00:00:06 Speaker 1: It's an easy reaching fish feeling bait, chicken hook setting rod holder that will leave you reeling from the feeling. The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it. I don't want to make fun of a store like that's no fun. I want to make fun of an individual like I want to hurt the feelings of a single human. And a guy runs in, He's like, guys, we got a boat that's thinking. We need all hands down on the dock. Good morning, de generated anglers, and welcome to Bend, the phishing podcast that refuses to wear crocs but there's no problem using a y shaped stick to support it's chunking rods. I'm Joe sph Mellie A. Miles Nulty, and straight up, I'm I'm actually offended right now. I'm full shit. Don't tell me, well, you wear crocs, crocks. You're right that I like rocks, but that's that's not the issue. That's not what I'm pissed about. I'm pissed that you would make such a sweeping proclamation on behalf of our shared like team podcast or without any consultation, like that's I didn't. I did not, and and yes I rocked the hell out of some Crocs. In fact, in fact, I used to guide the guy who started Crocs. I am team Crocs all the way. Oh so do you do you have Croc stock? Then I don't have stocking. I didn't needn't he ever, teen should have got in on that early. Uh. Look, I'm not saying they're not comfy, because I'm sure they are, but they're just to me, they're just so goofy looking. But I did I did once to own a pair. I owned a pair of Crocs flip flops, and they were super comfy. But every time I wore them near water or on a boat, I'd like slip and blow my knee out every single time. And I'm like, I can't. This is terrible. Your your spot. They're not boat shoes, dude, They're not water shoes. You can't get them wet or they turn into just like they're hyper lubricated when they get wet, slip within it, if that makes sense, Like the flip flop wouldn't come off, My foot would just slide forward. Eat what you're saying, I have experienced it. I I'm with you on that one point. And I don't care if they're goofy looking. For the record, like I'm goofy looking most of the time, so my footwear can totally match me. This is what I just I just quickly add about myself though, Right, So my point is if I'm going to wear some kind of like technical, tactical looking shoe like that I needed to be good on the water. If I can't, if it has not like water shoes, you don't, i'd wear them in the water. So if it has no value there, then it's just then it's just they're not fashioned. You where your water there, what you put on afterwards to be comfortable, that's what they're for, all right, Like I did. I made the mistake of wearing them one time when I was guiding and I almost fell out of the boat and like lost my baby loft slides, but I just never did that again. They're they're they're the perfect sandals so long as you're not on the water. They're after the water sandals. Okay, but they're not sandals. Their cloths, come on, they're not sandals. They're clogs. I'm not gonna kill whatever whatever, I'm not going to convince you the crocs are like, it's like barely a step above going to the grocery store in bedroom slippers, Like you know what I'm saying, but look for I don't even I didn't even want to get off on the crocs. I'm trying to I'm trying to coach into chunking sticks. Where are you on chunking sticks? Right? Yes, yes, the choking sticks. Uh, Crocs make a specially good chunking shoes. And while I won't so bad in anything but the finest molded phone sandals, I'm not. I'm not actually that picky about what I used to hold my rotten place. While I'm doing it, I usually just prop it up on some rocks. But I assume, I assume you have some fancy holders for your chunking sticks. Uh, well I have. I have sand spikes for surf fishing, but not for freshwater chunking. Though I recently debated, I was on Amazon, I was reading reviews. I debated buying a set of expensive holders just for this purpose, and then I I can't. I had them in the cart. And then I came to the realization that like God has provided all the free and perfectly functional rod holders a boy could ever need. So I I didn't buy them. And that's that's just what I use. I mean, it's not something I do a ton and they worked just fine. And I don't even know if you if you knew this about me, But did you did you know that I love chunking, like particularly in fresh water? Oh yeah, yes, we have had this conversation. I know this about you. You were, you're you're a man of your your Polly map. I appreciate that. Like I'm all in on aggressive angling. I'm all about fly fishing and messing with the coolest lures and such. But people who don't know this, I truly get just as excited about chunking for catfish or gar or both in and it shocks a lot of people. And I don't mean that to say that they scoff at it, but rather it's just the style of fishing bores them to death, you know what I mean. Like, I I know a ton of dudes that they're all about throwing frogs for both friends, but the idea of sitting on a chunk for them has no appeal or even forget the chunks, even just hanging a shiner under a bomber for bass or pickerel. Sometimes I am just in the mood to do it that way, and I think watching a bomber dip is funny. Ship. Yeah, I can't. I can't argue there's there's a childhood joy of seeing a bomber twitch that I will never like. It is ingrained in my soul. Yeah, And I got no issue with chunking, although that is definitely a term that I learned from you. I was thought of his cut bait fishing that's chunking rolls on and it's it's not my it's not my go to. It's not my favorite way of fishing, but I've got I've got nothing against a good soak. I will post up with some cut bait for channel cats a couple of times a season and have a great time. Fact is, I'm actually organizing my first cat fishing trip the year right now with one of my best buddies in the son. I think. I think it's a really fantastic way to either fish with kids or or get drunk near water and call it fishing right now. No, it's good for both of those things. That's fair. But I also think people assume you just like huck a gob a bait anywhere and wait, and and that's that's so inaccurate, Like you still have to put your time in figuring out exactly where you should cast that bait in which baits I don't know work best at what time of year and so on and and chunking or cut bait fishing is one of those things. You can make it as complicated as you want, you know what I mean. And I have always enjoyed tweaking rigs and messing with different hook sizes, and I don't care man like when a catfish picks up a bait and that like that real starts to click or stick floats, stands up and starts running. There's a both in under it. That just ate a shad chunk. I'm fired up. I love it. I really don't. I throw zero shade at that, and I can I can get behind that. My only question is do you do you happen to incorporate any wonderful thirteen fishing products and do your chunking tour well? It sure do, Miles, And thanks for asking. I've I've used their saltwater line extensively to make sure my local boat in population fears me uh, open green spinning rod, the heaviest action they make, to be specific, paired with the largest prototype X spinning reel they make. And if this all sounds like a shameless plug, it is because we love thirteen Fishing. We do. We actually a matter of fact, Bent is now proudly brought to you by the good people of thirteen Fishing. Yes, I'm sure that you all have already seen Joe testing its merit in the last couple episodes of B Side Fishing, but probably not this week because it's it's a fly fishing episode this week with some pike. But generally we got the thirteen going and we love them. Yes, this is true, and thirteen does not make a fly rod, but I'll say yet, maybe someday, you never know, because those dudes are always busting out new badass designs rising us. Yeah, they also do not make rod holders. But if you're too cool or too good to use a fork stick to chunk like I do, we have a recommendation for you this week. We actually do. That's that's actually true. We're We're gonna we gonna switch gears. They're gonna move into sale bin where we make fun of dumb fishing ship people are selling in online classifiedes and pull you to a product that will make you the terminator of your local cat fishing scene. Why did you put the hand to pay? You don't know what I'm getting? Man? What you didn't have to be so hurtful with me, so angry? So today's sale bin item sort of bucks the norm for us here a bit. But it's just it's just too ridiculous not to highlight and to be completely honest, and I'm not trying to be that guy, Okay, But I found this post probably more than a month ago, and Miles and I both agreed this is a must do, but it often just takes us a while to sort of get caught up on potential sale bin items and bar nominations and such. And in the time since then and now, a bunch of you have also forwarded this one along, and we thank you, but they're they're actually there are too many of you to to give shout outs. And technically I found it first, so but fair but fair, and I could I could vouch for the accuracy of that statement, because a lot of you have written in. But Joe did find it first. But the reason that this particular one is unusual for us is that we tend to shy away from products that are there, like mass produced, were made to order. The fun of this for us is finding old, used, weird junk that some random person is trying to pawn off for better or worse. Though Facebook now allows small time manufacturers that ship globally to sneak their products into the local marketplace pages and for the most part of stupid stuff like, for example, the Chillen Reel, which is another one that a lot of you sent to us in case you visit. The chillen Reel is a cheap ass beer couzy with like this little post on the side that you can wind fishing line around. I'm not even that thing basically just makes fun of itself. There's nothing for us to say totally yeah, like I don't have yeah, we didn't have to tear that up heart just like watch their own content and it's it's it's just me yeah exactly, um. But and then doing so, it's also like it's essentially like if you're gonna make fun of that or this thing today, it's like you're making fun of the store selling hard souvenirs on the boardwalk in Jersey. And I don't want to make fun of a store like that's no fun. I want to make fun of an individual like I want to hurt the feelings of a single human, not an entire operation. Um. Anyway, I'm sure many of you have actually seen this by now, but we just couldn't stay away from the fish and chum. What's what's with the the Why are all the names the same? I hate that name, the fish and chum the chillen. Really, if you have an end in there, you're screaming gimmick to me. It just and all of these make me think of other stupid fishing gimmicks from the past, like, for example, the laser lure. It I feel like there's there's there's some kind of a cheesy back story that you're gonna tell me to try and get me to buy it. Hey, Brice, I wanted to ask you what made you think of the laser lure. Well, the laser lure is actually in the accent. It wasn't something I intended to invent. I used down a gun store and I had lots of fish tanks. I got a new glock with the laser one and I shouned the glock in the fish tank. Well, every fish we chase and bite that dot, they bite a rock or bite sand. But this isn't the laser lure. And before I get into why the marketing for this product is just so ridiculous, I have to say, in fairness, the fishing chump could actually be useful. The concept itself is not bad. It's the picture. It's it's a plastic rod holder that's attached to a flat brace with long velcro straps on each end, so it's it's basically just a portable and removable rod holder. You could strap it around a dock piling, or strap it to a railing, or strap it to an ice fishing bucket. You could. You could put this in a lot of different places and it could be useful, or at least moderately useful. But for some reason, that useful attribute is not with the makers of the product chose to promote. Uh no, not at all, though they're they're actually they're promoting it as a holder you can strap to your leg. And and in the key photo the eye catcher, if you will, you see the lower half of man sitting on a bench on a dock, and he has a fish and chump strapped to each calf with with rods extending from both right and I I just find this to be so asinine, it's not even funny, Like unless you're an old man that will stay seated the entire day and we'll only need one rod. I just don't get it. And even in that, right, why not strap the fish and chum to the arm of your lawn chair? Why not use a stick in the dirt? Like, how much reaching effort is this really saving you? Right now? Thanks to a little Internet sleuthing though, this here's what we learned. The fish and chum is actually not new. It's been around for at least a decade. And we know this because Miles foul into this total garage operation, hack job infomercial that we assume was made by the original inventor. And it's it's gold, right. I wish we could play all two minutes and twenty seconds of this, so we're not going to do that. You look it up yourself if you want. But but here's the opening fishing jump fishing rod holder a unique fully adjustable like mounted rod holder leg mounted the whole a portion of slotted to adjust for right or left leg, and the ball and cup arrangement locks it in at the desired angle. So we're guessing what happened is that someone rediscovered this product and either bought the patent or the patent was expired, and they think they just resurrected and make a quick buck. But it was terrible ten years ago and it's terrible now. And I hate to say it, but the first thing that popped into my head was Forrest Gump. There's this I just I'm sorry, deficient show looks just like the leg braces that little Forest had to wear. And he's running and there's the swelling music and they fall apart and the bullies are chasing him. That's all I could think about. I was running. You think of Forest coming for some reason. I think of the spears scene in a Spentera two when he's got one in each leg. Everything about the marketing for this product makes me cringe. Everything about it is bad. Their website tagline, I'm not making this up. Their website tagline is it's an easy reaching fish feeling bait, jicken hook setting rod holder that will leave you reeling from the feeling. No no g on the end of verbs, not one, but two exclamation marks to cap off that juncto of a sentence. The whole website for Fish and Chow is just chaos. It's just utter chaos. I'm intrigued by bait jigging, Like what do you do, like twerk on the dock like that the whole thing you're you're sitting there and strapped your leg. You don't have to use your hands to jig. You just tap your foot. Oh man, you get a little mouth harp going, and it's a whole thing. I wish there was a video of that. Well, dude, I mean shit, if you scroll through all the photos in that post, they have one on a dude's leg that's sitting in a very small boat and there are coolers and seeds and all kinds of ships surrounding him. So like, that's fine if you don't move from that exact position and orientation, but you reach over to grab your Mr Pid right or twist around for the bag of dill pickle sunflower seeds. You got problems. Oh dill pickle seeds good, they are good. I'm not that's they're delicious. They're almost as good as barbecue. Um, but what you also have is an entire boat gunnal upon which rod holders can be easily mounted. Like that's pretty common, Like you have a boat you fish put so it just makes no sound. It's like we it's we are. We are all now dumber for having been exposed to this, and may God have mercy on our souls. That's how basically done this. Yeah. I really hope none of you bought this and are patiently waiting for it to arrive because we've kind of crushed your soul. But come on, let's think about this. Remember those little little holders that you could put on your your belt to hold your rod for re rigging. Most had one, I think, Yeah, Well, if you don't, that's because no one did, because they never took off. No one had those Some people some were like maybe, but no, no one bought one. And why anyone thinks this leg brace holder is a good idea? I don't know, but I've been wrong about lots of things before, and maybe they'll sell millions and I'll have to admit how wrong I'm I don't know who knows, But thanks again to everyone who sent this our way, even even though Joe did technically find it first. And as you guys continue finding ridiculous fishing ship for sale on your favorite online classified sites, do please keep sending those links to Bent at the meat Eater dot com. Now see, that product, in my opinion, is just another one of those things that makes you that guy. And fishing is it's it's full of such products. Though they don't know. They tend to come and go quickly. Um, Like, you remember he had the line cutter's ring. That was I remember them well though, that's what I mean. I know you wouldn't have one, but you remember him. And I may wear creeks, but I did not have the line cutter ring. I've seen a few of them on fingers on the water and I'm like, there's that guy, you know what I mean, there's like the dude. So there's the dude at the shitty Park Lake casting a lore with a water wolf camera in front of it, and there he is. There's that guy. Guarantee, when that guy goes offshore, he brings some zombait with him, some bait. But there are other ways to be that guy in fishing that do not require terrible gimmicky products. Uh. A matter of fact, we're going to hear about one of them in a Smooth Moves segment with a unique twist. Normally the is a part of the show where we let guides and captains tell us about idiotic things the clients have done. But when we called Ja Siemens, he said, hey, can I tell you guys a story about something dumb I did as a good and we were like, yes, yes you can. For those of you familiar with J on YouTube, he's incredibly knowledgeable, well spoken, super thoughtful, put together angler, So it was it was actually kind of refreshing to hear that he's not immune to complete screw ups. Why hanging out with us today? In the guide check, we got our friend Ja Siemens, who's one of our North of the North of the Border buddies that we don't get to see these days. I know we miss you, guys. I just miss I want I miss Canada. Mad We miss you too, You don't We're hurt without our American friends up here. Fishing lodges are empty. Yeah, economically, I'm sure that's true, but from uh traffic on the water standpoint, I bet it's kind of nice. You're allowed to say it. Jay were like, yeah, it was bad, as you're you're allowed to say it. Fishing was good, The fishing was good last summer, Yeah, I bet it was. Uh. We actually brought you here to tell us a story, and and normally the smooth move story focuses on stupid things client do. But I think you're gonna tell us something stupid that you personally have done. So we're gonna switch it up a little bit. What do you have for us? I've done lots of stupid things all guiding, but this one was. This one was in my first week of guiding actually, and I I started guiding when I was sixteen, so I didn't even have my drivers. My parents had to drop me off of the fishing lodge and and I got boated up and but that's a different part of the story. But anyways, it was it was my first week of guiding, and um, we had portash into a lake that was about an hour boat right away from the lodge, and it had been raining all day. So we came back to the boat after I did of fishing and there's a bunch of water in it. And with tiller boats, often when you pull the dream plug in the back, it pulls from the inside. So if if you don't have a bill pump, then you just pull the plug and it'll drain as long as you're moving. So we finished our day of fishing. Awesome day. Whileye fishing, hot back in the boat with my guests and it's it's whatever that our boat ride for boat ride back to the lodge, and I pulled the plug and it drains out perfectly, and I'm like, Okay, this is great, get back, get back to camp, tie the boat up, and go up to the dining hall and I'm eating with all the other guides and talking about our day, and a guy runs in. He's like, guys, we got a boat that's sinking. We need all hands down on the dock. And I'm just like, oh my goodness, I wonder whose boat it is. I wonder what happened. I'm feeling so awful for whoever, whoever this is, Like, I don't know what went wrong. So I'm just like, I'm genuinely concerned for whoever this is. And we started walking down to the dock and sixteen year old Jay's heart just sinks and I'm just like, that's that. That's my dock slip that's that's there's no boat there. That's where my boat is supposed to be. And when I pulled the plug, I never put it back in. So there's all the senior guide standing around me there and they're like, okay, J, well you gotta put the plug back in the boat and we'll try to like use it a sub pump and pump it out. So I jump into the lake full clothe and I put the plug in. We're able to lift it up, like just a bit of the cowling was showing and there's like tackle boxes floating and stuff. Man, so it was like it was it was yeah, it wasn't a good scene. And uh we got the boat up and feeling a little better and like, okay, J it's time to go tell tell the owner. And I'm like, where is he right now? He's like always having having dinner with his wife in the in the dining room. So I go in there, just dripping wet, looking like a wet rat. And I went and told them what happened, and I mean, he was so good about it, but it was just like one of those stories. And I don't even know how the story spread, but my first day of high school I come into gym class and the teachers like, Jayson, I heard you sunk a both this summer, can you tell the class? So just instantly it's just the story spread and I had to tell everybody, And now I'm telling the mediator listeners, and it's just like, man, so I sunk a boat. A few a few thoughts on that. For one, getting dropped off by your parents to guide is way cooler than getting dropped off to bus tables, which is what my parents are dropping me off to do. So good on that. But also I think, like, look, look, everybody knows there's like sort of like the whole like Canadians are so much nicer than people down here, because if you were that was like a lodge in Jersey, the reaction for the owner like would not have been the same. So so good on that too. For just like, Okay, it's all right, I'm glad. It's kind of amazed that you kept your job. Yeah, I'm surprised. I'm surprised I got hired back a second year, that's for sure. That wasn't the only mess up. But oh yeah, I heard they got the motor running they had to bring into the shop and pump the water and stuff. But they didn't have to buy new motors, so that was a plus. Well if it if it makes you feel better, I'll admit to having done the same thing to drain alive well on my boat up on plane. It drained right out, and then I forgot about that, and then got a call the next day that my boat was listing, and of course I was two hours away from my boat, and I was like, well, just unlisted. Do what you gotta do, and they like, yeah, but they caught it. But I know that pain. I know that pain. Catch U up on you quick. And now I feel superior to both of you because I'm the only one on this call who never sunk about Good for me, Thanks a lunch. We appreciate you humbling yourself in public for all of our entertainment. No problem. You can laugh at my expense. So my favorite part of that is when he said he felt so bad for the guy whose boat that sank. It's it's yeah, It's like it's like you know those announcements at Walmart's like attention customers. If you're the owner of a red RAB four license plate and you're like, oh, what's that about? What happened to the rav they're getting towed? And then one day you're barely paying attention because you're debating which flavor of cool aid to buy for your catfish paint, and it's like, oh, ship, that's they're talking about my truck, Drop everything and run. You know, Jay's response felt very Canadian to me. And I don't mean that in a in a dismissive or I hope not offensive way. I think sixteen year old boys in general are completely self centered jerks, and they're so generally insecure that they're quick to revel in anyone else's mistake because it deflects from their own screw ups, you know what I mean? Absolutely, And I assume that most American sixteen year olds in that situation be thinking, oh my god, what a jackass? What kind of dumb guide sixes own boat at the dock, But they're sixteen year old jays like, oh gosh, I sure feel bad for that poor guy. I hope his gears okay, Like, yeah, I appreciate that. How many times have we said on this show and I'm sure we're gonna say it again, Canadians are just nicer than we are. That is fact, they are nicer. They're just better human beings. Generally, I think that's true. Generally, I do think that's true. But I think we're also waiting into into into muddy waters here. And that's enough of the cultural stereotypes. Let's pull the plug on our current events, live well and to see what's flopping around the bottom. Grab the easiest targets. It's time for fish news. Fish news. That escalated quickly. Okay, so we're we're shaking it up a bit for news this week, kind of buy listener requests. So ever since um Netflix documentary C Spiracy has dropped, we have just been inundated, have we not Miles with people going what is the deal with this? Have you boys seen this? And is this bullshit? So it took us time to finally sit down and watch it, which we have. And you know, Miles and I could just prattle on about this and and and and give our thoughts and our opinions, but I think it's fair to say it was an impactful enough documentary enough people are talking about it from all different angles that just having us blab on about it and say some funny things, it's not gonna do it justice we we really wanted to take a deep dive into this, and I know a lot of you guys are are interested in this, so um, yeah, I mean we're going We're going, go ahead. I'm sorry to cut you off, but like we could, we could just give our semi informed but not really deeply informed opinions, but lots of that's kind of the problem that we see with the film itself. So rather than just recreating the issues going on, we we dug into our deep, deep, deep bench of meat eater in house talent to help us kind of parse this out and draw some conclusions. Yeah, so we're not doing the multiple news story thing today. Our entire news is devoted to to c spiracy, so it's not really a competition, though. I challenge Phil at the end of way in on and tell us what his favorite shark is. No, that's what we want from you today, um and why and why exactly? And I will I would just say, and before we move along here that I was turned off as soon as the filmmaker in the beginning said he's always been fascinated by whales and dolphins, not like sharks and barracuda. So right then and there, I was like, I could just I see where this is going. So um, we have some guests, Miles. Who who's joining us today one of our esteemed editors and colleagues, Sam Longdren. Sam has been on this show before and giving us his his background. Sam actually has some experience working as a commercial fisherman, so Sam's got some unique perspective there. And we also have Steven Klobascher, who if you pay attention to our our our fishy content on the website, you will know that name because Steven is one of our regular contributors. He's a post doctoral candidate at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in in fisheries. Fisheries biology is all right, Stephen, do have that? So he He's going to come in from a and and kind of look at the science and the facts there in ways that Joe and I just aren't qualified to do. So really excited to hear what you guys have to say, and then at the end we'll just have a conversation and see what comes up. Sam, Please, the floor is yours. What do you have to say? What do you want us to know about C spiracy? Well, now, I think a lot of what you need to know about c spiracy comes in about the first minute, so literally a couple of minutes into the film, the director and host Allee tow Breezy hits us with a motion graphic of a whale taking a giant watery dump, along with the following statement quote. When whales and dolphins returned to the surface to breathe, they fertilize tiny marine plants in the ocean called phytoplankton, which every year absorbed four times the amount of carbon dioxide that the Amazon rainforest does and generates up to eight of the oxygen we breathe. So in a world concerned with carbon and climate change, protecting these animals meant protecting the entire planet. The way I saw it was if dolphins and whales die, the ocean dies, and if the ocean dies, so do we end quote. So individual parts of that may be accurate planked in our plants, so they do absorb carbon and produce oxygen. Cetacean feces certainly fertilize these microscopic bio communities, but they're hardly the only source of nutrients. However, Tabreezi is general bent and phrasing seems to imply that A plus B equals see, or that we are only able to live and breathe because of marine mammals, which leaves the discerning viewer wondering what other information in this film is complete? Whale ship? Yeah, doesn't he drop a stat in there that of the oxygen we breathe comes basically from from whale dukey something like that? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, he does not the trees or leaves or anything, just that. Yeah. Uh So it turns out there's a lot of inform information in here, and I'm gonna let Stephen break down all the science he shipped here in a minute, but first credit where credit is due. C Spiracy does point out some real glaring issues with the health of our oceans, including climate change, pollution, plastic refuse, and over fishing, and then beyond over fishing, like it shows that there's real slavery and murder and piracy and just rape and pillage and awful ship on the high sea ease. And you know, I knew a lot of that stuff. I imagine you guys did too. This has been receiving coverage forever, but it's also pretty isolated to like Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. In places that you know, we as Americans don't have a lot of impact on. And you know, if if if people didn't know about that stuff previously then Saucy spiracy and found out, then good, that's that's great, it's it's it's helpful that people are learning these things. But like you know, you should continue to educate yourself through real, reputable publications, not whatever that film was. So you're not saying that doesn't happen, because it does in other countries. But he sort of framed it like this is the commercial fishing industry as a whole exactly exactly. It paints with a really broad brush and and I'll get into that in a minute, but you know, ultimately on on on the premise that Earth socians are not as healthy as they could be and that real action is needed to solve these crisis. Like Steve and I we tend to agree with c spiracy, But the problem is, like their their conclusion is that we need to become vegan to solve all these problems, and on that we we tend to differ. And that's the essential problem with C spiracy and for me and for a lot of other people. By the end, you realize the whole point that the whole film was designed to drive viewers toward an understanding that, because of the poor health of our oceans, is no longer ethical to eat fish at all, or any other animal products for that matter. And here here's another indicative comment about sustainable fisheries that comes towards the end of the film from Dr Richard open Lander, who is a dentist and activist and a vegan food producer, so he doesn't have any dog in this fight. Quote. They make it appear on paper as if eating, on one hand, sustainably produced salmon is better than killing a blue fin tuna and therefore creates a justification in the eyes of the consumer. But that's like essentially saying that it's more sustainable to shoot a polar bear than shooting a panda. Women. Reality, neither one is sustainable and neither one is right to do. End quote. Oh that's scene. I'm sorry, but that scene because you're the cartoon of each of those bears and like the red blood come down over it. Yeah, well, the front stat and I think we haven't mentioned yet, like what hits you very early on? Is there suggesting what is it by if we if we keep going, there will literally be nothing left living in the ocean or or nothing that we can we can we can catch and feed ourselves with. Yeah, they like they like that that one a lot. And uh and Steven's got some stuff coming up for you about how that is complete whale ship if you will. But first, you know, I have to address the sustainable fisheries part. And and like, you know, this is completely anecdotal from my experience, but at the same time, you know it's an American American fisheries are managed based on science at the very least. You know, you can have your own definitions of stays to sustainability, and Stephen will discuss that. But I just want to tell everybody what I saw as a as a commercial fisherman, as a young man working in Alaska. I spent a good portion of my young adult life working on on salmon um boats or shooting polar bears. Um. If you follow follow off in landers analogy and millions of them too. Um. But you know I wasn't pressed into that service. I hustled my ass off to get that job. There was nearly zero by catching our salmon saying behind besides jellyfish um, which those populations are not like doing badly in that area, and what few rockfish and uh kelt greenlings and salmon sharks that did turn up in our saying we're always turned back alive, although that did get pretty rowdy with salmon sharks a few times. UM. And you know, they talked so much about how the biggest problem with commercial fishing is the abandoned nets, the abandoned waste that comes from it, That of the plastic and the Great Pacific garbage Patch is commercial fishing gear. But man, I don't know a single commercial fisherman in all my years living in Alaska who had abandoned their twenty thousand dollar net that they've spent years working on. You know, it's just it's just no one would ever even think about that. I'm not saying that trash doesn't exist out there, but just for people who haven't seen it. The other argument they're making, we hear about microplastics and bottles and garbage, and basically they're trying to say none of that is really a problem at all. The majority of the plastic out there is discarded commercial fishing gear. So yeah, and what a step should we understand that what a step back for like the enviro mental movement. And that was one of the most comical things in the film is how he went into all those uh, those nonprofits in California who are trying to reduce you know, single use plastics and stuff, and he's like, you're not doing anything. All your work is useless and garbage, and like what we're we're trying to help. I don't know. It felt like he was really backstabbing some natural allies he might have had. Well, what he was trying to say was that the reason they won't come out against nets is because they're all secretly backed by the commercial fishing industry. And I don't I don't know if that's true or not. You know, he didn't seem to offer a lot of a lot of real proof there, but you know, maybe it maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But in terms of sustainable fisheries, you know, every salmon we caught went straight from the net into a refrigerated seawater hole, and then at the end of the day we would deliver those fish out of our hold into a tender vessel where they also went into refrigerated seawater and those tenders would run all night to processing facilities back into town own. And I mean, and this is not like an unregulated frontier bonanza as commercial fishing is portrayed in the film. Like, we listened to daily radio broadcasts from the Alaska Department of Fishing Game regarding which areas would be open the next day, and you know, and that was completely based on fish delivery reports, reports from the previous day and spotter plane observations. So a d F and G was always aware of how many fish are being caught, how many fish are coming into Prince William Sound. And they also had a pretty good idea like where those fish were going. So if there's certain basins that were under escaping, they would close massive areas around there so those creeks would get enough salmon coming back. And man, like, I did a lot of exploring when I was up there, and I saw a lot of creeks that were so thick with salmon you could literally like if you wanted to walk across the creek on those on those fish, and then the bay in front of the preek would be filled with tens of thousands of more fish. And so just like the biomass up there is just incredible. And then you know, the last summer I was up there, I was there for the largest pink salmon run in history ever recorded in Prince william Sound, higher than it had ever been since they were measuring that kind of thing. And I mean, that's a pretty good sign of sustainability when you're actually getting more fish year after year. I mean, there's a lot of different factors at play here, and not all sand and species are doing that well. But you know, it's something that I could feel proud of, and I think is indicative of how a lot of American and Canadian fisheries are managed. Um that there's a lot of science, there's a lot of restraint, and you can you can expect a product that was harvested in a pretty conscientious manner, but you can't reasonally expect the same fishing practices from a lot of a lot of the world, like and and and the stuff that's not labeled, like you really don't know, Like if you order a bucket of popcorn shrimp Popeye's chicken, as I did and immediately regretted last weekend, it's likely that meat came from unmanaged fishing or delatious acquaculture, or maybe it didn't, but you can find out you picked the wrong dipping sauce, because that's delicious anyway. It was late at night, it was all they had left. But you can find out in a lot of those situations through websites for the Marine Stewardship Council and the Monterey Bay Aquarium UM, which also include labels on a lot of fish products, but simpler still in restaurants and at fish deli counters like I would really encourage people to only purchase fish that was wild caught in America or Canada because that's something I believe that you can feel good about. But best of all, you can just catch and eat the damn fish yourself like to do. Of course, that's our overarching message here. Yeah, I do think it is fair to note that if you look at a lot of of c spiracy like he does not spend a lot of time on American boats. I mean, most of what they're showing you is practices in other countries. There's similarities on the East Coast here with the bluefin season, and bluefin play a large part in that. But these guys literally don't know any given day whether they'll be able to go tomorrow because it's so heavily monitored, and the quota is so heavily monitored that can shut down at at any any point in the season. I was kind of intrigued at Miles. I'm sure you were too, by the amount of fact checking data sources that popped up. And that's sort of a little a little trick to make your your information sound more realistic and researched and throughout the more valid. Right, So throughout the entire documentary, every fact that he puts up, there's the very small, hard to read source where that information came from. And Steve and I believe you've you've taken a little dive into you've broken down some of those, uh those sources and and and can enlighten us on some of those, Yes, I have, And I can't go into every single one of the claims, but I just touching on a couple of main ones where they build the rest of their premise and argument off the information that it's wrong to begin sum So the Sam stated, you know, there's obviously issues with the world ocean, but we really need to be aware of how those are presented and so not going into anything that would be opinionated too much or anything. But the big thing from this film is that they present no solution rather than there's the one don't eat fish, just stop eating fish. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, as Sam mentioned, you know, eating us wild caught. That goes a long way, along with other things. But for me, as a science minded person, you know, I always go back to the data. You know, what did the data tell us, rather than just accepting a blanket statement with a very small sourced information in the corner that you can't read. And so once you start digging into the data, that's kind of where bascets of the movie start to fall apart, namely that no fishing is sustainable or that there's no way to define sustainable fishing, and that all fish stocks in the ocean could collapse by So a large part of the film is based off these beliefs, and that builds the further lines of questions and investigation. But the problem is, and this goes to something that is referred to as Brandolini's law, or the difficulty in refuting bullshit. So that law sta the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it. Pans are not only wrong. So here in lanes the problems the front center that all fisheries would collapse. That is a myth that is based on one small part of one much larger study in two thousand and six, and that basically amounts to more or less a lazy extrapolation of data. So in that study, a small part of it there is um the researchers were looking at some recent catch numbers from a few declining fish population at that time, and then they just extrapolate and draw the line out. Well, if you have a declining line, eventually that line is going to hit zero, right, And this caused a big ship storm in the fisheries world back then and beyond, and and really it was that big headline that was picked up by the media and spread throughout the news outlet, and so many other scientists refuted this claim and had the data to back it up. And so a couple of years later after this, the authors and other scientists went back and forth. They came out with a new study in two thousand nine, which included some of the same scientists from the study that was produced in two thousand six that made that original claim, and those scientists they looked at a hundred sixty six fish populations at the time and came to the conclusion that, you know, the ocean fish stocks are not on a path photo collapse, and they've actually been stable over the last twenty years. But once the bullshit gets out there, it's hard to get rid of us. So over the last fifteen years, again and again, the same idea that fisheries are going to collapse resurfaces, and it's a catchy headline and doom and gloom kind of thing, but it's just not true. Um. And so more recently a study out of the University of Washington examine eight two fish stocks, so much more than the previous study in two thousand nine that refuted the claim, so even more data their backup that that research of the fisheries that were considered even over fish in two thousand nine had improved, and overall sixty of the world's fisheries are not over fish, and that accounts for eight of all seafood. And so there are regional issues, there's illegal harvest, human rights issues within the fishing industry, but by and large, managed fisheries are sustainable, and so there's a big difference between fishery that are managed in the US and areas where they're not managed in the high seas or developing countries. But it's been shown time and time again by the world leading marine fisheries researchers fisheries can in fact be sustainable. In the film, the example that the European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries uses is a great analogy basically that if you have some capital in the bank and you're only spending the interest gained off of that capital, you will be sustainable into perpetuity. Same idea when it comes to fisheries. As another argument against sustainable fisheries, filmmakers bring in the issue of fisheries by catch and the stand mentioned you know, it might not be a big of an issue, and it's it certainly happens, and it's a varying degrees and varying impacts depending on situation. But the idea that forty percent of all catches thrown back as bycatch is incorrect, and that comes down to semantics again, and one singular study that makes the play so the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization. The widely accepted terminology and definition of bycatch is the total catch of non target animals by catch HAP. But bycatch can either be used or turned back with no further harm or discarded and you know slow levels mortality. In two thousand nine, there was a group of people working with some NGOs that decided that they were going to redefine the word by catch, so it's not just the total catch of non target animals. Those authors in that study used that bycatch is catch that is either unused or unmanaged, and so not to get too far in the weeds, but essentially, if there's a fishery that's unmanaged, all that fish would be considered by catch for their coaltation. It got it. That's an important piece of information when looking at those numbers, right, and so just as an example of that, you know, some of the information used to get to that, it's information from a in a bottom trall fishery in India where there were some instances of illegal nets, you m in their regard to that. Therefore, all the catch from the bottom trawl fishing was considered by catch. So it's just consulates the numbers and discards bycatch it's an unfortunate reality of the global food system. Whether fishing or farming, there is some level of waste, but it's much more like ten P than But the idea that you know data from was irrelevant too, was relevant in two thousand nine, and it's still relevant today. And that's a red flag in and of itself, you know, And just as another example of that, you know, when they state that two d fifty thousand sea turtles are killed in the US annually, that's data from two thousand. It may have been true to some degree at that point, but it's important because that spurred the development and advancement of fisheries. Oh, we have a problem where managed fisheries. Let's fix this problem. So those fisheries have developed things called turtle excluder devices on their net. So more recently turtle deaths are down to only annually, and turtle populations by and large are increased. So, I mean, I've got a piece of paper that says I have a PhD. But I don't need that to tell you that four thousand is a little bit less than two. Yeah, So I mean it looks I think we have There are a lot of ways, thank thanks to both of you guys that were able to refute some of the the quote unquote factual claims here and and I think that's important to parse out and to look at. But I gotta say, like, personally, from from my perspective as a journalist, as a writer, uh my, my, My maiden objection to this film is the sophomoric approach that takes to to storytelling, right. Like, the analogy I have for this is that it reminds me of a ninety minute visual version of of that the intro to college writing persuasive essay, you know that we all had to write like so the filmmaker picked the topic that he was like personally an emotionally invested in, and he did some research and he came to a sweeping and impassioned conclusion. And I'm familiar with this because I read a lot. I read a lot of these essays when I taught writing one of one, and many of them spoke in uh equal moral certainty about the legalizing of marijuana and that being the answer to all of society's problems, from social inequity to climate change. And kind of similar to those essays, there are seeds of ideas in here with which we all agree. I agree, you agree like all those things that Sam brought up, that Stephen brought up, Uh, that many of us have brought their major problems, and and all of these are valid and need to be addressed and looked at and given some attention. We all agree with that. But to land on the conclusion that's simply ceasing to eat all seafood is the answer to all of these problems and we'll create some global panacea. It straight. It strikes me as just as erroneous as claiming that legal weed will make us the utopic states of America. I just like, I see so many corallarias there and it feels so similar to me. He he came in with with fact toys that like are just so bizarre. But it's like you say, the one oh one style of essay writing, it's sort of like, well it will help us. Just throw that in there too, Just throw that in there. You just throw that in there. Like, Like one of my favorites was that, uh, fish moving throughout the water column constantly regulates the temperature of the ocean. So if there are no fish moving throughout the water column, now that is a big reason why the ocean is warming and we're having more hurricanes and all this stuff. Yet, like if if you know fish, and Stephen backed me up, but if you look at most ocean fisheries, it's all relatively inshore, like very like most most of the fish live pretty close to the continental shelves or or close to land. Like if you go out in the dead center of the Atlantic Ocean, like there's not a whole lot of stuff just swimming around out in the middle of the ocean. So that one just caught me as sort of like really, man, like, you're gonna tell people that fish moving around in the ocean regulates the temperatre or the ocean to the point where it will warm too much. If they're not, it's just let's forget about the golf stream and weather and the coreolis effect. Like it's just like, yeah, dude, you know the stripers swim up and down, it gets warmer and cold, you know. So I'm not even saying that there's not some like minor like like itty bitty fact in there somewhere, But those are the kinds of things he just threw out as supportive of his claim, And it's like, what are you talking about man. So I did a bunch of reading on elsewhere on this and I'm gonna I want to quote from this article that I found in Hakai magazine, which I think does a really good job of summing up my personal perspective on this film. It was written by a guy named Josh Silberg, and and he wrote quote in his search around the World for one Villain behind all the oceans Ills. Too Breezy reduces a complex tangle of social, political, and environmental factors into one simple narrative as he cues ominous music and tells stories and generalities. Too Breezy glosses over nuance. Though the film misleads viewers with over simplified science, it's real harm is that it ignores the history, culture, and systemic inequalities that are entwined with ocean conservation. The film is right that there are real problems in the ocean and have been for years, but Too Breezy seems to constantly be alluding to the fact that there's some cover up. That conspiracy mindset is a common theme throughout and and personally I could not agree with with sober more and in that way, I think c spiracy is very much a product of our time, right, It's it it resonates to me with so much of our media. That's that's cloaked in this this political theater, right, We're we're inundated with these stories about clear and obvious heroes and villains and equally clear and obvious and simple solutions to our problems if not for some deeply entrenched and shady conspiratorial entity who's supposedly manipulating all of us behind the scenes to ruin our lives and our planet. But the problems are more called you than that. That's just there is that that doesn't fit right, And so Soberg concludes his criticism by saying, had to Breezy looked into any of these issues in greater depth, he'd found that journalists have been covering these sorts of stories for years without glossing over the nuance. The point being, for me personally, these these issues have been under scrutiny by experts and scientists and researchers and writers for a really long time. And what I want all of us to ask ourselves is what makes more sense? Does it seem more plausible that some twenty seven year old with a camera and a love of whales and no actual training cracked some long hidden vault of truths being suppressed by all right of governments and industry and conservation organizations and media outlets. They're all conspiring to kill the ocean for profit? Or does it make more sense that these are actually just really complicated problems and that many people are working their assets out to figure out viable solutions with difficult set of constraints. I personally am going to go with the ladder as making a hell of a lot more sense. Me too, Me too. Wow, there there's our c spiracy deep dive. We hope that that answered a bunch of questions for you guys, and can't thank Sam and Stephen enough for jumping in on that so that we had more informed things to say than what Miles and I would have come up with alone. Email us you already have been let us know your thoughts. Were always happy to hear from you, guys bent at the meat Eator dot com. And actually, what are we moving into next? Miles? I think Stevens gonna help us out there too in a way. Stephen is going to help us there. We're gonna do a finclips after this on the pike minnow and uh I put that one together. But if you want to hear more about it and see more of Steven, go over to the media dot com and check them out. And then after but we won't get there until after we hear from our illustrious engineer Phil about his favorite sharks and why. I'd say my favorite shark is probably the basking shark. Even though it's apparently pretty gentle and low moving, the image of a feeding basking shark is a love crafty and nightmare. Its mouth looks like a portal, and swimming through it could take you through the cosmic layers of time and space and right to the great Beast Cthulhu himself. And you know that could be a fun weekend activity for the whole family. Some years back, I got to spend a few weeks floating through the Grand Canyon. Once you get away from Lee's ferry, the Colorado River isn't much of a destination fishery. You float the Grand to experience one of America's most stunning wilderness areas and to challenge yourself on some of the biggest white water in North America. Plus you get to live, at least for a while as a complete river rat, once you push away from the bank and dive into the walls of the canyon, there's no going back. You have two hundred river miles to cover with nothing but the supplies packed in your boats. It's the kind of self sufficient adventure that's pretty much absent in the major already of our lives. A trip down the ground should be on everyone's bucket list, but like I said, it's not usually a fishing trip. In fact, I was the only angler among our crew. I knew the opportunities to cast a line would be few, and the chances of catching fish in many places pretty slim, but I packed a couple of travel rods in the bottom of my dry bag. Anyway, there are a handful of exceptional trout streams to feed the graund and I did pretty well. I can into a couple of them, but I can catch trout at home, the fish I really hope to encounter, though I knew the odds were vanishing. Lee Slim can grow over six ft long and weigh more than eighty pounds. It's the only native aquatic predator in its range, feeding primarily on other fish, but also rumored to take mice, birds, and even small rabbits despite its lack of teeth. I'm talking about the Colorado pike minnow, the largest minnow in North America. Side note I learned while researching this they are not the large mennow in the world as I had previously thought. That distinction belongs to the giant barbed cat Locarpio siamensis, which lives in Southeast Asia and can go over ten ft and almost a hundred and forty pounds. Maybe one day we'll do a finclipse on that strangers looking beast, but not today. Colorado pike mindows are only found in the Colorado River drainage and were once abundant throughout that system, which includes rivers in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, and California. Settlers relied on pike midows as food fish, and some reports claim that creative or maybe just lazy, Frontier anglers used horses to drag the massive fish from the water. At the time, they were known as white salmon because of their migratory spawning journeys. Though pike midows don't go to sea, they would travel up to two hundred miles to find optimal habitat in the spring. As the primary artery for the American Southwest, the Colorado River has been so damned in dewatered that it hardly resembles the muscular river it once was. Pike mindows can no longer make those impressive runs to optimal reproductive habitat. Their home waters are now colder and more controlled, and they have new non native competitors. Colorado pike midows have been endangered since nineteen sixty seven, which is why my chances of actually catching one were miniscule and I didn't. There are four distinct species of pike meadows in North America, Colorado, Umpqua, Sacramento, and Northern. Good News, the Colorado pike mendow is the only one that seems incapable of effectively adapting to life in a damned river system. Bad news. The Northern pike meddow has proven itself so good at thriving in the reservoirs and slow moving pools of the Columbia and Snake Rivers that they are harming salmon and steelhead populations. Northern pike midows consume millions of juvenile salmon and steelhead each year. Putting added stress on iconic fish that are already struggling. More bad news. Northern pike midows only get about ten percent as large as their Colorado counterparts, maxing out around seven pounds, so they're not nearly as a tract of a sport fish, but anglers who choose to target them can find value beyond their size. Since the Bonneville Power Administration and Pacific States Fisheries Commission have teamed up with Oregon and Washington's Departments of Fisheries to administer the Northern Pike Minow Sport Reward Program. The program runs from May one to September and pays anglers five to eight bucks for every Northern pike midow they turn in over nine inches, depending on the size. Some enterprising anglers are making real money fishing for northern pike mindows. The top twenty who participated in the program last year averaged over twenty grand, and one brought in nearly fifty thou dollars and five months of fishing for the record, that's far more than I ever made as a fishing guide in five months. Best of all, it seems to be proving effective since the sport Reward programs started putting bounties on northern pike midows thirty years ago. More than five million fish have been culled from the system, and some reports indicate that the northern pike menoputation on Salmanas has decreased. In a somewhat ironic twist, the Arizona Fish and Game Department is now offering bounties on Salmond's to help protect pike minnows in the Colorado River. As Joe covered in Fish News a few months back, anglers fishing around Lee's Ferry, the same area where Grand Canyon raft trips begin get twenty five dollars for every brown trout over six inches they bring to an area check station. Brown trout are not native to the Colorado or anywhere on this continent for that matter, and aggressive browns can prey upon juvenile pike mindows and other endangered native fish in the Colorado System, like the humpbacked chubb. So while pike midows are harming native salmanas in one fishery, Salmanas or harming native pike mindows and another fishery, but in both cases, sport fishing is being leveraged as a tool to help the underdogs. Well, I'm not per really convinced the killing brown trout around Lee's Ferry will save Colorado pike mendows. That's just one of the tools that the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery Program is using to hopefully help boost pike minnow recruitment numbers. They're also requesting the Flaming Gorge damn increased springtime releases to better mimic the historic seasonal flow cycle and help Colorado pike mindows successfully spawn more often. I can only hope that program works and that if my kid floats down the Grand Canyon when he's grown, he'll get to double over a route on a musky sized minnow. Man, it's a shame. Pike minnows are critically endangered because they sound like they pull and eat pretty much anything. I want to catch one so so bad. Sam Longeran and I have this conversation like once a month. They have. Those fish have all the attributes that that anglers love, Like if you just were to if you were to strip out the minnow part and just talk about the in general terms, like they get big, they're they're the top of the food chain. They push around all the other fish in the river. They will attack and kill like anything, and I've never caught one, right, But but I feel like any generic presentation that you could get in front of one, so long as it vaguely looks edible and scared, would get munched. Actually, on that note, Joe's about the schools on an overlooked generic fish catcher that everyone should probably have on hand, but doesn't even better. If you're looking to catch some of the finest catfish and both in bait you could possibly find on the Eastern Seaboard, these lures will catch that too. Well, that's not loud enough. In past end of the line segments, I've said that it's often difficult to trace the lure's origin back any further than when it became mass produced. But in the case of the shad dart, I can't even figure out when mass production really started, because in essence, it still isn't like a big seller. I mean, sure, you can find shad darts made by companies like Marathon and a few others on the shelves of big box stores, and they'll be two or three darts in one bubble pack, and you're most likely to find the color selection limited they'll have red and white, maybe red and yellow, and perhaps shark shrews and dark green, because those are the classics. But for the vast majority of anglers that really rely on shad darts, they're not usually picking them up from the big box store. More likely, they picked them up from a local shop that works with a local dart maker who knows exactly which colors the local anglers and fish are hungry for. The only things really known about the shad darts origins is they first appeared in the Northeast well over fifty years ago, and since they hit the scene, they've predominantly been distributed by garage and basement dart makers. So what is a shad dart. Well, it's one of the cheapest, simplest, most effective lures you can own. Yet most anglers that live outside of regions like the Northeast and mid Atlantic that have thriving cultures revolve around the annual spring runs of hickory and American shad don't own any A shad dart is just a compact lead jig. They can weigh as little as one six an ounce and as much as a full ounce. Their cone shaped and the wider front end is sort of sliced off at an angle to create a sloping face. The hooks are molded right into the body and the line tie I protrudes from the darts back, so the lore always falls and swims horizontally. Darts often have a tiny pinch of bucktail tied on the hook, but there could also be a little bit of synthetic flash material back there, or no tail at all naked As we say, it's the goofiest little lore, but it's actually a genius design. That wide angled face is designed to create water resistance. When real across the current, water bounces into flex off that face and gives the dart a unique shimmy. These days, flutterspoons have gotten very popular for shad, but as a kid, all my old man had on them for our annual trip to the Delaware Water Gap. For shad was a box of arts, and all you did was cast at a slight angle up current and steadily real the dart back. No jigging or finessing or twitching, just real, and if it got in front of the shad, the rod would just load up. When your line was right around eleven o'clock. For most of my life, I didn't think anyone used shad darts for anything but chad, But that wasn't the case. Matter of fact, research shows that in other parts of the country they're more commonly referred to as croppy darts or quill bees. And if you think about it, the same action that attracts shad is beneficial in a plethora of other fisheries, especially considering a dart can also replace a jig head. I've tipped them with a piece of blood worm to whack white perch. I've added a curly tail grub and used them to pick off some cropp eas. I even have a buddy that leans on simple shad darts for shallow water light line flounder fishing by tipping them with a strip of squid or a live mud minnow. Much like a metal spoon. A dart is equally effective jigged vertically or when you swim it, which means the ears of any hard water anglers listening right now should be perking up. So how many of you will heed my advice and mess with shad darts, I don't know, but I know a whole bunch of you discovered the power of the trout magnet. One of my all time favorite lures for stock trout because of its inclusion and end of the line. I was peppered with photos and notes of thanks after that segment. But just in case you haven't put all the pieces together yet, your stringers filled faster this season, not because of the little soft plastic trout magnet meal worm you were dangling, but because of its shad dart head. Leland Lure company who makes the trout magnet actually have the ancient shad dart to thank for much of their success. They shrunk the dart down to micro size, harnessing the power of that angled head to make their lures dance, flit and wiggle as they ride the current. So if the dart plastic combo is so potent in microform, imagine what you might achieve letting, I don't know, a soft plastic crayfish or helgra might pinned on a bigger dart, slip down a juicy smallmouth, run under a little bit bigger float. So that's it for this week. If you're gonna be spending some time sitting on a bucket waiting for a little tap tap tap peroo, we've given you plenty to contemplate like drain plugs and the human response to forgetting about them. A dart you could probably stick in a pikemanow if they weren't nearly extinct, and the perfect accessory for the bait dunker that considers himself a leg man. If you've got comments, concern sale nightem's awkward photos or bar nominations, go ahead and collect a bunch of y shape sticks, set them on fire and send us smoke signals, or just email all that stuff to Bent at the mediator dot com. Don't forget if you want to Bent sticker pack from us, the quickest way for us to detect a nibble from you is to tag your ship to generate Angler or Bent podcast on the ground. Hell, you may even be able to score one of those Billy wants a shotgun stickers very soon they smite be in the works. They very well could be, but until they're a real thing, Billy just wants you to keep dreaming about that flat dead that could swallow a toddler you're certain lives at the base of the local dam.

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