00:00:01 Speaker 1: And I'm like, other than being in shape and cut and having the staminate the paddle far enough out to catch selfish on a kayak, we're basically the same person hunting. Let's be If this is what you're gonna use, you might as well just grab like the towel bar out of your bathroom and tape a real to it. You have not honed your micro phishing skills and therefore will not survive. It feels like they're trying to drag out the sound of the plastics slowly sliding from his nostril cavity at the Good Morning Degenerate Anglers. Welcome to Bend, the podcast that swears this is the year it's going to finally, once and for all, perfectly organize all its tackle and keep it that way so it's not constantly buying hook swivels and soft plastics it knows it already has but can't find the night before a trip. How do you like that one? I'm Joe Surmelis, and I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, but if I had one, it would be something along those lines about organizing tackle, because because that's something I know I do, Because yeah, I reorganized my tackle at least twice a year. It's this weird like zen therapeutic thing. For me. It's and it's especially true for fly boxes. There is something about a perfectly organized fly box that satisfies me and and brings me, brings me some inner peace. I don't know why I could not agree more like it, but it's so rare that minor organized like I have to take a picture for social media because I'm like, Wow, that only happens once a year. Because I do. I reorganize in a spring and like the streamer box say, we'll get all nice, nice before the first warm season streamer trip. But by now, like and I mean like right now now in winter, my ship is chaos. But I'm one of those people, like I gotta say I know where everything is, at least in the general sense of like what region of the garage, what should be in? Yeah, what quadrant? It's in that quadrant? Um. But the only time I go nuts is when I jump into a curveball program, I e. Like, I get invited on a random musky trip, you know, because I don't do that often. So finding and organizing all the musky laws and leaders that I have scattered about would take effort, but no, it totally. It does feel good in the spring when everything is perfectly in place. Yeah, yeah, I can relate to to much of what you're saying, and I feel like I feel like maybe I was misleading with my statements. So let me clarify. My ship is not organized, not by any stretch of the imagination, in any sort of functional sense. Like unlike you, I can't usually find what I need among the precarious stacks of gear that are just lining my garage. I don't do well with that. What I'm talking about is the the small and useless act of organizing and reorganizing individual boxes. There's something a battle, not the war. It's like battle, not the war, like that. I can that. That feels like something I can handle, and so like I will, I'll take all the lures or flies out and just kind of reorganize according to some system that I decided makes more sense this year, Like last year, I decided that all the various prince nymphs that I have, like all the different kind of prince nymps that I have, deserved their own box instead of being them. I've seen them, I've seen you do have a lot of those. Yeah, yeah, again guiding out here you kind of have to write, And they used to just be lumped in with all the small stone flies. But I was like, no, no, I've got enough. They deserve their own box. So I pulled them all out and reorganized everything. And will that help me find my prince nymps or catch more fish? Absolutely not. I already knew where they were. But still I got a sense of joy out of it. Yeah, it was not useful, but it was joyful. See. I don't own enough nymps to organize them beyond the one standard size fly box that I have for nymphs, you know what I mean. Like if I broke them down further, we'd have like separate thimbles or something like that. Of nimp anyway, but I I've got no problem with New Year's resolutions, Okay, just to get back to the to the opening point there. But if I make one, I won't tell anybody about it, Like I have a problem with public posting of resolutions, Like if you're gonna do it, just shut up and do it for yourself, you know what I mean? Like maybe and I could be a jerk here and get flak for this. I don't know, but I never got that. Like one week smoke free, you know, four people are like, awesome, job, bro, keep it up. But then if any of those people see you burning a heat or a week later outside the launcher mat, now, like they just know you have no follow through? So why make that public? You know, what's the doubt? I think that's the point. I think that's the point. I think like that's for people who need the social pressure to keep an agreement with themselves. And sure, great, I don't. I don't, I don't. I'm with you, man, I don't. I don't want other people judging me for choices I made about my own self and health or whatever. And like, this whole conversation just has me thinking about last episode when we were talking about how how New Years kind of gets you down, and I've actually been thinking about that and I and and wondering why it doesn't bump me out quite as much. And I think there a couple answers, like one we have skiing out here, which makes the winter nicer, and that might be part of it. But the real answer, the thing that I've been thinking about is it's super deep and like mind blowing all right, are you? Are you ready for this? Do tell lay it on me. The days are getting longer. For dumb and obvious as that sounds, because it does. I think. I think we sometimes forget the whole point of having winter holidays are to keep us from losing our minds during the darkest days of the winter. And we made it. Those days are oh her, Yeah, from now until June, every day is gonna get just a little longer, just a little brighter, except for you know, if you happen to be a listener in the Southern hemisphere, I feel like I feel like you guys get really screwed on this whole deal. All the winter holidays happened in the middle of your summer, and then what do you have to get you through the dark cold days of June. Yeah? I never thought about that International Day for the Fight against Illegal, unreported and Unregulated Fishing. That's not a real thing. International Day of Yoga, World Seafarer Day. All those are actual U N recognized holidays. For the record, I looked it up anyway. Uh. For those of us who live in the top half the globe, congratulations we survived the darkest days of the darkest year in recent memory. You know, Amen to that, Amen to that. I like, I like where your head is out. Let's turn the page on this sun, bitch. And from the view out of my social media feed, it looks like many of you are way ahead of us. And I'm seeing lots of picks, uh, you guys getting out and having fun. And many of those picks have involved big coats and little rods. But maybe some of you dreamers out there you have the coat like, you've figured out the coat part, but just need the perfect little rod to begin your hard water pursuits. Don't worry, Miles found a super sweet Internet score for you in this week's sail bin. Why did you put the hand to pave? You don't know what I'm getting, man, You didn't have to be so hurtful with me so angry today. In the saale bin we find a very simple offering. Whoever posted this particular gem on East Idaho Craigslist is not a person of many words. It's not someone that I would call verbose. They are into the whole brevity thing. The title is simple ice fishing poles, That's all it says. There's a lot of things about this that are simple, very simple, all right. Look, I am not an expert on ice fishing. I enjoy ice fishing, have some ice gear I get out when I can. I've worked on some ice fishing shows. I like grilling brods, drinking beer, and fishing through holes in the ice as much as the next guy. But I do not claim like solid expertise there. It's just something I do. Yep, I'm right there with you. I love it, but I don't have all the gear I mooch off somebody else. Yep, yep. I mean, I feel like I know stuff, but I know enough to know that I'm not the guy who knows it all. But when I look at this post even I know that something doesn't seem right, Because while I might not be the most experienced ice angler on the planet, I do know the difference between an ice fishing rod and a fly fishing rod. And what I see pictured in the two photos on this post are just the bottom sections of two very very crappy fly rods with two very very crappy fly reels. All right, just so, for context, picture the bottom section of a four piece fly rod, the really thick part. Now, picture that with a couple of snake guides attached and a tip top glued to the end of it, and you've got it. That's that is what is being sold. You can't zoom in enough on the photo. Like even the tip guides. Something looks weird about those, like they were like a repurposed something else that was glued on the end. I mean, who there's there's a lot of creativity here, which I respect, but the I think, I think there's there's one major problem, right because so as far as I understand it, ice rods have two sort of basic essential qualities. One is that they're short, so that you can jig over a hole without sitting six ft away from that hole. That makes sense, and these these spent that bill. They are short, you could do that. But the other thing that I expect from an ice rod is that it will be sensitive and have a pretty soft tip, because you need to be able to detect a light strike and set the hook and fight a fish up through the ice without breaking pretty late line. And that's where this this particular innovation I think falls short in that respect. Yeah, it reminds me of a quote I believe that Gary Loomis once said, I can build you a rod that will never break, you just won't want to fish with it exactly. I mean, let's be if this is what you're gonna use, you might as well just grab like the towel bar out of your bathroom and tape a reel to it like that. That would essentually perform the same function as either. It wouldn't look as cool, but it would do the same thing. So all right, I respect the repurposing here, right. I mean, you got some old fly rods sitting around you don't know what to do with them. Like, I got an idea maybe I could, maybe I could turn it into an ice rod. But it didn't work. It clearly didn't work, And now someone's trying to sell that bad idea. Yeah, I gotta say that ten dollars for both, and if you needed a couple of cheap o reels to knock around with, that's the deal of the century for sure, for sure, And and honestly not even that at that price for ten bucks for both, I would consider buying this set just to see the looks on my friends faces when I like rolled into the ice shack and pulled out these rods and started jigging with them like that. That would be worth ten bucks for me just to see that reaction, like, what the hell is that my new ice rod? Do you like it? So the part that gets me is like, what do you do with this when you're in eighty feet of water jigging for giant lakers? Like you're just gonna be standing there front and there's no quick release on a fly reel, so you're just gonna be sending a minutes to get it down the depth. That's the major. So I can forgive the half a fly rod, but like stick a couple of spinning reels on there. You know, it's just this is not functional. It didn't work. You're trying to trying to sell us your mistakes, which again, good on you, and at least it's cheap. So uh that one man. I got a lot of laughs out of that. Whoever posted that in East Idaho, thank you. If you come across any online fishing gems for sale, just let us know send us a link to vent at the meat eater dot com. You all been doing a great job sending us those submissions, and we do appreciate them and we look forward to the next ones that you come up with. So that's true. We have been getting a lot of good sale bin submissions lately. Several of you out there send us a link to someone in Minnesota who's converting old beer taps into ice fishing rods, and while we didn't quite think that one had the legs for its own segment, we it definitely deserves an honorable mention. It's a good one. The only thing in that one that we can expand on. I particularly like the fact that their price not according to the quality of the rod, blank or like the action or anything, but the price is according to how rare the beer tap is. Like the standard bud heavy tap goes for sixty bucks, but if you want the limited edition bush like corn Cob tap, that's gonna cost you a hondo. Yeah, I mean, I think the rods are all just broken off ands of ugly sticks, so like there's no one's not carbon you know, priorities do priority. Someone also sent me one that was a set of matching beer tap rods, and I believe all the taps had little Montreal Canadians goalie masks on, you know, the whole set, And I'm sure I'm sure it was molson um. Anyhow, when the people are out there using beer tap rods or normal rods. I have been seeing some stunner lake trout pictures lately, and I'm jealous, got to say, because lake trot are one of those fish that I rarely get to mess with him, but I love them and find them so fascinating me too. Definitely, I feel like a total dumbass when it comes to fishing for lake trout because actually I've only ever caught them by accident. I've never really know, I've never targeted lake trout, but I know, like I know enough to know that the people who really get after them have it down to like a science. There's that dude to the guy Grant Gully who took Steve out on the last season of the Dots Boat And I've I've gotten a no Grant a little bit. And that guy he's got the Laker game dialed. He just got it figured out. Yeah, for sure, No dude. One of the cool things I ever did was I targeted them on the Ice and Colorado with legendary guy Bernie Keith. Awesome dude, And he said in the beginning, He's like, you want to catch a lot or you want to catch giants. And I went with the ladder and in two days on the ice at Lake Grand but we only hit five fish where they were all overt on giant tuna size soft plastics. And to fight fish like that on a tiny rod like scream and drag, it was insane. It was insane. And you know, but of course, seeing where I live, I also have a soft spot for Great Lakes fish too, because they're one of the few fisheries that we've been able to successfully recover after we've you know, pretty much damn near wipe them out. So um, I go up to the Great Lakes to fly fish for them. Though I do understand most guys troll their lakers, but I hate trolling all yeah, And and I'm not a trolling guy. Like if I never go on another bill fish trip again, that'll that'll be fine with me. Um. And in fact, in today's weekly word, Miles is gonna tell you what lake trout and old fish have in common. Webster's Dictionary defines fish as this week's word is pelagic. No not the apparel brand voted most likely to instigate a bar fight in the Fort Lauderdale Airport chilies. Polagic comes from the ancient Greek word pelagicos, meaning sea. For the purposes of US anglers, the term usually references the pelagic zone and pelagic fish. The pelagic zone describes the part of a body of water outside the tidal influence of a shoreline and not near any sort of bottom structure. Polagic fish or fish that live at least part of the time in that open water. We're talking tuna, billfish, mahi, mackerel, sharks, raise lake trout. Yeah, freshwater fish can be polagic too, if they live in a big enough lake, as well as the massive schools of bait fish on which those species feed herring, whiting, anchovy, jellyfish, flying fish, stard eining, smelt, and lots of others. Still. Other popular fish my great between the polagic and coastal zones, like Jack's barracuda, redfish, and salmon point is. Many of our favorite targets are at least partially pelagic. So if you liked fish, you might associate the term with abundance, big fish, bloody decks, and full coolers, But the truth of the pelagic zone is very different. Polagic actually describes the vast nothingness of open water, one of the most sterile and least hospitable places on the planet. Polagic fish only make up eleven percent of the total fish species, though they live in the largest aquatic habitat on Earth. And here's the thing that a lot of us don't know. The pelagic zone is actually broken up into five different categories. Because open water isn't just broad, it's also usually deep. One of the anglers talk about the pelagic zone, we're usually just referencing the surface layer, the epic pelagic zone, which generally extends down about six hundred and fifty feet depending on the clarity of the water. That's where the vast majority of sunlight, oxygen, energy, nutrients, and organisms are found, and not surprisingly, it's also where most of the fish live. But the polagic zone goes a hell of a lot deeper than that. Below the epipolagic zone you find the messo polagic zone, Meso being the Greek word for middle. This area goes down to about thirty three hundred feet and is also known as the twilight zone because even though light does penetrate down that far, it's pretty diffuse. There's not enough sunlight at these depths for photosynthesis, so no plankton. Quite a few fish species do live down here, but they come up into shallow water to feed at night and hide in the depths during the day. Below this, you hit the bath up polagic zone from the Greek word bathist meaning deep. This extends from feet down to thirteen thousand feet, and it's also called the darker midnight zone because duh, no light reaches down here. This is the zone where those creepy deep water fish that create their own bioluminescence and have ultra black light absorbing skin live. Check out fish News from a few weeks ago for more details on these strange, of it fascinating adaptations. This zone is pretty damn inhospitable, at least from a terrestrial perspective. Aside from being completely dark, it's also cold, low and oxygen and high end salinity and pressure. Fish down here survived either by eating the remains of shallower water fish that die and sink, or by eating each other. Next, you hit the abysso pelagic zone from the Greek abyssos meaning bottomless. This goes from thirteen thousand feet down to nearly twenty thou feet and is where many of the deepest oceans bottom out, but in certain places, like the Mariana Trench, the ocean goes to an even deeper zone, the Hado pelagic zone, sometimes called the underworld, since Hado comes from Hades, the Greek god of the dead. We're talking about depths down to thirty six thousand feet, and honestly, we don't really know what lives in that zone because we can't get there. For me, like lots of other anglers, I think the word pelagic hundres up images of early morning offshore runs, sinking the horizon, blow ups in the bubble trail, trolling lines, popping off outriggers, scrambling shouts of fish on long, sweaty stints, and a fighting harness, prismatic flashes through blue water, and if you're lucky, a well placed gaffer tag followed by high fives and cold beer. It's a word that we've appropriated to describe a particular kind of fishing, big targets in open water, but the actual definition of pelagic doesn't fit that fantasy very well. It's a place of scarcity, a massive watery desert that includes the least comfortable parts of this planet. I don't exactly know what all this says about fishing culture. Maybe it reflects our optimism, our confidence that we can find the haystack needles that are pelagic fish. Maybe it just shows that we don't actually understand the English language all that well. Or maybe it speaks to the kind of native intelligence common among our kind. I know a lot of anglers who barely passed by all G class by sitting tall behind the smart kids, but can recite exactly which Booey's, Feds, sea mounts and rex hold particular fish in any given conditions. The one thing you got wrong, I believe Hank Parker fished the Hato Polegic zone, uh well over a dozen years ago with flying lures spider wire. Yeah, it was all about the spider wire. It was right when spider wire came out, and it was like, you want to hit the Hato Polegic Zone with you know, spider wire. I think you're gonna need lead core for that. Yeah kidding, But don't on what you said there. That's pretty much how I got through some of my science classes, dude, Like I was. I was never bold enough to blatantly cheat on the test, but I damn shure cop had some homework. I also somehow ended up an ap bio one year, and what I did in that situation was just simply fail. I did not. I intentionally did not sign up for ap bio because I knew that if I had, I would have either failed or cheated. I don't know why I did it. I really don't know. It was a patch. But unfortunately for us, there are no notes to steal or shoulders to peek over, because it's just the two of us going mono amano in fish news, fish news. That escalated quickly. All right, so before we kick in the news, I do have one fan shout out this week, um, and that's going to Tyler Berman, who emailed us and the subject line of that email was dude snorted as Senko and I followed the Reddit link in this email to a video of a man getting a Senko removed from his nose by a doctor. Now you you watch this A doctor? A doctor I'm using I'm using air quotes in my voice in case you couldn't tell a doctor. Okay, So I good. So you saw this too, You watch this too? And this isn't a news story. We can officially use it's not news and I think the reason is because, as you've just hinted at, I'm calling total bullshit on the whole video. I'm calling it fake. Gotta be bullshit. But I can't figure out why anyone would stage such an elaborate fake. It's not like why. I don't know. I don't and perhaps it's already been debunked. I don't know how long it's been around. Um, but I don't think the doctor's real or anything, because this dweeb is acting like he has a length of barbed wire jammed up his nose and they remove this sinko painfully slowly. Okay, with with with tweezers. Here's a bit of audio. Oh man, oh sorry, it's just so it just feels so weird. Sorry. Yeah. And then and then later, a little bit later, here's this Okay, And I don't know if you read the comments, man, but most of them were saying what I was thinking, which was just pull it out, yea, why are we one centimeter at a time like you? It feels like one of those I don't know if I'm gonna say this right those is a SMR videos, the weird like oh yeah, yeah, it feels like they're trying to drag out the sound of the plastics slowly sliding from his nostril cavity. Like I didn't get it. First of all, Sanko's are lubricated out of the package. Man if I did, Yeah, if I if I had a choice between a senko or like a big pen jammed up my snooter, I'd take the sanko every time. Every time. Um. And also when it finally wiggles out, it's oddly void of boogers. So I'm calling I'm calling this fake right, But Tyler, yeah, we appreciate you. I'm gonna say one more thing, but if you watch this video, like it is very elaborately staged. There's like a very doctor seeming actor and a code and like they spent some time and some effort and some resources making this, and I cannot understand why. So that's that's what. And not that I expect many people didn't to like just know the soft top of their head. But the guy who's getting it pulled out of his nose looks like the lead singer of mud Honey. He does. You're absolutely right, that's my fans shout out, Tyler, thank you. I mean I've got my little early one, and I'm not going to shout anybody out by name on this one, and it'll make sense in a second. But it does connect to that in sort of the shape of the bait. A lot of people lately have reached out to us with links two lures in the shape of penises, and I got to admit that I was I was totally ignorant of this like propensity that anglers seem to have for casting out phallic lures and trying to get fished eat them. I had no idea that was a thing. Man, We've gotten We've got links to crank baits, stick baits, soft plastics. But remember, I know where you're going now here. So we've gotten a lot of links to ones that are pre made for sale. Are you going to the gentleman that made his own. I'm not calling him out because that's one of the ones. There's one the ones that I'm not he said. He sent us an email. He said, I got a three D printer for Christmas and I made this top order and it's a it's a penis and nuts, And like in my head, I'm like, why why did you make that? And why why did you Why did you send that? That's where I'm going? Where I'm going? Is I don't get it? Like, is this some weird desire to debase the fish? Is it like some kind of like dominance thing. I don't, I don't know. I don't. I don't get it. I I believe it's all. I don't believe anybody's using those weener lures. It's just like it's like a joke you buy for your friend, but it was funny thirty years ago, Like these are not new, Like you've been able to buy them booby and weener lures forever. He just had to do it, you know, through mail order instead of on Facebook. But it's like the Spencer's Gifts of the fishing world. Is that what you're saying? Yeah? Pretty yeah, pretty much. So I think what we're both saying is we we love seeing weird stuff from you guys, but you can stop with the dick laures. Like we're not doing a sale bin on the dick lures. Nope, we're not sharing your homemade dick laure's on Instagram, which I don't know why you'd want us to do that anyway, you know, Oh, anyway, I just I had that one like the keep coming, so I felt like they had to be addressed. But but yeah, let's let's move on to some fish news, maybe something a little more substances. Okay, alright, alright, fair enough, fair enough. So I get to kick off this week as a reminder, as always, this is a competition, Miles and I don't know what stories the other guys bringing to the table, and uh, Madman audio engineer Phil will declare a news victor at the end. And I'm going to start off today with a nod to a buddy of mine, Jason Mark, who's a journalist of the highest caliber, exquisite writer. Um and I met Jason two summers ago. He was working on a piece about snakeheads on the Delaware River water shed for the Philadelphia Inquired and uh, he tagged along with me on a snake hunt. Now, this is a caveat that has nothing to do with the story. I just I just have to tell it, right, I just have to bring it up. At the time I met Jason, he was a very clean cut, well pressed man. In and then last summer, last summer, I'm snakehead fishing on the side of the road in South Jersey and up pulls this pick up with a kayak stashed in the back, and out pops a long haired, very unshaven Jason, wearing like a full brim boonty hat and like he's all sweaty. And it turned out he became so snake head obsessed he now spends his summer is just mucking around the swamps of South Jersey. And I but tell you what, Jason is still writing and writing very well, and he recently had a story in the New York Times headline the problem with problem sharks. Okay, and I'm gonna summarize a lot of this because it's a long one, right, but here's the gist. We all know. I think we all know what shark coals are, Okay. Shark bites a swimmer causes mass hysteria, and in the past, even here in the US, that would lead to the killing of a bunch of sharks in the area of the attack, right with the idea of being you're you're getting rid of the problem one. Okay. Now, while these full on blood bats don't happen like they used to in other countries, particularly South Africa and Australia, um, they do still use nets and baited hook's. Time to time, they're still deployed along some beaches where swimmers and large numbers of sharks often mingle. So there's a doctor, Dr Eric Kluwa clue c l u A. It's French. I don't know how to pronounce. Do you know how to pronounce what'ch is? Gonna call him Dr Clua okay um And he's a marine biologist based in Paris, and he says he's figured out how we can get away from shark calls, which, as the story says, is like executing everyone in a police line up in order to ensure justice was dispensed on the guilty party. And now I'm gonna quote from Jason's story here fascinating. Dr Cluis said he has found a way to make precision strikes on sharks that have attacked people through a form of DNA profiling he calls bite printing, and he believes it's usually just solo quote problem sharks that attack humans repeatedly analogizing them to terrestrial predators that have been documented behaving the same way. Instead of culling every bear, tiger or lion when only one has serially attacked people. Wildlife managers on land usually focus their ire on the culprit. Dr Cluis said the problem sharks could be dispatched the same way, and once a database of these bite prints is built, DNA could be collected from the wounds of people who were bitten by sharks and matched to a known shark. The offending shark would then need to be found and killed. Okay, okay with me so far, I'm with you. I have a couple of questions, but finished. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So many other people in the science field, um have pooh pooed this idea, and I don't necessarily mean the bite printing part. Right. It seems most agree that collecting DNA, uh you know, via bite print could work, right, And clue Is is perfecting the technique using tiger sharks in French Polynesia. And here's a quote. He says, I'll let them bite a pig leg or something else with flesh, muscle and bone, and that's what he's using to perfect this DNA collection from a bite wound. But many people are saying, first of all, the idea of a rogue jaws like problem shark has been long debunked, Like there's really no science that that proves that's a real thing. Clue is saying. On the other hand, his research and data collection will prove the opposite, the problem sharks do exist. Um, but I mean, here's where we get our fishy tie in, right, what what? What? What this guy fails to address in this even though other sources who aren't even anglers have addressed it very loudly and the pieces Okay, like, let's say this, this data collection proves there's a problem shark that's bitten three people, how do you now single it out and targeting? That's just that was that was my question. That's what. He doesn't address that at all, right, and and that's just not how fishing works. So if I'm understanding this right, like, theoretically a great white could bite someone and say cape and by the time you get the data back, assuming that there's a pool of pool of data, right, like, I imagine that shark would have had to have bitten other people at least two people, right, at least two people for for you know, proper data to be collected, and then you take the time to determine, oh yeah, that's the problem shark. It could be a hundred and twenty miles off Jersey and five feet of water. Like, you can't just take a boat out in the ocean and say I want that one. So, in my opinion, this is just a case of hard core science not jibing with simple common sense. Like in my head, it's like teeters on ridiculous. It's like saying, you know, new study find serial killers drive cars. Well yeah, but like it doesn't doesn't help us find them. So I tend to give researchers the benefit of the doubt in these things. Not always right, but they're they're generally pretty like smart folks who understand complex problem solving. So I would love to be able to ask this guy like, what's your what's your solution? Man? Like, okay, you've got the DNA of the a problem shark. How do you they're they're sharks in this area? How do you tell which one is the one without killing all of them or sampling? Like, I don't get it. No, No, you're right, But even if you could tell which one, how do you target that shark in a pack of Yeah? I just don't see. I don't see how that would ever work. I don't I don't doubt that. Hypothetically that database could be created, but in my opinion, it would take a damn long time. Like we like we were saying, in order to identify one of those sharks, wouldn't it have to bite multiple people and you'd have to have the DNA from multiple people? I mean you could would it would do Here's what I'll say. It would prove or disprove the idea of problem sharks. And so like, if that's what we're going for here, you could say, like, oh, this, this person and this person, this person were all bit it's the same shark. Yeah. But yeah, but even that, man, I don't know, I could counter argue that and say that, like if you look at the New Jersey attacks from close to shore, the book I did on philistines, here, there's a million theories as to why those sharks where they're doing that, and in a lot of cases they point to environmental things. It's not like those fish were blood hungry for humans. They where were they weren't supposed to be, or got pushed there because of weather factors, or you know, they ran out of a food source here, Like what what what is a problem shark? Okay, but regardless of the reason why they get there. You can say the same thing about bears in that and we we do have problem bears. There are usually environmental factors to drive a bear to seek an alternate food source that maybe become human based, whether it's human food or people. But once that's happened, then that bear is a problem. I said, it will continue to seek out that food source, and so that's where I would say it could be valuable. Okay, all right, well I find the shark. All you do is like, yeah, they're a problem. I don't think. I think we have to figure something else off that. There's a lot more work to be done here, you know, there's a lot more and on the kind of on the subject of areas of fisheries management where we have a lot of work to do. I'm gonna pivot from the salt to the fresh air. And you know, in in previous Fish News segments, we've talked quite a lot about the detrimental impacts of fertilizer, specifically phosphorus on water quality. Right and and just a little quick update, nutrients from fertilizer using lawns, golf courses and agriculture get into waterways and then concentrate in lakes and then cause algae blooms lead all kinds of problems, right, like oxygen depletion, soiund of bacteria. These these are things we talked about, and this is a major and growing problem in fisheries across the globe. Right you think about the massive red tides and fish hills in Florida, or the blue green algae warnings that seem to be just growing in scope and scale every summer all over the place. So in light of all that, here's my question on this story. Why is a ranch on Colorado's Blue River requesting permits to intentionally add phosphorus to the river, And why do some conservation groups and environmental advocates support the idea? All right, So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a little backstory here so we can put this. I'm not supposed to answer, Yeah, you're not supposed to. I'm just I'm just saying that was hypothetical rhetorical. Um, not a hypothetal rhetorical All right, First, a little backstory. The Blue River cuts through the mountains of central Colorado on the west side of the Continental Divide in the nineteen sixties, as Colorado's Front Range population began to expand, city planners realized that they didn't have enough water to support the number of people they were hoping to attract into these metropolitan areas east of the divide. We're talking about Denver, Colorado, Springs, Pueblo, Fort Collins. So they devised massive pipe line projects to divert water through the mountains from the wet or western side to the drier east side, where all the people want to live because it's warm and sunny. The backstory on these water diversion projects is like fascinating in and of itself. It's it's worthy of its own segment. But but but I I ain't got time for all that right now. I just need to give you the basics. What's important here is that the Blue is one of the rivers that gets diverted, moving water from the Dylan Reservoir over to the South Platte River, and therefore Denver Dylan Reservoir sits above a two hundred and thirty one ft high bottom release dam, meaning that the water flowing out of that dam into the Blue River below comes from the lower reaches of the water colum so it remains at a relatively constant temperature that's optimal for trout, never getting too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. Just about every famous trout fishery in the US sits below a bottom release damp for exactly that reason. And and the Blue has long been a famous trout fishery. It's it's no and for producing just massive rainbows and and big browns too. Part of the reason that fishery has remained so healthy is that in the nineteen eighties, as the mountain towns grew in the upper Blue River basin, water quality managers enacted very strict regulations on wastewater discharge, which kept levels of pollutants, including phosphorus pretty low. For several decades, the Blue was arguably one of the best trophy trout rivers in Colorado and the country. Really. Guides and outfitters proliferated and profited, and private ranches were bought up along the banks, creating exclusive access for their owners and clientele. One of those ranches, Blue Valley Ranch, owns a stretch so noted for its big fish that local anglers refer to it as Jurassic Park. Okay, so now fast forward to Colorado Parks and Wildlife stripped a nineteen mile stretch of the Blue which includes the Jurassic Park section, of its Gold Medal status because they found that the size and no umber of trout and the river had significantly declined. Biologists explained that the water lacked nutrients, so basically, many of the nutrients flowing into the system we're getting trapped in Dylan Reservoir and not making their way through the dam. Low nutrients means few aquatic plants, which means low numbers of aquatic insects, which means no food for trout. So this year Blue Valley Ranch, a twenty five thousand acre swath of land which again houses that Jurassic Park section, wants to pilot a program that would intentionally add nearly two thousand gallons of phosphorus to the river annually in order to boost nutrient levels and hopefully fish size and populations. Now this could sound like an evil plot by a rich landowner to improve the fishing on his private stretch of river at the expense of the ecosystem, but it's it's not actually that simple. Paul Tutor Jones, the second, who owns the ranch, the dude, he's actually proven himself to be like a pretty good steward of the land in the water and wildlife. He's he spent a lot of his money trying to improve habitat. He he built these uh, these these wildlife corridors to get through the busy highway near there so there were less issues. He's set up a foundation that works to protect the mangroves in Florida, and he's just he's done a ton of stream habitat restoration on the Blue which not only benefits him but all the anglers, the fish that river. So various local conservation groups and water planning organizations are backing this project that includes Trout Unlimited, the Blue River Watershed Group, and the Colorado Basin Round Table, and they're hoping that this has the potential to rehabilitate the section of the river. But what I'm wanting, like, what does rehabilitation really mean here? We're talking about an artificial system that's been damned and redirected and planted with completely non native fish that grow to disproportionately large sizes. Sarah Marshall, an eco hydrologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at Colorado State University. She sees value in the Blue Valley Ranches experiment, but said further tinkering with the river to restore it could have risks. She told The Aspen Times, the proposed study sounds like a band aid rather than fixing the underlying causes of degraded stream habitat. And I gotta say, man, I'm as as I so often, and I'm torn on this one. I fished the Blue and it's it's an incredible fishery, like it's it's it's amazing, and and I hate to see a section of stream lose its fish, particularly one that's as good as that one. But I'm also not totally comfortable with intentionally adding phosphorus to a river when we're working so hard to limit the nutrient load in in so many of our waters. Right, it might help that twenty mile stretch it's lacking nutrients, but then just add to the problem downstream. Right, it seems like one of those situations where we've completely screwed up a natural system and we're just gonna keep doing more and more tinkering, thinking that like screwing it up further, we'll fix what we've already done. But projects like that don't really have a great record. So it's a tough one, man, yeah, man, And it's it's a hard one for me to speak to you because I I certainly know the blue I've never fished it. I mean I'm not I'm not that in tune with that particular river. But you can't help but see both sides of it. I mean, without knowing what the vegetation in there look like. I mean that that is important, and forget all the pollution and conservation. I mean, you get a high water year here on the river and then the grass doesn't grow, the fishing sucks in certain spots, like you like, you do need that. And sometimes I also think that you can overprotect something because I mean, if you look at something like this that was so special and blue ribbon, how many great trout streams out there are not protected nearly as much as this one is. I mean, especially like I look at Pennsylvania. There's a lot of great trout streams in Pennsylvania that I mean, they're not coddled the way some of these Western fisheries are. There's all kinds of ship dumping into them, and they still fish, and they have big fish in them. And so I'm not saying you can't do anything, but I mean I don't have a firm answer on that either, because I see that I see the value both ways. But I mean, this wasn't This was not a trophy trout stream initially. Originally, if we're talking about what it used to be, it was, you know, it used to be probably a pretty good cut cutthroat stream, but no one really knows because there was so much mining activity in that area in the eighteen hundreds it basically killed everything off. And then in the nineteen sixties they built this dam to to send water over to Denver, which created this bottom release fishery that grew these massive trout and for forty years it was great, and then they ran our nutrients. It's not great anymore. So I mean, what are we fixing? What are we trying to restore? Yeah, you're you're fixing something that was manufactured from from from the get go, right, And I get it. Like, I love big trout streams too, I love bottom release dams, I love tailwaters. There's some of my favorite places fish. But is it worth potentially adding more phosphorus load to the Greater Colorado River system that could us things up downstream just to have that one piece go back to what it was for a very short period of time. The correct the correct answer to that is probably not. I mean probably not. But I mean, did you know how anglers are, man, It's like people care most about what where they're fishing and how it affects what they want to do. And I mean, that's that's a problem with so many conservation issues, is we're worried about right here and now and not fifty miles from here. I mean, it happens all the time. And and look, I get a lot of people make their living guiding that river. And I'm not trying to say that their needs aren't serious or significant. I I just it's it's a hard one. It's complicated, it's it's a very hard one. It's very and I don't I don't think we'll we'll necessarily resolve it here um, but by all means, email us way in. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And how do I segway this Well, hopefully it'll get back to a status of of some serious meat eating trout gigantic meat eaters, which is a that's a that's a ship segue. But I'm you know, I just want to see where it goes, now, like here's here's where it's gonna go, because this this is a fun one that's ironically going to pair perfectly with this week's closing and the line segments. So stay tuned for that. But you'll know where that's going as soon as I read this headline here from Louisiana Sportsman. Two catfish eat family of ducks. Okay, So this pair, this pair of blue cats was caught by angler Nick Price your Homa and the fish wade nineteen and a half and twenty point two pounds, so definitely respectable blue cats, right, but not like super tanker monsters either. And according to the story, Nick noticed the guts on these cats were abnormally extended, so after fileeing, he slit open the stomachs and outpoured a whole family of ducks. Wow, okay, and Nick says one cat was full of just babies. The other one had one baby and the mama duck. So like the full grown duck, he can't be mallards, That's all I'm gonna say. There's no way these are. These have got to be a smaller duck. Anyway, I'm gonna throw a shot up on the on our our weekly Bent Insto stories so you guys can see it. They're they're pretty. You could tell their ducks. They're kind of decomposed. And I'm not I'm not a bird person. I don't know what they are. But one is definitely a full grown duck. Okay um, because that's what I thought. Like babies, I understand. But the mama duck, that's impressive, especially considering these were not forty fifty pound blue cats like twins. Good but it's not. It's not insane. So Nick Nick reckons the fish were paired up and swimming around together when they happened upon the Ducksworth family here, and he says he showed this the pictures of the stomach contents to his dad and uncle and they've both been catfishing this area for fifty years and said they've never seen anything like that. Now remember that part right there, as you ventured into the end of the line segment. Fifty years the local cat crew had never seen anything like this. That will be important again later. But Nick says he did do some research and found some video of catfish taking shots at ducks and other birds, which I've seen them wells catfish over in Europe particular. Right, Um, you know, but I don't. I don't think Nick's gonna start baiting with with duck parts. He did, however, add, and I'm quoting here, I have an unusual catfish bait. It only catches big catfish. It won't catch a lot, but you catch bigger ones with more meat than five small ones. His secret speckled trout belly. Hm. Now he says it's prime catfish bait. They love it. I've been using it here for at least three years. My biggest catch has been about thirty eight pounds Nick, Like, what just ride on the ducks? Band? Like, why are you give your sh it away like that? You know we're there's a chance that we're gonna tell it to everybody, but you know, I mean we kind of just so. Um. I just thought that was an interesting little one. You know that the birds pop up now and again, the mice and the voles and the things and the trout stomachs. But I I don't ever recall seeing a whole family at ducks in blue cat's stomachs before. I haven't. I've don't. Actually I've never caught a blue cat, so I can't speak to it. But no, well never kind of blue that I've caught lots of other cats, but I've never caught a blue. Um. I sort of from my my second story today, I also went a little bit more like lighthearted and fun, not not quite so sciency and serious. You know, it's it's a but but like you, you know you you went, you went salt into fresh, and I went fresh and now went to salt. So we're getting a whole smattering of everything. And and I'll admit my first story was really long, so the second one is going to be pretty short. I gotta I gotta close with the best headline, and that's purely why I picked the story. The best headline I found all week. Fish sex organs boosted under high c O two and this one came from PiZZ dot org, one of those science journalism websites that I enjoyed just like hanging around on. And uh, I'm gonna file this in the very very slim category of benefits of climate change. So a new study out of the University of Adelaide found that one particular species of reef fish looks like it may actually benefit from ocean acidification. You know that that that's happening right now as a result of increased CO two in the atmosphere. The common triple fin or for sterry gin la pillum I know I blew that uh is a shallow water species found off the coast of New Zealand. When exposed to increased levels of oceanic acidity, these fish produced more sperm and eggs and take better care of their fertile ova. The research team compared the triple fin found in areas of underwater volcanic seeps that naturally have high levels of carbon dioxide with fish found outside those areas, and they discovered that those fish experienced no negative effects from acidification and significant increase in gonad production. The males in the area of high acid eight and foraged more, and the females devoted more of their energy to a vary in production. The researchers also found that the male spent more time and energy guarding the fertilized eggs, which might lead to better recruitment. So there's the good news and all this. The bad news is that we're talking about tide pool fish that grow to a whopping eight centimeters. So like, I don't think you're gonna look for the triple fin to take the place of your favorite sport fish, which are not going to fare so well from acidified oceans. But hey, something's gonna do, all right. I don't even know what to say about that. I was thinking that maybe they were like a different version of the triple tail, I know, I was. I was like, oh, like, no, no, we're talking about tiny little tide pool fish that uh, that will do great whenever the else dies. Here here's what I'll say about that. I once did an interview with a very smart gentleman who wrote a very great book about micro fishing, and I was like, what is all this about? And and and it was a very interesting conversation. But one of the things that he said is like, you know, micro fishermen might be laughing all the way to the bank because at some point like that might be what's left and then you have not honed your micro phishing skills and therefore will not survive. So don't joke. You never know if you don't. I don't know. I don't know what we're gonna be fishing for in thirty years or what's gonna gonna be the thing that that makes me most excited? It might be a whopper. I got an eight centimeter broye, but at the same time huge like like when are we when are we gonna get like the like the you know, some climate change thing produces ten pound blue gills, you know, like we've been hearing about that our whole life, Like the radioactive like gonna get some of that, you know? You know, well, at least we know at least one fish seems like he's gonna benefit from it. So maybe others will too. Who knows, We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll all find out soon enough. We can only hope either we clean up the whole climate and the whole thing, or we just hope for like, you know, stupid radioactive fish. Uh. Phil has got a lot of take in here. We got um sexual fish, organs, duck duck sauce, uh, catfish with duck sauce, catfish, Yeah, miracle grow sprinkle a little miracle grow, and your favorite trout stream uh and shark hunting. Phil. Let us know what you're thinking. Man, We'll see which way you sway this weekend. As soon as we're done hearing from you. It's on too awkward moments in Angling Quack Quack Joe Simmeli, you are the winner this week. So I just wanted to ask you, guys, um for a favor for a friend of mine. Um, if you guys come across any new stories about how increased CEO two levels can improve the performance of human sex organs or anything, it doesn't have to be CEO two, go ahead and pass those stories belong to me and I'll forward them on to my friend for you know, no reason. Thanks, Why did you take a picture? A life? So I want to say I feel bad about what we're about to do here, but I don't. I can't. I can't feel bad because you guys send us shots to trash like you guys opt into this. You put the ship talk ball squarely in our court, and you say things like here's a picture destroy me. So I can't. I can't feel too bad because those are the emails that we get guilt at all, exactly right. But I'm gonna enjoy this one a little more usual because, um, today's awkward moment awkward photo is from a friend of mine, and today we're gonna deconstruct a photo of this pal or maybe former pal, Kevin Hughes. And when he sent this shot, he didn't even provide a backstory. He was basically like, Hey, you said you were looking for awkward shots. Here you go. That's what I got from Kevin. And I don't know Kevin at all, but I feel zero issue with with trash in this one because awkward awkward it is. Again, I don't know this guy, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that Kevin is either just incredibly self confident, like just just one of those people who's automatically comfortable in their skin no matter how they look, or totally unaware of what he was getting into when he offered up the shot. Well, I I can tell you that he's totally confident now because a quick bit of backstory on keV. I've known him for years and he lives down in Miami and you can find him on the Instagram at small Craft Advisory Fishing, which is a very clever name considering his stick kayak fishing, and he produces all kinds of cool videos and social media and even guides a bit. But when I say kayak fishing, I mean like giant tarpin and snook and tuna and all kinds of macho stuff like he gets after it. Kevin is not at the golf course pond, you know what I mean. And while I don't have time to explain why, I also believe he's one of the luckiest anglers on the planet. I have joked with with mutual friends more than once that he has a horseshoe stuck up his ass, so good for him. He's lucky. Kevin is also a gorgeous man, Like, no kidding. Over the years, my own wife has been like, OMG, Kevin Hughes is so hot, and I'm like, yeah, a famous celebrity, it's a buddy, and I'm like, other than being in shape and cut and having the stamina the paddle far enough out to catch sailfish on a kayak, we're basically the same person hunt you know. Yeah, I'm sure no other than other than his like seemingly chiseled physique, his his southern location and his badass jackalope tattoo. You guys are basically twins. We are. But then Kevin had to go send us this photo of him in April two thousand one standing on the shore of a Colorado Lake, and I don't even know where to begin, but I guess I'll start here. Fourteen year old Kevin was not so cut, not at all. And let's just say he was likely familiar with Oxy or stride X pads. Okay, and look, I was too. I'm not making fun of that. I'm just we're we're stating facts about the photo, pointing things out, and I felt the need to go there. No, that's that's I think. I think it's earned. And I also feel like I gotta say I was an oxy guy myself. And for the young guns out there who grew up in the big farmer generation, we're talking about a stringent acnepads, all right, not hillbilly heroin. But I'm not I'm not one to pick on a little kid's pimples. I'd consider that a low blow. I will reserve my ridicule for the clothes that his mom probably bought for him. And young Kevin's mom seems like she had good taste, because his attire is what's what's what's the magic to stunning? It's stunning. I'm dying to get into that shirt, but I will. I will start at the top. I will hold back Kevin is wearing a white Abercrombie visor, which leads me to believe that he was either the last preppy kids still wearing Abercrombie in two thousand one, or he was really into eminem and I hope it was the ladder, Like I hope that when he wasn't fishing, he was just watching eight Mile on repeat and daydreaming about himself winning rap battles. Let's say, strong chance there were slim shady posters in this room. Yeah yeah, well, okay, you mentioned the shirt. The shirt sort of backs that up. Okay, this shirt, it's loose, flowy and breathable, button up like a Hawaiian shirt, but it's got this crazy Asian print happening, right, I mean, it's all over the place. It's a white shirt, but it's just slathered with Chinese letters and dragons, just all different color dragons, man like, randomized all over the shirt. I'm pretty sure I hate, I hate to rumpt you, but I'm pretty sure that when I saw Wu Tang play in Hawaii, one of them was wearing that shirt. Oh you saw Woo Tang? Yeah? Man, all right, we can't get off on that now, but there you go. So that's that's that you just made the shirt cooler and kind of ruined the whole make fun of the thing. But anyway, um, I look at it and I'm like, well, this is kind of foreshadowing, right, because I was like, it's it's kind of kind of a little bit scarface. And Kevin did end up moving to Miami, you know what I mean. So it's like a little picture of the future, like what he's gonna rock and you know where he lives. Um, but can't you see him at the mall with his friends falling in love with that shirt, like what you know, while there were no adults there, like I bought you know, weird clothes and stuff when I was at the mall with my friends and my dad, you know, Paradjenko is my dad be like, what the hell you wearing bell bottoms? You know what happened all the time. I mean, yes, I can relate to that, but the shirt does not flag that way for me. It's just like, guy, I think we have different perspectives on that shirt. The Asian themed Hawaiian shirt just doesn't throw me at all. I can picture I can actually picture some I think some of my high school teachers wore that shirt in the late nineties. If I'm being honest, and I would probably still rock that shirt to this day. I could see you where and I you know what, damn it, I could see you wearing that shirt. Yeah, I could do a Christmas party or something, yeah, totally, or just out fishing on a summer day. It could happen. I will admit that the shirt feels a little out of place, like with the backdrop of the Colorado High Mountain Lake. So yeah, I see, I see how it's a little out of place there. But I can't throw too much shade because I can see myself doing that. But let's let's move off the shirt. Let's move on to the fish. Kevin's holding a small rainbow trout. And it's not like when I stay small. We're not talking like four inches of fury small. It's but it's also not it's not what I would put into the hog category, right, Just let's call it a twelve venture. It's a perfectly respectable fish for a fourteen year old kid to get excited about. He could have used maybe a little guidance on the on the hold, like maybe loosen up the full hand around the girl's death grip. But again, I've seen worse. It's not the worst I've seen. Yeah, see, we may disagree here, but like, what what strikes me is a look on his face, right, a face, by the way, that's wearing glasses that I don't recall being in style. Okay, just the these thin gold framed oblong not sunglasses. These are like glasses, glasses that I just I don't feel matches age. It's like he's trying to find his own style with with the ensemble, with the clothing, but like these are the glasses like his mom bought him six years earlier that he's still wearing. Okay, but anyway, I don't think the ensemble belongs in this fishy setting. And his face to me looks as though someone else caught the trout and handed it to him and said, he hold my trout for a sect, dude, And then like before he could respond and say I don't know how to hold a fish, someone quickly snapped his photo. That's what I see. I get that. The thing that sticks out for me on that one is just his apparent total lack of enthusiasm, right, and it doesn't come off like it doesn't come off like the I'm too cool to look excited aloof teenager thing, which I would understand for a fourteen year old. It doesn't feel like that. It feels strangely more wholesome, Like if I were to caption this photo, it would say something like, hey, this fishing stuff is pretty neat, Like that's what did she's saying, like the moose from Wally World. Actually, this fish is a pretty neat one. But my big takeaway from the photo is that I'm looking at someone who has no business being as comfortable and confident in his body as he seems to be. Like I don't know how he can have that look of confidence and be the fourteen year old kid that he is, and it seems like, man, I gotta see. I gotta say, it seems like it's all worked out for him, because you say, Kevin sprouted into an absolute angling badass. And my my final point here is that this picture should provide hope to all the mid puberty kids out there stuck somewhere between wanting to be k v D and I don't know what's called post bologne depending on and they're like they're like trying to make the decision based on what they think is going to get them get them more attention from the people that they're interested in romantically. But here's a hit for all of you. It's always the musician and not of the fisherman. Always just playing simple. You'll make it so much more being a drummer and a Deaf Leppard cover band, you know, especially considering you have two arms, than like winning the bass Master Classics. True, but listen there there is a video of Kevin out there paddling under ten docks with a forty pound snook on the line, passing his rod around pilings twelve times, and you're watching this go and there's no way to do it is landing this fish. But he us amazing angler Queues, You're an American badass, and we do thank you for sending this okay, and to everyone else, if you're dying to be this embarrassed on our podcast, please keep those shots coming to Bent at the meat eater dot com. You know what I gotta say, Kevin's story is the life story of his that you you laid out there kind of makes me think of the fairy tale the Ugly duckling. You remember that one, of course, I do. It's classic. Yeah, I feel like I feel like when I was a kid, I got the modern, like watered down version of that original story because I was looking at I was, I was looking this up, something to do with like getting my kid new books and the original by Hans Christian Anderson. And it's like so many other classic fairy tales, it's so much more brutal stuff the kids get nowadays. Like it's not a nice little fun story, no, totally. Man. Like, my daughter is really into the Little Mermaid and I, you know, Disney, the whole deal, and I but I found out, much to my surprise, not long ago, that was originally a Hans Christian Anderson tale. I did not know that. And in his book, in order to walk on land, she had to drink a potion that made her feel like she was constantly walking on knives. I mean, how terrible is that? And then after enduring all that pain, um, the Prince marries another gal and the Little Mermaid kills herself. So they left that out of the musical, you know. Uh, and we were part of that world, you know, Oh that was good. That was good. Yeah, I mean you look at that stuff and then we wonder why we're bitching about the fact that kids are softer nowadays than they were in the eight hundreds. Anyway, I didn't mean to de rail us into talking about gory fairy tales and sensitive children. I was really trying to set up a nice little segway there, because for end of the line, Joe is going to tell us about some ugly ducklings whose entire purpose in life is to elicit violence. Not loud enough. Tracing the history of any style of lore to its true origins is often pretty difficult. The first frog lore is as an example. We're likely whittled in a backwoods cabin and crushing fish long before the world was introduced to the rubber snag proof frog. In many cases, a lure's story starts when either the inventor or someone with more business savvy than the inventor begins mass production, and such is the case with the first duckling lore. I went down quite a rabbit hole trying to get a beat on the first duckling to hit tackle shop shelves, and to the best of my research, it was the creed duck spelled c r e d u K. Multiple kind of reliable sources have its mass production starting in the nineteen fifties. That mass production happened in the town of Oregon, Ohio, and the creed Duck was the brainchild of Mr Bill Zabo. The cree duck was made of molded plastic and looks exactly precisely like a classic bathtub or bur ducky de bait. Has a flat bottom, and it's through wired with one big old honk and treble hook dangling behind the ass region. On either side of that hook, two more wires create little duckling legs, each with a small silver spinner blade at the end. Cree Ducks, at least per eBay were available in classic, black and yellow, black and white, and even white and cinnamon. Though Zabo was eventually bought out by a larger manufacturer, it seems as though the cree duck was made through at least the nineteen seventies. What's most interesting about it, however, is its origin, which I learned about from a single magazine ad I've found online from the nineteen sixties that appears to be written by Zabo himself. Across the top, it reads, Indian guide tells all, now you can use his secret to catch big fish. Having fished the Cree river system in Northern Canada, I knew right away he was talking about the Cree Indians, hence the lore name. The ad says nobody could figure out how the Cree guides were managing to consistently at stringers of massive pike, which is silly, because I know for a fact the pike up there will swipe it a gym sock. Still, it goes on to say it was only after I had become almost a blood brother to an Indian guide that I found out how they were using a crudely carved and painted wooden duckling with hooks attached. Zabo even guaranteed success with your Cree duck in the ad and offered a full refund within ten days if you weren't satisfied. I cannot help, but wonder how many refunds he gave, because I have never been satisfied with the duckling lure, not once ever, and in my opinion, they fall squarely in the novelty category. Not only have I never caught a fish on one, I've never seen a live duckling gets snatched in person. I want to see it. I think we all want to see it and love the idea of a pike or muskie or bass that sucks living foul off the surface. And that's why I think duckling loure is sold back in the day and continue to sell now. Though duckling sort of faded away in the eighties and nineties, companies like Savage Gear recently resurrect them. If you fish and are on social media, strong chance you caught that fairly recent video of a kayak angler nailing a monster pike on a buzzing Savage Gear suicide duck. Search for ducklings getting eaten by fish on YouTube and you'll find plenty of clips. Nobody, including me, ever said it doesn't happen or never happens. In fact, I also know there are certain leagues in Canada that basically have a yearly duckling hatch and the pike gobbled them up like tic TACs. But I call bullshit on the idea that a duckling is some sort of secret weapon everywhere the way I look at them, If you throw it long enough, eventually something's going to collaborate. The massive Instagram attention you'd get from the shot might be worth it. Two Some but I have in the patients to throw a lore I have no confidence in for more than twenty minutes, and I will quickly op for something I know the fish eat on a regular basis. My colleague and buddy, Sam Longran Mediator's fishing editor, echoes my feeling. But then there was a muskie trip he took with his dad on the Flambeau in Immediately after his old man called his first ever muskie, he cut off the whopper plopper that at trashed and tied on one of them new fangled suicide ducks. Sam scoffed, and I get the impression he was mildly embarrassed in front of their guide. Few casts in, though, that duck got hammered by a forty plus injury, which might not have gone over so well considering Sam was working really hard on that trip to get one on fly. And as Sam put it, my dad fished that damn lord for the next day and a half without so much as a passing glance. Did that fish really identify that as a duckling or did it just make the right sound and get in front of a fish that was ready to kill. We'll never know, even though I think you know what I think, and Sam, I do hope your dad gleaned all the install love he could out of those photos. Well that's all we have for you today. But if your new year's resolution us to start scrapbooking like I know Joe's was, this week's page would include the worst use yet for fly reels, further proof that anglers are either illiterate, brilliant, or some combination of both. A Cinderella story of inspiration for all the pimplee fat kids out there fondling their zep cos, and possibly the best worst lure ever invented. Oh my god, terrific as. Always send us a note and let us know what you're up to it Bent at the meat Eator dot com we look forward to all your news ideas, bar nomination, sabin items, awkward photos, love letters, and unmitigated hate mail. We do, to be fair, most of those are for a lance fee. Uh. No, matter what you have to say, we will read it, and if you make us laugh, we'll be sure to send a degenerate angler sticker your way. Just be sure to send us your address too. That's right, We're also keeping an eye on the degenerate angler and bent podcast hashtags if you're into the whole gram thing. But remember, even if you're like Miles and hate social media, you're all is welcome here

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