00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Media dos World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can review with Ryan kel Kell in now Here's Kel. The big mouth buffalo carp is the oldest age validated fresh water fish on the planet, the oldest saltwater fish being the greenland shark, which isn't for sale if you're asking. The big mouth buffalo is native to North American can weigh in at over eighty pounds, but the oldest of the three d eighty six wild caught fish collected in a recent study was only twenty two pounds at her astonishing age of a hundred and twelve years old when she was caught near Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. Kind of flies in the face of the oldest is the biggest mantra we have in the outdoor world? Doesn't. In this study, five big mouth buffalo carp were aged at over one hundred years old. Almost two carp were in their eighties or nineties, leaving little doubt as to the longevity of the species. Because of the long lives of these carp, scientists have realized that there are major reproductive gaps in this fish. History of fish taken from multiple populations were over eighty years old. Typically, a study like this would reveal multiple age classes. This suggests the possibility that the building of dams in the thirties seriously restricted the fish as ability to reproduce. In order to get a super accurate idea of age, the scientists in the study used bomb radio carbon dating bomb referring to atomic bomb tests carried out in forties, fifties, and sixties. The A bomb tests increased the amount of carbon fourteen isotope in the environment, leaving a permanent measurable marker that can be measured against pre bomb test or pre carbon fort heen isotope spike materials. But back to the fish. Big native carp like these have long been considered and are referred to as quote trash fish, and I'll just say right now that's incredibly unfair and flat out wrong. In fact, with the increasing number of non native invasive species filling our waterways, the importance of keeping our native fish healthy cannot be understated. The reason for this is if our fish species are so healthy they're combined biomass in a system will prevent more fish from moving in no room at the end, so to speak. On top of that, the big mouth buffalo actually eats invasive zebra muscles during their larval stage. These muscles are a serious threat to native species, infrastructure and water ways and recreation. In my mind, this act alone makes the big mouth buffalo carp much more of a trash collector or civil servant than a trash fish. This week swimmers here and Neandertal Gordon Ramsey poach is more than just eggs, stream access and so much more. But first, I'm gonna tell you about my week. Uh few old guide buddies came through for an end of summer fishing trip. A couple of highlights for you. This first one is for a collective social education. I learned my childhood friend, classmate, current seattlite and fellow ex guide Kelsey Clevenberg, associates himself with a very French society of men called Fleneur. A fleneur, as it was explained to me, openly values leisure, sleeping in and lounging, all traits we Americans typically do not consider valuable. Since I will be the best man in his upcoming wedding, I felt that I owed it to the world to better understand just what a fleneur is. The word fleneur means stroller, lounger, saunter, or loafer, often with the connotation of wasting time. A fleneur is also described as a detached observer quote botanist of the sidewalk. According to Baudelaire, a flaneur also shuns an overly orderly plan in favor of flexibility. And finally, my favorite quote on the subject of flenour comes from the author and actress Cornelia Odas Skinner quote, there is no Anglo saxon counterpart of that essentially Gaelic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time, which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city. If you're still confused, this Seattle based buddy of mine could be described as the dude from the amazing Coen Brothers movie The Big Lebowski. If the dude was a bit more techy and really into cross fit, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man, So now you know what a fleneur is and like myself, will now be forced to categorize some of your buddies or your own behavior a little differently. Back to the fun fishing part, or the second highlight of the trip. This one came as a direct result of being flexible. Much like the aforementioned fleneur, we were rewarded by refusing to follow a rigid plant. We initially geared up for three days of fly fishing and floating, but at the last minute I threw in my box a spear fishing gear, wetsuits, a pole spear, an actual spear gun, masks, snorkels, flippers, gloves, booties, and a weight belt. Very glad I threw this pile of gear into the already overstuffed truck as the diving conditions were about as good as they could possibly be In Montana. Visibility is always a factor when diving, and despite lakes looking clear in Montana, they often have sediments suspending the water, which makes finding fish, not to mention actually spearing fish, pretty darned difficult. These couple of days offered spectacular your visibility and abundance of aquatic life. A couple of fun observations. I found that if you swam to the bottom of the lake and raped the finer pea sized gravel. Schools of carp would come in to inspect the digging. You may not like KRP, but I'll tell you they're surprisingly fun to observe and dig in the gravel with. I also discovered that walleye are curious fish. This was huge for me as I have always wanted to find a more interesting way to add walleye to my diet. Finding the spots while I like to hang was very difficult, but once I located a few shooting walleye was relatively simple. Swim down where they are holding, in this case about eighteen feet down and sit or lay on the bottom for as long as you can. Forty seconds was enough on most of these dives. Sitting on the bottom trying to be as patient as possible is tough. You have this ticking clock or beating clock as your heart continues to thump despite and eating oxygen and not getting it. You know time is running out, but you have to be still and patient. Luckily or unluckily, I suppose, there were plenty of non fish things to focus on and inspect, like old twister tailed jig bodies, crank bait's and a few fishing rods stuck in the rocks took my mind off of my lungs imploding. About the time my brain would be in total freak out mode and my lungs felt like they were going to burst, I'd calmly look over my shoulder and notice that a walleye had slid into my slip stream. Then another couple of while I would come in and give me a big walle i a type of look over. Even got to witness a big walle i swim through a small school of bait fish like a humpback whale gulping krill. It was an amazing experience. Once the wall I got close and comfortable, it was just a matter of pulling groceries off the shelf in a way. We shot almost two limits of while I picked up a couple of bonus freshwater drum. Both the drum and the wally i were very good eating and in my opinion, getting some exercise. Swimming, diving and hunting them was a hell of a lot more fun than waiting to detect a finicky walleye bite on the end of your line. Despite the national obsession with walleye, they have always kind of board me. Again, they're very subtle eaters. Detecting a strike take serious time on the water, and when you do hook a walleye, in my experience, they just don't put up much of a fight. I know this is seriously contentious with Joe and Jane walleye fisherman, and I'll admit I do not have extensive walleye experience, but I'll still tell you in the future, when possible, I'll be targeting all my walleye with a spear rather than a rod. Nothing wrong with a little more exercise per walleye and the cooler moving on to the anthropology desk and letting you know that this type of watery physical activity may come at a cost, and apparently always has. Repeated exposure to cold water like we were diving in can cause something called surfer's ear. That's the layman's term for external auditory exostoses, or bony growths that build up in the inner ear canal in response to irritation caused by repeated dips in cold water. Quite coincidentally, a recent study of Eurasian Neanderthal skulls revealed a surprisingly high occurrence of surfers here. Now, the sample size is relatively small, but these skulls may still offer a snapshot into Neanderthal life. I highly doubt the snapshot will reveal any ancient surfboard design, but I'll follow along and let you know. About half of the twenty three skulls in this study suggests that Neanderthals likely spent a lot of time foraging in and around water. Additionally, an equal prevalence of surfers here in both male and female Neanderthals suggests that men and women shared the same hunting and foraging responsibilities, a set in bone fact that hunting and fishing is just as female as it is male. I find stuff like this generally fascinating, but it also makes me think that if you really like to fish or clam or forage seaweed and get roped into one of those genetic testing services and your results come back with Neanderthal DNA, you can just nod your head and say something like yes, of course, I mean, you won't be entirely right, but you won't be all that wrong either. Moving on, but sticking with the ancestral fishing desk. Gordon Ramsey, the celebrity chef made famous by the series Hell's Kitchen got some ink the other week when he admitted to fond childhood memories of poaching salmon with his father in Scotland. Poaching like he and his dad were illegally taking game. Not the cooking technique, but fishing in Scotland is, in my humble opinion, extremely complicated. Waters where salmon can be found are generally private. These private waters are either locked up solely for the landowner or at least two fishing clubs, hotels, lodges, or angling associations. In order to get on water with a reasonable chance at catching us ammon, an angler will more than likely have to spend a lot of cash. You'd have to book a spending spot on a salmon river, a beat, as they call them, there, stay at a posh lodge that provides beats, or purchase membership in a fishing club. Most beats are offered to the current ly s, meaning that if it's good, the beat will rarely, if ever, change hands, So an angler will have to secure a sub prime beat and wait on the anglers with prime beats to move on or go away or die, allowing everyone with the sub prime beats to kind of move up the river beat ladder into a better fishing spot and better opportunity. None of this makes Ramsey's history of poaching acceptable, but it does paint a picture of how someone who wants to fish could look at this system and say, screw it, I'm going fishing. Absolutely delicious frustrating as I find this whole private water thing. It does allow me to once again talk about how awesome some of the fishing game laws are in America and how darned luck we are to be able to enjoy access to rivers and forests owned by us, the people, not a fishing club or crown estate. That being said, it's incumbent on all of us to protect our exceptional access rights. Look at what's going on in the State of New Mexico in regards to this very thing. According to the New Mexico State Constitution, the unappropriated water of every natural stream, perennial or torrential within the State of New Mexico is hereby declared to belong to the public. Sounds good, but accessing that water has become something of a challenge over the past few years. In two thousand fifteen, New Mexico passed a bill taking away public use of stream beds that cut through private property. Before that, those stream beds were considered public land, just like they are here in the Great State of Montana. That legislation flew in the face of New Mexico's own Attorney General, who wrote an opinion in two thousand fourteen explicitly stating that stream teams are public domain. But wait, there's more. In two thousand seventeen, the New Mexico Department of Fishing Game enacted a program that allowed landowners to apply for permits barring all public use of rivers and streams that go through their property. The five landowners who got these permits last year were allowed to prevent people from even floating on top of the water. Some even erected fences all the way across rivers that were up until a few years ago, public land, locking out voters and anglers who've been enjoying those waters their entire lives. Now for good news, the current State Game Commission, recently appointed by the new governor, voted to temporarily halt this program of river and stream privatization while the New Mexico Attorney General's office reviews the legality of the whole deal, folks, This is not a new issue. Water access in this country is contentious and confusing. Laws about how you can legally get to and use rivers, beams, lakes, and seashores differ from state to state, and you need to be respectful of private land in order to stay hip on this stuff. A couple of years ago, our friends at back Country Hunters and Anglers put together report that outlines the basics for each state. You can find it on their website, and I suggest you do so, and as per usual, if you live in New Mexico or spend money recreating in that beautiful state, call your New Mexico state senators and let them know what you think. This is a huge topic and I could spend multiple episodes on it, but for now I'll leave it at this. The Public Trust Doctrine gives us historic rights to access and use our waters for fishing, fouling, and navigation, but those rights are not guaranteed in the Constitution, so if we don't continue to fight for them, we could wind up like jolly Old England, meaning we'd all have to join fishing clubs where breaches and pay a lot of money to get our boots wet. I'd prefer to keep the system and the pants we've got over here. That's all I've got for you this week. Be sure to let me know how I'm doing at ask Cal. That's a s k C a L. At The Meat Eater dot com. Subscribe, download and leave me a review wherever podcasts are streamable and downloadable. If you want to follow along even more, you can check me out on my Instagram A count at Old Cal four oh six. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks for tuning in.

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