00:00:06 Speaker 1: You've gotta be a lot smarter than that if you're gonna Rick roll, Joe Surmelli, I was like, not today, Rick Astley, not today. I don't need big screen TVs and and sports when I can watch people making asses of themselves trying to dock in front of a rowdy crowd. And we'll be back next week to give us a hack on how to properly put those on and remove them with Google from all the ship that leads. Day later, I'm going to ask you about Australian Santa. Feel good about that? Great wow, Good morning, degenerate anglers. Welcome to Ben the fishing podcast that struggles to get your ride at home from its favorite bar because it only has a three star rating on Uber. I'm Joe Surmelli, I'm Miles Nulty, and and I'm I'm a little confused by that set up. Are you an Uber driver? Now? Are you like noon lighting as an Uber driver? No? No, no, no, no no no no. Drivers can rate passengers too, that yeah, like if I get yes, right, Like if I get in Homeboys car And for the record, this is this is totally hypothetical, But if I get in dude's car, wearing like soaking wet waiters and leave behind a trail of mud and like sand or bunk or slime or something, and then tip him in in ski ball tickets, which I've been known to do because I always have a lot of very good skiball player um that he can give me a bad rating so that future drivers don't make the mistake of picking me up. Real real thing. Yes, so I can get black balled as a Uber passenger, like I can. I can get like cut out, like don't pick this dude up totally. And you can also get blackballed as an Airbnb guest. That what I know about that. I was Yeah, okay, see I I was recently. I was recently. I'm proud I was just rated as a five star gas, which means I didn't have a foam party or steal the linens or anything. Yeah, but real, grown up, it pays to be nice to Uber drivers, um, and if you if you must leave a mess in the car, like at least compensate with a hefty tip, right like real American money, because that's the beauty of capitalism. You can buy your way out of the consequences of almost any any bad behavior. Any mistake a lesson I hope you're teaching to your children. But you know, setting aside ugly cultural side effects of Western industrialization, we do live in a society, as you're pointing out, where crowdsourced ratings are growing increasingly important. Right. For example, the fact that we are the lowest rated of all the Mediator brand podcasts on Apple, a lowly four and a half stars out of five, likely means that we're missing out on perspective listeners simply because a few people out there either don't understand or can't appreciate the value of satire. I'm proud of that. Like, sometimes you have to, like if you don't have a perfect rate, and that means you've you've you've ruffled some feathers. And I'm about that. But all those people who I do have a modest proposal for all of them. Um But but group think ranking of goods and services has become a huge part of how we choose what to consume, you know what I mean? Like, we now have so many choices about what we eat, watch, listen to and buy that we're just desperately searching for help to figure out what we should consume and I mean, we're all guilty of it. I do it not, especially like if I'm traveling hotel and motel reviews that's everything to me. The doctored photos of the room won't tell you about the blood on the carpet, and like the half eaten egg salad left in the mini fridge um and see, it depends on how you look at it, and that's that's the point. It's like that one guy's bad review. You might be like, I'd be happy if there was this is the right exactly. And I can also spend our wars literally hours reading reviews on Amazon, and I'll go into a tailspin of indecision because even though like that one toaster of and I've been eyeing it has four thousand good reviews. You know, Alan and Iowa wrote a really compelling, angry missive about how his his kitchen counter was set on fire, and it's the one like all of them can be good, but you can read that one you're like, oh no, yes, what if it sets my counter on fire too? I don't want to be like Alan. Yeah, I don't want to be I know, I know, And and the fact is you really shouldn't care what Alan in Iowa says, but you do, right, You shouldn't care, but you do. You know what you should care about, though, you should care that we give thirteen Fishings Whipper Snapper jerk Bait a five out of five star review because we do. Yeah, we do, and you should because uh, well, for one thing, they sponsor this show, they do, but that I actually I'm gonna set up part aside and said fish been fishing it recently, and I like that short bait so by it's it's just a badass, well tune little bait that that it plays plays big on small water right like it's it's it's skinny, it darts, it slashes, it slashes and darts. Um. And it's become a favorite of mine, like for wet waiting summer Smalley's and it's gonna hurt some trout this winter. I can't wait for that. I know it. Um, that's a kind of review. I could just cut and paste that right into the Amazon review and then Alan might buy one. Exactly. Yeah, we can only hope, and I hope you do that, but we The point being, Amazon reviews are a dark, dark, deep pit. I both love and hate them because it feels like we're in the situation where everyone in the world has turned into the characters from High Fidelity. You guys, it's not We're not not seriously, you're totally elitist. You feel like the unappreciated scholars. So your shipped on the people who know lesson which is everybody. Yeah, it's just sad that. A couple of weeks ago, we had Brad Leone on the show and Joe asked him which fish is the most overrated? Yes, right, And to my disappointment, he responded none of them, which was just a slightly lesser cop out than his refusal to choose between kvs He and Popeyes. In my opinion, give Brad a break. I like Brad, He's like a lot. But but to be fair to your point, right, that's that's how you survive public scrutiny and remain popular, like you enough sometimes right, Um? But even though so, maybe Brad is not welling a risk his reputation over like a knee jerk opinion. We are because we're not famous or popular, so I'll say anything to anybody. I don't give a ship, right, um, and Miles, we've actually compiled for you, like our Desert Island Top three lists of the most underrated fish to eat and the most overrated fish to eat. Yes, we will step out on this limb, put ourselves out there. So I'll start with with underrated. For me, my first one, and this isn't any order, just the first one. I'm going with escalar. We've talked about escalar in the past, but I feel like this is an underappreciated fish because, like they make it up, they have it's white tuna. White tuna doesn't exist. There's no need to dress it up under a fake name. It's so good on its own. The colloquial term you see sometimes uses butterfish, which I think is right because it's just rich and fatty and delicious pearl white meat and so good. Part of the reason I think that this fish gets hated on is if you look it up online, they're all they're they're a bunch of people. They're all these posts and things about how, oh, if you eat too much you'll get gastro intestinal issues. People call it x lax fish. I don't know, man. I've eaten a lot of escalar, also known as Waldo Waldo and Hawaii, and I've never ever had any problems, well, like if you eat too much taco bell, it will be the same problem. You know what I mean. But I did, I've eaten, I've eaten how I've eaten pounds of the ship in one sitting, Like I got a one time. I saw it in a local seafood place and bought like a whole steak and just whacked it up and ate it. I've never had any gastro intentional issues from from eating it. So that's why this fits on this list. I think. Don't believe the hype. Yeah yeah, so number two for me the second one. Anyway, blue gill and people at least in the Midwest right now are screaming about this and like blue gill aren't underappreciated. We love them all the time. Yes, some of you do, but a lot don't. A lot of people, if they're pan fishing, prefer to hold out for the croppy or the perch. I say, give me the gills right because they're easy to catch, their super available. You can you can limit out quickly. They're easy to scale, which I think is nice. And when you go out and catch up at the little ones, you just you scale them. You gut Hm, you fry them whole and it's damn good man. I think blue giller underappreciated as a food fish. Yeah, but see we have a different perspective on that because of that whole ease of catching things. So I've eaten blue gill right, and it is very good, no doubt. I think there's definitely a cultural thing here, and by and large, I think people in the Northeast don't eat bluegills, and to be honest, I have I have very little interest in it. And because I think part of what makes this is for me speaking for myself, makes a meal of fresh fish more enjoyable is the pursuit, you know, like you put in a long, hard day for those fluke or tuna or snakeheads or even big cropp ease. And do you ever have somebody joke like, well, you know, I could go to the store and buy tuna for a lot cheaper than you just spent, but you know, run off short. But if you're an angler, that's all part of it. It's all like part of the pursuit. But bluegills are everywhere. In my opinion, it's like it's too easy, Like I can literally drive down the street with two slices of wonderbread and catch enough blue gills for a fish fry in twe I mean it's every single day from April to November exactly. Now. To me, if the only reason you fish is if to put food on the table, that's appealing, but it isn't for me, Like I'd rather use those blue gills to catch a flathead and then cook the flathead because now those easy bluegills are becoming part of that bigger pursuit. I see, I see what you're saying. But that's why I think they're underrated, because people take them for granted. And that's that's that's why there's no right or wrong. You're not wrong, it's just two different perspectives on it. Today. It's like that's so easy. They're swimming right there, like that's take like ten minutes exactly. Know which My third one is scorpion fish and this is my sleep this is the one. I'll admit this one with which I have the least experience, and and scorpion fish are they're really ugly if you've ever seen like, they're kind of scary looking it and they have these again bad reputation. They have venom in their dorsal fins, and if you step on one, it can give you nasty sting. And I have avoided them up until recently. But not too long ago, I was I was back in Hawaii and my cousins brought a big, like a whole big scorpion fish back to the house. And I will never shy away from those fish again. It was so good. It was so good. And they're they're scorpion fish all over the world. You can find them in all the different oceans all over the place. Their meat it's like firm and it's white, and it's just delicious they have. It's not one of those bland white meat fish. It's got interesting texture and flavor. And they also have these massive heads. They're kind of like they look like giants sculping. Yeah, and you can take those heads. And this is for real. I just did it. They make the best fish stock I've ever eaten, so good. I've never eaten scorpion fish. I I love to try it, I just have not had um the chance. So I'll switch into my list here, and I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but my number one most underrated take a guess, I think, I know, I think I know where you're going. Right. It is really the only fresh water fish I genuinely get excited to eat because it's just so different from your standard walleye or catfish. UM. And I've never fed it to anyone an he's skeptic that wasn't blown away by everything about it after they tried it. I have no personal experience, but I've I've heard your gospel, and I look forward to crushing some fried snakes on your back porch with a double tall cocktail. I hope we do it someday soon, because I want we will do that. We need to do that. Um. Next up for me, right, would be the Atlantic bonito, which is not to be confused with the bonita, the A and the O. Okay, very important because bonita with the A and that's just the common Southern name for false albacore. Right, Bonito with the O or lumped in with the mackerels and tunas, and they don't freeze, well, they freeze like ship. But Benito is outstanding. It makes terrific Yeah, yeah, it makes terrific sashimi poku sevich. It's outstanding on the grill and it's very flavorful without any of the like the really strong oily taste of a lot of the mackerels. I kind of liken it to it's like Spanish mackerel meats yellow fin kind of. And they're also just a blast to catch on light tackle, just speed demons. I only got to do this once, but I can confirm when when eating fresh bonito or damn good, I'm waiting there. Yeah, and last and last, i'd say northern Pike. And I fully understand that's that's not the case on parts of the midwest of Canada UM where I live, though, and even I think kind of out west where you are, UM, people just still want the wall eyes and the perch and the pike kind of get overlooked. And I remember the first time I ever had it was in Saskatchewan, and I couldn't get over how good it was. I actually like it better, dare I say, than Wally, And I've had it a bunch since. I'd actually eat it more often locally, But anyone who watched season one of b Side Fishing knows my local pike water is full of PCBs and heavy metals, so I refrain from doing that but when I get a chance from cleaner water. Absolutely so. You know, so I underrated overrated Europe. I know, I know what. I know what one of your overrated you do everybody knows before I get there. I'm with you on the pike, which which actually that totally teased me up for my first overrated fish. We don't really need to talk about this. We've already done it. It's Walleye, end of story. We can move on. We get it. Number two for me though, Marlin, Okay, marlin are amazing sport fish. But the only marlin I've ever eaten that I thought was really good, like I look forward to, was smoked, and we've it Wasn't the fish right? If it's it's the preparation, So steak Marlon, you can. I'd rather that fish be swimming around. It's just not to me. It's just not worth it. My number three and and this is probably the most overrated food fish on the planet. It if you ask me, salmon. I do not understand why people like salmon so much. I don't get it. It's fine, but I can't. I cannot, for the life of me to understand why salmon is the most ubiquitous food fish on the planet. It's it's just not that good. It's it's it's often mushy, and it's either fishy or just totally bland. Sorry, I don't get the salmon thing. It's just I don't get it. I did. I'm I'm right there with you on all accounts here, right, Like I don't get the wall Like Craze, I I'd never personally kill a marlin, period, right. And while I like salmon sushi, I could frankly just give a shit about a cook piece of salmon now, like fresh caught in Alaska. Sure, like that's like a treat, right, Otherwise like farmed or shipped out. I just I'm just not interested. And similarly, I also find just trout extremely overrated. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I piss anyone off of that, but I just think trout are bland end and completely uninteresting. And I'm talking about wild ones too, not just stockers, right, I'm talking about the wild ones too. It's edible and like you feel all cool cooking one, you know, on a campfire. It's yeah, I was about to say, it's good if you're like out in the back country. Yeah, because then it's like it's like part of the little experience, like you know. But but will I ever be excited to eat a trout? No, I will not. Um. And finally I find I find fluke and flounder very overrated, and so many of my Jersey people are cursing me out right now. It's good, it's very good, but it's so mild to me. It's one of those fish that just tastes like whatever you put on it. Um. And as far as Northeast inshore fish go, I will take a dog or a black sea bass over a fluke any day of the week. So all right, there you have it. Waly and salmon universally overrated. We might be the only people who pick scorpion fish and snaked over salmon. Although something tells me that our first guest, who we've had on this show before and is not afraid to express controversial opinions, Abby Schuster, might actually agree with us. So must week on Trivia, Miles is going to ask Abby about a kind of salmon that actually might be underrated, at least as a food fish. You gotta be highly skilled for these shows. You understand that if I don't under are you well versed there? You very smart man. All right, joining us for our trivia game today, we have guide captain and owner of Kisman Outfitters on Martha's Vineyard, Abbey Schuster. Abby. Thanks for making some time for us, Thanks for having me absolutely all right. So we brought you here to play a little trivia, And uh, I guess I feel sort of honor bound to inform you that in our version of trivia, you you can't actually win anything, but you do risk losing some dignity. So you know, but bar trivia, you win something you wouldn't have a beer around of drinks or something. Nothing, No free drinks here, you get nothing. Uh So the first time you and I crossed paths, I was working on an Atlantic salmon film project, and you were you were like one of our go to people to help tell the story of the younger generation of East Coast anglers who grew up without the chance to fish for Atlantics, and and I just that was like my first introduction to who you were and which you were all about. And and also the first time I really dug into that sad story, which is kind of a shame. It's not hopeful one. And that's something you know, we've touched on a little bit here in the past, and hopefully we'll be able to touch on the future with with some more positivity. And so just from from that experience, I know that you have a decent knowledge base when it comes to Atlantic salmon, and and regular listeners to this show will know that I probably spend a maybe too much time talking about Pacific salmon. So instead of all that, I am going to ask you about Australian salmon. Do you feel good about that? This sounds like it's gonna be a fun question, because the intro was kind of downer. I gotta say I had to turn it around. I had to turn Let me just say that you're going to win the legs and you're dying. But here's the good part. Ozzie's love to have a good time and Australian salmon are are not in trouble at all. So let's play. These are all multiple choice, Okay, all right? Which of the following is not a colloquial name for Australian salmon A Hawaii b cocky salmon see new fish, d budgee salmon, or e colonial salmon. Which one of those is not a name for Australian salmon. You're going with colonial salmon. Yeah, I'm sorry, that is incorrect. No, no, no, it would be d the Budgee salmon, because I totally made that up. Because that's a reference to the budget smuggler, which is a very different slang term in or either you guys familiar with that one? Nope, but you have to you have to tell now, don't make me Urban dictionary. You should. Uh, you don't even have to do that. So the budget smuggler, if you if you refer to that in Australia, you would be talking about a very small speed. Oh that's that's what Okay, that makes sense. And the term is actually so common that it was entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in just moving on, you got you got a chance for redemption here? Can I just ask a question? One quick question? You can, okay, just because I have to know when we say Australian salmon, that's not like they don't call salmon something. More questions and maybe this will all be revealed, right, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Sorry, all right, Always always get ahead of things, Joe, I'm a thinking man. I'm a thinking man. Question number two, which species are Australian salmon most closely related to Pacific salmon, Atlantic salmon or three finn salmon? Oh, Pacific salmon. Yeah, I'm sorry, you're you're kind of on street here. Nobody knows these. Don't feel bad. I don't know what he's talking about. To be fair, I knew that one, but but I'm weird. So let me clear this up. Neither Australian salmon or thread finn salmon are actually salmon, nor are the two of them even that closely related. They're just closer to each other than they are the actual seal monits. There are no actual native seal monits in Australia. This is uh, this is one of those cases where like the settlers who came from elsewhere went to Australia and and and the colonists, we're trying to name fish, and they just named them after fish. They already recognized and reused old names, even though the two weren't related at all. Kind of like, that's why that's why they have ten million cod? Yeah cod? Right, they call everything a cop But we're going we're going long because I really like this category. So for once, we're gonna have three questions. You still have a chance to bring it back. I believe in you here, I believe in you. I'm nervous. You got this all right. Last question. Australian salmon are of particular interest to fisheries biologists because they seem to be successfully adapting their diet as as water temperatures warm around Australia from climate change and the food sources shift. So now they feed almost exclusively on pelagic baitfish like pilchard, scat and anchovies. Right that they're just they're eating those. But before climate change, they used to have a very different diet. What did they previously eat? A octopuses, b eels, see vegemite or d squid. Uh, I would go with eels. Yeah, it is just not your day. I'm very sorry. I knew, I knew it all. I knew you'd bring along. It was like the coming hot you turned it around. You really you really redeemed yourself on that one. And uh, and we appreciate you debasing yourself enough to that was a tough one. That was a tough one. That was that was a tough friend. It was I know, we I believe me. I asked all those questions because I already know you're an expert on like salmon, so I knew I couldn't put anything over on that. I had to go a different direction. Abby, Thanks so much. We really appreciate you taking time. Thank you. Have you ever eaten Australian salmon? No, I've never. I've never caught one. I've never held one. I've never seen one. I've read about him, and I know people who catch them. It seems like they're kind of they're like the blue fish of Australia. People think that's toily and they're only smoked right, But I don't have any personal experience to draw from, right and saying you can't pass judgment on any fish without the pe, because we call it in media personal experience, you know pe, like I said I did. I didn't think pike would be good until somebody fed it to me, and that experience allowed me to get excited about having fried pike. When I was out in Wisconsin last summer, I knew what I was in for and um our next guest cooked it for me, Tim Land where who runs Tight Lines fly fishing company. Um Tim showed me some incredible smallmouth fishing on the Manominee River. And uh, this week he's got a tackle hack that might help you out when it comes to finesse fishing on the surface in the heat of summer. I'm getting hats coming from inside the city. Hike up, flood. Welcome to tackle Hacks, where we call up somebody who knows a lot more about fishing than we do to pass along some some knowledge, some tip, information, something that will make you a better angler. And today we've got my buddy Tim Land. We're on the phone from Tight Lines Fly Fishing Company up in Green Bay. What's going on, man? Not much? How you doing, Joe, I'm doing great. I'm gonna be better when this is done because I'm gonna know something I didn't know before and there there thereby be able to fish better. So excited for learning for us. So I mean, you're you specialize in all kinds of things which you do a lot of small mouth predominantly fly. Um make us, make us better long rot anglers, people who call it long rotting. You just dropped pearls of wisdom right now, pearls wisdom on your fellows. Well, one of the things that we see right now, once we've rolled into our July and August time on the river, the river drops out, we lose all the water flow and we have to get a little bit more technical, a little bit more finesse, especially with our top water stuff. And what we see an awful lot of times when we go to darker colored patterns blacks olives, they blend perfectly into the river so you can't see them, and the bites can be very very small. So what I always do my hat tackle hack is I buy the cheapest fluorescent orange fingernail polish that I can find, and what I'll do is I'll just keep that in my boat bag, you know'll paint the top of a popper or the top of a wiggly pattern with just that. Or if you guys remember the old pulsa strike indicators with the adhesive the adhive back. Yeah, yeah, crazy, Yeah, they're they're awesome. We we still sell them in the shop. They're they're they're great. I cut those in half and that adhesive is good enough on those, as you know, because you can't get the ship off your leader after you put them on there. But you put that on the back of a popping bug or a wiggly and now your clients can see it and you can see it. So those two little combination things in my boat bag are there all the time for low water season. That's a great tip. Man. Why do I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't like the pulse and you guys are like, oh love those And I was they used to twist my line like crazy there. I must to put them on wrong or something. I think that was a you problem, Joe, Yeah, probably it's I think it's you'll be back next week to give us a half on how to properly put those on and remove them with Google from all the ship that leaves on your leader. Yeah, that was presented as a fly specific hack, but I can see that working with conventional two right. Contrary to popular opinion, midsummer fish will still eat on top, sometimes not as much, but but sometimes you have to get more subtle and smaller with your presentations. You can't just throw out the big stuff and like have a big weight coming back. You gotta go slow and you gotta go small. And and that's where his his hack really helps out in my experience, that's true, at least for all river fish from trout to bass, even muskie. Right, if you go super slow and downsize your baits, you might get blown up on top Tim, Tim knows what he's talking about. Oh I can. I can attest the Tim's prowess man. His guide service and shop have five well deserved stars on Google reviews. Good for him, must be good. Dude obviously knows his stuff. Um, but we're about to find out which one of us knows his stuff. In this week's battle Fulfill's Best Review, it's time for fish news. Fish news that escalated quickly before we hit news. We have a little housekeeping. A couple of weeks ago, I covered a news story about people painting turtles, and a shocking number of you wrote in to tell me all the reasons why a person might feel compelled to paint a turtle shell. And so I feel like I have to I have to give voice to some of these because I was dumb. I have to. Ryan Knapp wrote, Snapping turtles get run over by cars all the time. They migrate to find places to lay their eggs in sandy banks, then make their way back to water. Their dark shells are hard to see against pavement. Hence traffic cone Orange not supporting it, but it's pretty obvious how someone could think they were being altruistic. So I missed the obvious one there. Oh yeah, So then we got one from listener Cody Cantrell, who apparently comes from a long line of turtle painters, because he wrote a heartwarming tale about how he and his grandma used to enjoy watching three toad box turtles on their walks together, and how they would mark the shells with now polished so they could distinguish and better get to know their local turtles. Um. His town also has a spring festival that involves a wild turtle race for kids, and he has painted the shells of his kids racing turtles in various themes. So we can meet that one too. And I felt I felt a little like a jerk when I read that, because it was it was so heartwarming. Uh, I was. I was wrong on at least some level. I still don't agree with turtle painting, but I have been educated. You all have educated me on how it might happen with good intention. Yeah yeah, and like and like. The maya culpa was all fine and good, but several other listeners were disappointed in that story for a completely different reason. Okay, So Evan thread wrote, both Miles and Joe spent several minutes discussing the subject without making one single teenage mutant Ninja turtles reference. They are turtles who are named after famous painters. Semi colon. The jokes wrote themselves. I feel that this was a blatant oversight and a mistake that you both should have avoided. I am severely disappointed, and my day is ruined. I do believe this is something I can look past moving forward, though it may take some time. Man, that one hurt that would hurt Evan, and and it struck a nerve because as soon as I read it, I went yell, lew it And so we do apologize, uh and and for that and whatever else and to make up for it. I think this might help Evan. Here's Here's a final email from Aaron Littera, who has the whole thing figured out, and he wrote, here's my theory on the turtle that was painted from last week's Fish News. The turtle was painted orange to look like the legendary teenage mutant ninja turtle Michael Angelo. The perpetrator of this was none other than vanilla Ice. In a moment of nostalgic passion, he tagged the turtle and sang a little song as he worked. Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go Go go Ninja. This is how the Secret of the Ooze comes full circle. Game set match. There you have it. There it is uh man, But who who knew myles stupid turtle painting story would elicit such rancor um? Slow? It was a slow newsweek people, okay, but better news. Uh, this is not a slow news week, so prepare yourselves. And as a reminder, this is a competition and normally Miles and I do not know which news stories the other guy is bringing to the table, but full disclosure, because we're about transparency here this week, we do know at least most of them, okay, because Myles has been cooking up a monster story. Um, and he knows I've been cooking up a monster story in the makeshift shed I built in the backyard, and I had just enough robotusts and left to have it ready for today. So even though there's uh not not much element of surprise between us, our illustrious audio engineer Phil will still be judging us, perhaps commenting on who delivered their news with more pep flair and zing now and since Joe's robo tripping and has been for days, I'll give the edge there, but we'll see. So you you are up first this week? Yes I am. I am, so I am normally up first. This would be my week to go up first, but I am seeding off position to you because I, as you mentioned, I've been working on a big story, so I only have one because it took a lot of time. Okay, So I think I think you should go first, and then I'll give my story and then you can close it up. Fair, fair, and and a lot of you already know where we're going here. And I gotta tell you, I thought that the outcry from listeners for for Miles and I to use our journalistic talents to uncover the truth about subway tuna was massive. No, nothing, subway tuna ain't got shipped on trout addicted to math Um the meth trout man in what is creeping in? On one year of bent, we have never had a link sent to us. As much as this link was sent, it's still being sent. I guarantee I have five new d M s right now with links to the story and it dropped over a week ago. I've got I've got friends from high school who I haven't talked to in years sending me this story, like my great aunt Like, I'm like, what where's this going? I don't even get a birthday card? But I got the trout meth um, you know, and and look. And I'll be honest, I did not click on the link for the first two days of getting it because I read the headline trout could become meth addicts. And I said, yeah, nice, try, Like, you gotta be a lot smarter than that if you're gonna Rick roll Joe Shmelli is like, not today, Rick Astley, not today. But a few days and four thousand plus links later, I bit. So this is a real story. It has popped up on every news source in the world, I think, from Al Jazeera to your kids like weekly Little League news email um, and all the stories are pretty much saying the same thing. So for this, I'm going with the National Geographic version and their headline was trout can become addicted to meth. Here's why that's so scary. So here's the gist. You do your meth on your own time. Privately, right, and then you pee and poop and there's still traces of meth in your excrement and that goes to the wastewater treatment facility. And while these facilities are pretty good at removing contaminants from the wastewater before it returns to the river, they don't apparently do a great job with controlled substances, which means tiny amounts of that meth are ending up in the water flowing downstream from the treatment facility. Now, it's important to note that this doesn't just happen with meth, right, Like if you take birth control pills, do heroin, antidepressants, cocaine. Trace elements of all those substances can end up in the water this way. And you might be saying, yeah, but can enough really get in the water to make a difference. So, according to Pavel Horky, a behavioral ecologist from the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, they might. And the article points out that while Matthews has it's obviously always been a huge problem um in Eastern Europe. In the US, it's gotten worse since the pandemic. Okay, so Hokey proposed that these trace elements in the water could essentially make trout meth addicts, which could make them lethargic, give them withdrawal symptoms, and make it more difficult for them to find food and reproduce. So Quirky and his team conducted a lab study, and here's what they did. They dosed sixty captive bread brown trout with meth amphetamine laced water for two months while keeping another group of sixty control trout in a drug re tank, and the researchers ensured that the drug levels matched the meth levels. Other researchers have documented just downstream of wastewater treatment plants in Czechia and Slovakia, and in the first few days after being removed from the meth last tank, the fish moved around less, which the team interpreted as stress from drug withdrawal. Analysis of their brain tissue showed that the fish that moved less had the most meth amphetamine in their brains. The researchers also gave the trout from both groups a choice to enter one of two streams of water, one with meth amphetamine one without. The meth exposed trout preferred to swim in the meth lace water, particularly in the four days after their drugs supply stopped. Over time the studies trout preference for meth and phetamine declined to match those of the control fish, a clear sign of addiction withdrawal. Now, the article mentions a few other similar studies, one that found traces of cocaine in certain European rivers. They suggested that might interfere with the reproduction of endangered eels. In Canada, there was they did a study where they exposed young male fat head minnows to synthetic estrogen from contraceptive pills and found that when they did that, they didn't grow test these but produced eggs instead. But I think the most important thing to understand with all these studies, including the meth trout, is that all these things are are documented in controlled lab settings, right, but nobody has hard evidence about any of these substances having adverse effects in the wild, at least not yet. Because if you think about it, right, that's that's a pretty hard study because at minimum, right off the bat, you have to factor involution, you know what I mean, Like a sample taken at the outflow of the water treatment plant is gonna read different than one taking five miles downstream. You have to factor in rain, high water flows, low water flows. So they've they've proved that this could be a problem and the fish can be effective, which is real and fascinating. But I think so many people sent this because which is what a great headline does, right. It leads you to believe just a river of of meth addicted trout has been discovered, and it has not. But if it, I mean, that would because that would be something else, you know what I mean, Like I I assume that fish would have too few teeth to take a shot at a stream or crayfish, you know what I mean, opting only for squaremy wormies or they just they'd be so indecisive and confused. They just have no idea what they wanted to eat. Yeah, the sty only with Jesus dike allly, you know right they as I don't think they'd be very hungry or that or they I don't know. I know enough about tweakers to know that food is not not high on the needs. Well, if it was marijuana getting into the water to be a completely different story, different, you know what I mean. But look, it is a fascinating study and the hope um is that these findings will push lawmakers to insist that wastewater treatment facilities alter their filtering and cleaning processes to catch these substances, which the story suggests is possible. Like that that can be done. It's just that they're not really factoring that. They're not really doing that, and it would mean investing in some new technology um and revamped water testing methods, but they're not really there yet, so appreciate it. Four thousand. I wish I could send all four thousand of you stickers for that one. You deserve it. But here's my question. Yeah, of those four thousands, how many read more than the headline? And now I'm just gonna say to those of you out there who did send it to us, which we do appreciate, but I'm wondering, did you just see meth and trout and go, like, you know who I send this? Of course they did, come Miles. This is the world we live in digital media. Everything is a photo and a headline. That's what matters. It was a question, but my point was that, like, I hope that read the articles, Yeah, to take five minutes read the articles, because I did find this one to be fascinating. I read several of them, and I think your takeaway was exactly spot on the same thing I would hit on, which is that we've known for a long time. There're a ton of studies that show we are getting traces of all kinds of different pharmaceuticals over the counter and illicit that are going into the water making through wastewater treatment. This is not news. We've known about this for a long time. And wastewater treatment plants are starting to half. They're they're getting pressure to have to look at those contaminants as they need to get rid of just like they do eat cold I and others. Right, So that's great. I hope that pressure increases, and I hope we start making those changes. But the only difference in this studies that it was about meth. Yeah, Like no one cares about the title because the methods of methods pop culture. Man, I hate to say that, but likes so much more pop culture than um synthetic estrogen. Like that's not a T shirt, you know what I mean. There's there's there's no exactly, there's no breaking bad for tile and all. So um and listen, we're not coming We're not coming down. But this is a good point. I thought the same thing. I'm like, you guys are reading the headlines seeing brown trout meth and sending but if you read it, it's it's very different. So if you didn't read it, we now just kind of read it for you, so you got you got the whole picture anyway. That's maybe that's why they sent us like we don't want to Can you tell us where this is all about? Because I'm just gonna assume there's a bunch of cracked out trout, uh you know, likely in Delaware. I don't know who you know the yeah, yeah, so Trout aren't actually methodics. That's the takeaway for those of you who sent that. That's not true. The one I'm gonna hit I this isn't the newest in new for news, right it's the story is a couple of weeks old. But Joe and I talked about it when it first broke, and I intentionally held off because I wanted to give this one a little breathing room, Like are We were hoping that that the flames of internet fury might subside a little and calm down, and that and and and more importantly, we were hoping that more information would come out. But neither of those things has really happened. Yeah we're still going. Yeah, we're still going for it. So I rather than than waiting on an outcome that's probably not gonna occur, I'm just gonna try to present the situation as clearly and accurately as I can given what I know, and then followed that up with my own personal take and reasoning behind my opinions. You can draw your own conclusions on this one. Plenty of people already have all right. On June, a guy by the name of Josh Jorgensen uploaded a video to his YouTube channel titled Biggest Tarpin Ever Caught, and, as is the case with most YouTube titles, this one didn't skimp on all caps lettering or multiple exclamation points. Uh. Jorgenson runs a fishing YouTube channel called black Tip h which you've probably heard of since it has nearly three and a half million subscribers, making it among the most watched phishing channels on the Internet anywhere in the world. Jorgenson is based in Florida, and his content focuses on large inshore saltwater species, primarily goliath grouper and sharks, often being fought on rod and reel by extremely muscle bound men and also sometimes women. I feel like I have to begin this by admitting my own personal biases. This this isn't the kind of fishing that I personally want to watch. I find I find his content gimmicky, one dimensional, and lacking in substance. Okay, that's my personal opinion. Get that out of the way. That's said. He has a much bigger audience than we do, so what he does obviously resonates with a lot of people, which is part of the reason why this video has struck such a chord with with opposing factions within the fishing community. The video recounts Jorgenson's recent trip to Bahia Solano on the remote Pacific coast of Colombia. It starts with a short travel narrative where Jorgenson explains some shock at a local restaurant that is serving cow tongue. And I'm sorry, but I say this dude needs to dig a little deeper into his local Floridian cuisine because there's plenty of good langu with tacos in Florida. If you if you go to a taco shop and they don't have tongue, where I even dare say tripe sometime I'm like, play st legit. I don't know if you watched that video, but he has this whole beat and being like, I can't believe they serve tongue. Do you eat tongue? Like, dude, it's anyway, go to any New York deli, bro, you know, it's across many cultures, Jewish, Mexican. That would again, we know my biases, but that that particularly bugged me a little. Anyway. So the video does the standard travel narrative montage and they get to a remote lodge, but they pretty quickly jump into the fishing part where Jorgensen hooks and lands his first ever rooster fish. Normally, a feet like that would be celebrated in YouTube fishing videos like it would there be build up, there'd be excitement, but they moved through his first rooster fish pretty quick. A few minutes later, his bait gets blown up by a mystery fish. He reels down on the circle hook and a massive tarpean erupts out of the water, and of course after that, all hell breaks loose. Most of the video consists of Jorgensen and two others holding onto a stout spinning rod flexed over the rail of the boat and a real dumping line. Jorgensen decided to hand the rod off to a friend mid battle, be as a recent UTV accident left him with a back injury and fighting this massive tarpain clearly caused him pain. They start off estimating the fish around a hundred and fifty pounds, but as they fight it and see more of it, their estimates of its size continue to grow. After an hour fight, they get the fish boat side. Jorgensen puts one arm up through the fish's gilt plate, reached his other arm into the fish's mouth, locked hands, and began to lift the tarpaun over the gunnale. Mates and friends gathered to help, and they eventually hoisted the giant fish into the boat, took some measurements, posed for photos, and then threw the fish over the side back into the ocean. After releasing the fish, they estimated that weigh fifty pounds. Back at the lodge, they punched the measurements into a tarp and weight calculator available on the Bone Fish and Tarpin Trust website, which spit out an estimated weight of three hundred and twelve pounds. The current I g F a world record tarpin weighed two d and eighty six pounds nine ounces, so if that's correct, this fish would have well surpassed it. Jordan's video then then goes into interviews, one with an experienced trophy tarpin captain, the other with a saltwater fish taxidermist who has created over a thousand tarp amounts. Both individuals verified that they believe this fish to have been over three pounds after looking at flows in video. Jorgensen closes his YouTube video with a monologue that stops short of admitting that he would have kept the fish had he known it was a record. He kind of hints at it, but he doesn't come out and say it. He then says, quote, but I'm glad we let that fish go. It's still out there, still swimming around. It always feels really good. And now we can cue the controversy, all right, And this one has some layers. The main reason for the outrage has to do with the handling of the fish. One aspect of the story that is not opinion are the well researched effects of handling and release on adult tarpan. Adult tarpan, particularly the really big ones like this one often suffer significant injury when removed from the water. That's why Florida prohibits anglers from lifting fish overt out of the water at all. Additionally, all tarpin release best practices recommend reviving a fish boat side before it got it, especially after a long fight, which did not happen in this particular case. So bottom line, Jorgensen's decisions to remove that fish from the water and then dump it back overboard without reviving it, they do go against the prevailing science based recommendations for tarpin handling. I have to put a caveat on that everything he did is completely legal in Columbia, where he was fishing. He broke no laws at all. Okay, that's another point that you can't argue, that's a fact. The truth is, though no one knows for certain what happened to that fish. You got all these very vocal folks in the angling community that are making definitive claims that fish died, that's dead fish. And then you got Jorgensen and his supporters repeatedly countering the fish is fine. That I guarantee that fish is fine. It never it never goes belly up in the video, it disappeared, and I'm sorry, but the fact is that we don't know. All we have our belief and conjecture. That's it. Anybody's saying they know the fate of that fish is just being hyperbolic, all right. They're just pretending to know something they can't know, all right. But having settled that, let's break down a couple more elements of this story. First, the record, So everybody understands the minute that Jorgensen chose to hand his rod off to another angler, he lost any chance the records gone. I g f A rules prohibit multiple anglers from even touching the rod or the real all right, So even even if he had kept the fish and gotten certified weight, it would not have officially broken the record period. Second, another theme that keeps popping up on the social media sniping around this fish is the status of tarpan in the Pacific Ocean. Tarban are native to the Atlantic, not the Pacific, but in the last decade or so, more and more tarpan are being caught on the Pacific side of Central America and northern South America. The prevailing hypothesis claims that tarpan has started migrating through the Panama Canal and are now establishing new populations in the Pacific. In the video, Jorgensen and his local guide refer to the fish as an invasive species. As you might imagine, the lack of clarity on how this fish got to these waters and if it's quote unquote natural, has fueled so many keyboard artillery barrages. Those in support of Jordan's and claim it doesn't matter how it ended the fish because it's invasive species. It was opposed to him counter that if a fish migrated to a new habitat on its own, it's non invasive. I've even seen people claiming that tarpin are actually native to the Pacific. We just didn't know it. But I actually looked. I couldn't find any credible evidence supported that claim, So that is questionable. I mean that that's all irrelevant, Like getting into that side of the argument in the case of this is stupid. But because so much of it is going on, I understand that. But like all all of those kind of arguments to me, are are deflecting from the biggest problem, which will close on which just like the improper handling of this could have been this could have been done respected could have been totally avoided. Here's the thing, man, we don't know where that population of fish came from exactly. People haven't figured that out yet. They're just starting to look into it. I find this to be a highly interesting topic, right, And I hope we get to cover this in an another segment that has nothing to do with a record or a controversy or a YouTube video, because i'd really like to know. Right. But exactly as you're saying, Joe, I don't think it's pertinent in this case, it's not. And now I'll just I'll just add that I remember, I mean, this has got to be going back ten years. Somebody I knew who fished down there was like telling me, like, man, there's some tarp and showing up down there, and like I remember being fascinated by it then. But you're right in this case, it's it's very interesting. The how or why they're there is irrelevant in this The only way that would have like the way I could see it mattering is if and this didn't happen, but if Jorgensen had kept the fish, I then I could see the invasive claim coming into play, and I could see how that would fit here. But he didn't he released it. He just did it without proper handling, right, So I feel like, just like you said, it doesn't matter. Finally, of course, and I have to point this out. We wander into the whole you know, one side says you're just a bunch of one jill his haters, against the other side saying you're just a bunch of ignorant fish killing googins. And there's feces being flung around in the form of comments and stickers. God, and I find it just all completely counterproductive, right, And this is more personal opinion, but I think comments sections should just be eliminated from the Internet because that is where the worst elements of human nature get mainlined with steroids. Personal opinion. All right, here's what I think about this whole thing, and then Joe, you can tell me where you agree to disagree. But here's why I think went down. This is me projecting. Jorgensen didn't know he had a record tarpet on his hands. If he had, he might have made some different choices. He probably wouldn't have passed the route off though, Like like we said, he had a serious injury, so he might have been ultimately forced to do that anyway. I think had he known how big it really was, I think you would have just kept the fish and considering these circumstances. Had he done that, the result would be a lot less controversy. Had he decided to say, like, hey, this is a potential record fish. I want to keep it and mounted even if it's not an official record, I think most people would have understood that. I can't know his mind, right, I wasn't there, But if he knew, he wasn't planning to keep that fish, I wish he would have handled it according to best practices to reduce fish mortality. Right they were. They were fishing out of an offshore boat. I think that's an important point to mention. So it's got really high gunnals, so it would have made it difficult to do those best practices, but not impossible. Someone could have gotten in the water with the fish to take measurements and and help pose it for photos and video. You could have done that. The problematic aspects of the fish handling are meaningful, at least for me, because of Jordan's huge platform. We're not just talking about one individual fish that may or may not be in vase right. I get that that doesn't really matter. But millions of people follow and look up to this guy, and like it or not, what he does gets mirrored by other anglers, And to me, that's why it matters. Okay, we all make mistakes, and we all have a tendency to lose our heads when big fish are involved. I cannot imagine that I would have had anything near complete clarity of mind with a three hundred pound tarpet on the line, like freaking out both side. I would lose my ship. So I can understand and forgive the mistakes. I really can. My My biggest complaint with how Jordan's handled this situation is that he hasn't been willing to admit that he made any mistakes. If he were now to simply come out and say, hey, I didn't know we had and I had so much excitement and adrenaline when we landed the fish, I wasn't thinking through all the pintential implications. If I could do it again, I would do it differently in the ways for these reasons. If he would come out and make a statement to that effect, I think we could squash this whole thing. I think it would be over. But regardless of what he says or does. I think that the damage being done to the fishing community through this backbiting and sniping and this drawing of lines and the sowing of hate around this incident is so much more destructive than one dead fish. And and that's the real tragedy that I see in all this situation is the way that's playing out. See, I see another level of tragedy, and it's like a cynical one. But I can't I can't get my head around it. Like, this is my interpretation. Here's what I think happened. Obviously, they weren't tarp and fishing. That was a surprise fish. You know that they were doing something different, right, But I also think this this sort of speaks to just fishing content in general. Now my guess is as as a guy who's made a few videos in his day, right, this, this would be my guest. This goes down, they hook this fish, they're filming this because that's what he does. Right. Things are not handled properly. In the heat of the moment, you're not thinking straight. You have this huge fish. You just it's very easy to get that mentality of get it on camera, get it get it, get it, get it, get it, and we'll figure it out later. Right, it was not handled well. Things were done wrong. But then now, because the world you live in is based around your views, that is your world, that is what you do. You're sitting on this piece of footage and you have two choices. You could not post that because probably deep down inside you know you didn't handle that well, and that's not you know, setting a good example for your fans or it's like I'm not going to miss out on millions of views for this, And I think that's the route a lot of people take and why we end up seeing so many similar examples of poor fish handling and not best practices because so many people. You don't even have to be black Tip h with three plus million followers. I just think we see that all the time, like the the clicks and the likes and the views matter more than anything to too many people. Yeah, I mean that's that goes without saying right, you know, I agree with you there. First of all, if you or I have been in this situation, I would like to think we would have had a clear enough head to to not handle it this way, right, Like I've dude, I've dealt with you under pound tarpin um in Costa Rica, in fact, on the eastern side, and you you fight him to death, and those guys like we held that. I couldn't hold it anymore because I was dead. But like that guy cradled that fish and idled and mean we stayed with it for forty five minutes until it kicked, and then he still followed it on the surface for a while to make sure it didn't turn or anything, and went back. So I would like to think that, but if you made a genuine mistake, like you knew like this, I didn't do that right. It was a mistake. It wasn't necessarily malicious, it was just a mistake. It's like you have an obligation. You're setting an example as a media person, as somebody in the spotlight that has fans and you know is an advocate of this sport. You make that call, but that doesn't get you the views. So I think there's a lot of that wrapped up in this too. Sad. I think you're right. I would like to think, well, I'd like to think we would handle it differently, but I could see. Listen, I've never faced a three pound dark, and I could see myself losing my ship, the one I didn't expect one right, I could see my I don't know that I would have done what he did, but let's just for the sake of argument. It happened to you or me, or we're filming together, that happens. I don't know that I would recommend my I don't think my position would be we should not show this. I think my position would be we should show this and talk about all the things we did wrong here. And that's another way to take it. Yeah, that would be I think a more productive way to go about dealing with this stuff to be like, hey, we we we got this crazy video. We want the engagement, we want this, but we also we screwed up and here's how and here's why. I also think in terms of him not admitting wrong, I'm sure you've seen this before. To wherefore some people it's you you want something so bad, you want the glory of something so bad that you can literally talk yourself out of wrong doing so much that it just becomes the truth to you, you know what I mean, Like you just you just say it so much to yourself that then it just you become convinced of it, but I don't. I don't see how anybody could have posted this and not where how many videos have we had with the same thing. It's like, how can somebody post that not think people were gonna flip ship? Like you know, he knew, he knew. Um, so yeah, I'm sure a bunch of you guys have seen that. There's our our little take on that. That was that was heavy. We've had, We've had meth and now that I feel I feel a little dumb, but I also feel like it's not a bad idea to light in the mood before we close out here. That's your only story today. But that was a lot of research. That was a lot of research. So I'll wrap things up quickly this week. Um, let's all, we'll simmer down, we'll stop, we'll stop fighting and and doing meth, and we'll take all take a dive into my favorite file, which is fishing, gizmos, gadgetry and gimmickry, all right, and we'll just we'll talk about the hook and roll. And this is exciting because it plays into something we recently discussed on the show that being lower retrievers. Remember this, It wasn't that long ago, and we both pretty much agreed that they suck, like all those weights with the paper clip and the do Dad and do Hickey slide down your line. Uh, pretty much suck or at a minimum, don't work every time, or you know, aren't incapable of becoming snagged themselves. We'll guess what, forget the past, because the Hook and Roll is the last lower Retriever you're ever gonna buy. And uh, for many of you would probably be the first Lord triever you ever bought. And after hearing this, none of you were gonna buy it, whether you had one or not already. Uh. So this popped up in my news feed from the website Geeky Gadgets dot com. Uh. And of course, like many of these things, all the info is pulled from Hook and Rolls Kickstarter camp Pain, which, let me tell you so far, is not kick started very well at all. Uh. At the time of this recording, they were thirty five backers, so they've they've got a little way to go. And um, you've seen this video, right, so you know you know we're getting into air. What we have here, in my opinion, is a case of creating perceived value and performance simply by making something much more expensive, you know what I mean. And that's that's a tactic that works no doubt. Like if you're holding them like a three dollar broom and a thirty dollar broom at the store, and most people are gonna assume thirty dollar broom is better, let me tell you it isn't. My garage floor is no cleaner. Uh But anyway, big reveal here. The hook and roll does pretty much exactly the same thing as all the other lower retrievers that slide down your line and knock the lower free of a snag, except instead of being lead like the peasants use, the knocker device is made of high grade aluminum and stainless steel. It's rectangular in shape, it clamps around your line, and it's loaded with bearings so that it zips down your line very fair, creating zero friction, thus thwarting line chafing. Now, if the hook and roll doesn't knock the lowre free, don't worry, because it's tethered to a heavy duty braided line and that runs from the knocker device up to the hook and rolls own reel, which looks like a little tiny aluminum fly reel. But what that allows you to do is is also wrench on the line to pull the lower free or I guess you know, bend the hooks out without using your rod and fishing line to do this, like we all do. And the entire contraption is of course made to be worn on the outside of your fishing vest with your leader, straightener or not tool or whatever else you got dangling there. And here's the thing I'm curious to hear your your your opinion. I'm not saying this won't work, but even this, it's not going to get every lower back all the time. And could this this can get snagged to anything with a weight and a rope that you send into the rip rap like it might not come back to I do like the dual purpose knocker puller, but this product, they're asking seventy five dollars and that's steep And if this were ten bucks, I might bite, But I'd still either forget to bring the product fishing or just lose it in the garage with all the other retrievers. So I'm still out. But the best part of all this is the Kickstarter video, and what I gather is that this is made by a European company because they talk about meters and stuff instead of feat But they're trying to make the video uber American. They have this scruffy they have this scruffy dud there that they've named Mike very American Mike um and he's supposed to be this sad bass fisherman that keeps losing lords, but the narration misses the mark. He's also he's also driving a Toyota high Lux, So that's kind of a dead giveaway, but I don't Yeah, it's one of the long skinny ones, also dead giveaway. But listen to this intro clip, Meet Mike, the saddest guy on the water. Mike just sacrificed his favorite lure to the river lake gods. He had no say in the matter, Like, who are the river lake gods? Did you catch that in there? Okay? They also they also flashed to a shot of Mike with a big, large mouth that's clearly his European head photoshopped on Denny Brower's so photo shopped, but but he's still a badass. Listen to this. He drove here with a glad heart, an open road, and the music as loud as he damned well pleased glad hearted who uses the term with That's some had some Hansel and Gretel ship right there. Um anyway, that's what I got the gizmo, gadgets and gimmick file this week. Um, I don't know, man, seventy five bucks buys a lot of Sanko's, so no thank you. But what do you What do you think? Dude? It's I don't know. You didn't scroll down far enough. Only gets the basic model if you if you want that sweet real contraption that comes with it, you're talking a hundred and nine dollars. Whoa wait a minute, I screwed up. So seventy five bones only gets you what? Then it gets you the retriever, a pack of lure clips, of really snazzy carrying case with velcro strips, an Alan wrench that they call a maintenance tool, full instructions, and a carabineer for your vest. But how do you slide it down the line if there's no line connected to it? You didn't read this at all? Did you? You have a bunch of gear for fishing, including the reels from your old rods? Cool? Then just grab this small but mighty retriever and use your old reels to complete the set. You were more thorough than I was, because another thing that crossed my mind. If you watch the video of the Lord being retrieved, it's like, how do you do this by yourself? Because they've got one dude pulling the rod tight that you'd sending it, which means you better also have a friend. So for like fifty extra bucks, they might be able to get you a friend as well. I gotta admit, man, I thought that this was pretty well done. And when I got down to the end of their marketing Spudle, I was like, I'm gonna sign up. They toltally got me, and then I dug deeper and like two bucks, and then I kept going deeper and like the next one offered is like, well, you might lose the retriever, so here's what it would cost for a set with a second retriever. And I'm like, wait, I thought the whole point of this was that you never lose it all right, now, I'm out. I was almost there. This is like what goes around comes around. It's like a lot of these gimmicks are just revamped versions of ship that didn't work the first two times they came around, and I'm like, we've come back around the lure retrievers, Like that's one that hasn't been reinvantaged. I want them to work. I want someone to reinvent the lure retriever in a in a way that that's functional and actually works. So I don't know. Maybe this is the one I wanted to be and if it really did work, if it really did work, I would, and two it I would, But I'm not convinced it will work. Yeah, if I knew, I could get all my line and lures back off the bottom of the Lake River and not have to worry about it. Yes, and the river lake gods anymore. If it was seventy get it for Christmas. But not that. But maybe you will get one and we'll we'll get to talk about that more later, perhaps over a drink. That's what we're gonna go get as soon as we hear from Phil this week to see who won. Um here from Phil, then go pony up to that's my bar, Miles Nulty. Your story went deep, but unfortunately I am a shallow person. So the winner this week is Joe Surmeli. Okay, guys, I gotta complean about something. One of the reasons I actually named Joe the winner this week was because I have put something together. It's something I've actually been working on for the last couple of weeks. I have not told you about it. Um, you've probably heard of this service, this app, this website called Cameo, where you know, you can pay c list celebrities to record a little personalized video for you thirty seconds long. Maybe they were a list celebrities back in the day, but have you know, just dropped a few letter grades over the years. It happens, Joe. I know you are a big Jaws fan. I think everyone knows this. I put something together. Friend from high school actually works for Cameo. I don't know how he got that job, but he got it. I've been working with him to kind of find a little loophole to put this together. You could say that I had to jump through some hoops to make this happen. Catching on yet, Joe, someone has a little message for you, sucker. No, I did not get Richard Dreyfuss to record a cameo for you, Joe. Um, Richard Dreyfuss is on Cameo. This is true. You can look it up. He has one of the steepest prices out of anyone I've ever seen on cameo. So for the you know, lolo price of one thousand dollars, that's true, you can get a personalized video from Richard Dreyfuss. If you don't want to fork out that kind of money, you can get the kenting your kid that was eaten by the shark for thirty five dollars. So something to think about. Best god damn bar tender from Tim buck to to Portland's Maine Portland argument for that matter. Lately, I gotta say all of you out there, you the listeners, you you are getting back on point with the barn nominal. Yes, yes, applause. For sure, we are greedy and so we always want more, but I will say I will give credit recredits do We've been getting some really good ones, and and what I love about this is that I can see how this is. It's it's slowly but surely achieving the goal that we had at the beginning of establishing the best fish bars across the world. Yep. So, so this week we're headed to Maryland, and I'm pretty sure we have not hit that state yet, so we can we can put another pin in the that's my bar map. Yeah we can, we can. And this nomination comes from listener Kirk Marks, who wondered if I was familiar with this place, which I am not. However, I've been to plenty like it and and victimized at similar spots. But I'll get to that later. I'll leave you hanging to get right into it. Kirk writes, this bar is much more than just your typical fishing bar. If you're in the rock Fish chatter stripers for you Jersey folk, okay, uh, local beers watching newlyweds to face their wedding gowns and boat handling that could only be suitable for the qualified captain feed look no further than the Jetty Restaurant and dock bar in Kent Narrows, Maryland. So, in case you missed it, rock fish, that's what they call him in Maryland. It is incorrect, but that's still what they call them. He goes on, as any Chesspeake angler would tell you, the Jetty has a reputation. Accessible by boat or a car, the Jetty is a waterfront bar that offers pretty decent seafood and pub fair, but having some friends that used to work there, I gotta say I wouldn't recommend the oysters. I really appreciate that, Kirk. As a ravenous consumer of raw bar edibles and and having learned that the hard way. Um, you know, you gotta take it easy when there's a raw bar at the Chinese Buffet, found that out. It was difficult delicious going down, you know what I mean, I don't want to hear there that. Moving away from that, I'm gonna say thanks as well, Kirk, because that that truly is a hot tip. God knows. When I see oysters on a beach side bar menu, I order them what I do, So I'm the guy that's like, keep them coming until I say stopped, all right, Kirk continues. Although I'm not certain of the name's origin, I assume it has something to do with the large concrete jetty about a hundred and fifty yards away that mysteriously pops up right in front of drunken boaters every summer. I waited tables at the neighboring fine dining restaurant for several years throughout my time in college. After a long shift, already half buzzed, from dehydration. The White Staff would make our weekly pilgrimage to the Jetty. Man, have I seen some ship there, Several good bar fights, some stellar live music, a handful of boating accidents, and I've even had the pleasure of watching a classy wedding party whom I served a few hours earlier get ship faced in a way only the Jetty can deliver. I I will say that I do wish Kirk had expanded on that story, but it's okay. I have it a vivid imagination. I can pretty well see where that went. Yeah, we'll choose our own adventure there. Uh. Fun fact though, I usually get drunk enough at the actual wedding reception that I'd never make it to the afterpart. That's just something about me. Um. Anyway, the nomination continues. I have a feeling most folks come for the location and the entertainment alone. Hell, one time, as a young kid, I was fishing a spook from the dock and accidentally called a seagull. I remember receiving evil glares as if catching that bird was my intention all along. Point being, there's never a dull moment at the Jetty. And this is the part I personally sympathized with because there was a tiki bar right around the corner from where I slipped my my old boat, and the fun was just sitting there watching people, you know, try to pull into the dock for dock and dine. And I only ever did it once. One time, I just went straight there instead of going to my slip first, and I ended up like pinballing off a couple of pilings and that the whole bar like clapped, and who did And I was like, that's it. From now on, I will just dock in my slip and getting truck and drive over, so lesson learn there. I think that all seaside bars should have dock parking for exactly this reason. I don't need big screen TVs and and and sports. When I can watch people making asses of themselves trying to dock in front of a rowdy crowd. That's that, my friend, is real entertainment. We appreciate this with very much, Kirk. I'm always down for some solid people watching, and this sounds like the perfect place to do it. If you know, a fishy bar where you can see my tie while watching people like Joe crashed into the dock. Let us know where it's at by sending an email to Bent at the Mediator dot com. You know, I looked it up and the Jetty actually has excellent online reviews, does it? It does, over two thousand of them in fact. But I think um the fact that they served you know, stiff drinks waterside and makes people a little more lenient. Here's a four star review I found that Jess said, get some crushes, talk to the ducks, sit on the beach. Kitchen. Service was slow and orders came out wrong. Hey, on a beautiful day with a few drinks. It's not a problem. That's not not what I expect. It's perfect review. But if that dude, if he had that experience at the Olive Garden Inland, would be a whole different room. You'd be, it'd be it'd be one stars. That I'm pissed. It's that it's that old adage location location, location service might suck, food, might be all wrong, but you still get four stars because exactly stiff and I see the water. I like it. That's smart. We're gonna close out the show with an end of the line about a traditional lure for targetus species that used to be underrated but I'd say has caught on with the foodie crowd in the past decade or so, and it's it's no longer underrated. We're talking about delicious, delicious octopus. Well, that's not loud enough. When I was in middle school, our Hawaiian studies teacher assigned what I thought was going to be the greatest project of all time. We were each going to make a traditional octopus lure. I was ecstatic. Finally homework that centered on fishing. I imagined myself not just building the lure, but catching an octopus on it, maybe even bringing some in to share with the class. Then I got the materials list and realized we were going to make it out of toothpicks, chopsticks, and glue. Actual hooks were deemed too dangerous for a classroom use. I suppose the whole exercise felt representative of my frustrations with school in general. I had no opposition to learning. In fact, I relished new knowledge and skills, but we often received a pasteurized version of information. Everything was classroom convenient and safe, but it lacked direct application. Sure, I was going to make something that looked kind of like a traditional octopus lure, but I couldn't actually use it to catch octopus. So I failed to see the point. And I'm pretty sure I also failed that assignment. I always hated arts and crafts. Hawaiian octopus or lures haven't actually changed all that much since ancient times. They were first documented by Westerners in the mid eighteen hundreds, and the ones for sale today at local tackle shops and hardware stores across the islands remain surprisingly similar. A cowichell attached to a weight above one or more hooks. Native Hawaiians used rope fashion from plant fibers to lash, an elliptical stone sinker, a cowichell, and a bone hook to a six inch wooden stick to create They would troll or jig the lures over pockets in the reef. Cowry are a favorite food of octopus, and the lures would often tempt hungry cephalopods out of their holes. Hawaiian historian Samuel Camacao described it this way. The handsome stone was husband to the cowari, and the colary was married to the stone. When the two matched in beauty and they swayed in dance in the ocean, the came to watch the joyful dance. Those of them who wished to kiss the calorie leaped to embrace and kiss her because they were aroused by the dance. When he took hold of the cowali, the fisherman pulled up the cord swiftly with his right hand, grabbed it with his left, and pulled hard against the side of the canoe, which forced the hook into the hay. Modern Hawaiian octopus lures have swapped out the wood and bone for metal and the stone for lead. Some still used calari shells, but others feel that's unnecessarily specific, claiming that a painted golf ball works just as well and is far more durable. Octopuses are pretty damn good at crushing shell after all. Basically, though the technology and technique remain the same, most of the lures I've seen for sale commercially also have six to ten inch metal times on the bottom, which allow anglers to drag them over rocks without getting hung up as often. When I was a kid, we occasionally spear fished for octopus, generally with very little success, but I've always been enthralled by the idea of catching one with a lure, which usually involves one of two techniques. The first is sometimes called drag shell essentially just slow trolling and octopus lure over promising bottom and waiting for one to grab it. The second is more sight fishing than trolling. Anglers take canoes, kayaks, or even surfboards out to good spots and then snorkel at the surface, carefully studying the bottom. When they see an octopus or what looks like a promising hole, they'll jigg a lure and try to entice the creature into grabbing it. One thing I do know from limited experience is that hooking or spirity and octopus is just the beginning. The real trick is killing them quickly and safely. As most people know, octopuses have eight arms covered in powerful suction cups, and they will grab, crawl, and yank hard at you to survive. They also have a nasty, sharp beak where all those arms meet that can take serious divots out of your flesh and possibly sever a finger. Once you get hand to hand with one, you want to kill it quickly. The hardcores, and traditionalists bite them between the eyes, crushing the brain almost instantly. I was never that much of a badass, instead using the howly method of stabbing them in the same spot with a dive knife. Not nearly as cool, but definitely effective. I know some people turn the heads inside out, but I personally recommend killing them first. Trying to turn a squirming and surprisingly powerful octopus inside out is not as easy as it looks on YouTube. I once read an essay called how to Kill an Octopus by Alison Wilkins, and one passage in particular has always stuck with me. An octopus can see light, They have great eyesight and sense of touch. Their suction cups have chemo receptors that allow an octopus to taste what it is touching. Imagine for a moment that the octopus is wrapped around your arm trying not to die. What do you taste like as you bob in the water with this creature and your weapon? What do you taste like as you kill it? That is the end of our show this week. But if you're planning to write us a review on whichever streaming service you prefer and need a reference guide for all the fantastic dishes we served up, scorpion fish are better than salmon. Australian salmon aren't salmon and should never be smuggled like budgies. Now polish does belong in your tackle bag after all, and octopus speaks can crush cowie shells, golf balls and your finger equally true story, Please keep those bar nominations, sale bind items, awkward photos, fish news stories, and Dear John letters coming to Bent at the Meat Eater dot com. Yeah, I don't forget to drop our favorite hashtags degenerate angler and Bent podcast on the Graham for the chance to win sticker prizes, and uh, you know, go ahead and give us some good ratings on your favorite podcast service. Right now, we're tied with the Jetty. I think we can do better. MS lost by

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