00:00:02 Speaker 1: Which in Finnish actually translates to mud tropical stomp. Steve Austen, that would have been bad as yo, bro, I'll bring the case of Miller. You got the asparagus? Like, why? Who? Why is there asparagus and fishing? I just feel bad for the fish because it already lost most of its dignity getting caught by this dude and blind drunk. Good morning, degenerate anglers, welcome to Bent the Fishing Podcast. That can't even feign mild enthusiasm anymore when you hand off your phone and make a scroll through thirty five frames of your p B large mouth. I'm Joe Surmelli A Miles NULDI and and just wait a second, was that that PB thing? Was that just for Stephen Hella's benefit, because you know that's a pet pe of his right, you know, he kind of hates that. No, No, I actually had no idea he had a problem with the acronym PB. He's the boss, so I probably should have known that, but I don't know. I didn't. It never really bothered me. But just what bothers me is having to pretend I want to see tons of photos of it on your phone. This this right here, This, right here is why I don't go to barbecues with a bunch of people I don't know. Hold up, that's there's a legitimate bright side for the past ten months, because an barbecue is going down right like and and now these days when I run into people right as opposed to sometimes in the past, they don't just start handing me their phone to show off picks. Ever since, ever since that run on lisol wipes, that kind of that behavior just sort of shut down. You don't know, I'm not trying to be a dick, like I'm not, but I don't totally get it either, right, Okay, you caught a big fish. I'm honestly happy for you, Like legitimately, I'm happy for you. But unless the photos that you're showing me, like unless they're super unique in some way, or or you're using them to illustrate a point in a really good story that you're telling me, I just don't care. I don't I'm sorry. Okay, listen before I retort with a steaming cup of counter argument on what you're saying right now, just a quick friendly the reminder that the band podcast is fueled by Black Rifle coffee. If you like coffee and fishing, head on over to Black Rifle Coffee dot com back slash mediator to sign up for their coffee subscription service, then use the code mediator at checkout to take off your order. Plug done. Back to your little rant here, are you hating on gripp and grins in general or just when people show them to you uninvited? I'm confused? Uh, I guess it's a little both, if I'm being honest, all right, Like, I have a complicated relationship with gripping grids, right, and it's changed, it has changed over time. At this moment, like at this moment in time, I I can't believe what it says. I kind of think about them the same way I think about dick picks. All right, I have no problem. I have no problem with people taking all the grip and grins they want for themselves or loved ones or posterity or whatever. Would you superimpose the word dick picking that statement, like you, I have no problem how many dick yourself. This is all intentional, and if someone asks to see your grip and grins, then by all means share. But like I think, maybe we need to rethink this practice of just showing our grip and grins to people who have expressed no desire to see them. That's what I think. Yeah, but what you to find at the end there is social media and we and we know you don't like social media. And while I don't want to be subjected to random phone scrolling, I don't know. I you know, I feel beholding the social media to some degree, you know, and the Okay, look, you're right, I don't love social media. But here's where your analogy breaks down from me, right, because social media is it's voluntary. I can unfollow you if if I find your gripping and grinning like two egregious or or better yet, I can choose not to go on social media at all. Right, you're right, You're right, But I also, man, you, I think you're kind of not being realistic about this because just because you don't love hero shots, it doesn't really change the fact that big fish turn heads, right, Like our business is kind of about turning heads with big fish at times. Right, So I I get tired of both looking at and taking grip and grins. But like it's that or a close up, neither of which are original. And the gripping grins get way more attention and look like so I get annoyed with it too. I get annoyed with myself because I pose the exact same way in every grip and grin, whether it's shot by someone else or via the camera timer. And I hate myself for it. And I want to be creative and do something different. But after all these years, like my muscle memory goes right to rifle pose, I just go up, how just come out, just come up? And that's and that and that's my problem, you know. But my point is that you're not being realistic. And you're also forgetting about captains and guides, which is ironic considering you were once both of those. We had we it overlook that. And and they make money showing showing gripping grins, dude, like they do have more value than dick picks in my opinion, though maybe someone makes money off those two. I don't know. So yeah, all right, yeah, okay, look the Dick peck analogy, Uh maybe it's a little flowed. Maybe I went too far with that. I'll give you that. And man, like, just to clear this up, I take and I post gripp and grins Okay, Like I do understand that my my grape is my grape. Really, I think lies in the handing off the phone deal that we were talking about, like the being forced to see it. But to your point, like, let me get back to your point on on on guides and captains. I I struggle with that when I was guiding, Like I I actually hated gripping grins way more when I was a guide, I think than I do now, because I feel like they set people up for disappointment, right, Like all anyone sees on social media or anywhere in fishing media at all, really are these just huge giant fish? And so they show up, they show up to their day guided fishing, and their their expectations are dictated by Instagram accounts instead of reality. And let's just be let's just be honest. If you if you think your first day of trout fishing for the season is going to look like the fly Lord's page, you're setting yourself up for disappointment and it just makes for a terrible trip from the guide, for the client, for anybody. Look, all right, I'm gonna get off by soapbox and and be done with this. I think I think we've reached some sort of conclusion. Maybe I don't know. I don't know, but I think we need to move on to the fishing report. And this particular contributor does not care at all about this debate. Yeah, he isn't posting anything to promote himself because his guiding business is not what you would call legal. That is correct. You won't see picks of down the Road Darren anywhere. I mean, how we just bleeped his last name. He's so under the radar because he's got warrants out or something. But we're still gonna kick it over to our favorite South Louisiana Black Ops charter captain who's trying to keep himself moving forward despite the seemingly endless streams of hurricanes this season. Hey, y'all, it's down the Road Darren with the South Louisiana Fishing Report. Holy Mary, Mother of God, was that hilacious hurricane season. We had so many storms. They went through the whole alphabet with names and started picking some kind of weird Greek sound of names. They should have named them after the WWF rats. It was like Hurricane Hulk Hogan and Tropical Storm Steve Austin that would have been badass. My damn trailer got all torn up during hurricanes A to last month, so I'm currently shocked up in a tent and max old Lady Shantell's backyard. It's a less than ideal situation, but it's got it's perks. Sometimes I come home with a case of bush heavies and if I give her a few, she lets me use her microwave to warm up a can of ravioli. Anyways, the hurricanes did mess some things up, but the fishing is better than ever. The specle trout of gorging themselves on shrimp right now, and if you can find a good falling tide, you can catch a nice mess of fish. Head down the four Horse Lake when the tide's ripping, and toss some plastics anywhere you see your buy you emptying into the lake, that trot will be stacked up. It's gonna be a boat parade, So try to stay at two cast distance away from other boats. Some people got no respect these days, and they come up right next to you. My little pot in the Austin been going out to the lake front in the Wallans and throwing a cast net for shrimp. I went with him one night. Before we could finish a bottle of Taka vodka, we had already filled the ice chests up with shrimp. Chantel was pretty happy balled them shrimp the next day. She would have let me sleep on the couch that night if I hadn't got into an argument with her neighbor after my pit bull bit his laboratory retriever. Red fish are stacking up too, and you can find them all over the place right now. Get this, I saw a dude fly fishing for red fish the other day. That poor dude kept waving his own back and fourth and back and forth. I can't believe somebody will go through that much trouble when all you gotta do is toss out a dead shrimp under a popping cord and let the fish come to you, poor sucker. So that's the report for the fall fishing down here in South Louisiana. I still got some days available if you want to go fishing this fall. The damn mayor in New Orleans canceled Marty Guard this year due to the phony coronavirus, and I normally make a lot of money that time of year, so I gotta book as many under the table charter trips as I can. I'm trying to get my mama a new dryer for Christmas, and I may or may not have promised my boy Joey Campo i'd buy a jet ski. Anyways, I'll see y'all next time. I'll at me. So listen, all our stupid bsing aside. South Louisiana and much of the Gulf Coast is really coming out of what was a brutal, brutal hurricane season. And while while we know that's just kind of the way of life down there, life in the cone as they say, um, you know, people are dealing with some serious ship and trying to put the pieces back together. And I think it's just a good time, a good jumping up point to remind you guys that now is the perfect time to book a fishing trip. If you've been down there, you know the fishing is outstanding. That's so good. I mean, you spent more time than I but it's it's it's amazing. And even for those of you who aren't traveling right now, which I know a lot of you aren't, this is a great opportunity to put down a deposit with the quality captain and you can use that when you are traveling again, right, It'll it'll really help out some folks for scrambling, and it will give you something to look forward to, which is also beneficial. Absolutely, And we get hit up all the time by listeners looking for for captain recommendations, and we're always happy to help in that arena. Uh So, if you need a recommendation for a captain or guide in that area, hit us up. We'll be happy to point you in the right direction. I've spent so much time down there, I miss it dearly and my heart really does break for all my buds down that way after this cane season. Likewise, Yeah, and uh and since we're we're talking about traveling to fish, I feel like it's a good time to jump on over to fin Clips, the segment where we tell you everything you never wanted to know about fish you may or may not have heard of. And this week, Joe's diving into the details on a mythical whitefish that only lives in the Far North. She fish have been called the tarpin of the North, not only because they jump and pull like tarpin, but because they kind of look like them too. They've got dime sized, bright silver scales and a strong, extended lower jaw that, when unhinged, can suck up prey with a forceful vacuum, just like those poons. But tarpin are kind of sort of big gass herring. She fish, on the other hand, are members of the whitefish family. Matter of fact, they're the biggest member of the white fish family in North America, and I have been enamored with them since I was six years old. That was the year someone gave me a North American Fishing Club book all about the freshwater species in you guessed it in North America, because that's kind of their thing. But they're in the first few pages was a photo of a gent mean mugging on a pristine river with a sheaf fish. The book, however, said they were primarily known as in canoe, which translates into unknown fish and was coined by early French explorers, and the sheafish is native range. Per that book, where every species featured that little map of North America shaded to show you where said fish lived, she fish only lived way up at the tippy top of Alaska and Canada, and this made little me even more intrigued by them. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, today, she fish are most abundant in the kuska, Quim and Yukon River drainages, though there are a few other populations here and there in drips and drabs throughout Alaska, some of which over winter in brackish estuaries, technically making shea fish a nadromus, even though not all of them will end up in briny water. In fact, she fish don't really seem to follow any set plans. Many populations winter in the low ends of rivers within deltas and bays, than travel thousands of miles upstream in summer to spawn an eat. Meanwhile, other populations stand one place year round or migrate within a relatively small area. While long runners and homebodies are genetically identical, it is important to note that if you want to catch a true behemoth, like a fifty plus pounder, you're going to want to target the ones that winner closer to the coasts and make those monster runs in and around the coastal city of Seliwick just above the Arctic Circle in the northwest Arctic Borrow. As an example, sixty pounders are caught with relative frequency. Just you know, dress warm and if you insist on a Wendy's baconator after you fish, you won't find one there now. A rare trade of the shea fish is their rapid growth rate. Usually fish that live in icy cold water grows slowly, but inland fish can reach sixteen inches by the age of two and fourteen pounds by age eight. Meanwhile, while the coastal fish grow slower than the inland fish, they can get much bigger, and studies have shown that they live much longer than inland fish, up to twenty years to be exact. Historically, she fish usefulness didn't really go beyond feeding the natives and their dogs, but their appeal as a target is growing year over year among anglers. Alaska Locals target them with everything from live bait to lures, and they even get some big uns through the ice. Though their popularity is rising with the flybros in particular. And that's the segue I'll use to get us to Fairbanks, Alaska. In July nineteen, where I was doing some pike fishing on Minto Flats with my bud, Trevor Smith, I honestly didn't even realize I was in she fish territory until Trevor brought up that a client had lucked into one on a spoon this season before. He'd been guiding the area for a few years and it was the only one he'd ever seen. And I lit up, but was quickly extinguished when Trevor told me they were ghosts, man wanderers, very hard to pattern. Here in one spot one day and gone the next. Yet the next day, while fishing a confluence of two creeks high about ship my pants when what I thought was a big pike rolled over and revealed those silvery sheat fish flanks. Trevor, she had his pants. My friend John Frasier, who was along for the ride, ship his pants and with soiled trousers. We all reveled in disbelief at our amazing fortune. We went two for five on she fish over all on the fly in that same spot during the next hour and the next day, just as Trevor predicted, the ravenous school was gone. It was a fleeting glimpse, but still it allowed me to finally close that chapter of the North American Fishing Club book I've been drooling over for thirty one years. I am legitimately jealous that you've caught a sheep fish. I'll also say you definitely deserve that one more than I do, because I have not been dreaming about them since I was six. I don't know how like that's amazing, I don't. I don't think I even realized they existed tells in my twenties. But still they just look like such a cool fish. I hope I get to catch one one day off. It's super cool and and very strong, and it's um If anybody here fishes in the southeast, it's a very snook like eat and the water got They've got like snoop like looking mouths, don't they do they? You know, people call them tarp in to the north that I see the similarities there and looks for sure, But if you really look at their head, I thought it was very snook like jaws right. And the water where we were fishing when this creak came in was murky, and it was you could just barely track your fly a few inches under the surface, and these things would ghost up out of the mark and just just suck it in and go ballistic. And I have no wall space left in my tiny home office, which is the only room in the house that is allowed to have fish mounts hanging in it. But if I did my god like that, I'd commissioned a new wood carving or replican. So badass, oh so jealous. You have clearly you clearly bested me this week in terms of life fishing goals. I will, I'll give you that. But uh, let's see if I can make up some ground, maybe even even the score a little bit in fish news. That escalated quickly. All right, Let's do a little housekeeping here, shall we before we throw down the news gauntlet. Um, we don't have much for you this week other than and then a holiday message of sorts. Um. That is to say, we know Christmas is next Friday, but Bent Bent doesn't have off for Christmas. So uh no, In case you were wondering, Yes, we will be dropping the show next week. Matter of fact, we're calling it something along the lines of the Bent Christmas extravaganzas special, spectacular, something like that. We haven't quite figured it out yet, but spectacularly special for sure. Yes, move over being Crosby and the twenty four hour you log on TV make way for for this bullshit. But we did have a ton of fun putting it together. And listen, while we don't expect everyone to tune in on Christmas Day because you know it's Christmas Day, just letting you guys know it's coming, and if you catch it later after Chris is perhaps it will extend the good tidings for you or something like that. To steal a line from from Scrooged, you'll love it. Couldn't help myself, couldn't help myself there, all right, My my housekeeping this week is also kind of Christmas Eve, but it's it's it is simultaneously a bit of shameless self promotion, and that's not something I'm usually comfortable doing. But there's a chance you might still need a Christmas gift, and if you order like right now, it might actually get delivered. Now there's a chance you might get in time. The powers to be have asked me to inform you of a book title that is now available at the Mediator website and nowhere else. This is not a new book. In fact, it's it's more than a decade old. But it's one that I have a soft spot for because I wrote it. The book is called The Alaska Chronicles, an unwashed look at life, work and fly fishing. And if you've ever wondered what it's actually like to work as a fishing guy at a remote wilderness camp, uh, this book will answer all your questions. And if you're thinking about becoming one, don't read the book, or definitely do read the book. Liked the truth? Is this? The narrative in that is so honest that I had to change all the names of everybody in the book and obscure the location. And despite all that, my former employers still tried to sue me and the publisher over the book, but he failed and his loss can be your game. So this is the second and final printing of the Elastic Chronicles and all remaining copies can only be found at our website. So if you need a Christmas gift, go check that one out. There, you go Miles book. Check it out, and while you're there, grab a mediator fishing sticker, because we already know that the cost of a single sticker, when it's the same as the cost of the shipping, is prohibitive to you buying a single sticker. Some of you have reached out, we know, but you're gonna be there buying Miles book anyway, tack one on. Okay, so let's get to news. Um. As most of you know by now, this is a competition. Miles and I do not know which news stories the other dude has found. And at the end of it, our engineer, beautiful Phil, he's a beautiful man. He's gonna weigh in and declare a news winner and and make one of our our holidays brighter. And it is your week to lead off, sir, so that it is all right. My first story comes from the ICE's Journal of Marine Science by way of Coastal Review Online, and they dug into a study recently conducted on popular fish species off the Carolina coast. One of the ways the biologists monitor fish populations is through tagging. Right, They catch fish, put tags in them, release those fish, and then see if and where they pop up again. And this is uh, this is one area where anglers actually can participate in meaningful citizen science. Right If if you catch a tag fish, whether you harvest it or you release it, man just report it, full up your local manage an agency. It's not hard to do, and it really matters. It's something we can all participate in to help keep track of and manage our fisheries, and it's it's really really helpful that actually does make a difference. So anyway, these agencies collect all these data about different fish species, both from their own capturing release and from recreational and commercial fishermen reporting tagg fish. The authors of this new study that I read looked at tagging information on several different sport fish from recent years, and they reinterpreted those data through a statistical modeling method that I do not understand, and they came up with some yeah, yeah statistics, and I it's like magic anyway, but they came up with some interesting conclusions that I do feel like I can speak about a little bit. The big takeaway is this fish are getting caught and released far more than had been previously thought, up to seven times for an individual fish, and that has some pretty significant implications for how we look at tagging studies. So first, here's the bad news. This might mean that we're overestimating fish stocks. Fisheries managers use information on tagged fish to estimate how many of a certain kind of fish live in a certain area. Right, So the managers know that X number of red grouper are tagged in a particular area in a given season, and that why number of those tag grouper are caught and reported. They then make guesses about how the whole population is doing based on assumptions about fishing practices, angler efficiency, and beliefs about fish mortality. Well, this new study seems to be showing that some of those assumptions might be wrong. Over the past few decades, catch and release has become a lot more prevalent, but the methods that are used to interpret population data haven't necessarily caught up with that trend. So managers might be assuming that a higher percentage of fish are being kept than actually are, and that might make them guess that the overall populations are higher than they actually are. All right, So, so there's the bad news. But here's the good news. It seems like released fish survive at a higher rate than previously thought, at least the ones that make it through their first interaction with hook and line. According to Dr Jeffrey Bucknell, one of the researchers who worked on the study, quote, the proportion of released fish that survived appears to go up after the first release. Bucknell went on to explain this is counterintuitive. We expected that the effects of capture, including hooking, handling, and pressure related trauma would be sort of cumulative, and that fish are more likely to die after perhaps the third release compared to the second. But that's not what they found. It seems like fish that survived being hooked and tossed back once have a better than average chance of surviving that encounter again. And here's where I'm gonna get totally unscientific and make a guess about why that is. My guess would be that this is an example of catching and release fishing influencing natural selection, and that we as anglers are impacting the dynamics of the species that we fish for. The individuals that are not fit enough or adapted well enough to survive catching, release fishing, or dying the first time they get caught, and the ones that can handle that trauma are surviving and going on to get caught again, as well as maybe passing those traits onto future generations. So we might be pushing natural selection to favor fish that can survive catch and release over and over again. That was a very long limb that I just stepped onto. I'm gonna gonna admit that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna hear from some of our listeners who actually are biologists telling me that I took that line of thinking way past what the actual data can support. I was gonna say, I was listening to going, man, this makes a lot of sense, and had to remind myself that, like Miles, is just kind of making this part up right now, Yeah, that wasn't in the story. Nope, nope, And and I'm gonna welcome all those future emails that tell me how wrong I am. But lucky for me, this is a fishing podcast and not a peer review journal, so I can do exactly exactly. But just to sum this all up again, mixed news on this study because it might mean that that our fish stocks are actually smaller than we think, but the catch and release fishing might also have less detrimental impact than we thought. I got a stress though, that it's a pretty small sample size this This focused on four species of fishing one geographical area of off Carolina coast, so I'm not trying to draw too large a conclusion off of it. But I found it pretty damn interesting, I gotta admit, Yeah, so I had I had heard something about this and I think another one was black sea bass was a part of this black red grouper. And yeah, I mean that that's sort of the only thing like that side of it is interesting and uplifting that we might actually be toughening our fish up because we care more about them and let more of them go. Right. It's like, you know, get beat up on the playground once. Next time dude comes after you, now you're gonna start swinging back. But again, like you said, like looking at the sample size and these types of fish, these are already in my opinion, at least some pretty hardy wreck and reef dwellers. That's what I mean. Like group bres are tough ass, hearty ass fish. So if we could, if we get down the line, like does this tie in or lead to like um, tougher brown trout, tougher rainbow trout, you know what I mean? It could I mean if if if your theory, which again is just the theory. Now now we're like we're expanding on the part of it that was like not the science, but not at all. I I just can't help I can't help myself because it would just seem like if it worked there in that small, that small group. You know, why wouldn't it work elsewhere? But I guess you could already say that nobody's seeing much evidence of that on on trout streams or anything either, you know what I mean. Like, but it it's also not counted, So how do you know? I mean, that's the thing. It's only count in certain places, right, And I know of one study and this is just one study that was done years ago on yellowstone cutthroat trout in the Yellowstone River, and they found that a lot of those fish actually got caught up to seven times a year because cutthroat not that smart and it's enforced catching lease fishing for Yellowstone cutthroat on that stretch of river. You can't keep them. So I think I'm not I'm not making that leap over there, but I am going to say that that some people have found in some studies that they're surviving and getting caught more often than we may have thought. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. And the only other thing I'll add to that, um, you know, because you had mentioned like, hey, people, you know, if you catch a tag fish, do the right call it in? Like is there for? To me, it's like a badge of honor. And I've only ever caught one tag fish in my life and it was a striper and I was like, oh my god, there was the tag right And I didn't keep that fish. I didn't even take the tag off, but I recorded everything real quick and like I couldn't wait to call. I was like, where has this fish been? I'm just dying to know how far did you go? And then they were like, oh, yeah, we tagged it yesterday and I was like, oh damn it. I've got a couple of tag fish. And now since you've always got your phone with you, it's super easy. You just take a picture of the tag and like the write anything down. So simple. Um. Yeah, I actually caught one of those Yellowstone cut throat in the Yellowstone System one time and reported that and I was not the first person to catch it that season. And then a bone fish and hoii those are my two tag fish. Excellent, excellent. Well, here's what I'll say if if if you're interested in catching the same fish multiple times, maybe, um, in order to do that, you know, it's you have to think outside the box in terms of the baits you give it, because maybe it's senior ship too many times. So that's my that's my segue into this very what I think. It's a very fun little ditty that I found on the website of Ohio's Country Journal, and the headline is simply odd fishing baits, which is not a good headline. Great story though, and it's by Dan Armitage and up front right, it gives you a little background on the app fish Brain, which I'm sure some of you are familiar with, um, but in case you're not, this is right from the story. Fish Brain is said to be the world's most popular mobile app and social network for people who enjoy angling. The free to use app, with more than ten million users worldwide, helps create the best possible fishing experience by providing everyone, whether beginner or pro, with the tools, insights, and support to enjoy the world's most popular sport. UM. I'm certainly familiar with it, but I'm also not on it, so to be honest, I can't really speak too much to the inner workings of it because I'm not there. I will say I know some people that love it. I know a whole lot of people who despise fish Brain because they say it's there's no greater spot burn tool on the planet. But for the purpose of this story, that's that's neither here nor there, right. Fish Brain recently called on that huge user base to tell them the weirdest bait they ever used and what they caught with it, and apparently they got such a huge response that they were able to whittle it down to the top five categories of unconventional baits, which are candy, meat, chips and crackers, fruits and plants and leaves, and finally fast food. Okay, so now those categories are not overly surprising in and of themselves, but the story pulled some user quotes within all those categories, and I have I'm gonna read some of my faiths. Note that I'm excluding the candy category because, as you might get, that was all just gummy worms. Like, yeah, okay, gummy worms. I would I would assume it was all marshmallows. No, well, I'm sure marshmallows fell into candy. I'm sure that was part of it. But the quotes they pulled for the story, none of them were marshmallow. They were all gummy bears, gummy worms and stuff. So here's one from the meat group. I've been catching catfish in the lake in my neighborhood with Sam's Club corn beef lunch meat that's from Brectal fishing family in Florida. That one I found oddly specific, like boar's head. Corn beef only catches the litlans. You gotta have the Sam's Club. Okay. From the chips and crackers category, barbecue flavored ruffles caught me some little brookies and cutthroat. I dub Angling from Alberta, Canada said, um, I mean that sounds like wild brookies to me. I sprinkled some chips out there. They'll come eat um balsamic vinegar triskets for carp Matt Buell in New Mexico. That's a waste. Those are too delicious. They are, my friends, my favorite trisket right there. You can't use that for the carp bait we got. My dad once caught a blue fish on Derrito's that's from a dude and Western Mass and that's a blitz scenario. That's just one of those scenarios where they're frothing the water and hit anything that moves right, and we got one. I've seen someone catch snapper on asparagus in Florida. Why was that on your boat? Yo, bro, I'll bring the case of Miller. You got the asparagus? Like why? Who? Why is there asparagus? And fishing? And lastly, I was in Key West not too long ago and caught Atlantic Spanish mackerel on a Wendy Spicy chicken sandwich. The whole sandwich. Well, I'm gonna assume it's another Blitz scenario, right, and it's pieces of the sandwich. I think it's funnier to think of a Spanish mac eating an entire Wendy sandwich. Um, but I thought this was fun. And if you break it down though, right as I've already hinted at all, these scenarios aren't really that impressive because like brookies and blue gills eating French fries and like fired up salty fish, they will take a shot at anything they think is food or that moves right. In certain cases I've seen it. Maybe. I once fed a whole tomato and two soggy ham sandwiches and the cooler from the day before to a school of ravenous anita in Louisiana. Just like whatever slapped the water, it got eight catfish. There was a lot of catfish stuff in there, of course, like you know, they're kind of vacuum cleaners, but I doubt there were entries like I caught at muskie walking the through wired subway Italian b n t over a weed top, like you know what I mean, um exactly. So I think it's I think it's it's cool and funny to to sort of hear some of these things people wait in with. But it also got me thinking, like, what's the weirdest bait I ever used? And I would have to say, for me, it's it's play though, which I'm betting some people submitted. It just didn't fit in one of those categories. And dude, it's been a long time. But if you think about it, it's essentially power bait minus the scent. Right, it's totally bald ugradable, comes in any color you want, and you bawl that up and you have ever real nice little stocker trout bait. And I can't say that it out fished real eggs or power bait, but it did work. So that would be my contribution to weirdest bait. Uh Man, I don't I don't have a really weird one off the top of my head. The catfish one made me think when I was a kid, we used to fish a lake for channel cats and we would use beef heart because it was cheap. Right, beef heart was way cheaper than that lunch meets expensive, like beef heart for next to nothing. So definitely used a lot of that. And I remember one time, much later in life, I was on a fish and trip at this this beautiful trout stream in the middle of this this gorgeous area in uh In, Argentina, of all places that I got lucky enough to go to. But it got hit pretty hard and we were getting our teeth kicked in. We we caught a handful of fish, but we didn't hardly catch anything. And we're just finishing up lunch at the spot and the guy's like, hey, watch this, and he starts frisbeeing out chunks of bread into the current, and these giant trout just start boiling everywhere. And I couldn't. I could not convince those fish to eat anything I threw at them. But man, you whip a chunk of bread out there and get a good dead drift and they would nail it. Oh man, did that in the experience a little bit little you had to look at those fish differently after that a little bit. Yeah, kind of messed things up for but I had a great time. It was still a lot of fun, but it was it was also pretty frustrating. I just say, I just say, before you move on, if if anybody else out there has has used some really weird bait ship hit us up, I'd love to hear about it. Absolutely shot you out. So I mean, I guess the only connection I have from that story to mind things that don't belong in places where they end up is as close as I'm gonna get. Wasn't that a sesame streets segment? One of the one of these things just doesn't belong here like the other do some counting to one terrible story? All right? My My next story was spurred by an email we got from listener Katherine Williamson. She caught my attention, but you know, also kind of on me out. She wrote. I was walking back to my car and taking a fishing break. I stopped a little doc a favorite and popular fishing spot, when something on the far bank caught my eye. At first, I thought I was seeing a dead branch hanging from a tree. When I looked closer, I realized one it was an owl hanging by its wing, and two it was alive. Oh yeah, So the owl was entangled in fishing line that was attached to a crank bait that someone had broken off and said tree. But Katherine, you know, being the person that she is, clearly was upset and went out there and tried to free the owl. And she couldn't get it out on her own. She just wasn't tall enough. I don't I don't exactly know, but she couldn't get it out. So I love this part. She marched into a nearby subdivision and just started enlisting the help of strangers, like, hey, come on, we gotta we gotta help this owl, which is fantastic. With the help of few other people, they eventually freed the Eastern Screech owl and they called animal control Sadly, there's no happy ending here. The wings the owl's wing was badly broken and it had to be euthanized. Now, Catherine sent us this story hoping we would get the word out about fishing line left and trees being problematic for birds. Now, this is a sad story, but one dead owl is not a problem. Make right. The thing is, I've actually seen this myself more than once. It seems like just about every year when I'm floating some of the rivers around here during high water, I come across a bird or two that they got wrapped up in fishing line that's attached to a bus set off rig that's that's in the willows, and it's you know, it's sort of a dramatic scene, right you see their lifeless bodies skipping on the surface and the current, and yeah, it's it's kind of a bummer. And especially when it's a it's a Western tanager, which I have seen, and it's one of the prettiest birds around, and that they're always in those willows that time of year, right, so they're they're they're susceptible to it. It's still, again anecdotal, not necessarily tragic or indicative of any kind of a large scale problem. So I started doing a little to research, and there's a ton of information about marine birds and fishing gear, especially commercial fishing gear, but there's not much about freshwater species and recreational fishing gear. So I dug around for quite a while and eventually I found a paper published in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Science in October of this year, and it seemed like it was looking at exactly this problem, right. This paper started by taking a news story from earlier this year about an oriole that had died in a similar fashion to Katherine's owl, and like it made local news and got a bunch of attention, and then this paper was trying to figure out how big a problem this really is? Right, So I'm like, oh, yeah, I found it. So here here's an exerpt from the paper's abstract to give you sense of what it was talking about. Literature, databases, and the Internet were searched for other reported cases of injury and mortality to birds from recreational fishing line. Several compilations of bird entanglement records have appeared in recent decades. However, these concerned marine environments, and most entanglements involved commercial fishing gear, whereas the present paper focuses on recreational fishing gear, mostly in freshwater and inland environments. Sweet, right, yeah, this is gonna answer my question. I thought I thought I gotta figure out Well I was wrong, And I'm gonna save you all ten pages of reading and just sum it up this way. Birds die from lots of different natural and human cause factors. Sometimes they get to angle in fishing line. No one knows how widespread problem this is because no one is cataloging these events. Little little little anticlimactic right, I got another thought here before each time in I want to say that that despite all that and the inconclusive nature and the how disappointed I wasn't that paper, this is something we can affect as a fishing community by simply taking the time and effort not to leave gear in trees. Maybe you can afford to buy a new knockoff rapple of crayfish pattern crank bait, and good for you, you really made it, But maybe the cost of the bay it shouldn't be the only factor in deciding if you wade into the creek and the treat of the lure. When stories about cute and pretty birds getting caught in fishing line and hanging themselves hit national news, which they do, it makes all of us look bad, and it paints fishing in an unnecessarily destructive light, regardless of how widespread this problem actually is. And I'm going to close with one more quick personal story. Years ago, I was guiding a couple and they were just trying to figure out if fishing was something they were gonna do, Like they weren't into it yet, but they were. They were thinking about it. They were fishing curious. Midway through the day, we saw a red wing blackbird fluttering erratically way up in the top of this this Russian olive tree, and we went over to check it out. The bird was tangled in some leader that was attached to a big white streamer. I climbed the tree and I freed the bird, which flew away strongly I think was okay, and I retreated the lure. Those clients went on to fish with me for a decade, like they got into it after that, And I'm not saying that was why, but it definitely they had a very positive experience that first shot, and they never forgot free in that bird. A Additionally, I later went on to catch a two foot brown trout on that exact same streamer that I had plucked from the tree. And so my point is, Karma, take the time to pull the gear on the trees, whether it's yours or not. You might save a bird, You might save fishing from bad press. And you might score a sweet new lure, so just go ahead and do it. Yeah, I mean you basically hit on it birds aside, Like we shouldn't have to tell you just to pick up your ship and don't leave anything out there for for any reason. And I can honestly say, man, I have never encountered a bird wrapped in fishing line anywhere, but it it is. It is interesting to me because like a stock image of East Coast fishing in many places is like a power line just wrapped in fishing line, you know what I mean, Like that's like a stock like it's It's just there are places that I fish now that I fished recently where you know, we're out there in a boat, but you have guys that hit it on the bank. And I mean we could just go tree to tree to tree, and we do and we get all kinds of free new lawres and things like that. So I'm very cognizant of that. I try to leave nothing in trees, nothing behind. Um. You know, the only time it gets you is when you're you're fishing on shore, casting across a river or something you can't cross. It sort of is what it is, you know, I've just never seen it, but I'm sure birds out here get wrapped up probably more often birds out there, because this is a ship a little more line and tree. And I'm not talking about some seven X I'm talking about like forty pound snagging mono, you know what I mean. So yeah, yeah, I I don't have a defendi events on how often this happens. It happens enough that I've seen it. It happens enough that it hits national news from time to time. Are there cases where you're not gonna be able to get it back? Yeah, of course, far side of the river, or if you're in really swift current in a boat and you can't stop, Like, I get it, it happens. I'm not demonizing anybody who's ever done this before. I'm just saying like, if you can make the effort, try and get it out, and if you see one that isn't yours that you can get, go get it. It's pretty simple. Or also, you know, maybe learn how to cast better, Like how many people have you seen like overthrow on eight casts in a row. It's like, dude, your depth perception is that shitty, Like it can't be that shitty anyway, although from saving birds to saving stripe bess um, but not without issue. This one hits close to home. But I think this is a good because it drums up some debate. And this is I'm pulling my info here from the website of the Fisherman magazine East Coast mag I've been reading that since I was a little kid, um and from the story I'll just jump right in here. Approved in October nineteen, the change to the Atlantic Stripe Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, otherwise known as the f MP, implemented coastwide harvest reductions put in place in while also requiring the mandatory use of circle hooks when fishing with bait to reduce release mortality and recreational stripe bass fisheries. And as per this Fisheries Management Plan, states are required to implement circle hook requirements by January one. Okay, now, I'm gonna guess that I know how you feel about this, having talked to you about circle hooks, but maybe I'm wrong. Well yeah, well I'm gonna tell you how I feel. But but look, this is big news here, right, And to be clear, this is not a Jersey story. This is not a Massachusetts story. Every Atlantic state on that that has coastal you know, that's that's coastal, like the water touches the state. You know what I'm saying that has a stripe bass fishery. This applies to oh yeah totally. And while at the surface, right it seems like an automatic win and many anglers feel that it certainly is and this is very long overdo, but it's also kind of ruffling some feathers. So now, now personally, I'll get into my thoughts here. I I do actually think this is a good thing. But the way I'd put it as it pertains to my striper fishing um is I'll be able to work around its caveats, I think, and that will make more sense as as I continue, because the reality with this is it's just not as cut and dry as it seems on paper. Uh. And that's because natural baits play a much bigger role in striper fishing than than simply putting a chunk or an eel or a live mullet on a single hook and casting it out. You know, like it's really easy to think of it in terms of a piece of bait or a live bait on a hook. And now it goes. So this whole circle hooks deal was up for final debate this fall, and to give you an idea of what I mean, some states asked for exemptions for certain lures and methods. One of the more notable was tube and worm. Main asked for that to be exempt. And that's where you use these long rubber tubes with a treble hook on the back end, and that treble hook is tipped with a sand worm or blood worm. And yeah, it's an old school method, been around a long time and it catches a lot of stripers. Massachusetts asked that it not applied to anyone fishing on four higher vessels. But ultimately all of this was shot down right, and this is from the story in the Fisherman. No exemptions were made for gear type or user group, and therefore this regulation includes shore bound private boat and anglers onboard for higher vessels coastwide with no gear and this is where things get sticky with no gear type exemptions allowed. The new circle hook requirement in place includes, but is not limited to, such angling techniques as tube and worm, ill skin rigs, rig deals, the addition of a pork rind, squid, et cetera, to a bucktail jig and yeah, right, and all other scenarios where a natural bait is added to an artificial lure when targeting stripe bass. That's huge, right, So that's what That's what I was talking about when I said I can work around it personally. Yes, tipping a bucktail with pork rinds or bait strips very common method here, right, But I'm not going to freak out personally about only being able to tip a bucktail with a soft plastic right. Again, just just me, not speaking for every striper angler on the coast. I don't troll tube and worm doesn't affect me. I don't fish rig deals. I can live without it. But I also fully understand why this would drive other dudes to madness. Like if those are your go to depending on where you are on the coast, and that's what you rely on to catch your fish, I get it. But here's where it gets personal. Okay, this is the interesting one, and I'm dying to hear what you have to say about this. The biggest question right now, particularly in Jersey and New York, is with snag hooks and this this affects me, right, So Man Hayden, which we call bunker. That's the primary food source of big stripers in our area, and we get a run of them in the spring and a run to them in the fall with the best. And keep in mind, these are big bait fish, right. A bunker can be twelve inches long. This is a big bait, uh. And one of the most common ways to use them is a method we call snagging drop. So you got all the bunker out there in a school, you fire off a big weighted treble hook into one sweep the rod, snag a bait, then you open the bail and now, because that trouble hooks waited your your bunker just falls right below the school, acting all wounded and yet and the stripers just eat it right and you know, two outsiders. It might sound a little barbaric, but it's it's super common here. Every shop sells snag rigs highly effective. But here's my dilemma. I don't really snagg and drop, and I never liked it for multiple reasons, one being like, I'm just not always looking for meat in the box when I striper fish, so I don't want a striper to inhale a giant trouble hook. But even more so, I've always been really particular about where a hook is in my bunker. Um, And when you snag, you don't know is it in the tail, is it in the gills? Will it be dead in a minute. So while I snag, I zip the bait back in, send it back out on a single hook pin right behind the dorsal fin. And that's just because I believe bass eat headfirst most of the time, and the hook pulls out of that soft meat, real easy um out. You know, if you're not snagging bunker right, you've got a cast at them, which is a whole other headache and not always very easy. And point blank, dude, I can't throw a cast net like that's something I never learned exactly right, So I never learned how to do that. But now right, technically, even though I am only snagging for the purpose of getting bait, I can't do it. Well. Wait, so in the time between the snagging or trial to the boat, that's a live bait out there, not on a circle hook. And hell yeah, like your bunker gets trashed while you're reeling in, even if you're burning it in. It happens all the time. And this has sparked a bunch of debate. But but you said, now you can't. We don't know, right, Snagging drop is like the outlier that has not really been addressed, is snagging drop out? Can I snag but not drop? And as far as I'm aware of what I can find, there is no official answer yet. But you know all other local methods decide for many guys like me, dude, If you ban bunkers snagging altogether, short of really dialing in my cast net game, which also I mean, then you also have to find bunker in a cast nettable scenario. Right. Short of all that, if they, if they, if it goes away, I can't really live bunker fish anymore, which is a really exciting way to fish, like as live bait fishing goes. That's a big gass bait and you know, like you feel the tailbeat pick up and they get wet. It's fun as shit. I love it dearly. Um, but there's there's a lot of gray area at the moment. And um, I'll just close out by saying, you know, it was pointed out to me by a buddy who actually works at the Fisherman that Virginia as an example, um they've they've had a law in the books for a long time that you can't snag any bait fish. So are we ultimately headed there? You know, don't know, maybe, but there's there's haziness for sure, you know, even though the big picture should be good. But as you hinted too earlier, there's also a lot of guys throwing out the whole like circle hooks, gut hooked more stripers than jay hooks, which is you know, it's a whole other debate. Yeah, we don't have time to get into the hook debate. You took this in a different direction. Um Man. I don't feel like I know enough to make an informed statement on any of this, except to say, anytime you start trying to put in regulations like this, you're gonna wind up having issues like the one you're talking about. Right. The whole idea behind them saying no exemptions was to clear up gray area, and yet gray area remains. And so I think I would say that I do not envy the folks trying to manage that fishery at all, because what a terrible, thankless job that is. And and also I don't know that I could come up with a better solution, right. I think that taking away the exemptions was smart because otherwise it would be even an even bigger nightmare. But you still wind up with these very specific cases that have to be figured out. Yeah, and that's the problem, like it has to it has to blank everything. But there's these just these little sort of like pain in the assid things that you can't really overlook. Years ago bill fish tournaments, they said, if you're using natural bait like bally who, you had to use circles and remember a certain and if I'm not mistaken, that went away because guys were just like, I appreciate what you're doing, but like, we can't hook the billfish that way. You know, you're not gonna make a bucktail with a circle hook on it. So that's what I mean. It works with a bait live or dead on a hook cast out by itself. But there's so many other things that involved natural bait. We'll see what happens. Time will tell you know, yep, And and I hope you'll give us a report back once once you get through that season, once that you know, into next year. I don't see how it's going. But in the meantime, we're going to hear from our all knowing and all powerful filled the Engineer about who has emerged victorious this week. And after that, we're gonna head out onto the ice and relive a rather awkward moment involving a pike, a couple of dudes, and an unnecessary piece of equipment for giving me a new and exciting use for the seventeen jars of rock Hard Plato in my closet. Joe Surmeli, You're the winner this week. I am also holding a survey on the social media, so please visit my Instagram stories and let me know which snacks will make the least amount of mess in my bed sheets While I binge The Queen's Gambit on Netflix this Sunday, Why did you take a picture a lave? This week's awkward moment in angling comes to us from listener Mike Mancini and Mike. Mike actually sent a couple photos, but but one of them is not of himself. It's of his wife, and we're not totally sure that she gave her permission for him to send that in for us to roasted. So, dude, I'm glad you brought that up because in fairness. When we started this set, when we were like, if you have whacked out pictures of your friends, send them along too, actually asked them first, because that's that's like legal ship or something that we didn't think about when we said it, so lawyers. We're definitely not lawyers. But even though we're not using that that that other image, Mike, we do appreciate you sending it because we like options. The options are good, totally, totally. It is always good to have variety. In case you missed it, that's kind of our stick here on the day. It's a variety show. Whether you love or hate it, it'll be over in a minute and we'll be onto something else. Anyway. We chose this image for a few reasons. First, it's an ice fishing shot, and since we're heading into ice season at least maybe maybe depending on that. I keep hearing a lot about this Lanninia thing this year. Bust out, put away your mittens, bust out your shorts, New Jersey. Um, we're trying to make sure that the hard water crowd is adequately represented because even though I think it's fair to say Miles and I aren't like ice masters, we we've We've spent plenty of time huddled over a hole on a frozen lake. I've been known to run full board for the close flags at least and uh, you know, maybe on occasion crack a beer out there. So I've definitely done that. I have. I will say this though, like and I've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again. I think ice fishing is just often and too often portrayed as an excuse to drink. And I keep bringing this up because I I thought that before I started ice fishing. I was like, dude, that's just a reason to go, like drink whiskey and a shanty and pretend like you're doing something. But I was wrong, and and there's actually there's actually a lot to it. Ice fishing could be pretty technical, and I think if you're hammered, you're probably not gonna be fishing that well, you probably won't do all that well yeah, no, no, no, I agree. But hold on though, because Mike's photo actually might suggest otherwise to the contrary of everything you just said. Because the second reason we picked this one is that Mike's holding a legitimately good fish. Man. You know, that's a solid Pike's a healthy, healthy pike. It is. It's a respectable pike, or at least it looks pretty respectable, but it's kind of hard to tell with all the hands covering up the body. Because here's the other thing. Here's where we go on a different track. Mike isn't the only one in this photo. He's not. He's not. He's got company. In fact, let me just set this up. So, so there's Mike on the ice, He's holding his nice fish. It's pretty normal, really, But then you see Mike's buddy shoulder to shoulder with him, also holding his fish, and like it's a nice pike, like we said, but we're not talking. This is like a three pound sturgeon that he's holding up no support from a buddy. He's capable of holding it on his own. Yeah, And Mike's Mike's got the thing like well in hand, like he's got a good grip on it, and his buddies not even really holding it in like a like a meaningful way. He's adding nothing to the hold of the fish. He's just kind of awkwardly. It's like fondling the tail, just covering up the tail. Really, and I'll just I'll just I'll just go for the punch. They're both grinning like complete idiots. Yeah, yeah, no other way to say that. And tell me it doesn't look like they're posing for a wedding photo. It does like it should be like the mandatory It's like the mandatory groom and best man bro hug shot after the ceremony. Yes, but I mean instead, you know, we're not really celebrating a major life moment. They're just holding what I'd say as a decent pike. Decent yeah, yeah, and like look to be fair to Mike, he explained all of this in his email. He addressed all that and and it's short, so I'll just read the whole thing. He wrote to us. This is my personal best Northern through the ice or otherwise. My buddy and I were deep and thought that standing shoulder to shoulder would help illustrate our majestic catch. Instead, we looked like a couple of nubs who drank way too much. And they do that is that is exactly right? And Joe, like to your earlier point, that does undermine my claim about drinking and ice fishing a little bit because they happen to pull this one off. Yes, but wait, there's more, because while his explanation there explains the goofy grins and awkward pozing, it fails to address there's just one thing about this photo that it actually caught our attention. We haven't even talked about the attention catcher yet he didn't talk about it, no, that being the freaking jaw spreader still lodged in the pike's mouth, all right, And I feel like for those of you don't know, a little clarification. A jaw spreader, it's like a it's a metal spring loaded device that that you used to hold open the mouths of large and toothy fish like pike and muskie. So you can like use that. It opens up the jaw, holds it open, and you can remove the hook without getting your fingers all messed up. Yes, and and look, it's a perfectly acceptable tool I have. I have one, and and the size of the fish they caught justifies the use of a jaw spreader. But but once once you take the hook out of the fish, I'm gonna go ahead and say, it's generally customary to also remove the jaw spreader. And you're you're certainly gonna want to remove the jaw spreader before you take a hero shot, and it's similar. It reminds me very much of when you see that shot as somebody holding a fish horizontally, you know, with both hands supporting the stomach, but there's still a fish gripper or boga hanging off. I see it all the time, and I'm like, you ruined your ship, You just ruined that photo. Wh just take it off? Yeah? Would you take it off? Yeah? Yeah, it's like the pike version of that. That's that's a good analogy. And I I just feel bad for the fish, really, like that's what I think. I look at that and I feel bad for the fish because it already lost most of its dignity getting caught by this dude who's just blind drunk, I mean, just out of his mind drunk, but now caught by the drunk. Yeah, and but now on top of that, it's getting held up for like a group fetish photo biting down on the rough equivalent of a metal ball gag for fish, I mean, for it, no, no, you're it is truly debased. And I don't know if I hope that fish was released because it's clearly a mature female and exactly the kind of fish you want passing launch ginette X or or just put out of its misery after that that level of humiliation, so you know, well, you know, to be fair, that's really what this segment is all about. Humiliation. That's kind of what we're doing here. And to all of you out there, if you want the chance to experience your own humiliation through us, please send your awkward phishing photos. We we look forward to them. They truly are the highlights of our week. Sometimes Miles is saying true things. They really are the thing we look forward to most. Send those embarrassing fishing related photos to us at bent at the meme eater dot com. Please, all right, for the record, that segment is a perfect example of the kinds of grip and grin photos that I like, alright, the ones that don't take themselves seriously. I love those that, my friend is one point we definitely agree on. Another thing we agree on is your choice for this week's end the line segment. In fact, when I think about iconic lures, this is one of the first that comes to mind. It's not loud enough bur This week I'm going to tell you about the Rappola original floating minnow, which you know might be a little too on the nose. It's kind of like the interview we did with Oliver and I a couple of weeks ago. One piece of tackle you cannot live without. Uh yeah, I really should have seen that one coming. Choosing to profile the best selling lure in the world in a segment about lures, bates and flies seems equally obvious. But just because most anglers know about this lure and have at least a few of them in their boxes doesn't mean they have the whole story, and trust me, it's a good one. First, let's clear up the pronunciation debate. Is it rapaula, rappola, repella? Technically none of those are correct. Rappila was named for its Finnish inventor, Lori Rapila. The Finnish word rap has a distinctly rolled R. But I wouldn't walk into your local tackle shop and ask them where they keep their Actually, I take that back. I do recommend you do that, but please be sure to record audio of the whole thing and send it to us. As far as the Rapple of Bait Company is concerned, you can pronounce it anyway you want. They don't really care. They sell twenty million lures annually and their products have got more I g F a world record fish than any others, so they have that going for him, which is nice. But the world's most popular lure has a surprisingly humble and unique origin, as does the name itself. Lori Rappola carved the first iteration of this bait in asi Kala, Finland, but Lori's family wasn't originally from there. They moved to that town when he was a young boy, and when they arrived, the local clergyman, who also functioned as the town's record keeper, failed to write down his family's actual surname, instead inscribing the name of the town from which they had emigrated, Rappola, which in Finnish actually translates to mud. Yeah. The inventor of the most popular lure in history was actually named mud. As a young man, Laurie was uneducated but enterprising. During the winter he worked as a lumberjack, and in the summer he worked as a farm hand and commercial fisherman on nearby Lake Paiana. He harvested whitefish, pike, and perch, but trout were the real prize. Three big trout would earn him more money than two weeks pay at a local factory. Lori primarily fish with trot lines and live minnows, an arduous and labor intensive way of fishing, especially since he fished out of a rowboat and would regularly row more than thirty miles a day. First, he had to catch all his bait, and then he was constantly baiting and rebaiting his hooks while also trying to keep meadows fresh and lively. Long before portable narrators were a thing, Laurie became convinced that a lure that effectively imitated wounded bait fish would be far more efficient, so he started designing. One story goes that his first few iterations didn't work, but Laurie just kept on experimenting. According to one source, Lorie consulted with a local hermit who lived on an island in the middle of Lake Paiana to help assess what was wrong with his early inventions. In ninety six, he completed a successful prototype for what would become nearly three decades later, the Rappela floating minnow. It was card from cork covered with foil from chocolate bar rappers tossed out by more wealthy neighbors and sealed with cast off photographic negatives that he melted over the lure. According to Laurie's sons, he trolled it without a rod, tying the line directly to his thumb to ensure that he wouldn't lose the precious lure, and it worked. Legend has it that Laurie started hauling in up to six hundred pounds of pike and trout a day on his new invention, and the timing was fortuitous because three years later war broke out across Europe and so did food shortages. Laurie kept his family fed with his new lure until the war came to Finland. Then Laurie left the fishing to his sons while he went off to defend his homeland. He fought in the Second World War for six years before returning to fishing and lure making. In the post war boom of economic prosperity that boosted much of the West, interest in recreational fishing began to grow. Anglers who came to fish Lake Paiana from around Europe heard about Lorie's amazing lures and began buying them off of him. Laurie's sons started apprenticing under their father, learning to carve and craft perfect imitations of his invention. One of Lourie's daughters meanwhile set to work designing and writing promotional copy and boxes to help sell the lures, and also keeping records to ensure that the family got paid, because, unlike her father, she had been able to attend school. The younger generation of Rappela's transformed their father's idea for maximizing his commercial harvest into a recreational fishing business, utilizing mechanization and turning his hand carved blueprint into a scaled production. Lori meanwhile maintained exacting standards for their products and insisted that every single lure be water tested to ensure it had the perfect wobbling action before being sold. In nineteen fifty two, the Winter Olympics were held in Helsinki, several American competitors were introduced to the rappill lure and brought some back with them to the US. Pretty soon rumors began to spread about this so called finlander plug. A Minneapolis based tackle rep named Ron Weber managed to track a few down at a bait shop in Duluth that was owned by Finnish immigrants. He was so impressed that he wrote Lorie directly, asking for five hundred units, which was nearly half of the annual production at that time. In nineteen sixty, Webber teamed up with sporting goods store owner Ray Ostrom to found Normark, the American company that would go on to distribute Rapilis across North America. Sales were slow for the first couple of years. Rapplers cost nearly two bucks, which was more than double the price of most lures in those days. But everything changed in nineteen sixty two when Marilyn Monroe graced the cover of Life magazine just after her untimely death. That issue sold millions of copies, more than Life had ever sold before, and it also just happened to include another article titled a lure fish Can't Pass Up. Two million orders came in after that article, ran far outstripping the available supply. The company has continued to grow and innovate ever since, becoming do you biquitous brand we know today. The Lorrie died in four His family continues to own and operate Rapila from their headquarters in Finland, and while much has changed since the Rapplers were hand carving their baits from their home near Lake Paiana. Loria's commitment to quality remains. Each lure is still individually tank tested before being packaged and sold. Now me, personally, I will always love raps. I've got muskie, pike, smallmouth, wiley pan fish, and god knows how many barracuda and jack's on them. But despite all those catches, rapplers will be forever synonymous with one single fish, and that's my first top water large mouth. I was fishing a glassy dusk with one of my uncles and he had me tie on an original floating minnow black and gold, the same colors as Lori's prototype, and he told me to cash it out and twitch it on the surface with long pauses in between. The colossal splat mayhem that followed may have helped set the trajectory of my entire life. It wasn't a big bass, maybe a couple of pounds, but the way to attack that floating, wiggling lure was unlike anything else I had ever experienced. All Right, if you were bidding on the auction items found in this week's abandoned storage unit, you'd have to choose between naming hurricanes after w w E wrestlers, what you can get when you cross a mountain whitefish with a tarp and wide jaw spreaders are not popular in the b DSM community, and the best use you've ever heard for the foil wrapper off a chocolate bar. Please please keep those emails coming to Bent at the meat eater dot com. We want your bar nominations, awkward photos, sale bin items, even your grip and grins, as long as they help tell a good story. Maybe just drop us a quick note let us know how you're doing or how the fishing is out your way. We appreciate hearing from each and every one of you, and even though we're not perfect, we do try to respond to as many emails and messages as we can. It's true, It's true. It's a It's like a little productive procrastination that I can do when I'm putting off real work, like trying to write podcast segments. True, reading those emails is a great way to not do actual work. Whatever it is you're doing this week to avoid your real job, we hope it involves fishing.

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