00:00:06 Speaker 1: I love fishing, and I want to share my interest with that is, but I also don't want to be a d bag about it. Step one, insert your favorite and tasty as bait into our copper protected spring bowl. He started asking me about sasquatch and I was like, okay, this is this is really strange. I've heard there's Assenko shortage, so all those people probably none of them had a foreign troop bier Senko, Good morning to generate anglers. Welcome to Bend, the fishing podcast that's connected by contradictions, nourished by non sequiturs, booied by buffoonery, and flourishes on flotsam. I'm Joe SURMELI mild wealthy, and I can't believe Joe actually read that intro. You know, I really should have vetted that before we started recording, but I was busy this morning. Oh well, now you know, and knowing is half the bat battle literations aside, this episode really is like a hodgepodge of oddities, much like what you might find lodged in the rocks and logs and weed beds if you did some snorkeling at your local lakes this summer, which I recommend if you've never done that. And it got me thinking about a conversation that that we've had on and off over the past year between the two of us and and also with our buddy Ryan Callahan, about the things we throw in the water. And when I say we, I don't mean I don't mean the collective, we, the the editorial we. I'm not talking about society in general and pollution. I'm I mean you and me, anglers, people who fish. We got we got this email recently from a listener named Jason Keller, who sent us photos of a chunk of tire. Rubber tire, yeah, stomach yeah. And I think Jason summed up the situation pretty eloquently in his message. He out while I was both surprised and slightly disturbed to find what appeared to be a rubber tire inside a lake trout stomach, it dawned on me that I have spent literally my entire life attempting to force feed numerous types of aquatic animals every kind of plastic, metal or rubber bait that I could think of. I could not even begin to count how many plastic imitation eggs, swim baits, twister tails, flukes, or other various types of imitation bait I have left snagged in the rocks or broken off in some fish's mouth. Yeah yeah, And I you know, I think that's a perspective that anglers we just don't often think about. And I know, for me personally, right if I break off on a rock pile or whatever, my first thought is just like, God, damn it, that was a perfectly good paddle tail. And inevitably it's like I've only got two left in bone white, which is all that's working today, and it's it's very selfish, it's a very selfish reaction. Um, but I rarely give much ought to what happens to those rigs once once I break them off. I'm just being completely honest, you know, Like that's what we've been discussing. That's that's what this is all about, right, And I'll say this, even if even if I've got a ton of say I've got a ton of whatever, but I've got a ton of the bone white battle tails that are working and I break one off, I'm still annoyed. But I'm annoyed that now I have to spend valuable time that I could be fishing on re rigging. I'm not thinking about the thing that that is now sitting at the bottom of the lake. Yes, no, you're exactly right. And we've had multiple conversations on this show about removing lures in line from trees. Um. We've even talked about there was the kid in in Vegas who's got his own like a little cottage industry going harvesting the fruits of other anglers, misfortunately laziness. Um. But we really haven't gone into the depths, so to speak, you know, and for good reason, I think, right, because because in many ways this is like, this is like one of those dirty little secrets for anglers who care about conservation, that the thing that we want to hide and don't want to think of, right, Like, it's it's a grown up version of whatever illicit things used to have hidden under your mattress or at the back of your closet when you were a teenager. Right yeah, I mean the kids, the kids, they just have to worry about what's in their browser history, you know what I mean. It's which is which is a shame because like, like our sons are not gonna hide anything under the radiator, you know what I mean, in their room. They might, but it might be different things. I don't know. But and those kids, you're the browser history things true, But I would venture to guess that those kids today are probably just as worried about getting found out even digitally, we were. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with my analogy. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say shame is universal, and as we get older, the things that shame us, they just shift, don't go away. We're still we're still dealing with it. I'm I will admit I'm the guy. I'm that guy who usually picks up at least a few pieces of trash when I go fishing, like like, oh, here's a can and a bottle in some plastic, and I get to feel all proud of myself about it. But only I only get to do that, that that high and mighty thing, because I can't see all the trash that I personally leave behind, because my litter is underwater. It's out of sight, out of mind. So I can like hold my little old half rotten can and be like, I'm a great person, but I'm still leaving all kinds of unnatural materials where they don't belong and as they get older, I'm thinking more and more about that. I'll tell you what. We'll take a quick pause from from from your little trip down Shame Lane. Okay, to remind all of you that this podcast is fully outfitted by thirteen fishing makers of fine rods, reels and tackle. Indeed, indeed it is and and one of the ways bringing this back. One of the ways I tried to avoid that shame lately is by fishing their jabber Jah square bill crank bits. In addition to being very loud and noisy, which is cool, another benefit of the square bill design is that it deflects off the stumps and rocks and logs another cover, so you can you can wrote where the fish are with less chance of getting snagged. I've been hitting up a few of the secret lakes here lately, and I can report the Smalley's approve. Yeah. Like, to be honest, I've never been like a huge crank baits guy, but those are good. I like those. And best of all, even if you do break one off, okay, you won't also break the bank replacing it. So even if you share miles personal issues with losing lures, you only have to deal with with one layer of self hatred. Self self hatred might be a little extreme. I'm not like, I'm not like carrying a leather strap with me and and marking my back with self lash switch. Yeah, but thinking about thinking about all of this right, thinking about this stuff, it hasn't stopped me from fishing, right, it hasn't. It's not like I'm like, I'm so stuck with this issue that I can't fish anymore, or that I'm not willing to make a cast and a deep cover where where the fish ar because I might lose a lure. I still play the risk reward game, but I am I am more likely to go in after a lure then I used to be, even if it's like a shitty cheap lure, I don't. I'm not like, well that's a cheap one. I'll break it off anymore. And I'm like, I don't want to leave that there, or or I'll get right on top of it and use one of those goofy lure extracting poles no time out, like, and that will totally blow a spot. Right. If you do that, you're giving up a spot. But I do that more than I used to have. Have you ever used one of those pole lure extractors. I've never tried one of the ones that that's a pole, but I have tried um those those kind and there's all different variations UM that you slide down your line, you pull your line time. I've never got those because if it doesn't work, then then you lose the love the extractor to right, that's correct, And I would say the ones I had worked about thirty percent of the time, and then I just get that snag too, and then I would lose uh that thing plus the lord. So ye, not something I've had on hand. Don't really leaving them like, I don't really think they work, but I do think and I do think you're concerned is a little misplaced because if if I'm being honest, I don't really think hard baits are like the big issue. Really. It's soft plastics and lead jigheads that are the things I personally think about. Um a matter of fact, right, just last week I joined a buddy of mine who invited me to partake in kind of like a hush hush catfish deal a jig bite for flatheads, which I was very fascinated with, and the fishing was kind of off that night, which doesn't bother me in the least because that's fishing. Um. But this spot was shallow and rocky and and super jagged rock to like flat crisscross boulder, really jagged rock. And I busted off easily twelve jigs in an hour and a half, right, and it was it was mad Yeah, it was maddening that you were talking about, um how you just also pissed when you lose something because now you have to retie. So this would be like you need a long shock leader and like a really strong braid to to lead or not. So I I was just absolutely frustrated and maddened. But I started thinking about how much lead and plastic must just be in this one little niche area in this river, and it's gotta be and a half dude, I think I think the most retreat because we don't have to go on all the details. But you needed like a three quarter or one ounce to cast where you needed a cast and get where you needed to get for these fish sitting on the bottom. So you couldn't throw like a little twister tail. It's a big gas flathead. You need a strong hook. They're gonna respond to a big plastic twitching on the bottom um. And I don't know if it was the spot I was in or what it was, but I think ten retrieves was the most I got out of a lure before I was hopelessly was everybody around you? Yes, yes, it's just like you know, kind of comes with the territory um. But but contrary because I've heard people say this, contrary to what some people think, the vast majority of soft plastics don't buy O D grade. There's biodegradable ones out there. You have to opt into that. You have to opt into that, right, it's not the Yeah, the regular ones remain intact in the water for for years before breaking down into microplastics. And while fish, I don't know, they're probably not gonna eat like a lifeless spinner bait or crank bait that's wedged in the rocks, right, but no, they very well might eat a sanko or like a torn up creature that's that's quivering down on the bottom. You know, the current move that around. They totally actually make it twitch and the like. Yeah, exactly, that's why we purchased them. So, you know, just saying no, that definitely happens that. That's that's the thing that that that absolutely happens that I'm not I'm not an expert on this. I've read about it some, but from what I can tell, it seems like it's heartening. Back to the first story of the email, it seems like lakers, especially like to munch posted out soft plastics, and it's probably just because they eat almost anything and they're usually cruising around the bottom. But they're not the only ones. All kinds of fish have been doc commented eating cast off soft plastics. I've read a couple of studies over the years about this, and and some of them show them those those soft plastics right as they stay in the water, they swell up the absorb water, and they can swell up so much that they can they can actually block fish is digestive tracks, so effectively preventing that fish from eating anymore, which is a bad deal. Um, so I'm with you. I couldn't agree with you more on the soft plastics point. I mean, I hope everybody out there already knows. Don't just toss your used soft plastics over the side into the water. I know that used to be common, but we don't do that anymore, and there's there's a good reason, and if you're still doing it, please stop. But the the other thing is I actually fish, actually fish soft plastic less than I used to because of things about this, I still use them. It's not like I'm against them. I'm not anti. I don't refuse to use them. They're just not my go to. If I can get away with something else I do. And when and when I fished them, I'm I make a couple of changes, like slate changes. I'm quicker to to swap out a body if it's starting to get shoot up, right, if it's like I don't I used to fish the until they fell off, and I don't do that anymore, right, And and the other thing I do if I if i'm if I'm gonna do a wacky rig. I used to think using the O rings was stupid and kind of lame, and then I realized that you do that because you don't tear up the bait and you lose a lot fewer of them. And when you use the O rig you just toss out less senko. So they're not perfect solutions, but those are those are the things that I'm doing to minimize the opportunities for my baits to turn into underwater ship and I genuinely command all of that, and and similarly, I try to avoid losing too many baits. But at the same time, soft plastics are my go to, like there, there's there's, there's there's no there's no way around that. And maybe it makes me like a bad person. I don't know, but it's just a fact and just off top of my head, like I can't think of anything I target, with the exception of maybe like tuna, where I could be just as effective if I took soft plastics out of the repertoire entirely. And you know, it's just that's just how it is. Rubbing is racing, as Days of Thunder taught us, and and we're gonna lose them, like you're gonna lose some um But as Myles mentioned this episode, it's it's gonna be kind of like strapping on a mask and scouring the bottom of your local city pond. Never know what you're gonna get. And first off, we've got smooth Moves where we invite Guide's charter captain, shop rats and anyone who makes their living in the fishing industry to tell us stories of the most ridiculous shit they've experienced on the water. And this week we're talking to a mostly retired guide, Joe will Our, about a guide trip he ran in Washington that he wishes he could forget. Why all right? Today on Smooth Moves, we are joined by Joe Willour. Joe, thanks for taking time to be here today. Thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you guys. Yeah. Man, I I don't think we've ever like actually physically met, but we run in a lot of the same circles. Like I've heard your name just scattered around the guide grape behind for I don't know, like ten years or so something like that. And and I think I got this right. You're from Washington and and that's where that's the area where you started your guide career, right, Yeah, that's correct. I was really fortunate it uh help me go through college, best best college job ever, And then finished up school and kept guiding because it's still the best job ever, and transitioned out of it a few years ago when we found out we're having kids, but still keep a little bit of a toe in it because it's uh as addicting a thing as I've ever found in my life. Yeah, dude, like you're well, now you're in You're in twin Bridges, right, You've been in twin Bridges for how long? A dozen years? Dozen years? So you're like a unicorn. Seriously, dude, you are because you you came you like you came out of the fishing industry and you turned into a productive, healthy member of society as the executive director for the Beaute Local Development Corporation. Like, congratulations, man, nobody nobody does that. Thank you. You know, there's a couple there's a couple of reasons behind that, and one, uh is my good friend Casey Dudley. Him and I would always joke, if you want to get to the front of the boat, you've got to get out of the middle. And I always uh, I mean, I love guiding, but I also love the idea of standing in the front and casting uh equally as much, honestly, Like I love being able to show people the rivers and the cool places we get to hang out, but I also love the concept of going somewhere I haven't been and actually having the rod in my hand. And then from the guiding world, they had a really good mentor who really pushed me. And he's like, you know, as a fishing guide, you have these unbelievable communication skills, Like you've sat in the middle of a drift boat and told ceo s from companies around the world what to do all day long for most of your adult life. Like, that's a fantastic skill set for the professional world. So if you can find a place to put that to use, you're gonna kick ass. And I've been very fortunate to have some opportunities to go do that. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, Miles, like you come on, man like you, You've you've landed well too. As a former guy. Look, I'm still in the industry. I didn't I didn't get out of But I think I think the way you put that is well, said Joe, because like I think a lot of guides, all guys, for the most part, I had that experience you're talking about, but not all that many can articulate it that way and frame it that ways and then be able to leverage it into something else. So I'd say kudos to that. And the story, whatever, this story is. The real reason we've got you here is that a mutual friend of ours, Josh Mills. Uh he told me. He called me. I was like, ah, well, I always got this guy's story would be perfect show. And I have not heard. I have not heard the whole story. I just got a couple of snippets and and I would describe them as tantalizing. So let's just do this, man, let's jump in. What do you got for the smooth moves? Absolutely? And I want to preface it with, as a fishing guy, it's always fun to be able to dunk on clients. Like, you know, you finish your guide day, you sit around and you drink a beer these days of white cloth, which kind of fractures my brain, and uh, you know, you talk some trash about them. You know, they're going over to the bar and they're talking trash about you. Like, man, my guide was so hung over this morning. I don't think he gave a crap about us catching any fish. So it's definitely a mutual thing. But before I dunk on this guest, um, I will preface it with I've ran a couple of thousand guide trips. The number of clients that I would not fish with out of fifteen years of guiding is three. I mean, that's it. So the folks we get a fish with are fantastic. I've made lifelong friends. I've got a tattoo from a fly that a client of mine recommended. But there's also a couple that definitely deserve to be featured in this And so for this story, it goes back to my days on the Acama. And if you're familiar with the Akama, it's a it's a great fishery, but compared to some of the other Western rivers, I mean, it's not the Green with ten thousand trout per mile. It's not Upper Madison with two foot ground trout swimming around. It's a great river, it's a fantastic dry fly river, but it's just not it's not the same thing as some of these other rivers that fortunately get a fish now. And with this gentleman, I knew it was going to be an interesting day when he hopped in my truck. The first things out of his mouth, and I was driving an old F one fifty at the time, was man, this F one fifties and and piece of ship. You need to get a GMC. And it's like, okay, this is weird. Um it's a pick up. It's better than my old explorer I had two months ago that blew up on the side of the river and I lost my transmission. Like it's it's a truck. I don't give a crap. And we're going down into the Achma Canyon, which is a gorgeous piece of water, and we hadn't even made it about a mile from the shop, and he goes, Man, this Eastern Washington's the ugliest from piece of shit I've ever seen. It's full of nothing. But hillis in rednecks. I mean, this is where I grew up, and so that I I don't even know that it was strike too at that point, but it was like, this is gonna be an interesting two days. Um. But I mean at the time, you know, I was guiding full time. I wasn't in a position to turn away a dime. I mean, full time fishing guide. It's like, yeah, great, I've got four months to make money and then hopefully find something to do in the winter that I can pay rent. We get down to the river and we launch and there's a big blueing hats blowing up and fishing is pretty easy, which the ep mud I was fortunate to learn there. It's a challenging river. It makes fishing around here in Montana really easy because when you're trying to catch one of a thousand trout a mile and then you go to four thousand trout a mile, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Touches a couple of fish right away, and he goes, man, this river is just like the green full of dumb f and trout, It's like and so at that point it's like, you know, I need this money, but this is gonna be pain and fished all day whatever, you know, caught some fish, not worried about it. And then the next day is where it really got weird. And we're floating along and the river blows out from under us, and every river in the state blew out that week, I mean Seattle to Pullman, everything was toast. And so I've got two hours to row out with this guy and he makes he honestly, he makes really unsavory comments about some more things and what really put it over the edge for me, and the only reason I would ever dream about fishing with him again. At the time, I would go guide in the winter and the Washington's Olympic Peninsula, which I'm not a Sasquatch believer. I'll throw that out there. There's one is a sass. If one is a Sasquatch believer, he probably lives near Forks with the vampires. And he started asking me about sasquatch and I was like, okay, this is this is really strange. I mean, this is a seventy year old man that's asking me about bidfoot. And so at that point, it's like, you know, you've dunked on my state, You've dunked on my truck, You've until my river. I don't really care that much anymore, unfortunately, and I just fed into it a little bit and he's like, so you've spent some time out there, right. I was like, oh yeah. You know. It's like have you ever seen him? And I was like, well, gosh, We're floating the whole canyon one day and the shape just kind of appeared out of the woods and I never saw him. And he's like, oh, do you practice yoga and you can't see me. I'm I'm six ft five and two pounds. No one in my life has ever mistaken me for doing yoga. And uh, it's like, oh, yeah, those the folks that do yoga have higher alpha brain wave counts and they have a higher probability of seeing sasquatch. Definitely one of the weirder guide trips I ever put on. And uh one, I mean this was yeah, years ago. One I'll never ever ever forget. So I don't believe in sasquatch, but now I have to know, like this guy, had he seen him, if he was that into it? Like was he one of those Sasquatch dudes that's looking You know, I tried to block a lot of that day out of my marine, and so I don't specifically remember that, but it wouldn't be surprising to me if he was, yeah, on the Sasquat safari at some point. What I'm curious about is like, did you ever get any information on what he meant by alpha brain waves and how alpha brain waves impact your ability to see it? Sounds like acid trip stuff like take this and you'll ride the snake. It's like Alpa like even harkening back to this, once we go into details, there's definitely some PTSD there. It's like I said at the beginning, I I've ring a ton of guide trips and it's all really cool folks. I mean, the folks like this are the vast exception, and I've done a pretty good job compartmentalizing that and vacating most memories other than just the batshit crazy stuff that I heard. Fair enough, man, fair enough, well, I think I think the takeaway on this one, if if there is one, is that alpha wave will help you see sasquatch, and you should all do yoga if you're hoping to get there. And uh, if you wanta have a good day with your guide, probably don't shoot on his truck, his river, and his state all at the beginning of it. That's that. That's good advice right there, A good start, Alpha waves, bigfoot, that damn Sam Squatch, Sam squadch, he's going my jerky Uh. I will say that my years of guiding reinforced for me that you don't actually have to be smart to get rich, Like the phrase more money than sense came to mind from time to time, like Joe was very careful to point out many I would say. I would say the vast majority of the people I guided are highly intelligent humans, great people, but not all. And I'm not I'm not claiming to be the smartest guy on the planet. I'm definitely not, but there were definitely days where I was sitting there being like, you are so much more wealthy than I am, and I know I'm so much smarter than you. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Why don't we give you an opportunity to demonstrate that intellect you're so certain of? Uh? In the weekly battle of wits we call fish news Fish that escalated quickly. We got a fun little announcement to share with you guys before we getting the news here. By now, I'm sure most of you are familiar with the fish eating fish eating fish. That's what we call it. Fish graphic drawn by our good buddy Mike suit Off for the Meat Eater fishing sticker. That's the first place you saw it. I know some of you have that sticker. Some of you've gotten it from us because we've been sending a bunch out in our bent sticker packs. That graphic is also on the header of our Fishing Weekly newsletter, and guess what, it's now on T shirts and hoodies at the Meat Eater's store. We're excited being I am, I'm excited, and I hope everybody else like they're slick man. And I mean, I do love T shirts and hoodies in general, but you gotta be careful, like your T shooting hoodie has to represent you, and I feel like this one very much represents both of us, and I think it represents a lot of you out there. I think what you see, you're gonna say, yeah, that's me. And there's a strong chance that we're gonna be giving some of these away as you know giveaway items in the near future. Also a strong chance you guys will be able to snag some official Degenerate Angler gear from the Meteor Store in the near future. That stuff is not there yet, but the fish eating fish eating fishing fish it's up. You can buy it now. Yeah, And if you can't find it, just you just search fish eating fish eating fish in Google. Maybe Russian nesting doll fish. I don't know, you might find it that way. LRD knows what else you'll find if you search that, But anyway, you know, no, the the Degenerate Angler stuff is in the works. But in the meantime, be the his person at the ramp rocking that killer pseudo graphic ID area. And until we have some degenerate Angler gear in the store. Of course, you can still snag free stickers from us by either using those Degenerate Angler and Bent podcast hashtags or getting a shout out on this show, Speaking of which, I have a few very quick shoutouts before we move on here. First one goes out to Dan Jones, who wrote in to just say we missed some low hanging fruit in that mean mouth bass story, and he's like, why wouldn't why wouldn't that just be called a medium mouth bass? Which I thought was was brilliant. He nailed it. That was a good one. That was like perfect dead humor for both Yes, exactly, sticker sticker pack for Dan um and then Mitch McGee he d m me and he says question for you and Miles, how do I show and tell people that I love to fish in a way that the Bent Podcast wouldn't make fun of. Examples of things to made fun of, Salt Life stickers, any fishing brand sticker on my truck, driving a Subaru rod Vaults exclusively wearing Salty Crew merch. I love fishing, and I want to share my interest with others, but I also don't want to be a d bag about it, dude. Possibly one of my favorite questions, Um, you might well, now you're gonna have bent stickers, so those are approved. Put that you can put those in your truck. You might want to pick up fish eating eating fish t shirt that's approved. Because my real, my real answer to Mitch was just like, dude, don't listen to us. Who are we? What do we know? You be here? Okay you want to with a rod vault on it? Go for right ahead? Um, and the final one, I gotta I got a quick note from James Miles and his daughter Nora in just turned five and she's apparently a big fan of the show and asked if I would give her a birthday shout out. He says, she's mainly into the music. Also some of the stories, most of them are over her head, and she's really into the sound bites that Phil adds she's a big Phil fan. So there you go. Happy birthday, Noor. And speaking of Phil, Phil is the guy who gets to judge our news stories when this is all over. Remember this is a competition. Miles and I do not know which news stories the other guy is bringing to the table. It's always an advantage to be the leadoff, and that is you this week, sir, What do you get? And this week especially was a big advantage for the leadoff. I think we both know this because he assumed what I was gonna lead with, even though we haven't. We haven't discussed it. I'm gonna I'm gonna lead with the elephants, or rather the whale in the fish news room this week. That's why I didn't do it, because I wasn't the lead off. We have been inundated so many people. I think half the people who listened to this show have already sent the story. But for the other half, here's the biggest watery, fishy story of the week. Michael Packard, a fifty six year old commercial lobster diver from Massachusetts, was diving in forty five ft of water off the coast of Provincetown last week when he felt quote this huge bump and then everything went dark. And everything went dark because Packard was inside the mouth of a humpback. Well, now, if you're at the bottom of the ocean and you feel an immense force crash into you and then everything goes dark, what would you assume had happened? Um, I don't know. Maybe I was swallowed by a shark, isn't that I don't I don't know I got hit by a boat or a submarine. See, I would I would assume I got munched by a shark like that would be whether I don't like something slams into me to the bottom and and things go black. I think I just got chewed by a shark and I'm dead. That's what maybe maybe, like the average person would think that, because I'm a shark guy and also large, like it would take a full on negladon to just like make me disappear in one bite. It's even a great white like. So, I see what you're saying. But I don't know. I wouldn't have thought that. Well, maybe you're just more of a shark expert than the rest of us. But but and Packard would agree with me. He thought he got hit by a shark. But then he told w be Z TV quote. Then I felt around and I realized there was no teeth, and then I had felt really no great pain, and then I realized, oh my god, I'm in a whale's mouth and he's trying to swallow here. This is really nice. Now, for the record, the whale was almost certainly not trying to swallow him, but we'll cover that in a minute. Packard. Baggard wrote on Facebook that he thinks he was inside the whale's mouth for thirty to forty seconds before the whale rose to the surface and spit him out. Now this sounds insane. The whole story, I mean to me, seems utterly implausible. Whales don't eat people. Whales are pretty aware of what's going on around them. The idea that a whale would just like gobble up a scuba diver is frankly ludicrous. But this story has witnesses. Commercial divers work in pairs like with it. There there's a diver and then there's a crewman that stays on the boat top side and and tracks the diver's bubbles so you can help out something goes wrong. Packridge crewman, a guy named Josiah Mayo, was doing just that and then all of a sudden, a whale breached right in front of him and spit out his coworker. And that's got to be crazy. A charter boat captain named Joe Francis was working in the area and also witnessed the incident. Before rushing over to help. He told w b Z TV quote, I saw him might come flying out of the water feet first with his flippers on and land back in the water. I jumped aboard the boat. We got him up, got his tank off, got him on the deck and calmed him down, and he goes Joe. I was in the mouth of a whale. Packard was immediately rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, where he was treated for soft tissue damage, before limping out on his own power later that day. Knowing as we all do, that whales don't eat people, what the hell happened? In Ker, executive director of the group Ocean Alliance, explained that humpback whales employ a strategy called lunge feeding, in which they identify a school of fish, accelerate, quickly open their mouths and quote, taken ten SUV's worth of water and fish and then everything else. Though as we said, hump ACKs are usually pretty aware of their surroundings. It appears that this may have been a juvenile or subadult whale, like a teenager. And if whale teams or anything like human teams, they're feeding behaviors maybe somewhat more reckless and indiscriminate than their elders. Either way, researchers think that there's like a one in a million accident where the diver just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the whale just got him by mistake. Humpbacks have very small esopha guy, which is good for this guy, because there's no way the whale goes swallowed packard even if it wanted to. They do, however, have very powerful mouths and jaws, so the whale could have easily crushed the diver, likely breaking his neck and her back. But that's not what it did. Instead, like it sucked him up and went, oh, ship, this isn't what I meant to have. I don't want this, and then like rushed to the service where it shook its head and then potentially used its tongue to eject packard skyward. That's the theory. Now, in several of the stories I read, people would come up with some kind of analogy for how the whale was trying to get rid of and react to a foreign object in his mouth, like one compared to to a biker getting a bug in their mouth, you know, And that's not the analogy that I thought of, like when I heard the story analogy pot in my head, but it wasn't that. I thought of a fish with a plug in its mouth coming to the surface and trying to shake it loose. Like that's the image that I have in my head, but in a much larger scale and with a person, not a plug. And I'm not sure if there's any useful insight to be gleaned here, but I think Packard's the only person I can think of who's like been the lure that the fish was trying to throw, you know what I mean, Like he's been the lure. Other people have come close, but this is the only one I know of where he ended up in there fully enclosed. I have no clue if experienced like endows him with youthful wisdom that we English can use. I don't know, but I would like to think, right, I'd like to think he's like, guys, I've been the bait. Here's what I know now, Like I don't. He didn't do that. He didn't give that any of you that that That's what I hope. Last point on this, this dude seems to be one of those people to whom crazy shit just happens and he survives. Twenty years ago, he was in a plane crash in the Costa Rican jungle, in which he sustained massive facial lacerations and multiple broken bones in his arms and legs. He survived for two days in the jungle before being rescued, and the doctor said he would not have made it through another night. So this dude sounds like the kind of guy they would make a movie about. And he actually told the New York Post that if they do make a film about his life, he'd like to be played by Nick Well. Yeah, okay, so yeah, we had we had to touch on that when a few you thoughts like I see humpbacks of fair amount off Jersey during the striper season because they come right in on the bunker schools and that that that feeding style. It's no joke, man, And people have hooked them by mistake, because they'll hook a striper and the bunker and they're fighting it and whale just come up and take the whole school one shot, just like like a metric ton one shot. And if if if your your fishes in the middle of it, it's going down too. And like I said, I don't know of anybody who's been fully engulfed, But man, I know plenty of kayakers who've had some scares. I've had some scares on larger boats. I mean it's like a very imposing thing. They come up straight vertical like that, and like there's there's no stopping them. But it I'm not surprised, you know, I wasn't surprised when I read that it was a juvenile because most sort of whale follies and foibles, that's the case, Like they breach all the time, and it's like you're breaching in a fleet of boats. How are you not hitting them? But the big ones, like they they understand their spatial deal. It happens every once in a while, one will come down and clips somebody's about and it's always a juvenile. So like they're still they're still learning, you know what I mean. When when when you were a teenager, did you bump your head on shipped constantly? Because I know I did, so it makes perfect sense to me. My space didn't actually solidify until I was like I didn't butt my head, but I would like, you know, be in reverse when I thought I was in drive, like go over parking cones like jump over the concrete parking. I didn't almost hit a lady at the best Buy like the first week I had my license. As you know, we don't need to get off on that. I'm an excellent driver now, but I feel I feel for the juvenile whales. Um. Also, you know, I was thinking about it. I I I poked fun it at the shark thing, knowing that, like, oh, I wouldn't think it was a shark, but dude, great whites, cape cod, hand and glove, Like there's there's great whites all over up there. So now that I think about it, considering where he was in the world, Yeah, like they like they tracked them up there all the time. So I'm I'm glad that worked out. What a story, What an American, what a tough man, Like if you can survive in the jungle after a plane crash, this was like no big deal. Thirty seconds in a whale. I've got a problem. I'm walking home to night and going to Chili's. Um. I know, no good transition whatsoever. I've been trying to think of it. I don't have it. We've been I feel like we've been sucking on transitions in general. Lately and sort of copying out and just being I still working it. Okay, all right, fair enough. So the only thing I got, which is totally lame, is like we had a feud between whale and man. Here's another odd feud film. Feel free to cut that because that was a ship or don't whatever. Anyway, weird feud I found documented on Syracuse dot com. And according to this story, um, and I actually did know this. New York Seneca River is hailed as one of the premier carp destinations in America. It's so good, in fact, that the World carp Championships are scheduled to be held on its shores in three But there could be a monkey wrench that stops that from happening. And that monkey wrench is named Tony Crawford. Okay, so Tony Cross, Tony, Tony Big Tone. He works for Midway Lakes in King Mountain, North Carolina, which is a series of pay legs, and apparently Tony and crew have been making annual tracks to Seneca with tank trucks, catching a mess of those famous trophy carp and hauling them back to King Mountain to stock the pay legs. According yes, now, according to Ian Sorrel, president of the Carp Anglers Group of North America. He's quoted in the story saying it's been a dirty secret for a number of years. So Crawford has been doing this for a while. This is not a new thing. Uh. Here's a quote from the story. Paul Russell, one of the co directors of the Wild Carp Classic and a carpet fishing guide, said the Seneca has been recognized internationally as a premier carp destination. He said anglers participating in recent years in the Classic have noted a decrease in the fishing quality on the Seneca. Some have decided not to come to the Classic as a result. During the recent Classic held this pass May, Russell said, only thirty one of more than fifty teams caught enough big fish meaning fifteen pounds are greater to qualify for the Big ten category, which considers the total weight of a team's biggest ten fishing has the biggest cash payout. The bigger issue, apart from whether Crawford's actions are affecting the quality of tournament carp fishing in the river, is whether the practice could result in unintended spread of disease and invasive aquatic species from one state's waterway to another. So I certainly understand the frustration of the recreational carp fishing community here, um, and I guess they've kind of they've had enough, and they've enlisted the help of New York Assemblyman Will Barkley, who the story says is drafting legislation to get the activity under state Department of Environmental Conservation control. But the thing is, this is not a cut and dry fight, because Crawford is doing absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever. Why wildlife officials from both New York and North Carolina are like, yeah, sorry, I kind of don't care carp or not game fish. There are no walls saying they can't be broad across state lines, and if they're being stocked in a privately owned body of water, it's perfectly fine. There are no rules or regulations in either state governing this. So what the story doesn't tell us is exactly how many fish or pounds of fish Crawford and company are taking. And I also question, just to sort of play Devil's advocate, if this one dude and his car henchmen are really that responsible for a downturn in carpet numbers because there's no mention of bow fishing in this article. But in my experience, I think you've seen the same thing. Where there are a lot of common carp, there are bow fishermen. And just again, a quick Google search turned up plenty of hits for bow fishing on the Seneca. Um. All that said, having hung out with really really devoted carp guys like the euro guys, like I feel the pain here, Like you already are always worrying about bow fishing and how that's going to affect you know, the thing that you love to do, and then you have this guy. Um, but I mean it really just all ties back to the fact that I just don't think carp will ever achieve the status they have in Europe, Like it will just never happen here. Like it's like you're screaming at a wall if you're trying to do right by common carp. And final thought, well, I can't. I can't fully blast Crawford. I will say, like, man, there's a there's a ton of miles between between King's Mountain, North Carolina and the senetor River, Like you mean to tell me you can't find carp in that span that like fewer if any, people care about like if you would come and take them all for your pay lake, that seems odd to me to make that journey. But I thought that was interesting because it's a it's a very like I get it, it's a nasty fight, but I don't know who's winning that, if anybody. I would highly doubt that it's this guy's carpet toting operation. That's actually imp he's single bought on. I think you're spot on with with it's you know, more likely bow fishing or something else, but probably bow fishing um and which again also perfectly legal. Uh And I'm not calling that out as as something negative, but if the if the if the carp folks are looking for a reason why their numbers are going down so precipitously, I don't think you can just single out this one dude who's grabbing fish as your scapegoat. Yeah that said, I think what he's doing is kind of shady. Yeah, I mean cool, But I mean I'm not either. But again, you're looking at this small group of people who really like it's so hard to be a devout carp guy in this country because like everyone is against you, you know, what I mean, like, no matter how much you try, and it's similar to snake AADs, no matter how much you preach you know, the benefits and the fun, it's the average dude is against you. So I mean, I think it's it's it's shady too, and I think it's kind of wrong. And again I think he could probably find carp for the pay Lake a lot closer. But um, you know, to the average guy, it's still carp you know, It's just it's just some carp man. I was trying to figure out why this bothered me so much, and I think I've just put my finger on it. They may be whatever, just carp. I like carp You like carpet, So we don't feel that way. And they may not be a game fish as a designated by management agencies, but there's still a public resource. Yeah. Those are fish that come from a public lake that are feeding upon all the things in that lake that are available to the public, that are being taken out of that public trust and privatized. And that pisses me off, Like the just the philosophical implications of that pissed me off. That to me is the antithesis of the model that we have for wildlife management and fisheries, and so that just doesn't work for me. That just that makes me angry. Well, I hope, I hope there's there's some kind of happy medium or some kind of turn of events here, because I don't know. I'm not in the harp scene, but if they're really thinking of having the World Championship on American soil, I mean, you gotta have a pretty damn good card fishery to attract people from across the globe to hear um. So that's that's pretty impressive in and of itself, you know it is. I think the connection that I have between this and my second story is is that it fits both of these touch on fishing tournaments that people don't know that much about and maybe attract a local interest that that the rest of the country might never heard about, but are a big deal in their their little areas. So I gotta say this next story, I came away from it scratching my head a little bit. We're gonna come out of this with with some some questions more than answers, all right, So everyone we talked to in the fishing and tackle industry right now, every everybody that we we have a conversation with is all about how popular fishing is, how how how much money they were making, how crowded the lakes and rivers are, how difficult it is to keep tackle in stock, how busy the guides are. Right, that is the hottest conversation in the fishing industry right now. But one particular shop just doesn't seem to think it's popular enough like they feel they feel the need to create this extra huge incentive to get people out fishing. Enter the story of Old Walter two point oh. Last weekend was free fishing weekend in Tennessee, meaning that anyone could fish without needing to purchase a license. To capitalize on what was already sure to be a busy couple of days on the water on the famed South Holeston Reservoir, Watson's Marine and Tackle in Bluff City, Tennessee, decided to up the ante. On June tent at around one am, watson employees caught, tagged, and released a three and a half pound small mouth that they named Old Walter two point oh. They then announced on their Facebook page that anyone who caught the fish legally and delivered it to the shop alive would win one hundred thousand dollars. Winners were required to follow all fishing game laws and catch the fish on a rod and reel, but live bait and artificial lures were both legal. According to Watson Marine Quote, this entire event was inspired by a similar contest in the mid nineteen eighties that many still look fondly back on in the great memories from the event, and hopefully that same sentiment was relayed this past weekend. That's why the fish are called Old Walter two point oh, and that all sounds kind of heartwarming. But I read a bunch of stories about this, and no one actually seems to remember the details of that original contest from forty years ago, or even the exact year that had happened. So either people don't want to talk about the details with the press because it was sketchy or not sanctioned or something I don't know, or they really don't remember what happened. So I don't quite get how this is an extension of history being relieved, But either way, this year's Old Walter event will be much better cataloged in history. What was already a crazy weekend on a popular reservoir turned into a complete mad house. Anglers flocked not just from Oliver, Tennessee, but from neighboring states and even further afield. Local local news station five reported talking to a group who came from Michigan for a crack at the hunder Grand Smally public access points were just like choked with bank anglers and and the boat ramps were exactly what you would imagine, just like hellish nightmare scenes. The good news is that I couldn't find any reports of of disasters or incidents or injuries or drownings or fist fights or anything. But the bad news, despite the thousands of hooks and lines combing South Holsted for two days straight, no one caught Old Walter. He's still out there, chilling, sitting there. In a final update to their Facebook page on Monday morning, Watson's Burned announced that Old Walter still carries a prize on his head, but now it's fifteen hundred bucks instead of a hundred grand. Oh, so it had to be caught over that weekend. Had to be caught over the weekend. Man, Man, I don't want to I don't want to, like, I don't want to speculate, But doesn't this all sound real shady, like there's like some element of shade to this. Yeah, of course they are insistent. If you look at everything they put up publicly, like this is a real thing, And after it was over they put up pictures of the fish they're calling old Walter and then releasing it say it's real. Here it is. But I think you're exactly right. All of it smacks as a little shade to me from the like some sort of origin to a contest from the eighties that no one really knows anything about two like there's a hunderground. We swear the fishes out there like I don't know, man, and I don't know. And again I don't know anything about this marina. But I'm just thinking of like the local marinas on some of the bigger lakes around here. If they offered up a hundred thousand dollars, I'd be like, you haven't made a hundred thousand dollars in that little marina in that place, like in the last Like it just seems like one of those things where it's like we're gonna, we're gonna do it to hype it up, but like they somehow know they're not going to have to pay it out or something. I mean, like the best of people. But yeah, it feels sketchy to me too. I think it's also possible. I'll say this, we don't know how busy they are. That's a very popular part of the fishing country. Like fishing is a big deal over there, particularly bass fishing, and if they sell a lot of big bass boats and last year was probably a better year for them, very well could I'm thinking of it as like a small mom and pop place, but that might not be the case. Even still, it's like, why not just leave it a hundred thousand dollars till it's called if you have the hundred thousands? Because they got what they wanted. They got a weekend of like crazing is and people's beending money. They that that it's diminishing returns for them. Well, you know what the problem here is. I've heard there's a Senko shortage. So all those people probably none of them had a foreign troop beer Senko and and there you go, and that's what happens. Well, um, we'll monitor to see if old Walter Walter isn't that there's no, it's not Old Walter. It's old Walter Old Walter. There's no D. There's no D. There's to be a silent um. Yeah, well, well we'll see what happened. I would like to follow up to see if somebody actually catches it, just to prove that it's out there. I just want to know. I just want to know. Um. But okay, so I'll transition to to uh proving there here's some this is some real proof about muskies. I'm trying to set up this transition. This is proof proof about muskies. You didn't know. Data that proofs they is about muskie ship that you probably didn't know before. How's that was that smooth? I thought it was great. I'm moving on straight out of Michigan. Let's talk about a muskie named James. This is from m live dot com, your source for James. The musky plush toys on season lunch boxes. Just kidding about those, but not but not about the muskie which the Michigan DNR named James because his tag number was double O seven a good one. So old James was first tagged in the Detroit River. Is it old old James? We have Old Walter, and I'm saying Old James was first tagged in the Detroit River in the late spring of right, and by the end of that summer found his way clear across Lake Erie to Buffalo, New York. By January, James was back in the Michigan waters of Lake Erie, and in May he was only a few hundred yards from where he had been captured the year before. So that is a round trip for James of six hundred and twenty miles. And according to the story, UH James is still tagged and they monitor this through through sonar um. James has repeated this same pattern, the same movement in following years and is still providing scientists with data on these movements. How many times have they this story the story did not say. It did not give an amount of specific times it was repeated. It just said this was the first pass, and he's made similar or passes just as close in subsequent years, all the way out and all the way back. Right. So from the story, tagging and tracking of Muskie's is ongoing, with researchers hoping to use fish movement patterns to identify unique groups of fish, which according to the d NR, can inform overall estimates of populations and provide pivotal information to fisheries managers. Each fish is surgically implanted with an acoustic transmitter that emits coded pings unique to each fish and has a battery life of at least seven years. Um And says these signals can be detected by a network of listening stations throughout the Great Lakes as part of the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System, which I happen to know, while the story didn't go into it, they have these things planted all over the lake. They monitor all kinds of stuff, like they know like where all the wall eyes are right now and where. But I didn't know that they were doing this with muskies, Like I know that they've done a lot with salmon, and I know they've done a ton with walleye, and there's there's really no like huge follow up behind that other than I. I just always find these little tidbits fascinating because I think with freshwater species in particular, UM, so many people just kind of consider them home bodies, and that's not at all true. Like in so many cases, if fish have room to roam, a lot of them will for a multitude of reason. And this takes me back to that story. You come right. This was a while ago, but it's about the the near record muski in the Minnesota lake that wasn't supposed to have muskies in it. There's this big mystery and all they could figure was there was this long network of these small like culverts and ditches that ran underneath roads, um, that distantly connected to musky waters and there it's like, hey, you know, it's sort of speculation, like, well, that's the only way he could have got there. A must taken them years to do it. Um. But sometimes the lens they'll go are hard to comprehend without data like this, and this is like right in front of your face, Like they tracked this muskie swy miles multiple times, um, and they they've done a bit of this kind of thing, even on like salty stripers out here. Always blows my mind too. Um. One of them spent I remember this a couple of years ago, spend a ton of time in the summer, seventy miles offshore in the canyons where the tuna and the marlin are right and it's like by the book that fish should never be there, but like there it was, science says so right in your face, so I'm always it is fascinated by studies like this that just show you, like how far and wide fish will roam, So dude, And maybe it's probably not in there because you would have covered it. But I'm just curious, are there any hypotheses as to why that fish was making that trip, because usually they're going to be following baits, following cooler water, or following something that is attractive to them exactly, And no it didn't. But I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you base it around Walleye movements, I know a little bit more about that, Like if you talk to guys like Ross Robertson, like real wringers in that system, like they they follow emerald shiners, they follow, like you said, cooler temps. And while there's always like a little bit of Walleye everywhere, as I understand it, like the main bulk, the main population, they slide from one side of that lake and back again for following everything from temp to food. So I would assume the muskies moving for the same reason. And I actually, as I recall it, like the the eastern side of that basin, I think has the cooler water in the summer, like late summer, you want to be on the eastern side of that basin. So I'm sure even if it's I don't know whether the muskies are migrating per se, but like if you're a muskie and you're hungry, you can follow a bunch of small wall eyes around, right, you know what I mean. So it's a connected yeah or yeah. So I'm sure it's all interconnected to just these general migrations throughout the system. And as a salty guy, that's so common, like how totally fish migrating move But I mean that may as well be the ocean. There's so much water and so much space, so it's not like, well, Cleveland's wal eyes are here and they're always here. Like those fish, it's almost like a saltwater environment the way they migrate through that system, which is why those those great lakes, like hardcore musky guys are so dialed on localized bites at certain times of you're right, like you hear about that all the time, and and where you know whether they're they're in the Fox River of Green Bay just for one period of time when when the conditions are right and it's just like saltwater. You gotta follow them where they go as they move. It's it's all, it's all, it's all the fish. I've done it with small mouths up there, and like it's super secret deal I'm not supposed to talk about. But be that as it may. It's like we fished this area where you would have a hell of a time ever catching a small mouth except for like these two weeks in November, and they're on these Volkswagen sized pieces of rubble in basically a shallow desert and they're not that Like, you won't catch a small mouth there any other time of year. And there's a lot of that in the Great Lakes and it always fascinates me how salty it feels like right here, right now. So James the musky six miles, good on him. I'm sure he's strong. He might you know, you might want to let him fight musky guys instead of just ripping him to the net in two seconds. While he rolls around, let me have a little drag, let him run, don't bring him in. Green could go bed anyway. So it's got a lot to choose from. Who's gonna take the wind guy? Getting eaten by by whale. Old Walter carp few of the century, James the Muskie. We'll see what Phil has to say, and then we're gonna do a little freaking Philistines right after that. Okay, So you're you're telling me a hundred thousand dollars if I make him the winner. M you got a deal man, Okay, ye, because he did such a good job this week, and for no other reason, Miles Nulty, you're the winner of fish News this week. No hold on one second, hello, what okay? Deals off? I Actually I just recounted the points, and um, it turns out that that Miles was actually taking truckloads of fish News points from Joe's beautiful public lakes and trucking them all the way to his stuffy private lakes, and uh listen. Not technically illegal, but not in the spirit of fish News, and therefore I have to make Joe certainly the winner of fish News this week. What's fast? It's a guy who doesn't care about books or interesting films and things. Robert Lurke is best known as a hunting writer. His account of a nineteen fifty one African Safari Horn of the Hunter is still regarded by many as the greatest African hunting book ever written. Others, myself included, contend that it's somewhat egregious derivation of Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa dulls the shine regardless of what I think. However, Rurk rose to prominence and fame when Horn of the Hunter was published in nineteen fifty three, and remained there until he died of cirrhosis of the liver. In n style and topic weren't the only attributes were shared with, or perhaps borrowed from his favorite writer and personal hero. In my estimation, Rurk's most compelling, original, and enduring work is collected from a series that ran in Field and Stream from nineteen fifty three to nineteen sixty one, titled The Old Man and the Boy. The stories are written from the perspective of a grown man recounting the fishing, hunting, and practical education he received from his grandfather while growing up on the rural coast of North Carolina in the nineteen twenties. The series is technically fiction, but clearly based on Rurk's own upbringing. He recounts his childhood through a romantic prism that throws rainbows across nearly every character an event, Even when the story's hint at darkness or ugliness, those smudges get covered by colorful sentiment. Grown men getting blind, drunk, and falling into a name fisticuffs after a failed raccoon hunt over nothing beyond ego and idiocy are recalled in a char ring in tender anecdote. When one of them misses a punch badly, falls off the porch and remains supine. His fellow combatant and brother decides to join him. They sleep off their alcohol and fury, curled together in the dirt and looking so peaceful, are joined by one of the hounds, who stretches out across their feet. But in this book, rurks rosy reflections feel more perspectivele than deceitful. Adults often see their own backstories through the fun house mirror of nostalgia. When we remember our pasts, and especially our childhoods, we almost always find the time works on memory in much the same way that water does on stones. Rurk portrays early twentieth century North Carolina as a fantasy world for a boy who liked fishing, hunting, and being outside. In each vignette, he recalls some kind of wonderful adventure chasing quail or blue fish, where the boy is ushered towards some deep wisdom through the folksy backwoods brilliance of a grandfather, the old Man. The lessons are always practical. Steward your fishing game, bring spare tackle. Don't start drinking until after you're done hunting. Sometimes they're moral. Train a dog, don't break him. Idleness is only a sin if you squander it. One can be kind without being weak. Often they're philosophical. The person who speaks the most and loudest usually knows the least, or, to quote the old Man himself, the world is full of fine, fragmentary thoughts, killed at birth by the interruptions of damned fools. Mostly, the old Man teaches the boy to slow down, shut up, and pay attention to the world around him, especially the non human life. And while the stories consistently flirt with that shadow line where poignant becomes traite, they never seem to cross it. The old Man is wise and brilliant, but also self deprecating and just flawed enough to feel like the grandfather you wish you had Being that this book is set in the South in the nineteen twenties, it reflects flawed and ignorant cultural attitudes about race and gender. To consume this book entirely without critical thought would run counter to one of the central philosophies that the Old Man espouses. People are often dead wrong in their opinions about and ways of treating other people whom they do not know. We can always do better by ourselves, our world, and our species by actually listening to and internalizing experiences that are not our own, those shot through with relic arts of racism and chauvinism. I feel relatively confident that if Rurk's characters were alive today, some of their assumptions would change, And I think anyone reading this book in the twenty one century would be wise to maintain the skepticism of dogma and questioning of other's opinions that the Old Man so often recommends to the Boy. Here's a taste of the style and pacing that should convince you why this book is a perfect summertime read. We came around a bend of the Big Creek, and the old Man told me to head her into the bank where there are a lot of lily pads and weeds, and it looked like some fairly deep pools now. Then, son, the old man said, we ain't gonna talk any because fishing is a silent sport, and a lot of conversation scares the fish and wreck the mood. What I want you to do is sit there and fish, And when the fish ain't biting, I want you to listen and look and think, think about heaven and hell and just how long is hereafter? Look around you and don't take nothing for granted. Look at everything you see, and listen to everything you hear, just like you were brand new, come for another world, and think about all those things and how they got there. Now, let's fish well, sir. When you can't talk, you got to think and look and listen, And all of a sudden I was a lonesomest boy in the world. You know anything about what it's like to be in a fresh water swamp in the south when the sun starting to drop and the noises begin, or what it smells like and feels like as it cools off from the heat of the day, and what sort of things are all around you. I got to look in at the water. It was clear and clean, but brown is your hat from the leaf dye. And when you scooped it up a handful tasted a little like the leaves smelled if you crumpled them up in your hand. And it was full of all sorts of little things. Bugs that hopped and popped, little crawlers that left a tiny wake behind them like a mink. Swimming fish swirled and rose to snap at the beginnings of the fly hatch. A big bullfrog gave a loud, croaking kurt thump and leapt into the water with a splash over on the other bank of watermarks, and slithered down the greasy earth and slipped into the water without a sound. It was so lonely in that swampy river that it made you want to cry. All the sad sounds in the world suddenly started. A dove set up that woeful whoo hoo hoo across the swamp, and another one sadder still began to answer them back. They sounded like two old widow women swapping miseries in the utter. Hush, A million noises intruded. A bittern roared, a heron squawked, a kingfisher rattled a deer snorted and barked. A bird screeched, a crow cod Somewhere deep in the swamp, there was a growl and a scream as a wildcat skittled a rabbit. A squirreled, chirred, and was answered. Leaves rustled, things fell off, Trees, bushes stirred mysteriously with the passing of unseen animals. In my brain, I looked at all of it, the trees, the grass, the moss, the bugs, the birds, the ferns, the flowers, the setting sun, the rising hatch of flies. I felt the dark creeping, and saw the first shining speck of star, and heard the mounting noises in the swamp. I felt cold in my bones from the rising yasthma of mist as the air cooled. I was so lost in what was going on in the million slivers of vibrant life that when a big fish hit I lost him out of sheer panic. I'll tell you why, man, After all these years, what's still difficult for me to to fully appreciate and understand is that my byline appeared for for so many years in the same magazine where those stories came from. You know what I mean? A lot of history. There man a lot of it. And like when we met, right when you when we met, you were the fishing editor at Field and Stream, I was the fishing editor at Gray Sporting Journal. And I think sometimes, at least the first we both felt like we were we were wearing clown shoes, right, because I'm not, but I'm not mistaken. I think we were both the youngest people to ever hold that title of those magazines pretty sure. Yeah. And and by the time you were there, right, Rurke was long dead, he was long gone, but you still got to share mast heads with some of our idols, right like Tom, Tom mcgwain, AJ McClain, David James, Duncan Pete from Jim bab Like oh yeah, oh dude, yeah, I mean I still think about it now, like my stuff for for years went alongside Eddie Nikins and Phil Bore Jaley, and I'm still damn proud to have been part of that magazine and just like the literary and sporting tradition behind it, you know. Yeah, I mean, dude, while you were there, Harrison was still publishing Field and Stream. I mean, these were these were for for both of us. I think those were kind of magical times. And I'll never forget the day that I was told I got that job. I blew my mind. It was one of the top five happiest days of my life without question. Me too, Me too. And look at us now, Look look where we've gotten. We get to make a podcast with with such luminaries as lands By and Scatchee Johnson, um, you know. Plus we get to we get to come the internet for fishing products where they ridicule and derision for our sale been segment. God, you know it just all paid off? Face? 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. The original idea for this segment was for us to make jokes about used fishing gear that was for sale online. But as we've kind of gone with this, we keep finding or getting sent links to these just absolutely ludicrous manufacturer products. So Joe and I have talked about this, like off off the radio here, We've we've had conversations, and we've decided to officially open up the category a little bit right, give ourselves licensed to make fun of absolutely any worthy fishing related products, even if they're not being pawned off second hand. Yeah, because it's I don't know, it seems like there's too many not to like we have to We've already done a couple of times, but now we're officially saying that we're doing it so right. And and to be clear, we are in no way shape or for him giving up on combing Craigslist and Facebook our you know, we're just we're expanding. Okay, we're expanding. We're giving ourselves license to make fun of new shit and use hit. As I I said, I don't know, not too long ago, I prefer to ridicule a single person over a company. Right to me, it's it's like it's no different than my preference for buying stuff from a small business instead of a large corporation. I actually I actually want to see the impact I'm having, both positive and negative. Um, but look, sometimes you gotta expand your horizons. So that's that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. And uh and and you're helping us with this because because listener Brandon Razinski recently sent us a link to a product being sold by a phishing gear company that I somehow I'd never heard of this before. I don't know how I missed it. Judging judging by their website, yeah amazing. Judging by their website, the tackle box Shop seems like it might be a money laundering front for the Russian mob specializes in Chinese knockoff fishing gear, which may or may not have disappeared from a shipping crate. According to their website quote at the tackle box Shop, we stocked nearly all accessories including phishing lures, hooks, jigheads, weight sinkers, line stoppers, barrel swivels, free tackle boxes, and over all any and all phishing equipment you need for salt water and fresh water. I don't get the free tackle boxes, the stock of free tackle box free, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know so much. So with a tagline like that and prices like these, you can understand why they just can't afford to hire copy editors fluent in English language. You can get yourself right now. If you go there, you can purchase for yourself an entire ten piece set of maps Agia knockoffs for American. Of course they're not. These are not advertised like you can't look up MEPs knockoffs. It won't come up there, obviously it But it's like, it is so obvious that these are just they're painted just to be exactly like aglas, but they're not. However, the tackle box shop labels them as quote feather hook sequence fishing lures, whatever the hell that is. I don't know what that is. I see that sea fishing all the time pop up on cheap stuff. It's always like Lord's for sea fishing, like some maps. But how is it you see? It's uh, it's irrelevant. But as look as bad as their rip off gear is, that's that's not the thing that caught our attention, because there's plenty of rip off gear out there, Okay, Like, like you got to be more creative than knocking off of maps to get on the BENT program, right, because it seems they also specialize in gimmicks that probably never should have seen the light of day. And the one we want to tell you about is called and I ship you not right, It's called the eruptive fish hook net. Now you may be wondering, what the hell is an eruptive fish hook net? How does it erupt? Do I use it to net fish hooks? That have somehow erupted into the water. You might be thinking, I need to see a photo of this understand what we're talking about. So did we It didn't help us that much. Nope, Okay, the problem is at the corresponding photo of the product. It won't it won't clear up that many questions. I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try here. Okay. It's a barrel swivel attached to a thin metal rod that has a copper spring like one of those sort of like pot belly stove shape weird springs loosely wound around it, and on the other end of the copper spring are neon green beads and attached to the back end of this contraption appears to be just a lot of tied up nylon mesh netting. So it's just none of it makes any sense, right You You look at the name, you don't know what the name is about. You look at the photo and you're like, what is this thing that I'm looking at? So naturally you move onto the product description, figuring that's going to clear some things up. And and in this case, it's given in in three easy to follow steps, which we will now read for you, so you can be as confused as we are. Step one, insert your favorite and tastiest bait into our copper protected spring bolb And this this step comes with photos. The photos show absolutely nothing to do with bait. No, they're just more pictures of this strange product. But this time the mesh net is untangled and just it's hanging, and there's some trees in the background for ambiance. I guess I don't know. Yeah, yeah, okay, So here's step two. Okay, we'll get there together, somewhere, we're gonna have somewhere. Step two, wait patiently for a shoal of fish to appear. That's the step. And that's the step, wait patiently for a shoal of fish, not a school um. And in this photo, the eruptive fish hook net hangs in front of a solid black background, and there's ten little tiny Atlantic salmon photos shopped around it, right, and they're just like staring blankly at the dropping net as though they too are wondering what the hell this thing is and why it's here, how it's gotten into their environment. Maybe very confused. Maybe step three will bring it all together for us. Possibly possibly not. Step three pull up on your road to release the safety bead and release the large net to tangle fish. And the photo here just shows a close up of a person sitting a lawn chair holding a spinning rod, which does nothing to alleviate my skepticism about this whole thing or my confusion as to what exactly a safety bead is and what it has to do with fishing. Okay, so I feel like I have somewhat deciphered this though. Okay, so from what we can piece together, this is kind of like a cast net designed to be used with a rotten reel, but that wouldn't actually work because if you understand cast nets, they have lead weights all around the perimeter, so that when you throw one over a shoal of fish um, the weights sink very quickly to the bottom and the fish get trapped underneath. And at Okay, then when you you pull back on the line, it's cinches the perimeter of that net close the fish can't escape. Now, this item, I don't know. It doesn't seem like it would have any such functionality, and I don't really tell, but I think the idea, right this is, this is what I gather is that you would dangle this like you straight off a dock or a boat, because I don't think you could cast it. It wouldn't go anywhere. It weighs. It weighs zero. It's got the copper spring. What's got the copper spring? And once you fill that up with oatmeal or whatever, then you can send it flying. Right then you could heave it a mile. But I think what you would do is you would you would dangle this vertically off off a dock or a boat, and then when a shoal of fish swims over to nibble the bits of chum coming out of the copper plate chum capacitor, like you snap the rod, the net opens and falls down around them, but without any weights around the perimeter of the net. I don't see how that's post bowl or like what would you do? You have to like lower the rod around them, Like if you have only so much line up, do you open the bail and let it fall? But that wouldn't work either, because then that wouldn't work because the copper weight would go down to them. It would open. It would make the net open, not closed, I know, but just again, like that's like the best thing I can I can figure right, but really, at best, I guess you might have one or two. You know, members of the bluegill should just tangled up in the massive ball of nylon mess. Shit, that's the best. They had a couple of spines in there. You catch them, you use it once because you'll never untangle it again, and you throw it in the trash. That's what you do anyway. According to the website, this heralds and this is a quote upgraded version of fishing. Change traditional fishing methods, remove hooks, and improve safety. Just hanging on the fishing rod, you can realize safe fishing. This is that's a real sentence. They you can catch big fish without a hook. I'm sold. I mean I was confused and lost up until then. But that last that that last strong statement of positivity, just because we all want to realize safe fishing. You all want to realize it's basically when this whole podcast is just realizing safe fishing. But just hanging on the fishing rod. It's just that's all you gotta do, Just hang on it. You you didn't mention the best part because somehow the price just dropped from hurry up, hurry up and get them. Um. I assume they're actually already flooded with orders. But after this airs, they'll they'll sell out in minutes. It's the next tick on me elmo um so act now everyone, Thanks again to Brandon Rozanski for sending us the link. And if you come across ridiculous fishing related ship on sale, please send links to Bent at the Meat Eater dot com so we can keep the sail bin full. Well, we're just about to run out of oxygen on this free dive to the bottom of the mall pond. But for those of you who weren't keeping track of what we picked up along the way, we now know that anglers are just litterbugs with fancy boats and Yogi's commune with sasquatch or sam squatches. I like to say times were simpler fish here and at least slightly more racist in the thirties. And uh that new technology maybe making castnets easier to throw, but it's not improving on the original design. Please please keep those awkward photos, bar nominations, sale ban items, fish news stories, and other highly appreciated emails coming to Bent at the media dot com. And and do remember, like we said last episode, if you have any questions you want us to address on or off the show, please send them along. We don't promise we'll get to all of them, but we will do our best. Yeah, hit us up on the social media is with the hashtags Degenerate Angler and Bent Podcast. We also just ordered a whole new batch of Degenerate Angler stickers that are just waiting to get slapped on your truck or boat. And don't forget about those badass new fish threads in the Meat Eater store that that original Sublime forty ounces to Freedom hoodie you bought right after Bradley died in It's uh, It's time to retire that one.

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