00:00:06 Speaker 1: Screw the trout. I'm gonna put a handful of him on my cream and weet what I want as the only buffa hat I've never seen. Nobody cast a rod as bad as you. They'll keep your phone dry, but nobody will be able to hear you. Good morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome to Bent the Fishing podcast. Where we call it a scene. I call it disaster down here. The kids grow up faster. I'm Joseph Mellie, a mild and uh. And to everyone who caught that song, reference round of applause and a round of drinks on me if I had at the bar. Yes, I'm assuming I'm gonna say not many people did catch it, but that's okay. We'll explain. We'll explain. That was a tip of the hat to the band Operation Ivy, who inspired our new band theme music. And we want to know what you guys think. Do you think we love it? Yeah, we love it. I think it's fantastic. I would listen to that song anytime. But yes, it's weird man, the way that like are the timing of our song change happened because there was that there was that whole subject of the discussion that came up in social media recently and and so like, just so you guys known, because you're not all following this. Somebody and I can't remember who was. Some listener asked if if he's the only one that rocks out to the Bent theme song in the car, And we're really happy that people like it. But the truth is, like when we were putting this show together initially, when we first started, we just had to grab something that sort of fit on the stock music website. It wasn't what we had in mind, but like, that'll work and we didn't hate it, but it was it was just not exactly what we had in mind. So we've been we've been talking about an itching to try and get something written uniquely for us, and we finally got it done. So that's the new song. Things that media or tend to like come together real fast and literally it was like, we need a song. Are you cool with this? Do you like this? Like? Yeah, I like it too, and we just went with it. So yeah, that's that's where they original theme came from. Um, but the studio band we worked with for the new theme is actually from Philly, represent East Side, and we got to give a shout out to Hayden Samic, who works behind the scenes with Phil on our show. He's the one that set up the band orchestrated the whole thing, and we had a meeting with him and we were like, yeah, just make it sound kind of like this. Yeah, and I think they nailed it. Oh, they totally nailed it. It was like I said, I would listen to that song anytime. And we're pumped because, I mean, the truth is that you already know this, but Joe and I are huge Op Ivy fans, And for those who were unfamiliar, Operation Ivy is a historically significant band of the punk scene. They just kind of they just kind of appeared in the late nineties, made one badass album, and then vanished. It was just like boom, here it is Mike Drop and they're out. But their their legacy, Like for a band that only had one album, their legacy has endured amazingly. Like I'm guessing some of you have heard of Rancid. Well, Tim Armstrong, the legendary frontman, was the guitarist in Operation Ivy, and Matt Freeman, Rancid's bass player and also one of the best bass players ever, was also an ap ivy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And while those two dudes went on to be like punk hall of fame people like they got a punk rock hall of Fame status op Ivyes frontman Jesse Michael's Jes went on to become a lunatic. That's that's harsh, but seriously, that's not wrong. You're not wrong. The dude went off the deep end. And even if you have no interest whatsoever in his music, do yourself a favor and look up the Jesse Michael's Thrash Metal blog on YouTube, because because I can't help myself, here's a little clip montage. What I like doing is lying in a bathtub, taking a ship and calling it self spa treatment. Now record, I'm like, piss on my severed head. I'm not kidding, Okay, I like funk I I will admit even being an operation. I have a fan. I had no idea that existed until you were like, hey, dude, have you seen this? Like, no, who's seen that? I think it's just proof that like that, to me is proof of what's wrong with with the whole punk scene, because that's what happens to like a true punk when they grow up, not nothing good if you're like really like a true punk, like you shouldn't survive into your thirties because because you wind up there and that's fair. Yeah, that's hard. Like I was never a real punk because like that didn't happen to me. And I think, like when I listened to those or I watched those, I think I think Michael's is both clinically depressed and completely straight edge. But if he wasn't, I'd suggest he could probably use a drink like, hey man, it's a whiskey and talk about it. I don't know, but on that subject, I think we need to move off of punk rock and uh and and think more about drinking. And let's let's get into that's my bar. Yeah, let's do that, and everyone will be shocked to hear um probably that we're headed back to Wisconsin. And I always knew, yeah, I always need the state punched above their weight when it came to fishing and drinking. But until we started doing this show, I had no idea the extent to which Scotty's dominate the fishing bar scene. Fishing bars are like a goddamn institution there, uh for those of you who are who are not super enthralled by like our eighties punk conversation. How about what we're gonna We'll stick to that era, but let's switch it up. We'll switch up the details. Perhaps you were more in the pac Man frogger, nutthugger shorts and sweat bands, best God Damn bartender from Tim buck To to Portland, Maine, the Portland argument. For that matter, you'll remember that the goal of our That's My Bar segment is to pay respect to those most important cultural institutions great fishing bars, respect, mad respect, and we we will we will never achieve our goal of properly documenting all the great watery watering holes worldwide without your help. You are critical in this, and you know you've got a favorite fishing bar or ten. Perhaps take some time and pay homage to those hallowed places and send us what you come up with. Please, Yes, we we we we get some good ones. This week's submission comes from Mike Whittlinger, and and he wrote something so compelling. We're not even gonna mess with it, like we're not even going to interfere. We can't know, We're just we're just gonna read Mike's owed to his favorite childhood fishing place. It's it's that good where it stands alone, and that's rare. I gotta say props to Mike and uh and we begin. Being from Wisconsin, the bar talk makes me want to both wet a line and my whistle. I'd like to recommend one of my favorite scannie bars of all times. It might just be more of a memory than a real place at this point, but I'll submit it here for your reading pleasure. I started fishing around age two. My parents would take me to Pioneer Lake in northern Wisconsin. Directly across from the boat launch area was the coolest bar I could ever imagine. After long days of fishing, evening hours were generally spend at the bar. Enter Maple View Resort a ka Oshitsky's Polish retreat. That's being mostly Polish. That's great. Well, that was sort of their name. They sold T shirts that read Oshitskys, but I think their surname was actually O Sicky. Of course, I had the Oshitsky's T shirt and as a preteen, wore it proudly every chance I got. Picture the early eighties, nut hugger shorts, sweatbands, back when Dad's had hair and lots of it. All The photos from the fish cleaning station, which is with in a stone throw of the bar, of course, seemed to contain sons, father's marl borrows, blats, and plenty of forty plus in species for the wall or table. To a six year old fishing freak kid like me, it was the ultimate bar. Every wall held fish, huge glass encase musky mounts in various wheaty or woody habitats, monster walleye, four pound perch fish as far as my eyes could see, and I swear every one of those mounts were world records. From my youthful yet extensive experience, those muskies most certainly wayed a hundred pounds each, and the wall eyes at least half that. To top it off, at the end of that beautiful fish rainbow held the world's best cherry cokes, always with extra grenadine, and two real Marischino cherries if you ask nicely. They also had pac Man Frogger, other video games of pool table or two, and hummingbird feeders. Out side the massive windows overlooking the picturesque lake side. These windows were artfully sprinkled with a handful of fake bullet hole stickers. The veracity of the holes in question and how they got there left my six year old self in a constant state of wonder. The video games didn't fascinate me nearly as much as fishing, and whenever I could pull a buddy away from plinking quarters to go fishing from the resort dock, that's what we do. The most memorable night was late dark, breezy, freezing cold, with a constant drizzle, and we were just hammering fish on the end of the dock, two kids roughly six and eight years old, supervised in quotes. He put that in quote, supervised through that legendary bar window from a dry, warm, alcohol laden short distance away. Drenched and chattering, we were lip ripping fourteen inch perch left and right from the end of that bar dock. No ship or no ship skis should I say? Writing this has reminded me that I really need to make it back there and pay my respects either to a bar well done or a memory well embellished, hopefully both. That was pure poetry. I mean, that was like poetic perfection. Mike, let us know how it goes when you finally do make that pilgrimage back and I hope it's exactly as you remembered it, and do his favor. Send photos, and all of you out there listening take a cue from Mike and send us your bar nominations. If they're half as good as that one, they will probably get our attention. I've never been to that bar, but I feel like I have. Yeah, much like Mike, I accompanied my pops to many a Wisconsin drinking establishment after days on the water, and and that story, like that email that he sent, it just got me thinking about those days, which then got me thinking about what we used to call our fishing equipment when I was a kid. Yeah, you've been thinking about this a lot. In fact, Miles is going to delve into a touchy subject among anglers in today's weekly Word. Webster's Dictionary defines fish as I once worked with a guy who proudly identified as a North Carolina redneck. We'll call him Chris. Let me be clear, Chris was neither dumb nor uneducated. He was the kind of person who could frame up a wall, repair a hull, and rebuild a Chevy short block with the same set of rudimentary tools. He never once met a vehicle he couldn't pilot, from sport fishers to yachts, to jet boats to super cubs to G four's. If it swam, crawled, flapped, or ran, he could find it, catch it, and kill it. I can't say I always liked Chris. His skills were only overshadowed by his ego, but he earned my respect. When no one else was around, we'd sometimes share beers in a quiet conversation. In those moments, his drawls seemed to dissipate, and he'd admit to a love of books and language when anyone else was an earshot. Though he mispernoun its words and mangled grammatical phrasings, his language became intentionally crude and exactingly imprecise. I actually once heard him yell at a client I never seen nobody cast a rod as bad as you, and that exchange hit on the one semantic line in the sand that he could not stand here violated. If anyone called a fishing rod a pole in his presence, he would set upon them as if they had just insulted the good name of his maternal grandmother, which is apparently a big thing in the South. More than once I overheard him exclaim, you grow beans on poles to fish with rods. Here in the US, the terms rod and pole are sometimes used interchangeably, and as far as official American Dictionary definitions are concerned, their equivalent. But few topics inspire as much polarization and fishing culture as the rod versus pole debate. What you call that long cylindrical thing used to deliver bait and wrangle fish says a lot about how you identify as an angler. Such semantic sensitivity might seem unnecessarily divisive. Who gives a ship what you call the thing you fish with? We argue enough about fishing style or species. Do we really need another point of contention? Well? No, but like it or not, Fishing is what linguists referred to as a discourse community or an insulated network of people who come together around a shared set of goals, and we judge who is in and who is out based on the language they use. When I was a kid, we had poles. My dad had poles. My uncle's always had the best polls. I was usually saving up my money for a new pole. In fact, the first nice pole ever bought myself was branded the Berkeley power pole. Back before hydraulic shallow water anchors were a thing. But when I get older and more serious about fishing, I started reading fishing books and magazines and hanging around tackle shops, and I noticed that the real sticks they didn't use poles, they used rods. As I started working my way into the fishing industry, I figured out the calling a rod a pole at the boat ramp was kind of like calling a deck aboard at the skate park. In his classic novella, Norman McLean wrote, always it was to be called a rod if someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun. And though McLean was describing a scene from the thirties, the same attitude holds in contemporary angling circles. A quick search through online fishing forums will produce a slew of comments like I cringe when I hear someone referred to a fly rod, spinning rod, or casting rod as a pole or fishing rod is what fishermen use. A fishing pole is what rednecks and country bumpkins use. In that last quote, you can hear that the two different terms also carry a connotation of social class and standing. The language policing comes off as obnoxious and snooty. Rods and poles are completely separate tools, and their differences have absolutely nothing to do with superiority or class warfare. The distinction between the two comes from our angling obsessed buddies across the pond. In England, if it's got guides and a reel, it's a rod, But if it's a long stick with a line attached to the end, it's a pole. Here in the States, cane poles used to be common tools, but very few people fish with them anymore. Just about everybody I know uses rods with reels. Certain folks in the UK who target especially spooky carp will tell you that casting a line, even a lightly weighted one, makes too much disturbance on the water. They proudly use poles, some of them up to thirty ft long, to delicately dap their baits in front of finicky rubber lips. So, if you want to get technical about it, that's the difference between rods and poles. I use the term rod to describe my fishing implements because it's accurate and it avoids annoying rebuttals, but I don't actually care that much. I will say that it's pretty damn funny to walk into a fly shop and ask where they keep their fly poles, so long as you're not hoping to get good customer service. And speaking of the fly folks, tankara became the hot new thing in certain fly fishing circles about a decade ago. If you're not familiar, tin car is a stripped down form of fly fishing without a reel. The fly line attaches directly to the tip of the rod I mean pole, And to be honest, tankara would actually be fun if not for the people who love it. Tin Carra seems to attract the most holier than the uputty folks I've ever met in fishing. They proselytize harder than Jehovah's witnesses and Latter day Saints combined. But here's the part that I love. Every tin car in enthusiast I've ever met proudly refers to their equipment as rods, but technically they're wrong. So all you tank car people out there, I hate to break it to you, but you fish with poles, well done, man, And this ring is so true for me. Like when I was little, my gramps always said, grab your fishing poles, that's what they were. But now if someone refers to rod as a pole, I instantly labeled them a google, like you're a googan. Just maybe a little harsh, but at least, look, you've clarified the terms, right like there is now clarification, which means everyone that calls a rod a pole is now officially wrong. Like that is wrong. It's no longer tomato tomato, You're just wrong. So there you go, the judginess of the fishing community about about the terminology right there. Use it. That's what we're here for, is to educate you guys. And now that we've gotten that out of the way, we can move on to clarifying what's how opening in fishing's current events. It's time for fish news. Fish news that escalated quickly. So that little story I did about using golden rod golflies for trout bait, remember that last week that that resonated, right, I've gotten quite a few notes about that, ranging from just like, hey, my pap Paul taught me about this years ago, to thanks for spilling the beans on my secret bait. You jack Wagon. Um, I'm not. I'm not that surprised because I figured more people were going to be in tune with that than me. I had no idea, But I think my favorite came from Tom Nezick. He sent us an email and he says it is good, right. He says it's um. His brother Steve isn't much of a rotten real angler, but he's just generally big into the nature, you know what I mean, and apparently foraging. And he sent along a video of his bro hunting down golden rod gall lava to eat. And I watched this, and I gotta say, he almost made it sound appetizing and delicious. There's no almost. He made it sound incredibly appetizing and delicious. I don't know if I believe him, but that's how he made it sound. He describes them as having a sugary taste similar to maple syrup mixed with banana, and they crunch as if they contain crystallized sugar. And I said, hell, I'm gonna put a handful of him my cream of wheat. You know what I'm saying. They should be right next to the wet walnuts at Baskin Robbins but yeah, apparently Golden Rod Golf good stuff. Tom, thanks for sending that. Um it was both amusing and informative. So that's what I got for shoutouts this week. I just got a quick one. Uh. Andrew Peterson wrote in basically saying because last week we talked about Toby's Tavern and our That's My Bar segment and and he appreciated the shout out for Toby's Tavern, but he doesn't think we gave it enough credit as a fishing bar because it is located, he claims, within eyesight of some exceptional, exceptional pipe fishing water. So uh, apparently we we didn't. Again, I've never been to Toby's Tavern, but now I have yet another reason to go because he claims that the fishing there is incredible in addition to the drinking. So you know, yet another point in favor of Toby's Tavern as a fantastic fishing bar. Toby's Tavern, pike and beers and um Lion mounts having sex, good place. Okay, well, okay, so let's move on to the real news. Now. Remember this is a competition. As always, Miles and I do not know what stories the other guys bringing to the table, and at the end of it, our official punk rock DJ and audio engineer Phil will weigh in on who is the news winner. I do not have the floor to open. That goes to you, sir. It's true. I'm gonna sidebar for a second, and I would love to know Phil's favorite punk band. Oh, you've been called out. You just called him out as the punk DJ, So I'm just curious. Well, that's true. Don't say m x p X or we won't like you as much anymore. Sounds true, all right? Getting into the goods here. This story is is a follow up to an article that Spencer new Hearth published on the Mediator website a couple of years ago. Spencer does a fact checker series that you should check out because he runs down myths and legends and and the stories that you know, the culture of of of fishing and hunting has a bunch of of of things that we take as gospel and that we pass among each other that aren't necessarily true at all. Some of them are some are complete bullshit. And so when when Spencer was a kid, he asked his dad why they had stocked so many damn bullheads in their family farm pond, and his father's response was that they hadn't why why would they do that, and he went on to tell Spencer that ducks were to blame in doing so. Spencer's dad passed along a popular yarn that fish eggs stick to duck feet and water foul spread those eggs far and wide, and many years later, as an adult journalist, Spencer decided he was going to dig into that theory because it seemed like it might be questionable. Yeah. I mean, for the record, I've heard that my whole life. I've heard that a million times. That's how fish places yeah duck feet on on a yeah duck feet. So he started doing some research and he quickly identified some some some issues with this idea, including the fact that most fish eggs are just barely adhesive enough to to delicately bind to aquatic vegetation, which would make it kind of hard for them to remain stuck to a duck's feet during takeoff in flight yeah, like coming out of the water at altitude yeah. And another like the chances of fish eggs surviving a high speed water landing on a duck's feet are pretty slim, right, So those are those are two strikes against this and and to quote Spencer's article, he said, this duck transfer theory seems to unravel under scrutiny. However, a couple of listeners recently sent me a link to a Smithsonian magazine article that might force Spencer to reconsider his conclusions. Turns out, though the idea of waterfowl transporting fish eggs on their feet is far fetched, ducks maybe smuggling fish eggs in a different way. The Smithsonian article described a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last summer titled Experimental evidence of dispersal of invasive cyprinted eggs inside migratory waterfowl. Note the word inside the Smithsonian article has a catchier title, Fish eggs can survive a journey through both ends of a duck. Ha ha, I knew poop. I knew there was some poop poop issue. The researchers in Hungary fed five hundred fertilized common and Prussian carp eggs to eight mallards and waited for the eggs to uh to re emerge in plastic trays placed below the duck's enclosure. In total, eighteen individual eggs passed through the duck's digestive tracks, and three of those eighteen went on to successfully hatch into baby carpon interesting to Prussian carpon one common carp meaning that point zero zero six percent of the carp eggs consumed by mallard ducks in this study remained viable after journeying from one end of the bird to the other. Let me wings journey a distance best. That number may seem insignificant. I mean, with that low of a survival rate, how could duck poop possibly be a factor in spreading fish populations? So we gotta put this in context, and to do that we gotta do a little math. There are about twelve million mallards in North America alone. They're also quite common in Europe and Asia, and mallards love fish eggs. According to the lead author of the study, quote, if mallards find these spawning areas, they will go there and eat the eggs until they can't move. So if you assume just ten million birds consume a thousand fish eggs every year, that would equate to sixty million fertilized fish eggs popping out in mallard poop annually. Since mallards often travel up to fifteen miles a day, the opportunity for dispersal could be significant. Now, all that said, the studies very preliminary, small sample shoes, and it actually brings up a lot of follow up questions. Right, Like, the next thing the research team plans to look at is they're gonna they're gonna repeat the same experiment with other types of fish eggs to see if if this survival trade is unique to carp because that would really matter. Uh, And they don't talk about this in the article, But what I want to know is I want to know if fish eggs can survive a trip through other bird guts. Right, Yeah, they're twelve million millards, but they're like more than forty million ducks in North America, a lot of the meat fish eggs. Sure, so there's still a lot to learn here. But it actually seems possible that the old yarn about ducks transporting fish eggs had some truth to it. It's just that the old timers got the mechanism wrong. Sure. I mean, what pops into my head is Canada geese because around here, I mean, we got some ducks. There's ducks got ducks in Jersey, But I mean I see more Canada geese than than Mallard's on a lot of the lakes and streams and things around here, So I would point to them as a culprit. I have to imagine they eat certain amount of fish eggs too, and they're everywhere. I don't know. I would imagine so too, but I don't know that. That's what I'm saying, Like, there could be a lot of potential vectors for dispersal with with waterfowl, sure, and we just don't know. So this is a fascinating one for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being there. I have long been all these questions like how did these fish get here? You know those those spots You're like, wow, sure perch get into this lake? I don't know, And we always blame bucket biology and that could be it, but it might actually be birds. Yeah. Now. Interestingly, though, at least around here, it's always seems to be tied to warm water species, like the duck connection comes up with carp or a catfish or bass, but like I've never like I've never heard of that happening with trout. You know what, I mean, so exactly that's what I'm saying. So I also think it's fascinating because it's obviously only going to be certain kinds of fish. They have to have a certain hardiness because dude, those there has to be acid in those stories. I mean, that's pretty impressive to make it through that, you know. So I'll be curious to see if if other fish can make it through there. And I think you're right, it's gonna be warm water species. If there's another one that would work with my money would be on pike because those bastards are everywhere and you can't kill them. Yes, that that is true. So I don't I don't have a great transition other than to say we've sort of busted a myth there and we'll we'll bust uh somewhere here with this little story. So as a media person, I always admire when a news story is presented in an interesting way, right, So I have to give props to the UK's Guardian for this one. And we've we've featured other stories in the past about the seafood industry pulling fast ones right, either by renaming fish to make them sound more appealing or just straight up serving you different species than what's on the menu. But this has apparently gotten so rampant, particularly in Europe, but also in the US that The Guardian ran a story called could you Spot the Fake? And turned it into a quiz And naturally I aced it, but painted naturally I aced it um if I was only that good in in algebra one, but it it painted a really great picture of some of the most common fakes, which again occur here and there. Um. And when you answered, you'd get this little pop up with with more details that I thought were pretty good. So it was actually very interesting. And the first question, um, it would just say this is often sold as red snapper? What is it really? And it's a picture of a telopia And then you have a multiple choice dropped down like what fish is this? And when you click, the tilapia tells you red snapper is an extremely popular reef fish that has been over fished to the point that stocks are now extremely low in most of its habitats. It's cheaper common substitute is tilapia. Right now, what they're doing with this quiz is posing the question of whether you would know the difference if it was served to you in a restaurant, and I feel like for that one, I would I I would know, I would know that I was at least eating a freshwater fish, not a salt water fish. Um. And there's a bunch of these that'stually, it's a really fun quiz. It's it's a very good time, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but um, one of the more interesting ones to me was, you ordered delicious grouper, but what is the common substitute? There's a photo of a catfish right, and when you click on catfish, it says the Nassau grouper is critically endangered species from the Caribbean, while the dusky grouper is threatened in the Mediterranean. See In both cases, something else entirely is sold in their place. And this one hits for me because, again, like you and I can look at this with an angler's eye, this quiz is for just the consumer of seafood. But with an angler's eye, I would never order grouper anywhere, and I've known not to do that for years. I've only ever eaten grouper I caught because just in the U s alone, the seasons and the limits are so wonky that I never trust grouper on a menu like it's in It's in every restaurant in the Keys, and people just assume, oh, we're in Florida and there's grouper here. Well that's true, but there's a strong chance that you're you're eating frozen grouper from the last time the season was open, or you're eating something else entirely, and they assume the tourists don't know, which most of them probably don't. I don't know if that substitute happens here, but I thought that was fascinating. The Guardian was saying the most common substitute for grouper on a menu around the world as catfish. So that's two times did not know that, right, that's two times already red snapper and grouper, two fish that are known to be delicious. That they're saying the most common substitutes are freshwater farm raised fish. Man, I feel like the texture of those are so different. So do I. But again, you you you eat a lot of fish, you catch a lot of fish, you clean a lot of fish. If you're just you know, my grandma and grandpa going to uh lobster, you probably don't know and Uh. The last one that tickled me was this one. White tuna is frequently on the menu, yet it does not actually exist. What is this fish that's used as a stand in now in this this is a case right of of of Chilean sea bass style renaming because fishermen no dan Well, there's there's no such thing as a white tuna, And I've always known white tuna is actually a fish called an esclar, and their deep sea dwellers oil black and ugly as hell. They look kind of like deious. Oh yeah, they look they look like a black king mackerel kind of. But this story also says it's it's it's it's usually escalar, but sometimes white tuna on a menu is butterfish. That's what I've heard it called. Okay, that's the renaming i've heard for esclartfish. Well, yeah, but butterfish is also a real fish. They're they're tiny bait fish that we buy here for chum, Like you buy a flat of them. They almost look like little pompano silver pompano um. So I didn't know that was a common a common swap there. I always thought it was always esclar, but I don't really care which one of those it is, like, fake me out, don't give a ship because it is, as you mentioned, so buttery and delicious, like it is. White tuna is my absolute favorite sushi. I don't actually care if it's butter fish or what like. It is just And however, you also know that it's known as the laxative of the sea. So you can't you can't binge this a couple of Yeah, he had a couple of your sushi deluxe, but like, you can't. You can't go all in um. And I've actually been on the dock in Louisiana several times, like mean mugging taking photos with piles of yellow fin tuna we caught and another boat like with complete new but tourists like that don't know what they're doing come back in and they're all holding an escalar and I'm like, oh, like I want, I wanted that, I want the escalar. Want. So if you can find it online the Guardian quiz, could you spot the differences. It's it's fun, it'll kill a little time at work, um, but also interesting because there's just so much shadiness. Yeah, no doubt. Sticking with salty species that people love um permit are of permit. Yeah, maybe once or twice. And we're joking because because these fish inspired this like level of obsession and reverence among certain anglers, that's I think it might be unparalleled, except for maybe with bill fish. The permit love is is is real, yep, And there is some irony and how much people love permit because technically there there are subspecies of jack's, and jack's are like the trash fish of in shore angler. I mean they're not like, they're not like saltwater hardhead catfish level or dog fish. But outside of the state of Hawaii, I don't I know very few anglers who intentionally target jack's. Yeah, and I have a comment here because the same thing with permit. If you put a permit in deep water and throw a chunk of crab at it, it'll eat as quickly as a jack Kraval, as dumb and fast as it's right. It's all. It's situational. It's situational. But despite the fact that jack's are kind of considered easy and stupid and and not that desirable, they're big eyed, rubbery lip blacktail cousins are a totally different story. People just lose their minds over permit like permit tattoos are a thing I know, otherwise seemingly normal individuals who have spent many years and sums of money that honestly far exceed my annual income just trying to catch one single permit, one, just one one, which is it's crazy and and we we might chalk this up as an example of anglers arbitrarily assigning value to one species of fish while detegrating another similar fish. But as we were alluding to earlier, there's some logic to the permit mania, at least logic by fishing standards. Unlike other kinds of Jack's permit can be maddeningly difficult to catch on artificial lures, and that's part of the reason why flanglers go nuts for these fish, because they feed in shallow water, so it's site fishing, and they're they're hypercritical of presentation. Speaking from experience, however, if you drop alive crab in front of one, it's probably gonna get munched. YEP, I don't care. You can set that flyer out away and just drop that live crab. It's gonna work. Um. But because permit inspire such devotion, they're they're very valuable to local economies in the places where they can be found in significant numbers. Dedicated permit lovers save up all their spare time and money to travel to places like Belize, Cuba, where permit populations are high and less pressured. But the original hub of permit fishing is the Florida Keys, and the Lower Keys is one of the only places they're consistently targeted in this country. For the past fifty plus years, anglers have been making annual pilgrimages to the southernmost type of the continental US trying to fool these blacktailed devils, and they bring their check books and their credit cards with them. The bite that value the Keys permit fishery has been largely taken for granted. Very little was definitively known about their spawning habits. For example, until the Bone Fish and tarp And Trust, a fisheries conservation nonprofit, began an acoustic tagging program in to figure out exactly, when, where, and how permit reproduce. Results from that study indicated that about seventy of the permit that live in the Lower Keys congregate in one small area to spawn. Now, local anglers have long known that Western Dry Docks, located about ten miles south of Qust, is a prime spot to find huge schools of permit, mutton snapper, yellowtail snapper, grouper, and other fish in the late spring and early summer. Many of those anglers were savvy enough to know that massive groups of fish congregating seasonally meant that they're spawning yep, right, and so some chose to avoid the area during that time of year, but others would chase the high concentrations of fish. The Florida angling community grew sharply divided about the ethics of intentionally targeting the spawners and and the area became a flashpoint of conflict. Regardless of personal opinion and since morality, anglers who chose to fish there during spawning season were completely within their legal rights. That changed this year when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission established a four month fishing closure in a one mile area around Western Dry Rocks, oh In addition to the tagging study that showed the majority of the area's permit went there to reproduce, other studies showed a dramatically increased mortality for permit and mutton snapper that were hooked and released in that zone during spawning season. To see, anglers aren't the only ones who sometimes maybe take advantage of large concentrations of fish that are distracted by biological imperatives. Sharks do the same, and research showed that one third of the fish released by anglers were getting eaten by sharks. So even if anglers weren't filling boxes, even if they weren't keeping anything, if they're like, no, I release everything, I'm not hurting these fish, those numbers were still getting decimated, whether they knew them or not, because one third of the fish that they released, we're getting t bombed. And now the area is closed to all fishing April through July, and the decision, it's kind of amazing to me. It's being applauded by a whole host of different fishing and conservation groups that include the Bone Fish and tarp and Trust, Lower Keys Guides Association, i g f A, Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association, American Sport Fishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, fly Fisher's International, and Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation. Only mentioned all those names. And you know this because it is so rare to get all those different organs to agree on anything. It is. They won't even hardly agree that they all like to fish like it's it's barely a thing that they agree on what color the sky is on a given day. To get them to come together and agree on a piece of legislation and rule change, to me, that signals a ringing endorsement for this, And and with that many different people on board, it's it's got to be sound, Oh dude. I mean, look, you talked to anyone who was fishing the Keys in the seventies or eighties, they'll tell you that it pales in comparison. And even though it's still a mecca, it's still amazing fishing, generally speaking, it's nothing like it used to be. So if these are the kind of drastic measures that need to be taken to preserve what's left of that old school Florida Keys fishery, to me, this move makes absolute sense. Now. I'm sure there's a handful of charter guys who are not so pleased. Yeah, but and I mean we were talking about it is drastic. It's a one mile area that's closed to fishing for four months. Is that drastic. I mean, it all depends on your perspective. No, no, no, it's not. I understand what you're saying. It's not like they closed the entire gulf out of Qua. I get it. It's like this one little area. But at the same time, if you come out and say, hey, this one mile area, how many people are like, oh, that really makes me want to fish that one mile area? You know what I mean? Like you didn't. It's kind of like if you knew you knew, and and there's there's you know, what are you what are you gonna do about that? But also, you know, you tell me you can't fish in this one mile for four months, I'm like, what is happening in that one mile? So, I mean there could be I hope they can. They can police that, you know, or do to the least that um. But yeah, it's funny people get so crazed over this fish. You've told me you've had no problem catching them on the fly. I wouldn't say no problem. I've had better luck than most. Yeah, I've I've only tried it on the fly a couple of times. But I'm not eight up with them all the permit. I caught it been on bait, and like I was saying that they're so funny because if you do it in forty ft of water on a wreck, it's like fishing jack ravals like no problem, crab touches down, it's when they get shallow. Um. But did I think that's great? Man? And even though I'm not part of that cult, I admire that obsession. I mean, we're talking about dudes who refused to use glue on their flies. Like they won't put a drop of of cement or UV cure on a fly because like, the fish are that sensible. They could smell it a mile away and they'll they'll turn right off of it. I don't have the patients. I I did it a few times and missed a few shots, and I'm like, I do only barracoutas around can we do that? You know? But did I think that's great? And I do think that's amazing that all those organizations like you say it's rare that they all come to get a degree on nothing. Um that that says something to me. Yeah, And the only transition I really have here for this one is that you know, when you do get your shot and land your permit on the fly, I will assume you'll want to take a picture of it, okay, And this is gonna be a giant free commercial for Apple, but I don't care because it's a good P S A. And and it's it's too good not to pass along in my opinion. Um And you know how like hooking yourself is kind of a rite of passage, you know what I mean? Like I always say, like, if you've never had one in you pass the barb, you're probably not fishing enough or maybe hard enough. Um. And I also feel like losing a cell phone in the drink is a similar rite of path It's like a modern rite of passage. You know, I don't I don't believe I have any close personal angling buds that haven't sent me the I got a new phone, lost all my contacts text you know what I mean, like at least one time. Uh. And I've personally donated three phones over the years. Anyway. I found this story on slash gear dot com and it's about a woman in Canada anti carrier who dropped her iPhone eleven down the hole while ice fishing on Westcasu Lake in Saskatchewan in early one Now most anglers, like me, as an example, would have said, well there goes that, and off to the Verizon store I would go. But not Angie. Okay, she was on a mission to recover this phone, and she made three separate trips back to the lake over the course of a month, loaded down with augers and aqua view cameras and the works, to get this phone back. Right well, about thirty days after she dropped it, they finally located. Was like that. It had to be like the Titanic, like the aqua view swept over and you're like, there it is. They found it and then spent two hours using a magnet on a string to get the iPhone back and guess what, it works perfectly, according to Angie after a month under the ice underwater. Okay, now there's a p s A here, so just bear with me. The iPhone eleven is, in fact advertised by Apple is being waterproof, but only to two meters and only for thirty minutes. Like that's like the max two ms. But this this is the useful part. They actually interviewed a tech expert in the piece and and the phone was down a little deeper than two meters, but he said what likely saved it was the stillness of the environment, so it hit the bottom and laid there undisturbed. So I have to I have to ask one, was there a case on this phone? No, no case, no case, just no case, just a protective cover, no case. And this this tech expert said, if it was summertime and you had boat traffic or current or anything like that, strong chance the gaskets would have failed. So the point here that he makes is if you drop your phone in the drink, whether it's an iPhone eleven or otherwise, if if you can and try to retrieve it quickly and as gently as possible, like if you're knocking it and flipping it along the bottom with a landing net trying to get it, stronger chance it will be toast. And even if you drop one in like super shallow water on the edge, he says, you know, pick it up really slowly, really gently, don't like violently snatch it and grab it and like move it around underwater, because the less it's disturbed once it hits the drink, the better shot of saving your phone. So you're saying, fight your natural inclination, which is to do for you rip it out of the water. You have a better shot of saving your ship if you just gently pick it up and slowly pull it out of the water. Interesting. So I mean I I found that used for However, I like, while I feel better about inevitable sogginess now that I personally have an iPhone eleven, I still question just how you know quote perfect Angie's phone really is because I dunked my last iPhone, which was an eight I believe, and that was also supposed to have some level of resistance. And while everything appeared fine and I lost no data and and everything worked, the camera lens, microphone and speaker were shot like once you get water behind that camera lens, there's no going back, and like it was, it was completely garbled. Um. So you know, look, some people are very anti Apple. In fact that I recently got in a heated debate over this um with our friend Ross Robertson and which he called me an ostrich with with my head in the sand, because I shan't be swayed off of Apple products. But this story is a big checkbox for Apple for anglers as as far as I'm concerned, and uh, also for any of you saying as you brought up. We'll just get a just get a case, get a life proof case, right, remember life proof? Oh of course I had. Here's another p s A right, like, they'll keep your phone dry, but nobody will be able to hear you. Okay. So that's exactly what my issue was. I had to take it out of the case to have a conversation, and it's not easy to get him in and out of the case. Okay. And I don't know if you had the same experience, but when they first came out, this is going back a long time now, when they first hit the market, they were the bomb. Like my first one lasted the entire life in my phone, no problem. And I don't know what happened. I don't know if they changed where they manufactured or cut corners or what. But like the next four that I had, and I even would send some back for a free replacement, like this one screwed up. I need another one, dude. I got so tired of people that people telling me they couldn't hear me, which irks me. Anytime I want to call there like what I can't hear you? I just hang up and I'm like, I'll call you back later. That drives me insane. I literally ripped the last two life proof cases off my phone and like threw them in the closest trash receptacle. Couldn't take it anymore. No, it protects your phone, but it ceases to function as a phone. So yeah, yeah, then you can't actually talk to anybody, so little techy, little little p s a there. Um, you know. Hopefully we'll we'll see what Phil thinks on this one. I also want to hear about the punk band. And then as soon as we're done hearing from philm we actually have a fishing report pre spawn report pre spawn from our bess pro buddy on the tour Rant Stimpkins, who um, probably can't afford an iPhone eleven, but we'll see what he's got shaken out there. Joe SURMELI you kind of Trojan Horse day tackle hack into that last news segment and for that, hey, you're our winner, my favorite punk band. I have two answers for this one. The one I think you're looking for. I'll call it my cb g B answer is television love television. Now. I am of the age, and this is what I will call my warped Tour answer. My embarrassing answer. While you were smoking cigarettes listening to Circle Jerks behind the bait shop and I was behind the video games store treating Yugo cards. Answer. We're talking bands like Yellow Card, Jimmy World Motion City Soundtrack, pop punk Joe. That's what I liked. I can feel you shivering from two time zones away. I know you thought m x p X was gonna be my lame answer. Jokes on you. Listen. These bands were unfairly maligned at the time as just bait for fox emo preteens, but they're pop songwriting sensibilities and neck for melodies elevated them above a lot of the bands of that early two thousands generation. Yeah, and everyone thought I was so cool after that Pokemon segment a couple of weeks ago. Hey, y'all, your favorite professional bass fisherman, Ranch Stampkins here with a little update from the tour. I'm sure you already heard how close I came to placing in the Bass Open event at Lewis Smith Like yesterday. If it weren't for a run of bad luck, I'd have been in the money for sure. But that's all right. I'm fixing to give him a hell on Douglas and Tennessee. This is gonna be my tour. I can feel it well. Right now, I'm stuck idling in the parking lot of a Flying j just outside of Old east of Boga. What don't you know it, I wiped my ass with the only buff I had. What had happened was I bought some bull peanuts off a feller, selling them out of the back of a Chevy. They caught up to me on Highway sixty five yesterday. I plumb forgot about this no mass, no entry bullshit at all these truck stops. About twenty minutes ago, I gave my last five dollars or some guy named Harlow and asked him if he'd please run in and buy me one of them hot dogs. I reckon he should be back any minute now. Anyway, you ain't here for my culinary advice. Y'all want some juicy pre spawn advice, So listen up. I noticed over on Lewis they wasn't responding to nothing I was throwing. I was in all the right places, but even the customs square bills with the blood crackle paint. I traded my backup trolomotor battery for what in doing Ship. I knew right then there I was gonna have to pull out the big guns. I tied on my last four inch Yamamoto creature and light blurpleo and slung it to the stumps fish ate it before it ever touched down. I threw that little one three in the well and started feeling like I was finding my rhythm. But I got a little too excited after feeling that good old wiggle hung that bait up on the very next cast. Of course, I went in after it, but my trollomotor hit a stop, bucked, and knocked the damn whole rod out of my hands. Luckily one of the older guys gave me a spare outfit after wag in. It's missing a few guys and the real sounds like rocks in a coffee can. But it ain't nothing. A little w D forty and some zip tize can't fix Ship. I fished worse. I figured the guy did it because when I'm on stage at the Classics someday, he wants to tell his kids he helped me get there. Hold on a second harl ship An anyway, I gotta scrape up enough cash to buy at least three of bags of Yamamoto's and some of that Ozark trail braade before I get to Douglas. So, if any of y'all in the northern Alabama Tennessee Ish area are looking for a pro to speak at y'all's fishing club, shoot me at d M. Also, if you're interested in buying a CB radio, got a fence that needs a little mended, or needs someone to mind your kids while they're on zoom school all day, called Darrell over at the Dollar General and leave a message for me. Otherwise I'll holler at y'all again right after I cash that fat and Douglas check. See you later. I love Rance, dude, I really, and I wish him all the best. He's got the heart kids got moxie if you think about it, I mean, Rance is kind of like the punk band that's still hustling in the garage, you know what I mean, booking gigs at the local VFW. Like four people, Yeah, four people exactly, and if nothing else, maybe, like maybe they'll just inspire, just like one other kid to follow his dreams of bass fishing greatness. That's all it takes. No, you're maybe maybe I wouldn't Like I don't look at Lance's life and be like, damn, that seems glamorous to me. Like, even if he made it big, I don't think he would change much, you know, like like maybe he'd he'd order the deluxe gas station brewed right or no, no, do you know what did he do? He'd pony up for the big bag of jerky instead of the knockoffs. I'm being like, dude, what do I know? Like that? That probably is some kids dream you never the truth is like you don't know which people or bands or anglers or whatever will turn out to be massively inspirational and and influential until way later, far into the future. And that's actually the case with the with the lure the Joe's covering this weekend end. The line it rose to glory made history without knowing it was making it, and paved the way for countless other great lures. But just like you can still download up ivy music on iTunes today, this lure continues to have dedicated fans. Well that's not allowed enough, Burt. You can't escape swim bait culture these days. It makes very little difference what you target, because there's a swim bait. For that, swim baits are loosely defined class of fishing lures that imitate fish, which doesn't really say much because lots of lures that aren't considered swim baits imitate fish. But what we can all agree on is that swim baits like tacos are available in harder, soft varieties, and it's the soft ones that have really become ubiquitous across all fisheries. Chasing smallmouth tie on a little three and a half inch k tex swing impact Muskies go for the eight and a quarter inch defiant trout cropp eas You say the two and a half inch z man slim swims have you covered? Regardless of size, what all these soft plastics have in common is a paddle tail or a modified paddle tail that thumps away when you reel, creating both action and vibration. This style of bait is so commonplace now that it's not even really a thing worth talking about anymore. It's it's been around so long that it's hardly considered innovative. But how did we get to a place where there are twenty five or more varieties of soft plastic swim bait at any given tackle shop. Most people credit the California big bass scene that bloomed in the nineties with kicking off the swim bait craze, and that's not totally inaccurate. The lower building pioneers are that era may have created the demand for big swim baits designed to catch big gas fish, many of which were super expensive in the early days, But to say those lures lead to smaller, cheaper, widely available swim baits isn't totally true. Ask any of those early swim bait makers what inspired them, and many will point to Mr Twister's sassy shad. With so many soft plastic bait companies around today, I think it's fair to say that Mr Twister has kind of been sidelined. Yes, we all know this company made the curly tail grub is staple and fishing, and there's a strong chance you still buy Mr Twister grubs today. I mean, I certainly do, but we're not exactly hearing the prose praise their latest innovations on the tournament trail. But what people might not realize is that in the nineteen eighties, Mr Twister was a tighten not just because of the curly tail, but because when they dropped the Sassy Shad, it was revolutionary. The Sassy Shad was really the first mass produced, widely available paddle tail swim bait to hit the market, and furthermore, Mr Twister produced them in a wide range of colors and sizes that appealed to everything from cropp ease two large mouths to stripers. All you had to do was stick one on a jighead, cast and reel. They were also no more expensive than any other soft plastics at the time. Personally, I have a very distinct recollection of buying a few packs of small Sassy Shads as a young lad, but not really catching a whole lot on them. And maybe that's because I didn't give them a fair shape, but it certainly didn't feel like I was fishing something revolutionary at the time. Strong chance that's because while these lures were certainly pioneers, they also had shortcomings. The plastic Mr. Twister used was stiffer than modern plastics, injection molding techniques at that time didn't really allow for realistic colors and patterns. You mostly had solid or two tone options, perhaps with some glitter mixed in. Lore historians also point to a design flaw yes. The Sassy Shad had a paddle tail, but compared to modern paddles that tend to be large and really really ramp up vibration, the Sassy's tails were pretty small, making its kick pale in comparison to present day offerings. By the early nineties, there were no shortage of Sassy Shad copycats on the market, many with more effective tails. Still, even then, most were fairly rigid, limited in color, and required an external jighead. It wasn't until storm In reduced the Wild Eyes Shad in the early two thousands, complete with an internal jake head and snazzy holographic finishes, that the paddle tail craze really kicked in the high gear. Mr Twister still produces the Sassy Shed, which tells me they still must have devoted fans in the freshwater scene. I just don't happen to know any And while a Sassy Shad or a Sassy Shad knockoff may not be the first swim baite anyone's tying on for snooker stripers, these days, they have carved a niche in the saltwater scene, particularly in the Northeast, for the countless dudes trolling umbrella rigs that might feature a dozen or more sassy shads, that harder plastics stands up to all that drag and water resistance far better than new school plastic. And if a blue fish clamps down on one of your shads, it might not get cut in half. And if you need to replace shads within your umbrella rig, you can do so very cost effectively. I can't honestly remember the last time I saw a bag of large sassy shads for sale in a Northeast tackle shop. In fact, maybe I never did, because just like when I was a kid, these baits are usually sold individually, often displayed on the bottom shelf, and repurpose tubs that once held bulk cream, cheese or perhaps macaroni salad. The only real difference is that instead of being fifty cents a piece like they wear at Bayside Bait and Tackle, Sir, I reckon, they're pushing about three bucks a pop these days. That's all the time we have for this week. Remember, if you're headed to the thrift store, keep an eye out for an Ocean Sky's T shirt. Grab all the op IV seven inches you can find, but don't ask Jesse Michaels to sign any of them. Purchase that hazy zip block bag full of old school sheds if you're feeling sassy, and if you're looking for a lightly used CB radio, we got a guy. We do. We got that guy. And if you've got any questions, comments, concerns, bar nominations, sabin items are awkward photos to share. We're always on CBE channel nineteen and my handle is jaz Bone Coyote or just email all that stuff to Bend at the meat eater dot com. We'll see it there as well too, jas Bone Kylote. I don't I don't have a follow up to that. I don't want to get along, but I actually got that off of a CBE handle generator online. That is like my personal Yeah, that's what I'm sticking with it. Uh, don't forget those degenerative Angler and Bent podcast hashtags on the Graham. We are watching you at all times. Hopefully those of you who liked rocking out in the car to our old music are are digging the new jam, or at least we hope you'll get used to it. Yes, but remember eyes on the road. Don't give yourself whiplash and Phil crank It Up Stop at

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