00:00:09 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely fog bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. I have reasons why I think it's best if you can. That's gonna stick with me. Don't throw that out there right before the podcast. But you want, you want to know why I think it's best if you can. Okay, I have a theory about it. Um, yeah, I have a theory about why it's good. I put my theory to Rogan, and Rogan thinks it's good because he thinks people to talk over each other less. It makes it hard to talk over someone else. You know, if you go out to dinner, like you and your lady and another dude and his lady at various times through dinner, it's like, for whatever, there's like two conversations going on, like you're talking to his wife and then you're talking to your body, and you know, you get less of that effect. You seem to just listen to podcasts. You do a good job of people not doing that that it's one at a time, it's not. I mean, do you do you see that as a challenge or is that just a normal conversation like you said, people do that. Well, it's like it's it's like a comment, what are you doing? How does it justin levels um two figures? Yeah, it just has it's like a normal chat, but it's there's like a little bit of discipline to it, you know. Yeah, imposing the discipline. I cannot believe you guys do this every week for every couple of fifty two a year. We do them, and usually we do uh. Sometimes we'll sit down and we'll sometimes we'll take a couple of days and do three or four. We're ready whenever you are, m m. Yeah, we've released I think a hundred two or a hundred three of them. That is crazy. Did you listen to the meat tree ones? Both mere to listen to permissions? I've made major changes. Yeah, that made major changes in my life. Well, uh, Kenyan is going to be a pig and ship pig and mud you know. I think to go and look at your place because he's full of like little ideas about deer. He is, and I think that he is going to see the potential I mean, and he's going to see the ability to um that there are big areas that are just unencumbered. No one you know that part when he when he asked me, like you did, what does that mean? Like that that you've never been in there? I'm like, I physically have never been in there. And it's big. I mean it's a big I mean a hundred acres. I've never been and no one goes in. And the difference between um Mark and Doug is a Doug sort of grounded in reality, where Doug like looks at properties that need to turn profits. So Doug's got like agriculture, forestry. Kenyan's perspective is like how are we gonna make big giant bucks? It is and we had that, We had that dust. So Doug came and spent a day and a half and came around. He was very nice about some things we've done, things we we did do better, and uh um, He's like, what's your goal? And I you know, I just I said, you know, you would like to hold deer And then he got into the conversation about the neighbors, you know, shooting the deer and not doing it and what bothers you and the same thing. I went down that path immediately too. He's like, alright, time out. You know they're gonna move through here, and he actually, I really mean this. He actually convinced me to have a better attitude about it, well, that it's just gonna happen, don't get hung up on it. He legitimately convinced me those guys who own yettie coolers, Yeah, I mean, their places unbelievable, and they're like pride themselves. And it's not fence and everything down there's fence, you know, and they won't fence it. But they got one neighbors. It's one group of neighbors that shoots there, that shoots there deer, which is not how the state views it. But um so it's there. Probably is not fence, they point out, it's just got offense because they fenced one property line South Texas or one they fenced one line on it. Okay, because everybody else's pride seems similar because these guys post up on the These guys perch up all along that property line. Dad part you know, I've heard us. I told us to Mark that, you know, the neighbors, the work we've done unforced and everything that they called. You know, we've created a dear fat actory. So they post up a lot of them. You see a lot of stands just on the other side. I mean, and they will because you can bait in Michigan. They'll put certain you know, food items out there that I don't have on my property. You know. Now, they'll do a pile of apples. I don't have apples, and they'll I mean they, you know, during certain times of the year, they'll pull deer. I mean, so they I mean, and it's funny. I was telling that to Mark. They've got tricks and they literally, you know, they know the area where I've logged, and and and they the transition areas and show you to put something, put something not toxic but just to taste like ship all over their bait piles. Human hair. That human hair. Yeah, human hair is a good one. People do that, go to a barber shop and sprinkling along. Have you heard that. I haven't heard that will keep deer way That that human hair. I've heard to do that like a little tufts of human people's hair in my mouth. No phone not saying you need it for the No. Yeah, I'm down with it. Um alright, ready, ready, okay, first thing we're gonna do today. Uh. Everyone introduced themselves as though dealing poker so, um, we'll start with nice all right, let me honest. I'm here today, Um, just coming off a big, big morning and being all seasick like man, short morning, lost a enormous amount of respect for your honest today. Then going down, Mr Cook, Matt Cook from Chicago, Illinois, and you're you're having what I'm just trying to set the scene. What's in your cup? There? Your glass? Um, I have a youngling beer, South Florida. So you poured a beer into that glass. I thought you were having some sort of large glass of bourbon or something. No, No, it's South Florida style. Okay, moving along, Josh right from South Florida. I'm drinking by light and the can and the can Josh bright right, spell it you guys. And then Ryan, Yeah, but tell him your name, Bryan Tubbs, South Florida, South Florida, drunken by light from a can. Before we start, you guys are single, like not married? Yeah? Girlfriends Okay. So we've had good luck in the past by pointing out people's singleness because then, um, female listeners, all five of them will know no, because there's a lot more that. Because we used to talk about the lack of them, and then they point out that that they are out there. Female listeners knowing now that you're out there right and that you're single, will come and find you. I have heard that this happens from a man whose initials are B B. You know what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter. I don't so uh Yannae, explain you're explain. I want to start out with you. Explain your morning. So do your state of your state of being in mind this morning? But when I when my state of being in mind went south? Yeah, like just your little problem, you're a little problem. Well we went Can I tell what we were doing that made it happen? So? Yeah, So we went fishing with Ryan and uh Ran. How far do we go? Eighteen twenty miles offshore from so you're not so Ryan, You're not so possessive about your spot. So we can say we were fifteen to eighteen miles off b town, doesn't matter. Way out, way out, pretty far out. It took us a while to get there. It was rough on my scale of you know, calm and rough seas. It was rough out there. Would you do what you mean? We're running? Did you think it was rough? Very choppy. Yeah. Rough rough would be a good word for it. Not like, oh my god, the bolt's gonna flip, but like just annoyingly rough rough from a lot of different directions. Yeah, So we ran for at least it was at least an hour right on the way out. Um, then we finally got to the spot, started rigging up, and we're fishing with the fella named Nick. Um. I guess you call like the first mate in that situation, right, and um, he got everything in the water quickly, I'd say, just about the time that mate got down to feet, I was like, oh, man, here we go. So this happened to just like just like you spend enough time with a guy and you sort of get a sense of how they handle situations, and just to see him just like not just staring off into space. Man. Yeah, we're bringing up a sword fish and he can't even look over in the direction of the rod. That was the second one. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I saw that first one coming in. No, so I swear I was looking towards the shore. You can still see just a few buildings, you know, at that distance, and uh, when I would turn the other direction and look at that rod, and where the action was. It was just like those swells were just right behind the rod, and every time I see one of those swells roll, I mean that's all it takes, you know. Yeah, it didn't make me like hate you. It made me Um, there was some of that, but mostly it made me just pity you. And I felt bad for you, but teings with a little bit of disgust. Yeah, I was that we need to go in as soon as I got sick, and maybe you hate me no more pity and my and I got in such a better mood once he once he started getting better, you kind of like had a little bit of a throw up but not really and felt a little better. No, I finally, you know, because you're wrong through all these things in your head. Like even Ryan's like, you know, you want to have a dip that don't make you throw Hope you'll feel better, you know. I was like, yeah, I already thought about that, but like that's too hardcore. I don't really need to start chewning again, um, just for this. But then I'm thinking about how ron Lane told us about the salt water, Like I wonder if I could just pound a glass of salt water and cure myself forever. And then, uh, I said, you know, you're just being a little bit. You just need to throw up. So I just jammed my finger, my whole hand as far as I could into my yeah, because I was like, you know, you're just like you're close, You're close, You're close, and eventually you're just like, dude, you know it's gonna be better once you get it over with. And as soon as I did it, it's amazing. I mean, but I only got like ten fifteen minutes out of feeling better and then it's sort of sunk back down again. But anyways, that's a little sick that's get hit by a mosquito. So we just uh that was just a quick teaser into something we're out in. I describe how do you describe we're at right now? I mean we're out in a stilt house like like a check said, pilings out in the on the Glades. That's an up and coming uh you know, luxury home on stilts. Um. No, it's more of a shock. Uh. Six miles into the Everglades off of just west of Boca and for Lauderdale and a handful of these old places out here and they they were grandfathered in under some kind of land management plan. Yeah, there's in this area. It's a state area. There's about fifteen of different you know, uh you know levels of complexity. Some are falling down in summer, you know, a little newer and have been remodeled. Um, they are leases that with the state and so um, everyone out here just got their leases renewed. So good for how many years? I think it's oh so they could feasibly you could burn it had the parents placed down in two years. It's a twenty or goal still you know it is twenty incremental more years. So you're breathing easy. We're breathing easy. Absolutely. But they've been Um, they've been around for I think since they and they were his history said a lot of people said they were hippie communes at one time. A lot of people have over the years hidden out out here fugitives. You hear all kinds of stories. But what they are now is just for people that enjoy the Everglades, airboating, etcetera. Yeah, like kind of like you get the sense and just from conversations with with your your friends here is that you get the sense of people now buy these more like as beer drinking locations. It's that's part of like a social aspect to it. Even though it's good duck hunting, frog gig and bow fish and alligator hunting, it's not much different than like a cabin in the north Woods where supposedly you're going there to you know, hunt deer for a whole weeken. Some people do that, but a lot of people go out there and drink beer drinking purposes. You know what it's been described. Someone told me a couple of years ago. It's a lifestyle. There's several locals that these don't change hands very often, so um, you believe it or not, it's it's somewhat selective the people that have them, and so it's a lifestyle. People come out on the weekends. They very often handed down from one generation to the next. So um, there's a lot of pride in this area and that the people that have been around for a long time. Yeah, it's it's almost like a little subculture in South Florida. You know, you go three miles east of here and go into town and nine of the people don't even know it exists, you know. Um, I mean they don't know that there's these little ships. Yeah, they don't they don't know, you know, they know the Everglades are here, in the air boats are here. You know. Obviously you guys come in and seeing the people at the at the law at the land we call it the landing. You know, you see people there watching the sunset, gators, you know, birds et cetera, w walking on the levies. But they don't really know all of what exists. You know, there is you know, you have some tour boats you know that come out and people do see it from that, you know, they'll ride them by, they'll see it, but they see it from a distance and don't really know the whole story of them and really what's gone down here. Um, it's like when Ryan takes you to see a plane wreck pretty much and they're like, what happened? I don't know when to heaven? Don't know? Yeah, I mean that's you know, but I can tell you to happen, you know, And that's kind of what the you know, a little special part of it about is out here is it's you know, having the select you know, the the opportunity to do it, you know, and have the camps and you know, it's something that's very small percent that actually come here and sit where we're sitting right now doing what we're doing. Yeah. I had talked to at Um, you know, are are one of our special guests here, Matt Cook, some months ago, and you always kind of like mentioned the camp in the Everglades and mentioned frog gigging. But I didn't really with all the respect, I didn't pay that much attention. I mean, he showed me a picture, but it didn't really like it didn't. I didn't have it. I didn't have a good frame of reference to picture it. So we land. We finally agree like, yes, this is something we should come down and check out. And we flew into Fort Lauderdale and it's not far, I mean very short, Like what's the drive from Fort Lauderdale to the launch minutes? So like, yeah, you'd be in a big airport right direct flight from the West coast, Uh yeah, direct flight from the Pacific Ocean landing Fort Lauderdale, and twenty minutes you had a boat launch. And the first impression I have coming out here is this is the only place I've ever been where people leave their trailer in the water. Like I'm telling you, I don't know, like it is customary around the country and I have explored it extensively to launch your boat and then and then drive your trailer up and park it somewhere on dry ground. Yeah, but pure people are like they back it down, dry their boat off, and they're like, you know, they're going away overnight. It's like, perfect, I'll just leave it right here, Just leap it right here, because this way it's ready for me when I come back. That's probably a function of the air boat, right, you can leave the hubs out of the water. Yeah, I mean obviously you want to leave your hubs out of the water, keep keep your barings in good shape. But um down here, you know the way we part you know, putting the boats in the water. You know that's in this area. A lot of the parts of the state where the air boat you actually dry launch your boat. You have to, you know, it's that's pretty red neck kicking reverse floor it smashed the break and dump the boat off the trail. You drop it off on the ground because there's not like a you know, we got a nice little incline where we can back in. You know other places that we air boat, we're legitimately drop on our boat in a field more or less, and that's what you got, you know, you just drop it off on the ground, drive off little airboat trail and go through the marsh. Yeah. So we get in and we take off in the air boats and uh, you guys don't run with you guys don't run with lights normally because the way the moon is, I don't know if it has to do with whether it's throwing moonlight or not. But like you get the whole swamp which is just black, but the creek or the drainages and the trails look like aluminum foil, like strips of aluminum foil and the light and you just run. You can see everything perfectly clear and there's nothing to hit rocks because there's no trees and no rocks. Yeah, there there is some trees. You gotta know where they're at. There are some there's some stumps. There's some willow stumps, willow beds, you know that kind of stuff. Went. We we've we've found them before. Yeah. And it's interesting about running the airboat too, is there's no prop Yeah, no underwater Yeah, no, your your prop is you know, it's an airplane engine, you know, with a prop up on top of the hall and you have a rudder and without basically the difference in a outboard boat something where you gotta skegg down your only power. You know, the way to turn it is with power. You know, you got a rudder that's direct and air. When you lift off the gas, then you have no you have no control. So that's why you notice when we're driving, we're on and off the gas. You know a lot, a lot, you know, and you can run stuff over without naming it. Yeah, because we would have killed if we had a problem in the water. Yeah there manate he friendly. Yeah, it's like just like skim right over like the alligators just kind of like moving under the boat. And it took me a minute because at first I'm used to, like when you hit something with a with a normal skiff or whatever, I'm used to that, you know, noise of the prop. Yeah, we're here. It's just like you just like grease right over everything. And you ride out here at the camp and the camps like up on pilings is what you guys call him. Yeah, yeah, and you just pull the airboat up and you guys put your seats on them way up high, so you're up looking I'm presuming right, so you can see over the grass. Right. Yeah, that's a you know, and like I said, you know, as far as like going back to like the culture of the airboating, that's a Southern Glades where we ride Everglades style because we like to be up high in the grasstyle. Yeah, you go up further up to the state and they'll you'll tend to see the boats down lower their center of gravity because you'll see more of like a ride boat was what we call, you know, we build more of a hunt style boat. Oh you know so because you guys are saying you run a palm beach style hole. Yeah, in the Everglades style seat. Yeah, it's well, it's all you know, it's a the palm beat style kind of goes back to, you know, in the Everglade. It's you know, going way back into the you know, early seventies sixties when guys were building them, getting in the hot, rotting them up, building you know, hunting boats. They built the brought the rigging up and then the hall itself is a palm beach style boat, you know, um, which is how the hall is designed with the round china you know, the boats actually round in the bottom, you know, where you have what they call like a sled style boat has more of a flat side, wider bottom, tends to do better with water, you know, shallower grass. Our boats, going back to the palm beach style hall that we're running, they tend to do better on the dry ground. And the thickers, you know, in the thicker stuff. You know, they designed to go where everybody else don't go. Yeah there, it's like a it's like a sled but best thing you can you know, compared as a sled boat too faster, like a hot rod style boat. Our boats more like a four wheel drive style boat. When did the airbords, like, do you know the history of air bolls, Like, when did airbors become a thing? M I mean, I couldn't tell you they you know, to the year, but I would say developing into what they are what we have now. Fifties sixties they started getting into you know, years ago they a four cylinder you know, airplane motor. They used to run them, no battery, gravity fed fuel tank. You know, they put the fuel tank up above the motor. And they never rent. They didn't run batteries, none of that, and they hand propped everything. You know. Then started in the old airplane days with yellow contact and yeah, you know, magneto hand profit and that's how they went, you know now, and then they started getting in I would say, in the your sixties, uh seventies, you really start getting popular into the six cylinder motors building, you know, fancying them up a little bit, uh you know, and now they're going all the way to ls you know, all aluminum ls car motors with superchargers and gear reduction and dude like hot rods. Now, yeah, fueling electronic fuel injection. You know, we're we're still we're we're it's starting to become considered old school the way our boats are built. And you're saying, there was a time when guys around here would run whatever kind of airboat, and then the boys from Palm Beach had roll into town and people are like, holy sh it, that's how you ought to make an airboat. Yeah, and that caught on, well the Palm the Palm Beach guys that style boat where like they were known as the you know what one of the sayings was it if you told guys from Palm Beach that there was deer on the moon. They would build a machine to get there. And that's just the way it was. That's that's the old saying about it. So there's arguments there. Now there's guys down south and the in the southern part of the Glades. I argued that the sled and you know, um there's other builders. I'm not going to mention them all because I don't want to start a war down here, but um, you know, we're biased to what we run. But they can you know, I'll take in show you what it'll do, and and they can bring what they got. And my gripe with them is the noise. I mean, it's so loud. You gotta wear a headset. And at first I'm thinking I would just get rid of this sum bitch and use a canoe. But then it realized the vastness of the landscape. Yeah, that it's just uh, I mean it is huge, like the area is huge. It's just it's just like it's kind of a way to get I mean, it really opens up a lot. Like I can definitely see it, man, I can hear it, but but I can I can see the appeal for sure. Because once we went out to look at the downed aircraft today you realize that it's just it just goes and goes and goes and goes, and it's kind of monotonous like that, I mean, like in that there's not a lot of like, uh, there's not a lot of features in some of the areas. And if it weren't for the airboat, trails would just be really hard to get around. Ye. Um, you know you do have change. You know, like this is an eastern you know, the eastern side of it. Um, you guys only seen a small percentage of you know, obviously when you go further west of us, you'll get into more cypress you know cypress swamps um that you know, actually when you go southwest of US, so actually get rockier. You know they years ago down there they actually used to wrap the you know, we have also when and you guys haven't, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but we put polymer on the bottom of our halls, you know, so it that helps protect Also it's slicker, it helps you run the ground better. Um. And down in the southwest towards Tamami Trail. Uh, you know big cypress area down in there they call like the loop and stairstep. You know, they were known to wrap stainless on the bottom and rivet that to their hall to help with protect with rock you know. Um, but Febry areas got their own little like features for the kind of fit whatever sort of. Yeah, there's a little niches out every place. You know, this this area doesn't have the you know, now you're going back years ago. If you went up to the northwest corner of our area, there would be more tree islands. As water levels have hired lowered changes. You know, the tree islands have you know, shrunk, you know, died off, that type of deal. But for the most part this area, you know, you ride around, you see the little wax myrtle, you know, you see the little myrtle bushes, some willow heads here and there. That's about the extent of it here. Um, as far as now there is there's a few cypress you know, if you go out west of here, there's a few low cypress heads and whatnot. But this area, yeah, a lot of sawgrass, you know what from the water surface. So the way these guys got the area. But rig it's like you're kind of like it's almost like riding a supercub where the driver is right in front of you, and the drivers is sitting in a single seat, like a single elevated seat up above the whole. And then behind that thing elevated seat, you've got like a little passenger area with two like a little love seat basically for two people. How high is that love seat from the water surface? My on my boat is it's about seventy inches from the surface, so you're about six ft up off the water surface. And how long is your frog? Gig? Okay, the way these guys gig frogs is like nothing I've ever seen before. Where you're out in an air boat and the air boat is running and you're just as much as you can creep along in the air boat, you're creeping along in the channels and trails headlamping for frogs, which you wouldn't think they do. They kind of stand out like a sore thumb when you hit a bullfrog with a with a flashlight, just like something about the shine on it and then the yellow throat. You can just see them. But from the elevated seat, you're just like sitting down holding the eleven foot that's a carbon fiber it's actually graphics a GRAPHI leven foot frog gig and you give them from the seat while moving. Yeah, because if you stop the boat, you send if it was ever been in the boat. In the boat stops, you send out what's called a bow wave. The bow wave spooks the frog, right I presumably Yeah, they feel that, you know, they feel the pressure of the way and they'll go down. So you can't slow the boat down enough to send out a bow wave. The spoot you have to like stay faster than your bow wave and just as you roll by. It's like watching in movies. It's like watching planes, warriors, lance people from horseback from horseback. Yeah, it's like medieval jousting with an eleven foot gig on the move hitting frogs. Which when I first saw you hit one while also driving, I thought, Um, that man just did something that's a possible, Yeah, but then learn that it's not. It's like something about it. It's like it was it's one of those rare things that's easier than it's actually easier than it looks. But when you first did it, I was like I just witnessed or I'm like, this guy is doing a really good job of acting like he's not shocked. He just hit that frog while in motion. And you guys, what do you guys call the basket you used to for your frogg a frog shoot? Explain that to people. So on the frog shoot on the airboat, it's you know, we this is this standard feature on the airboat. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're a serious frog gigger, you know, I mean some guys so like I said, some guys just come out, ride around, you know, hang out, and that's what they do. But we're we like to hunt and use them to you know, we're sportsman. We like to use them for obviously efficient what we've done. You guys use the term that I've never heard. Um, you use the term gladesman. A gladesman now like Chestpeake Bay, it's a waterman just like means like basically a dude that like does a lot of stuff around here outside. A dude that does a lot of stuff around here outside would be a glades No gladesman. You gotta do a lot of stuff in the everglades, you know, yea and ship I mean like yeah, like about right, yeah, I mean, if you you know the glades. When these guys that come out here and are you a gladesman or no? Yeah, I'm glades okay, Bryan, But you're also an offshore fisherman. I do everything, so you can be an offshore commercial fisherman and a gladesman. A gig, frog shoot, ducks, kill, gators. What else you want? Fish? Fish, swordfish? Um? Yeah, explain the frog shoot the frog shoot. Basically what I have is it's uh six inch round piece of aluminum. That's you know. They We have a guy that makes him. He cuts out a little v and he makes these themselves. Yeah. How many do you have any idea? How many he produces a pile of you know, quite a But we actually have an airboat store down here. You go buy all kinds of accessories, yeah, airboat accessories. And basically that shoot, that six inch shoot of aluminums. You know, it's six inches in circumference and then probably ten inches you know tall mounted vertically mounted vertically on the eye mount because I you know, you drop, I mean nine percent. Airboaters drive with their steering sticks on your left hand and your gig what your right hand, So you mount to get the shoot on the right front corner of your grass raak yeah, just so people get it looks it's about like a coffee can. Yeah, it's about like a coffee can mounted on brackets in the in the in the in the um bow starboard corner. Yeah, which is that that big the which we call grass rake. What goes the big you know kind of the ramp, Yeah, the ramp in front of the boat, and that helps push the grass down. Um So basically what the frog shoot does. It just increases your efficiency. You don't have to grab them by hand, pull them off or none of that. You just stick the gig in there. It goes into a little slot. You pull it back, and the frog drops down into a like a laundry bag as all as we use. Yeah, so like the mesh bag. So it's like a picture of coffee can and picture to someone cinched a sack around the cinched a mesh sack around the bottom of the coffee cant. So anything that falls into coffee can falls into the bag. And then there's a V notch. It's more complicated this, but there's a V notch. There's a V notch cut into the coffee can. So when you got a lanced frog, you drop the frog into the coffee can and the V notches where the gig. The spear falls down in that V notch and it enters like a little hole. And then you just tugged the spear and the frog into the sack and it's like a wink of the eye. And that's a part a lot of people don't like about frog gigging, is taking frogs off the gig. Yeah. It is slick, Yeah, and you guys can stack up hundreds of frogs a good night, you know, I mean, we'll do now and a good night. I'll come out two hours and you know, me and myself, I expect a gig, you know, hundred frogs and two hours. You know, that's a good you know, normal, I could come out two hours, don't burn a bunch of fuel, get my hundred go home. You know, if I really want to go get crazy. We have gone out and gone all night and you can get three four when the conditions, you know, when the water levels right. Yeah, because they like us that. You know, if there's a lot of rain, a lot of moving water, fresh water, we tend not to do as well when we get more stagnant water more. You know. That's why I kind of like the late winter months when we're not getting you know, we're in a kind of a dry season. The longer that water gets stagnant and stay, it just seems, you know, we get more and more frogs get out into the because as the water is dropping, you know, as you gotta understand as oh, they're getting pushed out of all the Yeah, they come out, they got a feed. They eat mennows, crawfish, bugs. But I noticed you guys kept saying that the were you saying the frogs are up or high? What are you saying? You guys got a term you use meaning like shiploads of frogs, But you'd say, what frogs are up? You know that's when we say they're up, that means you know, you're starting to see him. Okay, I didn't know if you meant that the population in general is up or you just mean they're available right now. That means like it's available right it's good frog, that's good. So what's happening is the as the water levels drop, they need to like areas that were once wet are now dry. Another thing I had no idea about that we talked about out frog gig and last night was the idea of a gator hole, the areas they exegate. Yeah, they'll go in. A gator, I'll go in and he'll wallow. You know, he'll wallow himself an area and he'll keep wallowing it until the point that a lot of times the you know, the roots from lily pads, you know, there's actually a route down there, and it'll break off and then the little mud clump will float up, you know, and he'll have a little hole in there, and then he'll you know, he'll live in that hole. That's his sanctuary. That's the territorial about those things. If you get a bull, you know, a mail gator. You know, I've seen a mail gator stay in a hole and you know until you either if it's hunting season and we kill him out of there, he'll stay in there and guard that area, you know, and because he you know, he's gonna that's his little sanctuary. Just like a white tail buck has his little home range. Gator is going to kind of do the same thing out you know, out here for the most part, I've noticed other parts of state where the gators are a little bit more nomadic, but here they'll hang tight. It has an interesting function too, because as he excavates that hole and the water levels drop, he's got a place to live. But may it collects fish. Yeah, that's it's it's it's pretty important for other wildlife and you know, fish, turtles. You know, as the water goes down, you got you gotta imagine you have six inches of water around and muck and then there's a four ft deep hole. You know, the fish that haven't made it to the canal, to the perimeter canals, and yet they'll go to that deeper water, you know, and that also provides that game. I mean, the way I look at gator, he ain't too stupid because he got him a perfect little spot. He's got a place to live and all the food has has a win win situation for him. If I opened the bar, I wouldn't do it around here. But if I opened the bar somewhere else, I would call it the gator hole. Is there a um? Is there a bar called the gator hole? Uh? Not to my knowledge, but that's you know, I wouldn't do it here because people would think you were trying. You know, people here would think you were right, like some outsider calling it a gator hole. It'd be like your opposer. But say you were up in somewhere else, some other part of the country. You started a bar called the Gator Hole. I drink there. Yeah, so we gigged frogs. Not another question about frogs, Um, and Ryan feel I'm gonna get to you hot and heavy, So you can sit this one out if you want, because we're gonna cover you up and down on the soule swordfish situation. But um, why do you get Not why because I understand now, But can you explain how you clean your frogs? So the way you do it is you'll take a knife. You're grabbing him by his legs, you know, kind of pinch his legs together so he's straightened out. And if you hold them, you'll see a little arc in their back, you know, were their bone arcs. And you take a knife, just slice it, you know, slicy skin, and then you stick your finger and that, you know, down in the little hole that you made, and you peel back, you know, peel all the way back. Pull is my om man taught me. And when out a little young and pull his pants off. Oh yeah, that's what we taught. We can squirrels and pull their pants and well, so what you do is you pull these pants off all the way down and then when you know, you pull the skin all the way down past his feet, and then you grab underneath his belly and you'll actually tear the belly. You know. If you do it that way, you can it keeps everything cleaner. You know, some guys and I used to do it. You know, I did a couple of different ways, but I've just cut the legs off and then do it. See that's how that's how I've always seen it done, and that's how we always do it. Well, I'll show you another way to do it. But if you you know the way I'm trying to explain, if you cut it, pull the pants down past his feet and then reach up in his belly and you can actually just pull you know, the little muscle and you know, around his belly and just pull them gut out and everything will be attached to his head and you just snap his head, you know, you just spin his head in a pop right off and you got a clean set of leg and you guys, leave the feet the fingers, yeah, attached to the leg. That's the best part. There's pros and cons but there's pros and cons. The pro being I'm with you. The little toes, the fried up toes are good. It's just like you equated it when you guys equated the fish fins catfish fins, right, Yeah, like when you fry a small blue gal or whatever and leave his tail on there. But appearance wise, I could see that some people might, some people who were sort of on the fence about frog eating might see the toes, especially a whole basketful of them, and and it would tip them in the air direction. Yeah, I mean, if I you know, I mean, if if we got some ladies around and there we want to eat fays, a lot of times we'll cut the feet off. You find ladies are less inclined to want the toes on there. Yeah, it looks like it looks like Freddy Krueger. It's like ugly brother. Yeah it does. That's a good way. Yeah, it's like a little a little basket of Freddy Krueger's little brother. After frog getting, we set out to do a little bow fishing. And I have if people, if like people were where I grew up bow fishermen where I grew up, would they wouldn't even know how, they wouldn't know how to begin comprehending the number and size of gar down here. It's unbelievable. We never even flung an arrow at a guard though. But like up here's here's what I'm trying to get to this. In most parts of the world, most parts of the country, bow fishermen are not generally shooting. This is I'm speaking generally. Both fisher were not generally shooting fish that are that good to eat, right, like the like people shoot a lot of common carps, Like common carps the main thing people go after, and of course, like common carp were introduced into this country into many waterways as a food source. Like people thought that as native fisheries collapse from over fishing and habitat destruction, like well, here's this very durable for coun to fish that gets big people eat it will sort of replace the fisheries that we ruined with cart and then it would be happy. But carp have never even though you know they raise them and eat them in Asia, they're just not popular here. So where I grew up, people fished carp, both fish for carp and would often just discard the fish because now they're considered like a deleterious non native, and people want to see, would like to see it's never gonna happen, would like to get rid of the cart. But the one fish that's sort of like has like a fairly good reputation is uh long nose gar you guys have. These are long nos. But but the scars shape like footballs. Yeah, they're fat. Yeah, like I'm used to guards that look like cars. Yeah, well they're feeding good unbelievable. It's like Yanni said, it's like a football with a with a swordfishes nose coming out of huge cars. But you guys don't mess with them, you know, we don't. We don't, you know, we don't really mess with them. So you know, guys that like to eat them, I mean I've heard of god, you know, certain people. What they'll do with them is like you know, they'll actually like scale them and then boil the meat out of them, and they'll make like a patty out, you know, put some onion pepper and you know, make all us like a little patty balls. Yeah, I mean, but we don't, you know, we haven't messed with them. And you guys have so much other stuff to eat, yeah, I'd rather eat a frog when I've done them. Like you take like you take tin snips if you were maybe you never try to. You take tin snips and just cut up the back all the way up the bag, and then you cut so you got like you picture the whole guard laid out like like your arm right, and you cut a big long strip up what would be like his dorsal fin, the whole length of the fish. And then you snip the ends of that long strip and just peel the top part away, peel the hide off to the right and off to the left, and just remove the backstraps, which is where all the meat is on a car. And you've got these big long cigars of meat, and people will make guard balls out of those or you just you just chunk them up and fry them. It's not that bad, but that was the that was like in in Michigan, that's like the best fish that you're allowed to shoot with the boat will be a guard. But here you can bow fish for fish that people buy in restaurants. You got telapia. And then we also have in some of our canals which we you know last night where we were both fishing, we I mean there's we've seen a few, but not many, um and a lot of are more of the urban canals. They'll have bull's eye snakehead, which is you know, actually becoming highly targeted fishery. You know a lot of guys are you know, they're big into catching them rotting real but we actually got into shooting them, which Matt's been with us on that, and we've had some you know, incredible snakeheads shoots. I mean, you know, load the box tilapia snakeheads and and they get pretty sizeable. You know, it looks like a little mini Kobe is what I always say that kind of like, yeah, what is a big snakehead? Nine eight nine pounds? You know, and they'll get you know, two and a half three ft long. And the big tilapia is what too, yeah to to you know, like the you know a couple of you would kill last night. Those are pretty sizeable fish. Yeah, you know, they're like really substantial, And it's just weird to be able to shooting that weird because I mean I've done it in South America, but um where you can shoot like great table fair fish. Yeah, So to be able to go out and both fish for tilapia, even though tilapia or you know, non native but none native fish, you know how long they've been in these waters. Flap Um, I've seen him around since I was a kid, here for quite a while. And they dig a nest, like I'm trying to think the closest example that, like most guys would know, picture like a bluegill nest, a bluegill bed, but they dig it where it's it's almost deeper than it is wide. Yeah, it's like a ball, like a crater. Craters. They dig a crater and guard that crater. But the problem for bow fishing is a lot of those craters. Like there's a when you're trying to hit fish with the boat, you're like dealing with refraction. I'm not telling you this, I'm just telling like Joe blow listener that you're dealing with refraction. Like if you ever stuck a stick in the water, right, the stick looks curved. So when you're aiming at a fish, you don't aim at the fish. You aim way, You aim below, and generally you don't aim low enough. It gets worse and worse and worse the deeper deeper you go. So these craters are four ft down, three ft down, four feet out, and it gets to be very hard to hit the fish down there because the aral slows down so bad, you know. Yeah, and then the thing's too deep. But we caught some up in the shallows where they're just a few inches under the surface, and we caught them slipping, and then you wind up with like, you know, one and a half two pound fish that's like a restaurant like a restaurant grade fish. Yep. Yeah. People are buying them in the every day, you know, down here. You go into public's are you know, local supermarkets that are down here, and they sell them all, you know, probably one of the most popular fish people going by, you know, every day. So is it unusual that we didn't see anyone bow fishing last night? Uh? No, you don't see a whole lot. You know. It's it's not you know, down here in South Florida. Yeah, I mean there's guys that do it, you know, there's a handful of guys. I know a few, but it hasn't really taken off to the point that you when you go out that you actually see other people. You know, I've been doing it now for I don't know, what's what we've been doing seven eight years because actually Matt, you know, I hadn't really gotten into it until Matt came down and we he we funny stories. We were out fishing. We were snakehead fishing is what we were doing. And Matt had brought some bows and he'd come up with the idea and I said, O, well, I know a place where I know there's fish there, we go do it. We went out that night and I mean we you know, they shot till their fingers were so you know, it was just that the first night we did it was you know, we kind of found a little canal and they hadn't been fished, you know, both fish before, so it was just you know, as fast as you can shoot, as fast as they can get arrows back on there, and you know, and then from there he was the one who kind of really got me into it. I've always, you know, been had interest and it messed around a little bit, but it wasn't like go out and do it. And then he got me into it and I started Ryan and I buddies of ours. I mean, we started it was a great time to go, you know, summertime. You know, we all we liked the deer hun bow hunt, and it was a great time to go past time in the summer, and we started out there. We've got some beer and go out, get on the john boat and go bow fishing. And I mean we were doing it all the time, you know. So I think I feel like it would be like a I probably should be saying this, but I feel it'd be like a bow fishing destination place. Well because there's endless water. Yeah, I think the logistics are complicated to in some of the areas. I mean it's not there's not a lot of places are not necessarily the best places are near a bowt launch, like we went last night off the air boat. You know that's uh, you know it's tricky to get over there. So I think that can't be underestimated. Some of it's tricky. I can interrupt you. I want you to ask yourself, Um, is my microphone really just two fingers off my upper lip? It is exactly two fingers. I've been admiring it. What he's saying, gears might be just a little far. But see the thing is that Matt he's got he sounds good. Are you saying I have fat fingers, it's placed. I think your ear is farther away from your mouth. That's absolutely possible. Is that better? A little closer? Little closer? Okay, now we're one and a half fingers, okay. Uh. Logistics, it's complicated down here, you know, with the camps obviously the only uh, it's only accessible by the airboat. And so between that and getting into the canals when the water level and we'll talk a little bit on the water level changes quite a bit here, so you really got to know the area. I have a local that can kind of put you on the right spots. And that's how Josh and I came together around both fishing down here. Do you just rolled in cold here? It would be a tough It would be a tough it'd be tough years homet rolled in cold would be years for what. Just kind of figure it out. We figure everything out, both fishing. I disagree, because both fishes, both fishing. If you've got a good bow fishing boat and you got all these canals, any anyone's gonna find the canals. That's true, I guess. I guess they are in the canals really more than like out in the grass where we've been running right. Oh, yeah, that would be that would be difficult for people to figure out. But to go hunt the big primary big canals. Yeah, you cat you cat pretty much down here. If you've got any freshwater canal, you know that. And that is what's you know, kind of gold about it is you can in South Florida if it's public water, you've got a public boat ramp and any of these canals you can go put in and you're gonna see fish that you can you know, non you know, obviously it's gotta be a non game fish. So you can't shoot large mouth. They got no bass um, you know, no bluegills, that kind of you know, you can shoot catfish. Uh, you know you got down here, if you know, if you've got gotta say, you get a little bit east of here, you go to some of the you know where you guys drove in down that road that canal that there, you can go in there and shoot tilapia, uh, and snakeheads and oscar oscars and which is the native fish? Um, isn't it? I don't think an oscar as native, So that's another native. The snakeheads are introduced. You have snakehead introduced non native, the oscars. That's some kind of crazy South American seclet or something. And then you have a miyon cycling. And then we also have peacock bass, which the can you shoot those? See the state games? What's crazy? As the state has actually got a tougher regulation, like if you were to go fishing rod and reel, you gonna keep two peacock backs even though they're not native and they're non native, but you can you can kill five largemouth bass. So that's how they you know, you know, I guess it's kind of a that's pretty that's interesting. What's uh? You know, obviously a peacock basses in the cicklid family, you know, a cycling and mine cyclid peacock pass over. So you can't go shoot a peacock bass. It's considered a game fish here. I'd like to hear the logic on that. Besides, the people really like them, and have you ever eaten one of those? It's a good fish. Man. When we were down we're in South America, they have a smaller that they have peacock bass, but they're not like the giants like they'd be like four or five pounds and man, they grilled some of the olds one time, and unbelievably good fish, like one of the best, like almost as good as like snook, you know, like a very good fish. I got a pretty good story on a peacock pass please. So when I was a little little guy, we used to live on Sea fourteen, which is in in town here in Margate, Florida. And my dad's an avin, you know, I grew up. My dad's a gladesman airboat or that's who I've learned everything. He's you know, everything I've known. And he was an avid bass fisherman. When he was fishing sea forts, falling off bat large mouth large mouth baths, you know. So he was in Sea fourteen, which is pretty good for peacock bass fish, and he catches like a close seven pound peacock, which is it's a canal canal system. It's also explosive. Yeah, so he four he catches this you know, trophy peacock, you know, seven pound class. And I actually growing up, we had a nanny and she was from South America, and my dad had put the fish and he was taxing. My dad was a taxinger at one time, so he'd put the fish in the freezer and was keeping it that he want to get a mounted. And I come home from school and I'm something. I mean just the smell of the house. I'm like, man's you know, because she's cooking fish or something to night. And I walk in there and look in the pot and there's this peacock baths in there. It's boiling. My dad ain't home yet, and I'm looking in there. I'm like, her name is Vera Severa. Where did you get that fish? I was in the freezer. I said, Oh, this ain't gonna go good. Needless to say, she know she wont her nanny no more? After that, Oh no, she's lost. Hey, you know it's a trophy. Is a trophy? Yeah she she? We were uh uh, none of us. We all went out. I think we went to Checkers at night because it was pretty gnarly. Look yeah, um, have you Okay, We're always hearing about snakehead because snakeheads keep turning up in new locations because like it's a it's a fish. People buy it for their aquariums. Um. I think that's like tightly regulated now or more regulated than it was. People buy snakeheads for their aquariums. The snakeheads get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. They're hard to feed, hard to take care of. They outpaced the size of their tank, and people decided to get rid of them. So they keep popping up in new places. Um Like, if you follow, if you like read about wildlife news, you'll always be reading stories about some new drainage that that people have found snakeheads. And but then when you go talk to people who are in a snakehead area, doesn't seem like it's very often that they're like that they reached like the levels that Karp have reached. Like do you see is it still kind of rarity or do you ever see places where it's just nothing but snakeheads when they get into which we have a bull's eye snakehead and you know they're Asia from Asia, and when they get into uh, um, you know, I used to work on a golf course and at you know, earlier years great bass fishing and whatnot, and we started, you know, caught one on top water plug and you know, when I first seen it, I'm like the hexas thing, I don't you know, start figuring it out. And once we've seen the first one, it just from there it exploded and then you know, and like I said before, it's like gotten to like this crazy little colt that goes in chases east things. They love fishing for them, and you know that which it was in Coral Springsford just west or just east to here. I'm sorry, but the that's when they show up. They're so aggressive, you know, I would say, like peacock we used to complain about, we don't. I don't necessarily I'm not fond of the peacock bass because they get into a bat I'm a large mouth bass guy, and when a peacock gets in there there, you know, twice at least twice as aggressive as our large mouth and well they'll hammer the bait fish, you know, so that kind of you know little you know, they can't a large amounth just can't compete with a peacock is as far as aggressiveness, and the bowl's eye snake, as I'll say, is, is even more aggressive. You know, great fish to catch, I mean some of the most explosive top water. You know, it's need a bottoms. You gotta fish. You fish like a frog bait and fish it as close to the bank as you could possibly get it without touching the bank, and that's how they'll eat it. And you know, so once you see it, once they showed up, I mean they've exploded. And once they get into a lake or canal system, it's almost like they'll overrun it. You know, So you do see that happen, because that's certainly like the story you hear, but I haven't heard. But I haven't heard a lot of cases where people had like seen it reach those proportions. Yeah, you have the have a thought, Johnnie. Oh, it's just interesting that we were in Maryland this fall and on this coast but still a long way from here, and they were into catching snake heads up there and he a guy, we met a guy I don't want to say his name. You don't know his name. I know where he goes by. Oh that's right, you just have VIC signed on the side of his truck. He told us what he goes by. He told us they called me the whisperer, the X whisperer. So he gets telling us how listen, this is like only layers of like, no, you know what we Okay, we heard it from a man who supposedly witnessed it. He knew some guys who were doing Are you familiar with selling glass eels? So, do you guys have the American eel around here? Do you have a freshwater eel? Freshwater that's called the American eel. Now, American eels, like a salmon, is a nadrumus, meaning it goes from the ocean and runs up a river to spawn. That's an anadromous fish. The American eel is catagronous. It goes from the rivers out into the ocean to spawn. There's not a lot of fish to do that. American eels go all the way to the Sargasso Sea and they congregate and spawn in the Sargasso Sea, and then they where's that awful like like out off from the Caribbean, very deep area, like like a very deep area of the ocean. It's kind of without looking at the map, it's hard to explain. But if you shot from here, if you shot from here kind of like through the Caribbean off that away, it's like where everything gets deep. Basically, everything that drifts down down down winds up in this place called the Sargasso Sea. Eels, all the eels and all these rivers concrete there and spawn, and then they have a larva that just free floats, and eventually it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and when they go back into the rivers and start going up, they're called I think that at that point they call the glass eel. And eels are very popular in Asian restaurants. So if you go to a sushi joint, here your eyes eating eel unagi, which is smoked eel. Now, aquaculture, they can raise the eels in aquaculture facilities, but you can't successfully spawn the eels out there. You need to start with a wild caught They need to start with wild caught glass eels or wild caught juvenile eels. So does a market for these wild called juvenile eels, which people net up and sell for shiploads of money, and a lot of people poach them, and then they go into these aquaculture facilities and you can raise the eels up. So this dude's telling us that he knew a dude who was in the business of of marketing and raising eels, and one day he looks in this guy's eel tank. This is the dude telling me and Yanni this at a gun range. Remember this he says. He peers down into the eel tank and lo and behold, it's not eels, and he says, the hell is that? He goes, oh, that's a fish called a snake head. I'm I've been raised this. The guy tells us, I've been raising them and letting them go. Why would you do that? And he says well, and he kind of walks through. This is a waterman in Chesapeake Bay, and he walks through his family's history with fisheries that have collapsed and become overregulated. So he's like, we used to be able to catch X blue crabs, Now we're screwed. Then we used to be able to do X with clams, Now we're screwed. We used to do this, now we're screwed. Here's one fish that no one's ever gonna tell me not to catch as many as I want. And that's where he in this waterway. That's where this feller claimed that that was how this is happening. It wasn't from the aquarium trade, It wasn't from people throwing out ones. He's two as he's here and there, that it was a concerted effort on behalf of some gentleman to um introduce it. Yeah, because and it already does. There's it already has commercial outlets and commercial value because the feller we met actually sells the things to a restaurant. Is it under that name? At restaurants? Yeah, and I don't want to name who. See this is this story starts to make its own gravy because yeah, so it started to get a guy started selling it, and he got really good reviews and like the hot ticket item, and now this guy can't get enough of it and he's buying it for seven bucks a pound, isn't he It was something like that. It was high. Yeah, seven bucks a pound. So that's what got this. So that's what that's what this guy says is driving this whole snake head thing. Now, this could just be like a crazy guy at a gun club, which there are plenty of, or it could be like the real dope. But Ryan, you're right up in town. You're gonna be the hot he did tell us. I want to I want to finish on that, he did tell us, and would be interesting to try, especially since we've been talking a little bit about live Maite this last couple of days. But he was saying that a thing not to do rolling into a spot where you know there was a few and just start chalking a lure or two in, but just pitch out a handful and get a little friendzy going. And then he said, he said, you can just sit there and fish every single one out of the hole. Yeah, so start like the Sargasso. See I'm looking at a it would be it's eastern, it's western edge would be due east of here, but like beyond the Bahamas. It's Yeah, it's just like apparently like as things go down, like eels go down down, now down, down now down, they eventually wind up like in the deep spot, and then they FreeCast this larva which binds his way all up and down the and these eels are having wide distribution. But back to you, Now, this is something that had listened. I knew all about shooting fish with bowls. I knew all about all this kind of stuff, but I had no idea until I came down here. Until last night, I was unaware of the type of sword fish fishing that you do. Can you explain, Ryan, Can you explain commercial sword fishing how it's practiced here. We'll start by saying how it's practice north of here. North of here the long line, which they'll set anywhere from a long line and berries on how many hooks they want to fish or whatever they I mean, I know some of them they're fishing up to thousand hooks or something like that. Farther north of there, they harpoon them. I guess it's up in Nova Scotia or something like that where they actually get on the surface and they have you know, spotted planes and towers on the boats and big pulpits and they actually go out and that's how they cop them. Just yeah, I've talked the guys who've done that with spotder planes, like harpooning, like this is up in Montauk Fence too. But then there's a line south of which you can't long line. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the line. It's like two hundred miles east of Port Canaveral. You gotta be north of that and so so many miles east and you could long one. But once you get south of there you can hand gear fish. So you basically you got a buoy with a strobe light. Hold up, because here's the other part of this I need you to explain. Um sword fish are down in the daytime at what depth. I mean, they could be anywhere from as long as it's dark, I guess seven hundred feet of water and all the way out to I don't know to three thousand feet. Are you fish them around? You know, anywhere from dshing them in the daytime the daytime, but at night they must just spiral. They spiral upward and come up to the surface. Something that's happened the generator. I think you know what that noise was. Uh sorry, But at nighttime they must just spiral upward and come up how close to the surface. I mean we've seen him on the surface, but most of this stuff we're fishing around hundred two ft of water. So explain your your commercial swordfish gear. Basically you got it. They call it a jat ball, which is just a hard plastic ball with a ten pound lead on the bottom so it keeps it upright. Then it's got a stem that's probably I don't know, about a foot and a half long, and then it's got a strobe light that takes two deep batteries and he put that on the top. So so it's a bootie with a like a like yeah, like I said, like a booby with a strobe light sticking up out of it right, so you can see it at night. And then normally you put another light on there in case of stroke light breaks or you know, just easier to see it. And then from the booty you'll have I use like a hundred and fifty ft of they call it um tar line, which is basically like a just a cheap kind of rope that goes to a longline clip which is basically some kind of a swivel, and then you put a leader which is about a hundred ft. Then in between there you got another swivel and I clipped my light onto there asn't attracted, yeah, And then you can fish, you know, any kind of bait you want. I like using a lot of squids or mackerel Spanish macro, Boston macerel, tanker mackerel, something like that. And then you go out and basically you're jug fishing. You go out and start throwing these booties overboard, and they're not connected to each other, so if you can't find one, she's probably gone, like gone gone. Yeah, if your lights break or whatever. Sometimes we've had some of the leads get ripped out of the balls and the you know, ball flip upside down and you know you'll never find them again, got you? But you go out and set how many of these? How many? Like so you're driving out to fift hundred feet of water, we go a little deeper because we'll set from the east to the west, so be anywhere from two thousand then set all the way in to about nine ft. Maybe it depends on the current. Sometimes the current pushes to it always pushed you north, but sometimes they'll push you, you know, east or west? And how many of the how many of the of the booties you throw out with the hooks on them? I fish thirty two thirty two rigs stretched out over what distance? It's probably close to five miles. Why so far apart? I mean they're really only about a tenth of a mile up, aren't So you got I don't know, covering more water. So when you okay, this is like, so you start out your your furthest one is twenty miles off shore and your closest one to shore is fifteen miles off shore. And between those two points you have strong out thirty two booies with line, a leader in bait and a jay hook on the end. And they got lights on top. When you're at any particular buoy, can you look and see the booty's in either direction? If you're in the middle, you can almost see your inside. If you're on that now you can't really see at all, but you can usually see whatever one's next, right, okay, Yeah, I mean you could see probably ten or fifteen in a row something like that. Oh okay, So you're seeing like a considerable distance. It depends on if it's calm or not too you know, if there's if they're you know, the moon's full, you can't really see as many as far. You know, you might only see a few. But and you set this rig out there, or this big collection of rigs, you set it out there after dark. Yeah, we'll start like right at sunset. You know, it takes about hour hour and a half to get them all on the water. And then you're drifting at what speed it varies in the gulf streaming. Some nights you'll have you know, two knots of todd Some nights you know the title will be rage and will be you know, four or five knots almost. I mean that's fast. But I've seen it, And are you just cruising up and down keeping an eye on all the booties. Yeah, yeah, you gotta. Normally we'll go and throw all the booties, hang out, eat a sandwich, and then we'll kind of start going out to the end. Whatever fish we got, we'll catch them, throw them in the boat, clean them, and then pack them with ice, and then we'll go out and start checking them from the outside end. So how do you what tells you when one of these booties hits a fish? They'll go east west, um north outh. I mean most of them somewhat. They will kind of have a line, you know, definitely have different currents where stuff just goes everywhere. And so so you're you knowing that the swordfishes hit one of them is not based on that it's bobbing, but just that it's traveling in a weird direction. Or you'll pull up to them, they'll be half you know, BULLI will be halfway underwater. You'll see it spinning like sometimes you know, you'll fish on there that are dead and they're not really pulling, so you won't see like a wake behind it, and buy you'll just kind of sit there and spin real slow as you're driving past it. And then you don't know, like there's something on there, and what's a big swordfish and what's a small swordfish? Oh, I mean I caught one the other night. I don't think it weighed five pounds. Well that you find them that small, yeah, I mean not often. That was the smallest one I've ever seen. Yeah, it was tiny. And at night do the sharks tear the swordfish up? Is it not as bad at night? Yeah? I've had it happen coupled maybe five or six times, but not too not too often. It's not as bad as it be in the daylight. Yeah, I've never had one really messed with in the daytime. So here's it's not that much of an issue now because you're talking about fishing yellow fin that they'll sometimes you'll lose fish to sharks. Oh yeah, those sharks are on the elephants and they got like a feeding frenzy going, and those tunas they'll pull off so much line. You're pumping them up and they're kind of a circle, like you know, spiraling up real slow, and them sharks will get on real bad. Got you, But they don't hit the sword fish that bad, not too much. And like, what's it so when you're out doing commercial sword fishing like this, what is like, what's what's a bad night and what's a good night? Bad nights obviously when you catch nothing, so that can happen, it's happened, I mean good night. You catch anything over five, it's good. I mean you catch over a thousand, it's real good. But you're talking dressed weight, all dressed out. Yeah, can you can you explain to people like how you dress the swordfish? Basically they're gutted. All the fins come off, the head comes off, and then they're gutted and every you know, heart, everything, everything on the inside comes out. And then there's a bloodline that goes from all the way to the head, all the way to as far back as like the gut cavity goes. You just take a knife and run it down there. Then there's a little bloodline. You can kind of stick your finger and pop that up. He's a little wire brush and just clean it out and then pack it and crushed ice. Yeah, just pack it with ice. And like what's the so when you talk about the weight that you're selling, you're talking about that weight. Yeah, what you could hit a word for what you call those things we call them, just say it's cord out, cord out, and you fill your coolers up, and you're not like in what would strike people as a commercial vessel. I mean you're like you're seven basically like a sport fishing boat, like a twenty seven ft sport fishing boat, right, Yeah, because I fish tournaments and I charter fish. I mean it's kind of like a you know, do all everything kind of. But but you can pack a thousand pounds of cord out, a thousand pounds of swordfish core on a boat and that's a good night out. That's a real good night. Yeah, Like the other night we caught pounds. I mean we had all fish packed there. Anywhere you can have a box and ice in it, we had fish in it. And then that's a really good night. That's the best night I ever had. And then you take them in and how do you sell them? Basically just pull up out of the fish market. Obviously, I'll leave all the fish in my boat. Makes a lot easier. You ain't got to touch them two three times. But you pull up here, you pull your boat out of the water and put it on a trailer, and I'll just drive it over the fish market and then um, and you know the price before you go out and do this. No, sometimes you get screwed a little bit. But I mean, if you've got a lot of fish, there's it's hard to get rid of him other places, or you don't have a wholesale retail license or whatever. So I just saw them my fish at the same spot. Makes it easy to drop them off when you're done, and there's you don't have a contract about what the price is going to be. No, basically you go in, you you pull all the fish out of her boat and then you know, they got like a little scale or whatever, it's a big scale. They go and they put the fish on there. They'll cut the tail, see if it's got color or whatever, and check the bloodline and then they'll grade it. What do you mean, what Steven's got color? Um, Well, you have some fish that will be like like a white fish, which obviously that's kind of like a little bit lesser per pound. Oh, the white are less the more they call it peach or you know, they'll say light peach, peach, orange orange obviously being the best whatever it because they eate those world red shrimpoint that fish we caught today and it dies the flesh that color so different makes for a fattier fish. And that's why maybe it's more expensive when the color is in it. I don't know. I think it's more of like a sweeter taste or something. I mean, you don't really see too much fat, not like a tuna, you know how you have like fat content in the meat or there is, and you just can't really see it. I mean, I don't really know what they all look for for that, but but it's just the guy's judgment call when he's buying your fish. Yeah, and he grades every fish, especially like on the skin color. If you throw a harpoon through the side, you know, because you're dead ruin some kind of meat right there because you put a hole in it. Then the harpoon turned sideways. Yeah, we should probably back up and talk about that because we didn't. I meant to cover that a little bit. So your your cruise long and here's a booty booking off in some weird direction. What do you do? Just pull up on the ball and you'll have a basket of rope with a clip on it, and you'll clip actually clip the basket onto the line and pull the booty off. So that basically so to get the booty out of the way. Yeah, that's basically like you're rotten reil because you're hand fishing. You know, everything's with your hands. So that's basically like your real and your extra line. You know, fish wants to take line, and that's kind of how that works. So first thing, it's ditched the buoy and get the whole thing attached to another long line. Right, that's a thick enough rope to handle. Yeah, it's pretty much the same. It's the same as um what the dry we call it a drop, you know, the tar line that comes off the ball. It's just a giant basket of that. So then you got them and you start to try to jack them up pulling them, and they put up a tussle when you start pulling on them. Yeah, I mean sometimes you know, you can't get around to them fast enough and they're dead. I mean we've pulled up and two pounders dead. And it's makes it real nice and easy because he just i mean, he hasn't been dead that long. No, I mean, just you know, sometimes I mean, you you know, you hook them kind of deep or whatever. You know, sometimes they get wrapped up, you know, tail hooked, and you know they do die, but he's still marketable because it's only been so long. Yeah, I got you. So the ones that are still frisky, you bring them up and then gaff them or harpoon them, depending on his temperament and size. Yeah, I mean, if it's a big fish, I mean most of all the big fish with harpoon them just it's kind of like an insurance thing, you know, and try to hit him up in the head. Yeah, you try. I mean, fit's a big fish, you try to get it wherever you can, just for insurance or if you know. Sometimes fish will be swimming around the boat and never ate anything, and sometimes you get an opportunity to you know, throw a harpoon out a free swimmer. I mean, so you'll just be looking in the light and you'll see swordfish for whatever reason. What are they drawn to the light? H I think it's more you know, you'll have other fish on you know, you'll sometimes you'll have a swim all er fish and a bigger fish, or you got a bigger fish on the line, you'll have a little bit smaller fish with them, you know, because it's like a male female thing. You know, normally it's a bigger fish as your female than your smaller fish is the male. So you'll just all of a sudden realize here's a sword for swimming by, and you'll grab your harpoon and stick them with the harpoon sometimes when you get lucky. Yeah, Like how often does that happen? A few times a year? Not all the time, but it happens, and you're throwing the harpoon or jabbing it. If they're close enough, you can just jab them. I mean, if they're a little deeper far or whatever, you know, you just throw it and just see if you can get them. And you got another basket with I mean I got like a thousand foot or open a basket too. Just yeah, because then he's not played out at all. He's just gonna run. Yeah, depends where you hit him with me. If you hit him kind of far back or something like that, you know you're gonna they'll be pulling on him for a while, and events you drag them up and then you put a gap in the drag more the side of the boat. Then we picked up all the cleaning. So to move us back into the future where we belong. You go down. This fish guy comes in and takes each fish and says like he wants to judge the color on it general condition, and then what does he do? Then they just they have a giant floor basically, and it's just actually it's kind of like um plastic pallets and they have all you know, laid out and then they just stack fish on there where there's ice under them, and they you know, covering with ice. They put like a you know, whatever your boat name is. They have like a little tag on a number for however much the fish wade. You know, they're calling and trying to sell the fish, and they'll go in there, pick it and put ice in a box and ship it offered. And they're selling fish at the same time. Yeah, like the other night that we're we're catching fish and we had a couple of nice fish that you know, they're pumpkin and they're puking colored. Yeah, and I mean most people want those, so they sell real quick for you know, a little more money. They were already taking and pack them in boxes getting random ship and we ain't even off float all our fish yet. So it's that fast turnaround sometimes and then he he rates every fish, weighs every fish, and then you just get he just cut you a check. Yeah in like two weeks. Oh yeah, that's only catch, so you don't have a fift pound night and then just go out and just walk out of there in the check in your pocket, which is make it seem kind of nice. Now, normally it's like a week and by the time they you know, put it in the mail, you got it normally in about two weeks. So how much will the price fluctuate from day to day? Like, is it moving all the time? Is like most commodity trading where it's just like up and down, up and down most less swords, I mean, it's kind of it stays pretty level around like September over, I mean it gets a little low. I mean then uh, And you're saying when the guys start harpooning in the North, it drives the price dead, drives the price down huge. And plus I know there's a bunch of long line boats fishing up there too, like on the Grand Banks or whatever. I mean, they're catching a lot of fish too. So now that like this winter time in the North, your prices are good, there's not a lot of fish coming out of the north. Yeah. Normally right around like Thanksgiving time, the price goes back to like normal, or you know, depending on the weather, if it's been rough for a long time, you know wherever, then they'll you know, the price goes up a little higher. I forget whatever that holiday is where everybody eats fish, lent or something like that. Like that fish just goes through the roof around that, does it. Yeah, So if you got fish, I mean definitely making some extra money off them. There's enough people observing lent to drive up sword fish prices. I mean, all fish, every fish, any whatever is fighting at that time. Fish prices just go through the roof. And this is some of the you're saying today, this is some of the best sword fishing you've ever seen right now, Yeah, the last couple of weeks, perhaps because the weather up north, let's push fish down. So today we went out, So we go out to fish today. That's what you're doing at night when you're out commercial fishing. And we went out today and went out to about ft of water and explain the rig we fish today, like how like how you rigged up and how we fished it. Basic fish electric rail. It's called an LP that's just it's an LPs twelve dred that's the type of electric rail. It is loaded with fet ds. I'm sorry. Yards of pound breaks, which is a shipload of money worth a braided line. Yeah, it's a couple hundred bucks. And then um, from there, whatever kind of rodded. Some people like a long road, some people like one, some like stuffed soft. I mean it's whatever they like. But um, you got a rod, you got the sixty five pound tests. Do like a little bamny twist, which is the knot makes a loop, and then you put a wind on leader. Use the knots called a cat's ball. And when you say the wind on it used to be like a big long lead, it's a hundred foot lead, right yeah, but there's no swevel from your braided line to your wind on leader. So you'll tie a beaminy twist and at that wind on leader, I'll have a loop and the knot you tie it's called cat's paw. And then uh, why do you not want? Oh, you don't want because you need to be able to reel the whole kind of come on the rail. I got you, I got you, and uh, so wind on leader means you don't need to stop at a big barrel swivel. You gotta stop. You gotta stop at the lead, Yeah, and pull and pull the lead off and basically from that not it's whatever three or four ft and then you gotta um use wax line, make a little loop on there to put your leg, which you use a longline clip, and whatever pound moon that you want to use. Yeah, and you got a ten pound lead, and from that ten pound lead, it's like in simple terms, it's like you got the reel in the rod and then you got sixty five pound test braided line down to ten pounds of lead and then one feet of leader. Yeah, I think it's about one fifty as what was on there today. And then the bait it's a it's a standard. It's like a j hook with a skirt and then piece of bonito on it. Yeah, it's just like a they call like a Panama strip. It's kind of what kind of Patos cut cut as you know. Sometimes you'll say a belly strap. Some people say some people actually just cut a strip, but that's called a Panama strap. Got you and you're sending this thing downet down because you wanted like a hundred feet off the bottom, because you got a hundred leader, The leads a hundred fifty ft off the bottom. Right, the leads a hundred fifty ft. I'd imagine your hooks. You know where you're bait is. It's a little under it. It's a picture like these guys want this rig to lay out flat. You can't just like open the bail on the reel and send the whole thing down. It's gonna be a mess, yeah, because the lead is gonna be leading the way, and the whole leader is just gonna spiral around the main line and be screwed. So they lay the rig, They lay the leader out, get the lead in the water, and then motor and run. Meanwhile, the leads fallen, but they're driving away from the lead until they get the right amount of line out. Then you swing the boat around and come back at the point you started at so that that whole thing falls smooth and doesn't get all wrapped up. And then there you are five football fields of line out dangling around somewhere down at the bottom of the ocean. Right, and the swordfish hits and it looks like there's a bluegill messing with it. Yeah, today them things barely even tapped it. Like you can't. You would think, so how big was the biggest we had a We had an eighty five pound swordfish. Yeah, we had one und Ay five and other and like you would think that thing would take that thing out of the rod holder. But we're staring at it. You guys are staring at it debating whether there was a hit or not. It is just like, like so much gets lost in that amount of line, even though braid is so like sensitive and like like transmits signals so well. I always think like like if we're jigging hallibut two hundred fifty ft of water, you can take a you can take a twelve bounce lead ball and hit the bottom. I can tell you what the bottoms like, rocky soft, right, It's like it transmitts, it transmits that well. But when you get that much line out, it's an eighty five pound fish down there hitting a bait the most way half a pound and it's barely registers on that rod. Yeah, that's a pretty stiff rod too. I mean if you use a little something a little bit lighter, I mean you'll see a little more of it, like a tip bounce or something, you know, I like a little bit you know, longer, heavier rod okay, And then when that thing hits you don't take it out of the rod holder. No, you throw the switch and it takes about what how many minutes? I don't know, probably about ten minutes or so. That man, ten twelve minutes, twenty minutes. That long, that's what it is, because like you're fift of water, but there's like some scope and belly, like there's some scope in the line or some belly in the line. So the read out on that real says yeah, and you gotta sit there and watch that thing count down. That's what takes for so long. If you just look away, eventually it would come along quicker. I would like, do look, and they'd be like sevent d feet look and then a while later, but then pretty soon it gets like three feet and then he started getting excited at one feet here comes the lead. I have personal experience with looking away because second fish today, I wasn't looking at my watch, but it still felt like a long time. Yeah. I was hanging on the off the tea top going there's like, man, I think still hasn't come. I wasn't gonna return to me like having of me like sort of like slowly falling out of love with the honest and couldn't find it in himself to take interest in our fish. That we were I can't say we were fighting it, but that we were, that we were watching the thing play out. A lot of people would hate that kind of fishing. Yeah, like I was trying to tell you it is kind of boring, you know, there's not I was that those people aren't very smart. I mean, I like it, especially when you see a big one. You know, you see when it come up, you know, three or four or five pounds, and it's it's pretty cool, that's what you know. It's like going deer hunting. You know, you go somewhere where you can go shoot a bunch of lower ones, or you go, you know, spend the time track hill big one. It's kind of the same. To me. It's like it's like, um, it's like you're transmitting signals into outer space when you're fishing that deep, you know. I mean, it's like it's hard to even imagine yourself being on the same planet as the fish when you're fishing for a fish feet away. Some people like and I like the immediacy to like I like sight casting to fish, which is fun. But I also like when you're sort of it's like talking to et man, like when you're when you're like got that much line out and you can't even picture what it looks like down there. They're in another word, old man. They're in the black. They really are nearly black. It's like, but you're up here in the sunshine looking, you know, watching your honest and down there is like yeah, and and then fifteen hundred feet away at the bottom of like in the ocean. You know, you can't go down there with scuba tanks. He's just down in some other planet that obviously you throw that switch and all of a sudden, here he is back up in your world. I love it. It's cool when they come up to they're all silver and purple, and then they had the deck and then they're just like brown looking. It's like crazy how they changed colors that fast too. Yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable. I liked it. And we had one like I don't know how long do you think we had the first set out for I don't know, you're watching your watch, it was about minutes. How far do we drift? I don't even think it was a mile. We didn't even drift a mile. And then the second time we sat down, I mean the minute it got down, Yeah, taught us, I'll make a short drift for you, like we gotta drop one more time. Though it took longer to get it down than it did for the fish to be on there, and byam another swordfish. I thought I was I thought I was tripping out. I thought I've seen something. I'm like maybe, and then it really was. It places tricks on me too, especially when you sit there for a couple of hours, you're like, well that was a bite because what you're watching, like there's wave action. So as you're riding up on a swell that the rod loads, and then you get to the top of the swell and the rods sort of the rod sort of relaxes and go straight and then you and then it loads. Then you start to drop down and the rod goes sort of slack and falls and then repeats itself, and you kind of memorize the cycle, and you're looking for like an interruption in the cycle, and the interruption could be on the ride up, there's like go a pause as the swell brings you up, or on the drop down, it's like a like a stutter, and that's all you're really looking for. Sometimes you don't see it all. You look over and the row just buckled over and you're like, oh god, him on hit the You're like, oh, that's cool. Caught me sleeping, but caught him sleeping. You know, like you guys like to fish crapp ease, right, Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, But it's like I like to I fish a lot of small fish, but I would like to fish for big fish, like we like to catch halib it. But when you spend all that time fishing small fish and then you catch a swordfish that big, which isn't even huge, but like it's a swordfish and there kind of like all meat, they have a high yield. I start picturing if I was gonna take all that meat and make a pile and then start flaying yellow perch, and I had to flay enough yellow perch to match that pile. It makes me feel like small fish don't make sense, don't It's about a bite of file at. It's like, yeah, if if someone said, okay, you clean perch until you've matched those piles up, or clean croppy until you make me a pile of meat. The size of the pilo meat we got off the small swordfish would be a couple of hundred hundreds of crop. We speck fish all season and probably won't even amount the one fish one sword fish. One of the things too, like, you know, I'm a freshwater guy, you know the you know, I've been out with Ryan, I'm a gladesman and uh but I will say that my other the passion for me in saltwater and is going with him and bootie fishing the night time because when you you know, I've been with him a few times and then I went with him, just me and him, and got the you know, I made it for him. And you when you grow that line on a big fish and you're you grab you know, and I fought, you know, hunt gators, you know, fought gators in that. But when you grab a sword fish and you're pulling that line, you you know, and I'm a pretty big guy when I grab you know, when you grab ahold of him and you actually feel the power that that fish has you, you don't got nothing for him there you know, and that's what he you know, when when I went out with him, he's like, look, you know I was trying. He says, Look, when he wants to go, let him go because you ain't gonna stop him. You know, when they are there, pretty gnarly fish, when they want to go, they got you know powerful, that's what. Oh, there's something like really shocking about him. Yeah, it's like a prehistoric fish kind of comes up with that blade, yeah, sticking out of his nose. Yeah. And then when you got you know, when we went and you you know, even we harpooned him and then gaffed him and get him in the boat and they go, you know, nuts in the boat and that bill gets going. It's just I don't know, that's you know. If I would say I like to go, I'm like total opposite. All either like to go bass fishing or I want to go sword fish and I don't have no interest in the troll and the you know, sailfish and nothing like that. I want to go pull handgear. Yeah. You either want to finesse a large mouth and let him go or stick a harpoon and fish you know there. It's just something like you were saying like et it's at something like out of the world. When you even with the booties, you know you're pulling on him, you don't see him, and then all of a sudden when he lights up in the light of the boat and you see him, it's like, you know, it's like when you see a big buck, your heart like you know, skips a beat for a minute. Yeah, you know, I exaggarly Tom about man watching a big fish come out of the depths is like kind of awe inspiring and like surprising. Yeah, has has that go away? Now that you've done it so long? I mean as long as you could be doing it, not because I was plugging you guys as being single fellers mid twenties. You're both in your mid twenties. Yeah, I'm twenty nine. What's uh? I should ask um? What's your window? Right? Like? I always figured my window personally, like like whatever if I imagine like my window, I was always being like generally I would be imagining that it would be within five years of my age, like when I was before I was married, before I met my wife said, if you had to guess how old would this potential spouse be, I would say I'd bet she's you know, I'm not gonna be younger than five years younger me, but probably not older than five years older because that was a substantial window. That's a ten year window. Right, there's three sixty million Americans or female, and then you got a tenure window to catch them all. There are tens of millions of potential mates in this country. And that's not even talk. She's gonna be clean fish. You're gonna have to. So at twy nine, you're cool. So you're twenty nine, you're cool going back too, are you okay to hop ahead to thirty four? N? Okay? So that's a big window. Yeah, slot limit slot about fifty. So all right, So there's two so women in this area. If you're looking for um um, he gets both gainfully employed. Yeah, avid outdoorsman, prone to getting an airboat crashes, but not their fault. These guys have both. Basically you've both been run over by other run over by other less experienced voters. Uh you know what they say, um in the wrong place at the wrong time, pretty much. And you guys both not a cook. Yeah, because I said you cooked us alligator, you cooked us bullfrog, you cooked this frozen French fries. Um, how did you guys cook your frog legs? They were good. We just battered them, you know, like a little Cajun Cajun batter. It's a fine not even it was like a breading, like a fine bread. Yeah, this is I don't like to get crazy. You know a lot of people like to get crazy with the bread and and I feel like it takes away from your meat, you know. Um, I like to use a little lighter you know, a little more corn meal base, you know, and then we'll put like a little you know, it wasn't bready what you guys didn't Actually, it wasn't like a wet batter, right, No, it's just like you don't even got we don't we actually don't even use like an egg batter with it. Just you wet you know, just make sure it's moist and you know, and then we put a little creole season in in it in the flower. Um it's yeah. I think it is either Tony's or Zadaran's one. I knows that ran Yeah. Yeah, I've always been a Tony's man. I mean I like a lot of stuff. I like Tony's. Yeah, and then uh, you make a secret sauce. What is the secret sauce? I want to be secret and we told you the secret. Okay, Like give you a rough sketch on the secret sauce. It's have you been to like bonefish grill? You been to a bonefish grow? Oh yeah, bonefish grill? Yeah? They do like a bang bang shrimp. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's kind of like a like a spinoff of their version, you know. It's it's you know, saracha, some red chili, you know, like the chili pepper sauce, A little catch up other things. The counter over there got a milk, a couple of frogs. Well, it was good man. This has been like a really educational couple of days for me, like a handful of different activities, and then the sword fish and stuff is just kind of shocking to me. I think I'll be talking about that for a long time. That's pretty cool, especially when any catching that quick. Yeah, everybody leaves a dot at nine, were already running home by what fifty two big two, big huge fish land in the bottom of uh ycluding thoughts and the final guy on those sword fish like that eyeball. Right, Well, I mean it makes sense right where they live. But you don't catch fish that have an eye that. I mean that thing might be bigger in your eye too, definitely two to three inches. That's a good point, big around as a Copenhagen can There you go, Ryan, you're you're mate. That was out with us. I was talking about when you bring a he's talking about bringing a macop up in the boat and he says, when you're walking around the boat that Magel watches follows you thus sketchy. You can see him following you, following you with his eyeball as you walk around. Yeah, we killed a couple of this. Well. I did have one of the final questions where airboat culture outside of southern Florida, Like where where else do you find it? Um? Nebraska the Platte River they actually have. Um uh, they have pretty big event up there every year. They call it thunder on the Loop. They do like races that you know which they that's like a that's like car motor boat territory. You know they run a lot of what's down here too. You know there's a lot, but um, you know Louisiana, Texas, UM Mexico. You know a lot of the duck hunting. You know, they got a lot of the duck hunting operations down there. They use them. Alaska, Alaska caribou moose hunters using airboats. And you see guys even fishing same without airboats. I mean even um you know Illinois, um there starting you know there is some air boat in there that I've heard about through conversations and that. Um. But I would say as far as recreational airboat use, South Florida, Central Florida is like the mecca for it, you know, and we have multiple actual manufacturers here, diamond Back air Boats, T t O, Stossil air Boats, UM actual Classic UM looma tach like actual places where you can go get a production built boat. You know, I've been in the which we were up what last year at diamond Backs plant. Pretty cool operation to see how they actually, I mean you go from where our boats were built where it's kind of a one man shop, handbuilt, Hal's aircraft riveted. You know, everything's done with hand jigs. Where diamond Back everything's done by they have actual jigs built. They have it's like a line, you know, guys, Weldon Halls Uh, they're cranking them out. Yeah, they crank them out, you know, more like your UM agencies, you know FWC. You know they go as far as Louisiana and that you know they buy more from them. Now. Um, and that's you know on that touching on that. You know, so there there is. Actually it's a pretty decent sized industry here for that because we're in ground zero of air bolt culture. Yeah, I would say, Um, our friend, I keep thinking. My concluding thought, I'm gonna do it right now is are a guy we work with, Garrett Dirt myth he'd like it down here because people like to chew tobacco and he loves chewing, but none of us to chew with him. He come down here to drive around and air bolts having to chew the heaven man and he likes to turn a wrench and yeah, he likes motor sports, like chewing tobacco, motor sports. He'd be all over the you know what, you know what they about all this? Is it? Just the other day we were driving around and Uh, I don't know what we're doing. We're at the airport, maybe getting those immigration not to immigration, the customs forms for guns going to Mexico. Anyways, were early and the guy wouldn't see us early. We had to show up on time. So we went to get a beer and uh, it was snowing and it was kind of cold, and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of getting over the winter. Really Yeah, so we might have just found found his you know, his new place. He likes the ice climb though. This guy's throwing the motors that when he sees uh like he's I've seen him be almost moved to tears By super Cubs, moved tears By, but just like just like strikes him somewhere down deep. Uh, Matt Cook, you know, I was just talking about Ryan and Josh. You know the reason I come downers. They really represent kind of the essence of South Florida where I mean, as far as you've got commercial fishing. And it's fun to see how that whole thing plays out. Obviously, Josh uh amateur trying to be professional bass fishermen on Okechobi, etcetera. It's just fun to see. I know, you like to fish bass, but you want to become a tournament bass. I fished a lot of tournaments, um fish, some amateur event, you know, a lot of amateur obviously, we have you know, tons of you know amateur event team tournaments here, UM fish, some flw outdoors events, and you know, got some aspirations that go pro you know one day, you know, sooner or later. I like specializing in what we do because our style of fishing is you know, unique in its own you know, they just had a tour level event on the lake with on Okeechobi, which is you know they travel throughout the country and it's neat because you know what's kind it's hand in hand. When the Florida guys go North Alabama, Tennessee River, Valley Lakes, you know, Gunnersville real popular, you know bass fishing. UM, we tend to we struggle a little bit because we're so shallow minded. I mean I don't I don't ever use it that finder. You know, we're shallow minded meaning you know what I mean. Like we're like you're talking site fishing where I'm I'm a yeah, you don't know about Like we don't fish ledges and you know here and there, but we don't fish deep water clear water. You know, we're used to fishing, you know, punching is what we call it, which is a you know, using a one ounce yeah, punching match. You know, I gotta you probably heard of him the he's an amateur bass angler out of Oregon, um Matt Elliott. But yeah, he told me he broke the whole world of bass fishing down. And he's like also talks about all the different basque cultures. But he's from fishing small mouth and moving water in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, very different. I would be lost. That's more like fishing. That'd be like from your perspective, would be more like fishing for swordfish. You know, that's you know what. And on our side worth fishing heavy cover, you know, thick vegetation. That's kind of that's my specialty. And um you know where a lot of guys are more into the finesse. You know. I mean when I go bass fishing, I'm fishing with a seven eleven seven and eleven inch rod, almost eight foot rod, extra heavy action, sixty five pound braid. Like it's you gotta get him out of the junk because when you flip in there. You know, the gloria fish in Florida is any flip can be a ten pound fish. You know. Um on like Akachobe when the when when it's when the lake is producing at its top um depending on conditions. And you know, obviously we had a hurricane come through this year and that actually, you know, change even the everglades. That change a lot of our landscape if you call it um. So that affects things, you know. And one of the cool things about Florida and our fisheries is in the freshwater world, in the bath fishing is it changes a lot. So it's always a justin you know, you'll hear guys, you know, pros, guys at fish you know for a living. They come down here and they you know, they'll come down and have GPS marks from last year and they'll say they just erase everything and start all over because it doesn't know. She's constantly changing. So you ever f upitty large mouths. Yeah, not in a long time. I'm kind of It's like one of those things where now I feel, you know, I have a hard time killing one. Yeah. My dad and my dad's a redneck, Like I mean, I've read neck, but my dad is. My dad's on the old school. I mean, it's hard for him to put back. You know, he looks at you know, we always mess when we go deer hunt and we say, you don't see horns when they walk out, he sees pork tops, you know, so that's kind of you know, but we you know, I I don't I really don't like I can tell you a good story about Matt, you know, but Matt finish up your concluded though you concluding thought, No, I just uh, you know, I think people enjoy Florida for the beaches. You know, you always hear about Miami and and or the West Coast Naples. But for me, the essence of Florida is is kind of the center of the state. And what's fun to come down here in this area is you obviously can freshwater fish. And then you know, for everyone listening, you're only ten minutes away fift and you can go deep water fishing. I mean, so oh yeah, yeah that's we We woke up this morning in the in the swamp house, the swap stillt house, and fished off shore. Yeah. People can't conceive of that. You can do all of that in a three day period. Yeah. We had to take an airboat to get into the big boat. Yeah. We almost squeezed in a large mouth on Okechobee and and uh um, striper hunting. You know. So it's just a magnificent place for the outdoors. You can't and you can do so many things in a short period of time. So that's the reason I come down, and these two guys have opened my eyes to it. Sportsman's paradise, gladesman, I am. I want to be gladesman, which is totally different guest gladesman. Yeah, guess gladesman. Ryan, you got the concluding thoughts? Does anything you want to stick in there couldn't stick in there? I can't really think it too much. Yeah, Um, how old do you think you want to before you get married? Like? What would be like? Do you have in your head like a cut off at which you I think that people should be married personally. I'm not leaning on you yet about it, but I think that people should be married. I think it will do a lot for your fishing. Yeah, I don't have to go anymore. She's got a bunch of money. It gives you already of mind. Yeah, we'll talk about this later. Um, all right, everyone, thanks for joining us.