, which we're about to do. It is time for trivia. You gotta be highly skilled for these shows. You understand that if the fire are you well? First? Are you very smart? Man? All right? It is that time where we get to play a trivia game. Everyone's least favorite trivia game because there's nothing to win, but you're probably gonna lose your dignity today we are playing with our our friend Kinsley Scott and uh and and I'm gonna ask her a couple of questions that will probably bring down everybody's i Q, but hopefully we'll have a little bit of fun with it. Thanks for agreeing to do this, Kinsley. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, so you're feeling good. Yes, we'll see how much I can embarrass myself. Your questions, I don't know what they are, so he has no idea. I have not a clue, and he doesn't get to know either. Um, for those of you who do not know, Kinsley is a guide who splits her time between Montana and Washington, so she does a lot of catching of the trouts, among other things. And she's a she's a pretty damn fine steelhead guide. And so this first set of questions, or this first question rather, Kinsley is going to be steel head specific alright, So you're feeling you're feeling strong on your steel head knowledge. We'll see we will indeed, all right, So steel head. And and just to be cleared, Joe, I'm talking about native range ocean run steelhead. I have no idea if what I'm about to say is true for Great Lakes fish. All right, I haven't left to do. It is probably not. Let's just clear that up right now. I'm not dogging on your fish. I'm just saying I don't know if this fits over there. I just don't know. Is velvita and and and shrimp oil eggs in your question somewhere? Well, I mean it's a favorite bait. That is a favorite bait out here that that's that's just oh yeah, okay, that crosses that crosses over your stead yeah steelhead, yeah yeah, alright, so this this part's effect. And then I'm gonna ask you some questions about why it is steel head have a higher percentage of females than males in their population, and I want to know why is that. I'm gonna give you a few options. You have to pick one, all right, So why are there more females than males. A, Well, the males are fat and they're lazy. So because some male steel head they just choose to hang around in the rivers, right, Since the impulse to head out to sea can be impacted by the amount of fat and efficious body, and male steel head don't need as much fat reserves as females. They just don't bother. They just they just prefer to hang out on the back eddie couch, eating cat as cheetos and watching river monsters. So so a is that it's because they're fat and lazy, be sometimes they're a little too enthusiastic about spawning. Steel Head can migrate back out to see after spawning, unlike Pacific salmon that all die, but the majority of steel head never make it back to the ocean. Historically, like sev of fish used to make it all the way back to the salt depending on where in the world they were, but now with the dams and habitat degradation everything else, that numbers more like one but that numbers even lower for male steel head. Whereas female steel head will only drop eggs once, some male steel head will just keep on fertilizing until they're so utterly depleted that they can't make it back. See. Male steel head are mostly unnecessary because one male can fertilize the eggs of many different females, and because resident male rainbow trout can also fertilize those eggs just as effectively as male steel head that migrated. Steelhead populations just don't need very many males to maintain healthy numbers or D all of the above. All right, So your options about why there are more females and males and steel head populations is A. Males are fat and lazy. B males are too enthusiastic about spawning, see males are mostly unnecessary. Or D. All of the above. There's truth and all of those. Um. Okay, So let me get this straight. A they're lazy. Hey, they're lazy. They don't even bother migrating. Be there too enthusiastic about spawning, so they essentially kill themselves. See they're not that necessarily in population anyway, so natural selection doesn't really need them. Or D. All the things are true. My gut is saying that D because there is truth in every every one of those. Um. Like you said, rainbow trout will fertilize reds for females. Um, I'm gonna go with D. You are correct. All those things are true. Yes, let me let me wipe the sweat from my forehead. Correct. Every single one of those is true, and all of those are reasons why we have more migratory females than males. All right, So you got your first question right. You should maybe relax a little bit here, you go irish up that coffee. Uh okay. So you you are from Montana, I know this, and as a Montana and you know how many just weird little creeks there are everywhere, right, And and there are some river and creek names that are just like it's like everyone just used the same one over and over there and they couldn't get creative about it. Right. I once counted the number of Willow creeks in Montana, and I now can't remember the exact number, but it was over twenty of bear creeks and rock Creek, Rock Creek. We got them in Pennsylvania, everywhere, It's true. But then there are those ones that go the other direction. Right. They're just so unique and weird that you can't forget the names, and you know there's got to be a story behind them, but you usually can't figure it out. So I'm gonna read you a list of river and creek names, and you tell me which one is not an actual creek somewhere in the world. All right? So is it in the world? Yes? So is it a pick a tooth creek? Be Murdering Hut Creek, see Peckerwood Creek, d Dwarfs kill Creek or e Rivie de ha ha. You want to hear him again? Impossible? This is impossible. Okay, there's I feel like the most ridiculous one has to exist because how would you? It's reverse psychology essentially on the question. That's a good strategy. I agree with that strategy. Yes, I need to hear him again. Is it a pick a tooth creek, be Murdering Hut Creek, see Peckerwood Creek, d dwarfs Kill Creek or e Rivie de ha ha, whoever, whoever? If that, if that truly does exist, they deserve a metal um. I. I'm going to have to go with maybe one of the more generic ones in the middle. I'm gonna just pick one because I can't even remember the first two. We'll go with. If she doesn't get it, let me take a shot. What was c again? See is Peckerwood Creek? I feel like that doesn't exist? And then D was dwarfs Kill Creek. I'm gonna go with murder Hut Murdering Hut Creek. B Joe, I think the fake one is Peckerwood Creek. God, I wish that were true. You're gonna win no matter what, because I actually couldn't come up with a fake name nearly as good as any of the real ones. They're all real, so you win. No matter what you peck on this one, there is no answer. I just had too much fun finding ridiculous creek names and putting him in there. Do you know where these places where they there are? Some of them are in uh so. The last one was in French Canadia, and know that a couple of them were Australian. One was in Pennsylvania. I believe, I can't exactly remember. At this point, I should have written all that down, but I didn't. I just had too much fun coming up with those titles. But see, I figured they could all be real too. But I figured, if he's gonna stick one in, he's just gonna throw out pecker. Would I wish I had? I think that's a little our trivia. Our trivia segment is based on trust. Okay, the trade, Yeah, you won, you can't lose. This is a not lose not there's no way you can lose it. This one. You got them both, you got full credit. Okay, Well, then, since when did trivia become teball where we all get a trophy? Today? When I was driving. Thanks for letting us just be manipulative and mess with your head, Ginsley. We appreciate it. Thank you. That was bullshit. Come on, you cannot do that. It's the whole world God crazy about the only one right here gets a gun about the roll. You cannot do that going forward, I forbid it. I can, and I did. When you do trivia, you can write whatever questions you want. Is our show, and we control the laws of reality in this tiny, tiny little universe of ours. Except in one segment, where Fill the engineer is all knowing, all powerful, and all deciding. It's now time for us to genuflict and grovel at his heels in the hopes that we are the shows. In one it's time for fish news. Fish news. That escalated quickly, so before we kick off fish news, which, as a reminder, is a competition, Miles and I don't know which news stories the other feller has dredged up, uh, and a winner is declared by the infallible audio engineer of ours Phil at the end, we do like to use this space to give a and shout out and such one appropriate time to time. And I must say at Miles, I don't I don't know if you've been seeing this, but I've gotten quite a few notes about bushy figurines since your aushy story a few weeks. You've got some stuff. The story seems to have resonated. It appears that the folks are into that one. Yeah, and almost to the point where I feel like there's a lot more people actually fishing bushies out there than we even realized when when you broke the story. I would agree. So I just just wanted to point out that that that you guys love bushies. Apparently. In fact, listener Jeff Caldwell even wrote in to tell me that there are Misfits bushes available because apparently true. No, well, actually I got all excited right because I'm a huge Misfits fan, thinking they'd go great next to my Misfits bobble heads and um custom Commission Danzig bust I have carved out of imported Italian marble. But actually I looked it up and that's that's not correct, Jeff. There are no Misfits bushies that I could find. Um, So if you know something I don't and they do exist, as please send me the link. But quick side note, and my miles I told you about this, I just have to share it. A good friend of mine, Mick Trump, and recently sent me a custom Misfits popper popper head with the skull. Yeah, you showed me those photos that looks amazing. I put them on Instagram, and freaking Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, the guitar player of the Misfits, shared my fly photo in his Instagram stories. So I went from last year ever to best year ever, just like that with one share. So how about that? We've peaked me and Doyle. Uh So, while while I'm officially having a good year, now, I'll jump in and say, not long ago, the police and wearing Massachusetts were having a particularly bad day, and I love the story of their torment. So we'll kick it off here. Here's one from the New York Times headline, Massachusetts town begs residents to stop calling about fish. Okay, which doesn't That doesn't tell you the good It's a good headline, but it's it doesn't really doesn't really sell it yet. So I'll read a little bit. I'll read a little bit here. Uh. Some of the calls reported an injured seal. Others said they had seen the shark Still, others implored officials to help what appeared to be a stranded fish. By early afternoon Monday, dozens of people had called emergency officials and wear them on the southeast coast of Massachusetts. The town's department dispatched two officers to investigate. So what did they find? Well, it says they soon discovered that the odd looking creature lulling in a cove off Buzzard's Bay was no cause for alarm. It was an ocean sunfish, an enormous blob like creature that eats jellyfish, has a dorsal fin that, to the untrained I can resemble that of a shark. Now, you grew up in Hawaii, right, so probably you know them as mola mola. Correct? Right so? And frankly, all the off shore dudes I run with we always called amla's when we saw them. Um, but yeah, it's cool, Yeah, I don't know. We we also say mahi more even though dolphin is more the East coast thing. I just gravitate to the Pacific terms. Apparently, me and my friends ocean sunfish, mola mola Okay, same thing. But see, the calls did not stop, and the town ended up getting so frustrated that they had to issue a plea on their Facebook page begging people to stop calling, adding in the post, it is not not in all caps stranded or suffering. The sunfish is fine, fine in all caps, then following that in all caps all the way through. Please stop calling the police department about the sunfish. And there's a there's a there's a great quote in here from Whereham's harbormaster Gary Buckminster that reads, we get it, he added, referring to the concern residents had expressed. But one one isn't a good avenue to report fish that are swimming around. That's what I was thinking this whole time, the police, Like that's anybody who's I mean, I get not being familiar with house a particular critter reacts or you know, behaves and and expressing concern. I can I can get myself there. But then that your first thought as well, I better call the cops, Like you don't understand the function of the police department at all. If that's what you did, and not even the local number of the police, We're just gonna go. We're just gonna go straight to UH one. But now here's why I'm surprised, right, And this story even kind of echoes my surprise later on. And you might remember this. Back in two thousand fifteen, two schmos fishing on a boat up and mass encountered a giant sunfish, a giant mola, and a video this encounter, and it went super mega viral because they were so confused about what they were seeing. Uh, this is the infamous baby whale video. Right. So here's a little mash up we put together as a refresher. It's a baby whale. Man, we gotta call the aquarium of something to it. You want to try to pull it in, Let's look it, j J. We could get some big money for that. If it's a fish fight. Come on, let's plow up next to that ship. Role, let's help it. Uh. And And as we now know, it was not a baby whale. Ja. Every time I hear that, I cannot help but crack up like it's it's old news. Now. It's been around for years, but that one still makes me laugh. That video never gets old. So it was not a baby whale, nor as they suggested, a flounder, nor as they later suggested, a tuna. And it was not in distress nor valuable. You'd actually have gotten no money for it and possibly find had you brought it back to the dock. But I kind of thought the world saw this video right like. It ended up on news channels all over And even if the world hasn't seen this video, hasn't everyone in coastal Massachusetts seen it? You know? I would think apparently not. But I mean, hell, J and Companies spent a full seven minutes essentially answering all the questions and ruling out all the possibilities that people were flooding the local Wear and p D with last week. It would have been so good of the Wear and p D could have put together like a similar mash up like what what you did and just played that out to people. I think that would have been a better response. Actually, I just I just I'm shocked that there's that you know that I don't know. I will say this though, I bumped into tons and tons of molas off shore over the year, and they are one freakishly bizarre fish. They're very weird one in person, they're weird looking. Yeah, and I think this is what happens most of the time you see him way off shore, But every once in a while they just sort of ride the wrong current or whatever and they end up real tight to the beach. But they look like an evolutionary accident, like someone was like, whoops, screw that. We'll just let it. Oh, we'll do better when we start working on the billfish, you know. And they're and they're just they're so clumsy and goofy, and I've always known what they were, but man, like, those big old things they got have given me and many a shark crew heart palpitations because they come up at a distance, way out there in your slick and you're like, oh, ship, but it's just it's just old dope, you know, swimming and hoovering pieces of bunk er chum, and you feel bad for him. I'm like, I feel bad for you. You're you're weird. This is your life. But anyway, there you go. It's a sunfish. Jay. Stop calling the police. They're busy arresting your friends for throwing hands in the parking lot at the Cumberland Farms. Oh. I love that story, and it teas It teased me up nicely because we're we're on the subject of evolutionary accidents, and I'm just gonna run with that one. And I'll look at I'm kind of stepping into a little bit of Joe territory here, but I just couldn't let this one go, all right. And I don't know about you, man, but when I hear Isle of White, I immediately think of Jimi Hendrix. I think of the posthumus album that was recorded when he played at the Island of White Festival just weeks before his death. And I gotta say that's possibly one of the best versions of machine Gun ever laid down, hands down. But I have to go listen to that now, like it's been years. It's good. It's good. But this next story like gives me just a little bit of a slight, slightly new association with the island that sits just south of the UK and the English Channel. British angler Jason Gillespie was fishing just off the Isle of White when he caught something unprecedented, a completely white tope shark. Now, I gotta admit, I've never heard of a tope shark before. Are you familiar with these? Uh? No, is the short answer. I feel like I've heard that name before. Unlike last week we mentioned a gulper shark. Like, I don't know what the hell, but I feel like I have heard of tope shark. It's a new one on me there. I couldn't tell you what it looked like or anything, but they're also called school sharks snapper sharks, and this one kind of fits soup finn sharks, which pretty well explains why they are critically endangered. Delicious tope sharks max out at about seven feet in length, and they're normally bluish gray on their backs and flanks and white on their bellies, you know, just like most sharks. The specimen that Gillespie landed, however, or Gillespie excuse me, was a mature adult tope shark, completely bone white. And if you look up pictures of this thing, it's it's it's weird looking it. It looks a little like those creepy goblin sharks that leave live in like the super deep oceans. Not not the normal tope sharks, but this version of it has like a little bit of the goblin shark thing going on. Gillespie was quoted as saying, I've been fishing for thirty years and I've never seen anything like that. It's the fish of a lifetime one in a million. He wanted to say that a friend of his claimed to have caught one before, but he didn't think that albino sharks could survive into adulthood. He told the British news agency s w N S quote. I think generally if they lose their color, they struggled to survive because they don't have the same camouflage and they can't hunt as effectively and they get picked off by predators. Biologists agree, which the last beyond this point, which is why they hypothesize that the shark isn't an albino but instead lucistic. In other words, it wasn't born without pigment, but lost its pigment throughout its life. And for reference, Joe, I'll use one of your personal icons here, I think Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. And while that story is interesting and it's been widely reported, I actually have a follow up for it that that popped up after I had finished that one, and it's totally absurd. Uh. It's been a big week in albio shark news apparently. Um. Before I dig into this one, I have to mention that I can't confirm the veracity of what I'm about to say. It comes from the Sun, which isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity, but still, I just I had to do it. They report that an Indonesian vessel caught a quote larger shark in a net off the coast of Malaku Province into Asia. They do not identify what kind of shark it was, because that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is what they found inside of the larger shark, an albino cyclops shark fetus. Yes, you you heard that right. It's a baby shark with fully formed fins and body structure without any pigmentation, and one crazy ass giant eyeball right above its mouth. Now, this could be about as real as the National Inquirer scoop on undead Elvis and JFK Jr. Secretly hanging out at Trump rallies. But I feel like I just forget bat Boy. Do not forget bad Boy. Sorry about bat Boys there too, but I felt like I like, I came across it and I just had to include it since I apparently decided to cover the freakish shark beat this week, and man, it's it's creepy looking. Well, there was also something because I thought about it for a hot second and I didn't do it. There was also like a two headed shark something caught recently. I must have I would have covered as weird weird things. Maybe the sharks heard the you know, they heard that they're on the list for for the COVID vaccine, and they're like, we're gonna We're freaking out, man. I think that the amount of stress that they're experiencing is causing some serious deformities. I don't know. Well, the first one, though, the tope shark, is still the most interesting to me, And I mean I don't know. Obviously, anything that's an albino, regardless of species, we all know has a lesser chance of survival, right because it's just like sticks out like a sore thumb. But yeah, just it's not like it never happens. You and I have both seen the albino sailfish in the albino marlin, so that it makes you wonder if it was so rare for them to reach adulthood, as science is saying, being stark white like that, were they or did they have the Michael Jackson thing too? This is This is a good question. Uh, it might be lucistic, it might be albutism I think that just again, I'm not going to claim expertise here, but I think just in apparently the way that that shark lives, it's it's highly migratory and lives in the open ocean. So I think that that would be It's not like it's an ambush predator. It's like get hide anywhere. This thing lives in open ocean, and I think an albino shark migrating across massive open ocean is probably not going to do very well for very long. Yeah, it's just just my theory. Is it a deep dwelling shark too? You know, deep water species? Because I have to imagine after a certain point, right, I should actually know the math of exactly how deep. I mean, it would make no difference if you were an albino anymore. Well, that's why the goblin shark is is totally like has no pigment. They can pull that off because there's no light down there. But I don't think it's not that deep a dweller. Well, they live right next to one of those cookie cutter sharks. They're scary too. There's so much scary ship down there. Talk about it more. But I have one more comment, just because it's just it just popped into my head about the weird cyclops shark. You know, these stories pop up time to time about the sharks with two heads and this and that. Do you remember one years ago that was trout with two mouths? I missed that trout. I missed that one. And you know, like when you're a kid and you you slice underneath the jaw and then stick your finger in there and like pull the tongue out and the guts out, like if you're cleaning a trout to put on a campfire. Every which way I look at that photo. All it looked to me is like somebody slit that and separated it and opened that little tongue tab below the chin. But it was all over the news as a as a two mouthed, two mouth trout. This one could be just as real as that. For the record, I'm not claiming that this is real. It looks really creepy and it also looks like it could be completely fake. But I just had to throw it in there. Every time I see a two headed, two arms somehow, I'm always skeptical of it. Um. You know, I just I just don't take it at face value that it's real. But let me tell you what is real, the mullet toss. You know what the mullet tosses. Oh my gosh, I have so many theories on this, but I'm not going to take up the time making up stupid stupid ship. What do you got? Well, that's fine because don't think too hard because it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Okay, So this is some exciting news out of Orange Beach, Alabama from Fox dot com headline fish will fly in rescheduled Gulf Coast event mullet toss. It sounds yes, Well I have no I have never attended this event. I have been aware of it, um, And it's a big deal down on the Florida Alabama border. And it happens every year at the Florabama Lounge, which is a well known and popular drinking establishment slash roadhouse. Um. And this is right from the story. In this event, contestants throw dead fish from a point in Florida across the state line into Alabama, vying for distance records. So, as I've hinted at, don't think too hard. It is exactly what it sounds like. And of course it's mullet um that they're throwing, which I will say for anyone unaware, mullet are are a culturally significant species in that of the country, more so than than anywhere else. There's mullet festivals, you can buy smoke mullet on the side of the road and stuff like that. Uh. Now, normally the mullet toss happens in April, but Rhona Rhona squash that right. You attack on a few hurricanes in that area this season, plus constantly fluctuating state restrictions on how bars could operate, if they can be open, if they can't, and the mullet toss this year it kind of got sideline um. But you know, we can breathe a sigh of relief, fish hurlers because the event actually starts today October twenty three and runs all weekend. And in case you're wondering, just can we still get flights? I was just gonna say, think about what you're saying. Not only can we get them, we can fly first class for like ten dollars. Airlines emails me daily just like, please go somewhere, Please we'll pick you up at your house. We'll get you a limo to come to fill the airport, private jet just fly somewhere daily. I have to like say, like like you know, it's it's it's out of control. So yeah, um, we'd probably well, obviously we're not gonna catch today's festivities, but we can be there by Saturday night, you know what I mean. Um, And in in case you or anybody else is wondering. And again I'm not judging this information one way or another. It's just you know, because I like to be factual and give you all sides. Um. One of the bars owners uh says masks are optional, so there's that. Um yeah, And the same guy reminds us it's an outdoor event and it's usually breezy there, so you don't have to worry about the COVID too much. Though it does it does leave me wondering, right, Um, this could be we should go because this might be the mullet toss of the century. Records will be broken because I have to imagine you've got eight months of quarantine to just fling dead mullet around the yard like you owned your goddamn craft. If this is if this is your thing, that you and and we're laughing, but you know, there are certain people in this competition, like there could be a documentary. It's like, well, everybody comes in as fun, but old Billy Jefferson, he's the mullet toss guy. So you know it's it's It's kind of like how throughout Quarantine, I've magically gotten better at spinning deer hair. This could be a competition for the ages, all right, I have technical questions, yeah, and and maybe you don't know the answers, but I still have them. I may not. Is there like a particular Is this like the shot put where you have to you know, the mechanics of it are dictated in rules and there's only one type of tossing? Or can you throw these things however you want? You know, two hands over the head, underhand, throw it like a football whatever. It's just about your distance, like can you get a running start? I want there have got to be some rules around this. Okay, So I am not entirely sure about that, but I already have a feeling one or more people is going to write in after this episode and and tell us, though I will say and again, pardon if I'm wrong, but I remember covering this in a magazine years ago briefly, and I think it was just like, whatever you gotta do to get the mullet as far as you can go, Like you may even be allowed to make a giant slingshot, like I'm really not mechanical advantage is allowed. I don't I don't know. I don't know, and I should I should have gone further into that. But um, you know, mullet toss, which is interesting to me because mullet run fish wise, huge deal in the Gulf, huge deal in Florida, right, Um not so, I mean we were we just got over our mullet run here. It's just not as big a thing here because it never seems to coincide with any other fish. So it's like, oh dude, there's mullet all over. Yeah, but the stripers aren't here yet or this isn't here yet, so they just it doesn't have the same pun um. And I've never eaten it, but I've I've bought giant horse mullet at one of the seafood markets here at time or two of her bait, and to me, it is so pungent. I don't I don't fully get it, but I do know it's a big thing down there. I think it's like any greasy fish. If you smoke it, it's good. That's that's my understanding. I've had it in like a like a dip, like a smoke fish dip, and it was fun. Um here. I don't want to spend too much some my mulley because we're gonna run out of time, but I do have a couple of things I want to say. Molly get a bad rap in my opinion, and I know why I have cursed many mullet many a time, because if you're fishing for other species, particularly if you're in like shallow water fishing for neurotic species, and mullet show up to do that obnoxious thing where they just jump for no reason and they spook everything around you just you just you just hate them. But they strike me as one of those fish that I want to learn how to catch because they're really hard to catch, right, because they're plankton eaters and so micro hooks and yeah, I'm not first, but it's crazy. It's the weird tactical fishing rabbit hole that I could see myself going down that it's it's like a species like that that's super omnipresent but really really hard to to fool. Is exactly the kind of thing that I can get totally lost in and stuck on. I haven't done it yet, but I'm not ruling it out as a possibility for my retirement. That might be really to see you buying a little place on a back creek dock with there's no red fish, no tar, nothing just so, and you'd be happy. I would. I would, And I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot off of off of dead fish being flung through the air to another dead fish story. Um, but to get there, I gotta, I gotta. I want to. I want to go through a different lens. I'm curious, Joe, were you Were you a fan of the Far Side comics by Gary Larson? Were you? Did you ever get into those? I mean, I certainly know m I read a bunch, but no to say I was a fan devoted to him? No, No, Yeah, I loved him as a kid, like I really did. Like we had the books and I read them and even though you know, when I was a kids, some of them went over my head because some of them were kind of heavy, but I really liked them. And Larson actually did a number of fishing related cartoons, but the most famous of his fishing cartoons shows a couple of dudes fishing from a boat on a lake and in the background, several mushroom clouds rise from a nuclear attack, and one guy says to the other, I'll tell you what this means. Norm no size restrictions and screw the limit, right, And it's it's funny, but it's it's super dark humor. It's it's it's only funny because you don't expect that to ever happen, but it's it's kind of in a weird way, becoming a reality this fall in Colorado, except instead of nuclear holocaust, we're talking about record drought. Okay, well, well I was just gonna say too. I mean, not not entirely sure where you're going, but there were a lot of people early pandemic who had that vibe like with like they were like, when are there no limits? And I can just gonna start why can deer like those people existed the totally did. And I will just say right now, this story has nothing to do with COVID. Okay, yeah, none at all right. Now we are in what's being called a mega drought. More than forty five of the lower forty eight needs moisture real bad, and Colorado is getting hit particularly hard. The entire western half of the state is an extreme drought, and almost of the state is in what's called exceptional drought. One thing not so extremely tend being extremely extreme. I give us a night. Fish need water, but right now there isn't enough of it to go around. Some of Colorado's many reservoirs are being drained down to the point where they cannot support fish populations, so Colorado Parks and Wildlife have declared emergency fish salvages. Salvages mean a complete suspension of bag or size limits. Basically, it means that CPW has given up hope that fish will survive in these watersheds, and instead of yeah, instead of letting those fish go to waste, they let anglers come in and take as many as they can. CPW has enacted salvages at four different reservoirs, bar Jumbo, Pewter Ponds, and as of last week, Wahatya, though the salvage at Jumbo was recently rescinded to be clear as far as I can understand, the other ones are still gone. Fish habitat is not the primary purpose of Colorado reservoirs, or really any reservoir anywhere. They're owned and managed by irrigation companies. In a state that's mostly arid, reservoirs function as water catchment and retention systems. Colorado has lots of mountains. Those traps snow in the cold months. That snow then melts into rivers, but river flows are inconstant seasonal so reservoirs allow water managers like some insurance they can bank water, but that insurance will only go so far, right, Like, if a drought persists long enough, reservoirs get drawn down to irrigate crops and flush toilets and water lawns. And I'm not going to go off on an anti lawn rent right now. I swore I wasn't gonna do it, even though I really really want to. But just real quick watering plots of non native grass and arid environments because it looks pretty is way up there on the list of pointlessly destructive yet seemingly innocent stupid ship that people do. Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico. I am talking to you anyway. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not. I'm done. I'm done. That's it. I had and you know, and I even agree with you, except I don't feel like the sneers from my neighbors when my my ship's running wild. Yeah, I had to say something, but I just I don't. I'm not trying to get way off off topic. My point here. Fishing is a secondary benefit of reservoirs. So when the water needs exceed the water capacity, they get drained and the fish can either die of oxygen depletion or they can be put to some good use of food. So while I find this story a bit of a bummer and perhaps a harbinger of existential threat to the future of fishing in a hotter, drier world, I give Colorado Parks and Wildlife props. Instead of ostriching their way through this, they're recognizing what's going on and doing their best to let the public harvest as much of this resource as possible. And not only that, once water levels and lakes get so low that fishing becomes unsafe, right because like water, solo is just like this mud flat. You can't let people go out there. CPW will close public access, but they go in and try to shock out whatever fish are remaining and then relocate them to healthier systems. This isn't the first time CPW has had to declare emergency salvages. In two thousand twelve, Colorado experienced a similar drought the drains some of the same reservoirs, but through restocking and management, many of those fisheries were back in great shape by This is one of those stories that forces you to think about scale in a few different ways. In the short short term, anglers are stoked, they get to go fill their freezers. It's like that free for all pool seen in Caddyshack. In the slightly longer term, they're gonna lose some of their local fisheries, at least for a while. Those fisheries will probably bounce back in a few years. What happens after that will be dictated by temperature and precipitation and long term forecast of West It's not that great. Final point to consider here, though, is that all of these are completely unnatural fisheries. They are man made lakes stock with non native fish, manage for entertainment and harvest period that's it. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it somehow makes this whole situation feel just a little less tragic to me knowing that. Yeah, well, and a gut reaction to that could be very easily, especially if you fish one of these reservoirs. It's like, holy sh it, like like the place that I love is going away. But I think the overriding message here, even though we're all fishermen, um and you said it, reservoirs their primary function is not to create fishing and recreation opportunities for people. That's not what they're there for. And it is completely manufactured. It's a manufactured lake that at some point fish were stocked. And that's almost like a bonus for the outdoorsman. Lucky you if you have a reservoir that fishes really well and you have great access to Because where I live, and and this happens in a lot of the country, we have some reservoirs out here. You can fish most of them. You cannot most of the reservoirs, like connected to the Newark Water Shed that that feeds um New York City, like in North Jersey especially, Oh dude, you hear legendary stories of people like you know who hop the fence and and fish this reservoir, that reservoir, and it's like you know, Midwest smallmouth to the tenth power like nothing else you can find around here. But they are all under lock and key. They're they're they're protected because that that's New York City's water. You can't like they it's it's it's there for a purpose. So um I I I understand again that gut reaction of like, that's horrible to lose a fishery, but that's what these reservoirs are there for first and foremost, you know, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's a little different in certain like when you're talking about water management out west, and we can't get into this because we don't time, but there's a little there's some some issues there in terms of your gets having all the power. But in this particular case, when we're talking about the fish that live in the reservoirs that aren't native there, they were just really put and take fisheries that that's a different story than the perhaps native fish that lived downstream of those. Sure, anyway, a lot to you on there, Phil, Let's uh I pandered to you last week with the Pokemon story, and that didn't work. So this week I went a completely different direction, and uh, I expect some goods gonna come out of it. Buddy, I thought you had the shoeing with Pokemon too, but you did not. And now it's time to see who swayed the all powerful Phil this week. And as soon as he's done weighing in, join us for an extremely awkward family dinner and a poke in the eye with a sharp object in our sale bin segment devoted to idiotic online classified ads. M. I have to be honest. This week is a little tough for me. I keep hearing you guys talking about Oh well, I chose this story because I think Phil would like it. Oh, Phil likes video games, Phil likes Pokemon. Well, am I some lab rat to be to be prodded with a stick? Oh? Which which stimuli? Does? He respond? Tokay, no, No, I I am a person. I am a human being with an evolved brain. I will not be objectified and looked down upon like this anyway. Joe Sirmellie is the winner this week because I like the fish flying through the air. That was funny, but Why did you put the hand to pave You don't know what I'm getting, man, You didn't have to be to hurtful with me so angry? All right? This week on the sale band, I am running a two for a two for one special buy one get one free because I've got two items here that are definitely worth mentioned, but not because of what they are, just because of the descriptions. And we've got two terrific instances here of t m I within a sale post and I just love them. Okay, so I love I love a bargain for one to love a bargain for me. The first one I was tipped off to by my buddy John Fedorca, so shout out to him, who sent me a link to a Facebook marketplace item in old Bridge, New Jersey. And what we have is just a surf fishing combo. The title is just Tica ten ft six two or best offer, and Dud's got an old pen bait runner on it, which I assume is part of the deal. We wouldn't know, though, because the description simply reads two hundred oh bi oh. I don't fish anymore because my dad is a jerk. So there's that. I feel like this means a little bit of a marketing one on one class for the For the life of me, I can't figure out why you felt the need to include that information the sale description. He's like, well, I don't want people to think that there's something wrong with the item, so I tell my father. I just hope it's all resolved by Thanksgiving, you know, or considering Thanksgiving is a huge striper weekend. You know, Dan'll show up talking about the blitz he fished all morning, like sleeping beauty over here, couldn't get his ass up again, like it could be really ugly. He's like, you know what, Dad, I just sold that present you gave me on Craig's List. So that's one rod for sale because Dad is a jerk. And uh, we're gonna move on here to double our pleasure today. This one is on Facebook marketplace in Rumsen, Rhode Island, and the out of the post is giant fish one and we have a very nice sailfish replica. And tell you what, a hundred bucks ain't bad. A hundred bucks for a big sailfish like that not bad if it was around the corner. I'm looking at this photo. It looks like a decent mount It looks like a decent fish to catch you guys up, I only sent Miles the photo of this. I do not have the description. You do not know why it's funny yet. However, in the photo right there two chairs under the sailfish, and if you were to sit in either of them, your head would hit the sailfish. And the ceiling is I don't know, maybe five inches away from the highest point of the dorsal fin. Uh. And so to my eye, if I were a batman, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess the sailfish is hanging in a mobile home, okay. And my suspicion is bolstered by this description. If you don't have an eight foot sailfish hanging in your home, you don't know what you're missing. We normally keep tennis ball on its bill to avoid serious eye injuries. So wherever this is hanging, there's not really enough room for it to be hanging. And I could not help myself with this one, and I pined the cellar and I just said, uh, does the tennis ball come with the fish? I'm interested, but I've got serious safety concerns. And she wrote me back and just said, I will gladly have fixed the tennis ball to assuage any fears. Would you prefer a tennis ball with a squeaker? So she gave me a little like it would have been a tennis ball with a squeaker asshole, like would have made it even funnier. But she so she gave me a little ship back. So good for her. But like, if you're so proud of your sailfish mount, but it's hanging in a place where like it could take your eye out, I just that's that's very fun. I feel like there's a domestic dispute behind this one. And I don't mean in the violent or terrible way. I mean like in a we have a small home and you brought this into it and someone lost an eye or nearly did, it's got to go. It's it is highly likely because my home is not that small, and I'm looking at an eight foot tarp in on my wall that has been around for twelve years now and is still a domestic dispute, even though it's in my office. If my wife had her way, that would have never been in the home. So very highly likely. But that is your two for for this week two for one special. Remember we need your help in finding awesome sale in items. You guys have been doing a killer job of sending those in and tipping us off. Keep those coming to bent at the meat eater dot com. I just kind of want to reach out and do an intervention with that guy who hates his dad, Like, maybe maybe invite him down to the beach, tossed out some surf frauds, moderate a little toss the old pigskin around, you know, model healthy communication, use use fishing to bring families together. It could be like the anti politics, And I know you want to think that's possible, but really probably isn't man, it probably is. Side note though, I actually used to own the exact rod that he's selling, and it's a total piece of ship. The particular ticka he's selling was in my high school senior age price range, like it's sixty bucks, but somehow it still came with a lifetime warranty and five times in two years I sent it back snapped for no particular. It would just it would just randomly break, like mid fling just be throwing a plug and it would just snap. But um, dude, I mean that's how you learn. That's how you come to appreciate good gear and learn what to avoid. But it sucks having to do it through, you know, repeated frustrating trial and error like that. That's true. That that that is a frustrating part about fishing. But one way to help yourself out in that process, at least when it comes to lures, flies and bits, is to listen to our weekly end of the line segment, because you know, we're never wrong, never. This week, Joe is gonna tell you about a fly that an idiot can tie, but really smart fish will eat. Well, that's not loud enough. The Flashtail Whistler was designed by legendary fly angler, writer and photographer Dan Blanton in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies time frame. Now, just to rattle off a few of Blanton's achievements, he received the Federation of Fly Fisher's Lifetime Membership Award for outstanding achievements in fly fishing in the Silver King Award for contributions in saltwater fly fishing in and in two thousand nine, he was inducted into the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum Hall of Fame. Now, according to the Internet, where everything is true. Blanton originally designed the whistler to target stripe bass in the San Francisco Bay area, and the goal was to create a fly that mimicked a popular bucktail jig in the water. To achieve this, Blanton used a short shank hook which allowed all the bucktail extended past the bend to have a more fluid action in the water, and he also added lead wraps to the hook so the fly would fall nose down while the buoyant bucktail trapped air and lifted the tail, further enhancing that bucktail jig style action. As I understand it, it wasn't until just a little bit later that Blanton tweaked the pattern extending the trailing flash material well past the bucktail that we landed on the most common iteration of the flashtail whistler, which is still widely available today. And in case you didn't catch it, that also means the pattern hasn't really changed again in fifty years now. Of course, since fly tires loved to tinker and can never leave well enough alone, you can find whistlers incorporating modern synthetics and tied on a variety of hooks, but today we're talking about the O G whistler. The classic flashtail whistler features a set of lighter bead chain eyes, and behind them there's a collar of schlapp and feather, usually ray to simulate gills, which fades into white or yellow bucktail. Down each side you'll find a single grizzly hackle feather, and then that long tail of tinsel flash extending way out the back. We live in a streamer obsessed world, and sometimes I think the mark of a good streamer these days is related to how much skill and effort it takes to tie it. But it takes very little effort to tie a flash tail whistler. A matter of fact, anyone who got themselves a basic tying kit for Christmas can knock one of these out. While the whistler is hailed first and foremost as a salty pattern for everything from tarpin to snook to stripers, I got woke to its powers thousands of miles from where any of those fish live. It was on a pike trip in Saskatchewan on the Cree River system, and the trip was sponsored by Cabella's, which meant that every angler was giving one of their conveniently prepackaged pike fly sets. Now, like many serious anglers, I scoffed at the US right, like, thanks, guys, I appreciate it, but I doubt I'll be dipping into this little starter pack of basic deceivers and loosely packed hair bugs. Right. I mean, I brought five boxes loaded down with eight to ten inch buford head monsters man works of art. I've been crafting for months streamers with more material than all those kit flies combined. And it was around lunchtime on day one that my good buddy Ben Romans tied on the flashtail whistler from his courtesy Cabella's kit. Not for the record that the gym socks we were heaving weren't catching fish. No, No, quite the opposite. We'd been reefing on high thirty inch pike all morning. Ben just wanted to throw something a little less taxing for a while, and within fifteen cast that slender little flashtail got wolfed by a forty six inch northern and we thought, well, this is a fluke. This can't be right. But it was by the end of the trip. Five of the six forty plus inch fish we put in the net, eight a flashtail whistler. So effective was this fly that we even pillaged all the flash tails from everyone else's box and all that remained to them by the time we got on the seaplane to depart, where five short shank hooks with bead chain eyes and tattered red slapping collars. Now, I've caught countless pike as well as mahi mahi, lake trout, stripers and jack avow on flash tails since that trip many years ago, and it's a pattern that's always with me now on large predator missions, even if it's not what I tie on first. It has proven to be a great insurance policy when all those sexy Instagram photo where the meat flies aren't getting it done for one reason or another. The flashtail whistler is a testament to the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and you need not go broke to buy all the materials you need to make a fly that appeals to all the big nasties out there. Man, I'd tied a lot of whistlers sitting at my weather ports in Alaska. They caught I mean, they caught salmon, trout, pike, grailing pretty much everything. That's why I'm in that river. And best of all, I could bust out a dozen of those things after a full day of guide in, cleaning boats, doing chores, serving dinner, and washing dishes, even when I was exhausted and half drunk, like I could just get them done. The half drunk is key, because that makes it a guide fly. If you can tie the fly pretty ship faced, then then I then I consider it a guide fly. Absolutely anyway. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. And for those of you outlining a book report for English class, Miles is officially old. Okay. He can also tie a flashtail whistler totally drunk. Aristotle was obsessed with eel junk, and Australians have some crazy ass names for creeks. If you're planning to turn that heady knowledge in for credit, all we ask is proper citation. Give us some stars wherever you listen to our podcast, holler at some friends, write us a review or email. We promise we will not grade on grammar or punctuation. No, we will not, and yes, keep those emails coming to bent at the meat Eator dot com. We read and appreciate every single one of them. And remember, if you hook a big one. Don't be like Miles. Sacrifice your body for the glory, Sacrifice it for the gram.

Save this episode