00:00:02 Speaker 1: Slaying fish, drinking vodka big for hat. Imagine a toddler's crayon drawing of a caterpillar with a hook hanging out of the ass. And generally speaking, when you're fishing alone, do you shake it hard or medium or just a little bit? Good morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome back to Ben the Fishing podcast for people who are sick of listening to fishing podcast that lie to you by telling you they will actually help you catch more fish. I'm Joe Surmelie. I'm Miles Nulty, and thankfully, I've actually given up all hope of anything helping me catch more fish, except, you know, spending more time fishing. That's what I That's what I recommend all this stuff we we write and read about helping people catch more fish. Isn't that like the key to the city answer? Like, whatever your question is, how do I catch ten pound? Best? Spend more time fishing you'll catch eventually, Yeah, how do I catch you giant brown trout? Get out there more than once a month? Anyway? The fall season is coming, uh, and that's the time when the beaches and shore is returned back to their rightful steward striper fisherman and duck hunters. We're getting into September, which is crazy. I can't believe in September already. But that means that the frat boys have had to abandon the covid orgies on their parents bayliners and get back to doing whatever the hell it is that entitled college kids are doing these days. What is that zooming into class? That's that's what the kids are doing, which is like, if you think about it, zooming into class is the actual literal definition of phoning it in. They don't even You're right, I didn't even think about that. They don't even have to pretend anymore. Um. And speaking of phoning it in, it's we're on that topic. I think it's time for original fishing Report. Yeah, man, and I'm pumped on this one. This is a special one. It comes to us from none other than internationally renowned fly fishing guide influencer podcast hosting celebrity Hank freaking Patterson. And I gotta say, man, I am, I am flabbergasted that you arrange this. Good for you all those years of sitting in your car like a creeper in the parking lot at orbus headquarters hoping to awkwardly flag him down. Have finally paid off. Good on you, Miles. Check one check one. Mike is hot hot Mike check one to to check to check to Hey, Terry, how does that sound? One? Check one check one Terry? You listening to that? How does that sound? I don't want to sound like one of those freaking little rent bait fishing guys calling in their fish and report from a pay phone outside of backwood gas station, toilet or something. All right, you want to make this sound real pro alright, so let's listen up. Check chack jacks. That good, check that good, that check good good, okay, and three to one. Hey, I'm Hank Patterson, pro staffer, World Around fly fishing expert and guide. Hey, I'm here today with a fishing report for anybody planning a trip in the next week or so too Alphonse Island in the say Shells. I'm heading to the say Sells. I'm sure you're all pretty excited about that. But before I get into all that, I just wanted to brag that I just tell you about the fact that I was in Russia last week on the cam Chuka cam Chewy Cambuucha River, the Cambucha River, fishing, giant rainbows, slaying fish, drinking vodka, big fur hat, amazing trip. Let me tell you, if you are ever planning a trip to Russia, give me a shout. I'll put together a hosted trip and so that way I can go on the trip for free. I mean, well, it's not not not free for you, you understand, It's just what it hosted trip is is. I basically make a couple of phone calls and then I mooch off of you paying full price so that I get to go uh to Russia without paying any money. It's a win win, trust me. Uh. Anyway, this week, I'm gonna be in the Sayshells, and well before I get to that next week, I'm gonna be an Iceland. And I know what you're thinking, Oh my god, Iceland, Hank, would you please post a collection of hero shots of yourself with big Fish in Iceland, hashtagged busy day at the office and would you Oh and would you please post pictures of all the helicopters that you ride in while in Iceland and hashtag those Iceland uber or hashtag make everyday count. Anyway, if you're headed to the Sayshells. I should say, remember, take some flies and and and a rod or whatever. Make sure to get yourself on a on a pro staff or whatever. Anyway, bring seven go pros, four drones, UH six K black magic video camera on a gimbal, and a smartphone so that you can keep up on all of your socials while you're there. And hey, if you're planning a trip to Cuba in the fall, I'll see you there. You know. Not to sound like a dick, but I didn't even realize Hank is still around, man. I kind of thought he faded away, like with Tankara and fly fishing fly fishing for carp um. But I must just be out of the Hank loop or something. Though he never went anywhere. I think I think there's a little more to the story. Actually, I'm I'm pretty sure, at least from sources I've got, I'm pretty sure Hank has to stay in international waters so you can avoid extradition for for something. Anyway, if if any of you out there want to get on one of Hank's hosted trips and get the honor of paying for him to stay out of prison wall fishing for free, and say Shells, check him out at Hank Patterson dot com. Just make sure to watch out for spywear before before you go and do that. We've reached the part of the show where we beg, implore, and guilt trip you into putting down your phones and your computers and reading an actual book once in a while. Listen up, you freaking philistines. I got a book recommendation for you. What's a fasting? It's a guy who doesn't care about books or interesting films and things. Time on the Water by Bill Gardner chronicles a two d day muskie season that alone makes it worthy of a read. I mean, how many recreational anglers do you know who put in that kind of time? Very few, very few casual anglers have the drive or disciplined to fish virtually every day from May three to November, and Gardner is most definitely a casual angler. Part of the appeal of this story is Gardener's willingness to expose his own ignorance. He doesn't pretend to be an expert. He's a musky fanboy with an obsessive personality who had an epiphany while sitting in Gridlock l a traffic one day and decided to move his family to northern Wisconsin and spend seven months trying to catch one of the top ten biggest muskies of the year in Violas County. Spoiler alert, He doesn't act, so that's not much of a spoiler. It's pretty clear from page one that this guy isn't going to crack the top ten list. But that's not why you read the book. You read the book because it captures the beautiful futility of a fishing obsession. Time on the water also shows how much better muskie fishing is now than it was forty years ago. Although published in all the action took place in the season of night. We follow Gardner as he digs it out day after day after day, casting bucktails and jerk baits, trolling crank bits, soaking suckers, and hardly catching any fish. At one point, he goes nearly two months straight without landing a single muskie, and his big goal for the entire season is to catch one fish approaching fifty In these days, fifty inches are almost expected in certain places, and a real trophy goes fifty pounds. We really are living in the golden age of muskie fishing. This book is not great literature. It's a folksy account of a long and mostly unproductive fishing season, more a fishing diary than an actual narrative. Here's the taste. Trying a very shallow bay with thick weeds. Keep getting my bucktail fouled with weeds. So I'm going to try a big surface bait. For some reason, most muskie fishermen don't use surface lures. I love them sometimes, these big surface lures just driving muskies nuts. Cheeh, here comes one like a locomotive. Ten ft behind the lure, five ft smash. Hey, this is a fish set that hook. Give him line. He's a brute. No, not under the boat. Get back out here. Hold it right there while I get my glove on. Okay, into the boat. Nice fish measures about thirty nine inches. Well, I don't feel like quitting, so I guess you're going back in by guy, two years and you'll be a lunker. I can't believe it. I just released the biggest fish I ever caught. Makes me feel like a real pro. How did you do today? Oh? All right, I caught a thirty nine incher but turned him loosed a lot of emphasis on releasing muskies these days, but It's one of those things easier said than done. I mean, Christ, how many days have I spent on the water trying to get a decent muski and now he's back in the water. So yeah, some turns of phrase are painfully cheesy, and the term lunker appears far too often. But still I have a sauce spot for this book, and it turns out I'm not alone. It's developed a bit of a cult following. The book was never reprinted after and while the original paperbacks say on the cover, they now go for over a hundred bucks online. Luckily, Gardner sold the digital rights to Muski Hunter Magazine in two thousand three and they re released it, so you can still get the e book for cheap. You know, I am not like a crazed musky angler, but I do like fishing books, and I have no idea how I miss that one man. That book sounds like it's squarely in my lane. It's like it's like the fish book version of the band The Descendants, you know, speeky, underappreciated, and mostly mostly forgotten. That's that's spot on, Joe, because both The Descendants and that book reached the height of whatever their popularity was in the early eighties, so so good call, good call on that one. Uh. And they're both classics. Since we're on the subject of classics, I think, uh, I think we should switch over to That's My Bar. And remember, yeah, remember all of you out there, We we actually really need your help to make this segment work. We want to shout out all the best, dirty, dingy and divy fishing bars out there. So shoot us an email. Tell us about your favorite place to drink after a day of fishing. Best God damn bartender from tim Buck to to Portland, Maine, the Portland argument for that matter. At first, I was embarrassed, I must admit. Listener Glenn crane Felt offered up St. George's Pub in Brigantine, New Jersey for That's My Bar, and as a pure bred Jersey boy, I read Glenn's pitch and thought, how the hell do I not know about this bar? I practically grew up in Brigantine. Our family boat was docked down there for years. But it turns out, at least according to the interwebs, St. George's wasn't established until the early two thousand's, which would have been a few years after I stopped hanging out down there and the old family boat was sold, So that explains that. Nor would I have been of legal drinking age during those years anyway. But listen to this, Glenn rights. When you pull off the beach after a night on the jetty, there is nothing better than the biscuits and cod fish gravy at St. George's to warm you up. That and a little Irish whiskey in your coffee. The place is open and serving seven. It also has amount of the world record hybrid striper caught in saltwater hanging on the wall. Glenn says the bar's owner caught that hybrid off the dock where his big sport fishing boat is parked. And uh, a little research confirmed that to be true. Anyway, Holy sh it, man, biscuits and codfish gravy open, seven mounted stripers, Glenn, It's time for me to get back to my roots. Man. I guess I need to start fishing and hanging out in Brigantine again, just to eat and drink at St. George's, because that all sounds magical. Side note, I did spend a lot of time in the rod and Real Tavern and Brigantine in my youth. Okay, my dad loved eating at that joint. You remember that one, Glenn, right, That may have been the most badass, blue collar fishing bar the Jersey Shore has ever known, but sadly Hurricane Sandy took it from you and me and all the other bunka chunkas on our coast. Godspeed Rod and real tavern. Remember, we need you to make us hip to the coolest, dirtiest, nastiest, most fun fishing bars all the planet. So email us at bent at the meat eater dot com and make us believers in your favorite saloon. Tell us everything that makes it awesome so it and you, of course, can possibly get shouted out in the next installment of That's My Bar. Thank you, Glenn for adding to the rapidly filling reservoir of great fishing bars. Keep coming, everyone, but enough with the distractions. Let's get serious. It's time for fish news. Fish news that escalated quickly. Now we'll get to the fish news here um, where we tell you the real news about fishing related and fish related things. And as a reminder, this is a competition. Miles and I do not know which stories the other dude is bringing to the table. And this little new thing we're doing. Our our engineer, the Mighty Phil Phil Taylor. He now gets to weigh in at the end of this Dog and Tony show and decide who who brought the pain more proper me or Miles. Pay attention Phil, So, um, listen up. It's always its always benefit to be the leadoff man. That is that is me this week. And um, Miles, it's finally happened. I knew this day would come. Switzerland based food giant Nestle, which we mostly know for their chocolate here in the States, has launched Sensational Vuna, a plant based tuna. Oh no, oh, where's Ben O'Brien. We need to bring Bennett on this story continue. So, so this comes to us from Fox Business. Nest Lee, the world's largest food company, announced the launch of its plant based tuna, becoming the latest company to dive into the growing seafood alternatives market. The fish free tuna is made from six plant based ingredients, including P protein and wheat wheat gluten and contains of me know acids. Wait, this gets much better, uh, The company said. The plant based tuna will join Nestle's portfolio of plant based alternatives to burgers, meatballs, chicken nuggets, and other items. Now here's where it gets interesting. Apparently there's like a like like this fake fish race is somewhat um like like the space race kind of because it goes on to say Nestlee joins a number of startups launching more animal free products in the plant basic food space. For instance, Good Catch sells Foe Tuna, a foe tuna version of albacore using lagoons, beans and algae, in addition to plant based crab cakes, which they sound just the whole bay on that you're all sat a lot of old heavy, a lot heavy on the old bay. But and then it says and others have swum swam into sushi grade alternative tuna territory. The brand, the brand Ocean Hugger says it has quote the world's first plant based alternative to raw tuna, while San Francisco based startup kali Ana rolled out a raw tuna with iron, algae, oil, and various proteins using a proprietary process said to recreate the taste and texture of raw fish. Now I looked up this Ocean Hugger raw tuna alternative, and I gotta say based on the photos alone, it looks it looks pretty convincing. It's a nice piece of sush there on the rice with a little with a little rap though it is more the color of salmon than tuna, and um per the company. All it consists of is tomatoes, gluten free soy sauce, sugar water, and sesame oil. Now, before we comment here, to get back to the original story, we'll close with this fact toid uh. It says, with the rapid growth of alternative meat startups, there's certainly a market for sustainable seafood, particularly in the COVID nine teen era. I mean, now, it's a whole era, not just like a few months. This is the era which is awful. Retail sales for plant based foods in the US have increased by eleven percent compared to last year, according to the latest data from Plant Based Food Association and the nonprofit Good Food Institute. So the vuna looks like tuna salad, but it's the raw tuna deals that are wigging me out. Man. I mean, look, I'm not going to dive into the whole fake meat argument discussion thing like that. We We've already covered that elsewhere in other media programs and we don't have time to get into it here. And I'll just say this, my personal perspective is I'm all four people eating seafood responsibly and trying not to like get into bad situations where we're overharvesting fish stocks. Like be thoughtful about what you choose to consume. But maybe you eat your vegetables as vegetables and eat your fish as fish. And I know that's a crazy thought, but that's personally how I'm gonna go about doing it and avoid processing one thing and trying to like transmogrify it into a whole different species or critter that just doesn't make sense. Something Well, I like where you went here because I think the same thing, right, Like, dude, if you're a vegetarian, you're a vegan, do your thing. You have no problem with that. That's that's totally fine. But I mean I even have some friends or or like the wives of friends who are vegetarians, Like, Okay, you have a barbecue, they bring their own veggie burger. I get it, core fine, whatever, rock and Roll, it's the raw tuna the sushi that gets me, because to me, that's like something I might order out or back in the land before time when you could eat in a restaurant, like I would go to a nice sushi restaurant for sushi. So it's just such like a like a niche food to begin with, like a special treat. It's not something you eat as readily as a burger or a vegan hot dog or whatever it is you need to have. So like, who is buying that for when? Like are you buying fake raw tuna to make sushi? Play adders at home? Are you having that on hands so that when all your friends want to order sushi out, like you feel like part of the team. Because if if the ships tomato based and you're a vegetarian, why not make something out of some delicious slices of fresh tomato? Yeah, I would be off. I would far prefer to have fresh tomato sushi than fake fish sushi. Personally, that's a good I mean, I know they I mean, I know the mayo doesn't jive, and I'm certainly not a vegetarian, but I eat fresh tomato sandwiches like every day in the summer. Fels good tomatoes, bread, tomato, mayo, salt and pepper. Done. But here's here's what I will say to get back to the point, I'll say one other thing. I would probably eat the fake veggie sushi over a gas station sushi roll. That's that is the place where I think I would take the veggie one over the fish one. I mean, that's that's a place where I just will not get my sushi is from a gas station. Alright, personal pride. I had a few, I've had a few crunchy tuna rolls from the Circle K dude, and they were fine. I'm here, I'm here, I live to talk about it here I am. I'm not judging. I'm just saying, like personal opinion, that's that's where I might That is the one situation where I might pick the fake option is to check the date. Yeah, you just gotta check the date. That's all right. So this is kind of nice. You set me up pretty well to transition from one questionable seafood product to another. And I learned something this week, Joe, have you ever heard of a loser fish? Now? Now I've never. Now I'm trying so hard, ah man, I'm just not witty enough in this moment, and I'm like mad at myself. No, I don't know what to lose your fish. I didn't either, but it's an actual industry term that salmon farms used to describe up to a quarter of the fish that they produce losers. I call all farm ray salmon losers, Like I don't farm ray. We're gonna get there. Yeah. So the loserfish are the salmon that, although technically healthy, acts sluggish, have stunted growth and displayed little interest in food. And a two thousand and sixteen study from the Royal Society of Open Science looked at farmed Atlantic salmon brains and found that these loser fish have constant elevated levels of cortisol, which is a hormone that vertebrates release when they're under stress. Cortisol is a good thing in the right circumstances, right, Cortisol helps trigger the fight or flight response, which is important for wild salmon because you know, they got to outrun orcas and seals and sea lions and sharks and and although the punish, yeah exactly. The cortisol response also helps them make the upstream migrations that salmon are famous for, like you know all those those those nature videos of salmon majestically leaping up over waterfalls and getting away from bears. Yeah, it's the cool that helps them fly. But a constant bombardment of stress hormones, it's just not good. It's not good for the brain. It is not over the body. Many of us are experiencing that right now. The constant level of stress apparently turns normal farm salmon into depressed losers. They're they're so wigged out all the time that they don't even respond to the standard stress test for freaking out of fish, which I learned is to just pick one up and drop it into a bucket of water. That's the scientific industry standard first stressing out of fish. Researchers theorized that these smaller, weaker fish forced to live in overcrowded pens with bigger, aggressive fish without the possibility of escape, they just can't. They just can't handle that light level of negativity. Man, they give up on life, they stop eating and wait to die, which they do. In addition to depression, farm salmon are also prone to deafness, scleiosis, obesity, and licenfestations. And all right, listen, even if you don't give a shit about salmon welfare, and frankly, I can't talk because I've personally killed thousands of salmon as part of my job. But salmon farms are a bad deal. Those massive sea liight's infestations that they create spread to wild fish populations, as do the plumes of antibiotics salmon farms have to use to keep their fish from dying of infections. Salmon escape from netpens and can wreak havoc on wildfish and mess up delicate ecosystems like that time in when two hundred and sixty three thousand Atlantic salmon got free and Puget Sound, Washington, you know the Pacific Ocean where Atlantic salmon aren't supposed to live. So bottom line, I'm gonna steal a line that Grundin's used to use back in the day, quote friends don't let friends eat farmed fish. Alright, eat all the wild fish you want. But are salmon stocks have enough issues without being contaminated by pens full of losers? So the loser fish are they? Maybe I missed this, but are they deemed like not fit for concerned shin and then and then pulled out and wasted or they don't even grow, like they won't grow, they're so depressed they don't eat, they don't grow, they just die. They die of depression. And that's of all farmed salmon. Oh man, it's it's like it's like some of the dudes I used to play in bands with, like they're still just sitting around wishing, wishing we'd stuck it out on the hardcore scene, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I think all a lot of us have have some high school friends that wound up in the loser fish population, you know. But uh, I don't want to eat them. Yeah. Well, hey, look I won't come down and if you, if you, if you buy the huge pack of frozen salmon file AT's at Sam's Club, I mean, it is what it is. It's not my jam. Once you taste, in my opinion, a salmon out of salt water from Alaska specifically, like before it ever hit the rivers, you'll never you'll never look back. Yep, you will, just you know. But I'm not a big trout die anyway. But you know, Okay, So man, I'm trying to think of a good good segue here. I don't have one because I'm going in a way different direction farm salmon. So uh, here's here's one of those stories, um where I think we we stretched the parameters of fishing, which we're allowed to do here because this is our show and we can do whatever we want. Um. This one is about magnet fishing. You know what that is? What is magnet? I have no idea what this is? What is it? No? No, no, that's that's something they do over in Europe. I think over here you just tie a big magnet off to a rope and throw it in water and drag it around and try and find stuff. So it's exactly what it sounds like. It's like the subsurface version of those people with the metal detectors on the beach. It's like they've moved out into the water. Yeah well they yeah, or these are people who can't afford a metal detector but they can buy a magnet. And quick aside, before I dive into this, um, I dabble though very lightly, in magnet fishing, which you may not have known, and now you do. Um And and just to save face because it's kind of a dorky hobby, this is purely a COVID slash quarantine related thing. Okay. It started with extra time to sit around and watch YouTube and I got sucked in by this dude that he goes by the fissure and he's this spacstick cat from somewhere in the Midwest, and he just goes nuts every time. He's always on bridges, and he's finding all kinds of weird stuff and and every time you find something, he's like, what the heck is this guy's what is that thing? Right? And I got sucked in by this stuff on on YouTube? And then if you factor in what felt like license to buy anything you wanted on Amazon during quarantine to make yourself feel better, like eating ice cream after you just got dumped, right, that that is why I now own some magnet fishing equipment. Okay, So they're like this was this was like cathartic almost, Okay. I thought, like, I'm not really traveling. I can't go junking because of COVID, So this makes sense. And uh, so far a hundred and thirty dollar investment has found me two screws, five nuts in a bicycle chain. That is what I've gotten out of this. Um. I kind of lost I kind of lost the fire for it and realized that if I had free time to magnet fish, I should probably just fish fish, which is also safer because this story comes to us from Fox six Milwaukee headline. Person magnet fishing in beaver Dam recovers grenade that was probably live. What so, Yeah, did you did you just say grenade? Make it throw in war? Yes, that you would throw in war, hopefully at the people fighting you. It wasn't like a weird you know, foxhole accident or something. Uh yeah, but beaver Dam police say a person who was magnet fishing near a dam on Madison Street. It might have been this dude, he's always like out in public in the middle of a city recovered a grenade that was later determined to be real and potentially potentially quote live. A Facebook post from the beaver Dam Department said contact was aid with the Dane County Bomb Squad to discuss the proper procedure to dispose of the grenade. After seeing photos of the grenade and speaking with the beaver Dam Police Department supervisors, they determined that they would send a team out to assist in the disposal of the grenade. Due to the degradation of the grenade from being in the water for quite some time, the bomb squad was unable to confirm if it was actually live without further testing, but they felt it was necessary, I would hope, so to take precautions for everyone's safety, and they closed the bridge down for two hours while they got rid of this grenade in Wisconsin. I have a few thoughts on this, Okay, I'm kind of speechless other than trying to put myself in the in the shoes of this magnet fisherman bringing up like, well, this is this is the thing, and this is this is why, like I'm a loser fish in the magnet fishing world because you realize later that you watch these magnet fishing things and they're only showing you when they a fine cool shit. They don't show you the nine hours in four days where they found two screws, five nuts in one bicycle chain. Like I have right, but I do. I do have a couple of thoughts on this, right So to start, this is frightening. And while they don't know, they haven't said whether it was or was not a live grenade, But if it was, where did that come from? So that's mitually number one? How is there a live grenade? But I do have another theory because I, like you are a child of the late eighties and early nineties, so hear me out on this. When I was growing up, there was an Army Navy surplus store in the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia called I Goldberg's, and you could buy all the grenades you wanted in there. They were literally bins full of grenades. Now, of course they weren't live. The holes were drilled out, so they were disabled and could never be made live. But they were real Vietnam air grenades with the clip and the pin and the hole works, and they were like three bucks a pop, and I could We'll see them in the huge crates in that store, and I had at least half a dozen. Guarantee. There are still some kicking around at my mom's house. My dad had one of those, and I used to play with it all the time, so I know exactly what you're talking about. It was clearly not live, no, no, no no. But so those grenades would be drilled out, and they know they have a hole at the center. But you figure, if this thing is sitting there for years and it's all full of sludge and muck and that hole is filled in, you wouldn't know. So I mean I don't know, man. Of course, that was back in the like like what I consider the last days of when like kids were men, you know what I mean. Like we'd be at the mom we'd be at the mom my mom would be like, oh, honey, didn't you tell me you needed more grenades? You know, if you're good this year, maybe Sandon will put a few more grenades in your stocking. You know. It was back in the day when toys r us had to sign pointing to the arsenal aisle. You know, you remember that with the cobras on the grips, not the dragons, you know, yeah, like, yeah, okay, if you're gonna have bb gun war, only one pump and close your eyes when they're shooting at your face. Chunk, chunk, chunk, one pump my ass fifteen at least break a little skin. But those are those were good time. So that's what popped into my head. Maybe it's maybe it wasn't a live grenade. Maybe it's just a relic from an era that's not the COVID era when kids still went outside and and and played army. And for the record, once I get my magnet fishing game dialed in, I'm gonna find a whole grenade launcher like the one Pasha used in Predator Mark my words, come on out. We'll do. We'll magnet fish together. It'll be fun. Oh that sounds terrible. I'd rather go real fishing. But I'll say this, if anybody out there finds out like before we do, if it you know, they determine if it was live or not, let us know, give us an update because we want to know. Um, I'm gonna kind of stick with with lawlessness on the water for for the last piece here. I like it. Last last week, two Louisiana men one local bass fishing tournament, but their glory was quickly tarnished after they were arrested for fishing contest fraud. Alright now, now, cheating and bass tournaments is nothing new. We've covered it Meteor just like every other fishing media outlets. So the cheating part is not what caught my eye. That's just standard protocol. It's the arrest part. These guys are facing up to three thousand dollars in fines and a year in jail because they fished outside of the tournament boundaries. They didn't even leave the lake, they just left the boundaries. And this is not like one of those big national b ass Elite Series tournaments. We're talking about a local club tournament. They take their fishing tournaments seriously down there, and so they got me wondering about penal codes related to fishing tournaments. And apparently Louisiana is not the only state where cheating in a fishing tournament can get you locked up. So this is like one of those weird old laws thing you didn't know existed anymore, Like you can't ride a horse town on Sunday. It's not old, right, Like this is actually relatively recent. Getting caught breaking tournament rules, like fishing tournament rules in Texas is considered either a Class A misdemeanor or a third degree felony, depending on the size of the prize at stake. And no, it's not one of those old like laws just takes up space on the pedo coade nobody knows about. This has been enforced several times just in the last couple of years in the lone Star state. And side note, but weird one Texas tournament anglers seem to be cutters. They have a habit of tail chopping. In one case, a guy named Terry Keith Long was fishing good tournament on Lake Fork and and on Lake Fork, fish between sixteen and twenty four inches must be immediately released back in the lake, and they don't count for points. So Terry he catches himself like a sixteen and a half inch or and he decides, you know, maybe I'll just trim. I'll just take a half inch off with some scissors and call it good and no one's gonna notice. But hold on, wait, yeah, it gets weirder. Another case involved a kayak tournament and since kayaks don't have live wells, competitors take pictures of their fish on approved measuring boards and then let them go. Well, this guy, Brent Taylor, he must have felt like he needed a couple extra inches to stay competitive. So what do he decided to do? Was he cut the whole tail off of a bass, moved it a few inches down the ruler, and put his hand over the missing section as if you were just kind of holding the fish in place so it didn't flop around on the measuring board. Mr. Sneaky man, But but he's you kind of sneaky. But guess where he screwed up? He kept the tail. They found the tail in his kayak, and that was how they busted. Oh man, that's a little Darwin. It's a little Darwin over and and all these guys were arrested and charged under the Fraud in Fishing Tournaments legal Code. Uh So, from what I could dig up, only Texas and Louisiana have actual laws about fishing tournament fraud. But to be to be clear here, I couldn't like find a database about laws pertaining the fishing tournaments. So any of you out there, if you know of other states that have actual statutes on the books about cheating and fishing tournaments, please let us know, because I'm genuinely interested in how common those are. Like, I want to know how many states had to write laws about fishing tournament cheaters. See, I had no idea, man, I mean it kind of it kind of fits like with the good old boys in the South, Like you know, you don't you don't mess with a fishing tournament down there, But I don't. I fished one two tournaments in my entire life. One was pure fun and bragging rights. One had money on the line. I regretted it. So I'm not really into tournament fishing, so I wouldn't have known these things. But um, I mean, so the guys who who they were trying to who got arrested, were they being jerks about that or was it like, oh hey man, sorry, I didn't know that we were crossing the line. Like what like is it like drunk driving? Yeah? Is it like drunk driving where it's like no questions asked, like you did this and you're going down. You know. I couldn't find that kind of in depth coverage. No one interviewed them about their their intentions. But I'm gonna guess that they clearly knew the rules, they clearly broke them, and they won the tournament. People were passed, So I think I think they knew what they weren't supposed to do and they did it knowingly. Otherwise, you know, it was an honest mistake. They would have stripped I assumed they would have stripped him of the wind, but that would have been the end. But no, they called authorities and these guys might go to jail for a year. See, and you're gonna you're gonna you could end up in jail over a green bass. This is why I say fish for snakeheads people. Okay, there's no there's no one, no laws and snakeheads. You can do whatever you want, you know, don't don't you You killed ten snakeheads. Wherever you want, they'll throw you a parade around here. All right, it's time for Phil to weigh in and crown this week's champion. Phil. Come on, man, you know who brought the goods? Give it up? And uh and and then we're going straight from the front page news the classifieds as we dig into the sale bin Miles. I thought about making a loser fish joke here, but that would have been too obvious. I'm sorry, but you could not compete with Joe's tomato tuna and possibly but probably not, live grenades. Our winner this week again is Joe Surmelie Miles. That makes you over two. I'm so sorry. I do not make the rules. Um, actually I do, but just remember there are no small fish news stories, only small fish news podcast hosts, which you are not because you are a rather tall man. Please don't beat me up. 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, it seems like people love to buy and sell used crap on the internet, and you know, fishing gear is no exception. In this segment, we profile some fishing related item we found for sale online. And just like in all craigslis crawling, it is only interesting because it's terrible. Today's there's no exception. Okay. This one comes to us from let go twenty four dollars and the title of the post is just fishing weights. Now the magic of this better good fishing waits for bucks. The h the long description is the clincher here, But before we get to that, we just have to describe what we're looking at. So we have a case here, a long, skinny case with a handle and a hang tag for a pegboard on one end. And this was obviously repurposed. I don't I can't put my finger on exactly what this case was originally made for. I don't know if you have any thoughts there. I'm gonna guess that it was originally made for fasteners of some kind, bolts and nuts, something like a really really cheap tiny toolbox. Okay, all right, I like that. And it is absolutely beat to yet, okay, and in it in the few compartments. We have a bunch of clearly used, like pre made steel leader saltwater hook rings all coiled up. Yeah, that looked like they would take you at least an hour to disentangle them all. Correct. There are exactly five clearly used eight ounce bank sinkers, one of which has a little piece of what looks like four pound test like a little bit clipment, just got a little little pigtail. And there's there's one, there's one completely empty container, and then and there's also two croppy sized micro clearly use curly tail grubs, one shark trus one will call root beer. Uh. And this is twenty four dollars. That's what this will cost you. But here's the description. I'm gonna read it verbatim, but before you get there, Joe, I have to I just have to jump in. I'm sorry to cut you off, but what's for me? What's such a head scratcher on this is? I want to know whose fishing kit this was and what they were fishing for? In what circumstance do you need steal leaders, eight ounce bank waits, croppy curly tail jigs, and no hooks. Yeah, none of these, none of these things really so incongruous. How did these things wind up in a box together? None of it makes any sense to me? Well, I don't have the answer to that that we did correspond with this seller. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay, because this description. Okay, so five pieces of eight ounce weights equal sign seventy five dollars through one hundred bucks. So that right out of the gate is uh that math math? I don't know where we're getting that. Two hooks and fishing line and to fake worms for fishing. Now here we go. Come with the case to you hang it, lay it down, or stand it up for you own convenience. Enjoy your summer with this kit, im and get it before someone beat you to it. That is the description of this product. Summer with this kit, you won't have any hooks, but boy can get those crappy jigs to the bottom fast. So I did the jerky thing and I wrote, Hello, interesting kit. Do you think i'd be able to use these items for trout? I'm just starting to get into trout fishing in your area. Okay, Now you just heard the grammar in the description, and here's what I got back in four minutes. Usually a rod and reel well suited for a mainline in the four to eight pound test range will serve you well for trout fishing. And also we'll get the job done for other popular freshwater species such as bass and panfish. In perfect grammar. And I just cut and paste it into my search box. And it was straight out of a Google article called trout fishing basis. Yeah, so he just he just he just cut that right out of a Google answer. I can I give credit for that. That was actually pretty clever. I was like, that was slick. That was slick. You're you're dancing around. You have no idea, but good, good move, no doubt. Followed up by to each their own th h E R E you have to find what weights you like best. Followed up with However, for this little amount of money I'm asking for the kid, it's a win win for you regardless. R E g U A R D L E S S regards. Ye got it, he sounded it out. He sounded it out. So um fishing kit twenty four bucks. Enjoy, enjoy your summer, my friends, save a little cash. I mean, let's be honest, those eight stinkers are no more than seventy cents apiece, not seventy. But the thing is that kind of markup, that's that's the kind of thing you usually only find in fly fishing gear, you know what I mean. Like, And that's that's an unfortunate truth because it gives fly fishing a bad rap. But the truth is that fly fishing doesn't have to be that much more expensive than conventional fishing. And in this week's tackle hack, our good friend Tim Romano is gonna tell you how you can save yourself some cash on fly floating. I'm getting hats coming from inside the city like the flood at Tim Romano. How you doing, buddy, I'm doing okay. It's kind of a loaded, loaded question these days, but I'm okay. These days it sure is. But we're not gonna think about all that bad stuff. We're gonna think about the good times ahead. And you're gonna drop some knowledge on us, uh, specifically for the dry fly fisherman. You've got a hell of a trick here, tell tell us all about it. Yeah, I think it's a trick. It's um basically, all those little fancy dry fly floatings you spend I don't know five tens on you can buy those and they're great and they work really well, or you can google up fletching powder, which I didn't even know what that was because I'm not an archery guy. I'm sure some of your listeners will know exactly what I'm talking about, but um, it comes in quantities like ten fifteen times what you can buy at the fly shop for dry shake, and it's basically the exact same thing. Yeah, I believe you use this stuff. You put it on your fletching to keep them dry so they don't get water logged, like if you're out in the rain, right right, Yeah, exactly. And you're saying that's a good substitute for like a frog's fannie or something like that. Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, I'm trying to think about that. They're all slightly different, right, but they're basically just a descent powder. What I've the little bit of research I've done, I think it's actually called hydrophobic food. You telling me how to pronounce this f you m eat food, hydrophobic food food silica. It was perfect. So yeah, it's you just have way larger quantities and it's you know, literally like one tenth of the cost. So you just refill your empty frogs, fanny or whatever with that stuff. Yeah, like whatever container you like using, Um, keep it. I will say it's supposedly non toxic, but you definitely don't want to breathe that crap. Don't blow a line of it, correct, Um, I mean you can try. I didn't tell you to do that, though. What I do sometimes instead of pouring it from bottle to bottle, which can be really messy, I would suggest putting it in like a zip block or a thin plastic bag, so you can basically put the corner of that bag in and then just kind of tap it in slowly, because if you try to pour from bottle to bottle, that's a complete mess. And generally speaking, when you're fishing alone, do you shake it hard or medium or just a little bit depends on the day. Salt dude, that's a that's a legitimately good hack, right, And yeah, I know the last time I went and bought a bottle of that fancy Japanese dry shake, I'm pretty sure I came up short on rent the next month. That stuff is expensive, man, I know, I know. The thing is it's anything right, anything that says fly fishing on it. You can at least double the price, you know what I mean. Like I can get a spool of flora carbon too, spool of spinning reel pretty cheap, but then you get a miniature tippet spool of the ship at the fly shop, it's like a four hundred mark up. And this is a problem. This is a I believe, I believe, I believe. Smarter people call this a barrier to entry. Yeah it is, it is, and it's part of what gives fly fishing a bad rap, it really is, because everyone's like, oh, what kind of chump would spend that much money online? And I don't know, by the regular stuff, by the pa line. That's what I always do. Yep, me too. But I'm here to tell you all of you that you don't actually have to be rich or be a sucker to get into the long rod game. It's a ton of fun and you don't need to drop two grand to do it. We are we're gonna stick with the steam that every Man's fly fishing theme to close out this week's show with our end of the line segment. Well it's not loud enough, rubber Legs Pats, Rubbie pickle jimmy legs. No matter what you call it, the Pats rubber legs is one of the greatest fly patterns ever conceived. I call it a turd for reasons that are obvious if you've ever seen one, But the pattern is actually named after its inventor, Pat Bennett and the assortment of splade jigglie rubber legs that hang off of it. Right now, all the Western trout guys out there like du everybody even knows about the turd fly? Bro Well, no, everybody you hang out with knows about turd flies. But I'm willing to bet that at least half of the people listening to this have no idea what I'm talking about. And I'm pretty sure you guys don't know the history of that fly you love so much. So listen up. Imagine a Toddler's crayon drawing of a caterpillar with a hook hanging out of the ass, and you'll have some idea of what a Pats rubber legs looks like. It's a long shank took somewhere around a size four, wrapped with fuzzy brown or black or alive shanil with six or eight or ten or however man you feel like putting on their little rubber legs dangling around the edges. As with most fly designs, the paths rubber legs is really just a slightly altered rip off of a pre existing pattern. The original that spawned the modern turd was the girdle bug, invented by a guy named Frank McGuinness of Anaconda, Montana in the early nineteen thirties. Back then, fly tying materials didn't exist. People tied flies out of whatever feathers or other ship the head laying around. Turns out McGuinness was a true pioneer when it came to creative materials for dressing flies. See Frontier women were known for their toughness and resilience, but not so much for their spelt physiques, if you know what I mean. That said, even the pioneer gals like to get dolled up once a while and hit the town, and back then that meant smushing their midsections into constrictive shape enforcing garments called girdles. Girdles were some of the first articles of clothing to employ elastic bands, and legend has it that when McGuinness saw some of those little white strings of supple elastic poking out of his wife's well worn undergarments. He got inspired, only probably not in the way she was hoping. He figured those little white bands would look damn good his legs or antennae on wet flies, so it caught off a few, paired them with some black chanel he stole from her sewing kit, and bam, one of the world's greatest fish fooling inventions was born. A half century later, the girdle bug got upgraded with new colors and synthetic materials and became the ubiquitous trout catcher we know today. Simplicity is a virtue in fly design. Spending forty minutes crafting a perfectly proportioned work of bug art, only too s app it off on the second cast sucks. Turd Flies consist of three materials four if you add weight. Good tires can whip these out in a couple of minutes flat, no matter how many empty PBR cans are scattered around the vice. Turds work in any river with populations of stone flies. Stone Flies are found on every continent except Antarctica, and are as irresistible to trout as waffle house hash Browns are Southerners. Turns don't look all that much like real stone flies. You can find dozens of other patterns that look a whole hell of a lot more like the real thing. They have perfect abdomen, the thorax proportions, detailed modeling on the wing cases, articulated legs. They look like they might just crawl out of your box and join one of the annual stream side orgies that stone flies have after they hatch. Problem is, those realistic flies don't really work, at least not for me. Maybe fish appreciate simplicity too, or maybe they're just dumber than we think. Turds are the ultimate guide fly. Simple, fast and cheap to make, but deadly effective. Even if you've never tied to fly in your life. You can wrap up three or four of these and a half an hour and they will catch fish. So go buy yourself some Shaniel rubber legs, long shank hooks, maybe a six pack or two. Now is as good as time as any to learn how to tie flies, and turds are as good a fly as any to learn on. So if we're recapping, Hank Patterson is apparently still alive. And well, uh, Time on the Water is the l a punk band version of muskie literature. I've got a new bar to hit up on my home turf and fly fishing. As it turns out, shocker, after all these years of research, isn't just for rich people, true story. Carry those bullet points of brilliance into the weekend and do some good with them. Maybe even catch a fisher too. And and if you do, tell us about it, send us an email at bent at the meat Eater dot com. Tell us what's great, tell us what sucks, tell us all the reasons why we should never be allowed to host a podcast again. And I'm going to head over to St. George's pub with the copy of Time on the Water that I stole from your bookshelf and do me a little quality reading. Son of a bitch, I'm gonna piss off my whole family by reliving my high school angsty days and blasting some classic Descendants cuts. See you next week.