00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a me eat podcast coming in you shirtless severely vote bitten in my case underwear lessening podcast. You can't predict anything, um me and the lavin ego. Here did a little duck hunt in this morning? Is that make you jealous? Christum browse? It does? It does? I did a little driving this morning, did you? We're all enjoying the wilds uh do, Christie Wound? If you run through a couple of news points, love issues, let's do introductions. I'll introduce you. Okay, sounds good? Uh. Author, I don't get to say this very often. Author and poet Julia Husain had books of poetry. Come on, don't start with that. You don't believe me kidding? He had, He had multiple works of poetry and one of the Iraq War was going on. I would often catch myself saying, um, the novelist and poet Saddam Hussein because he had published novels and published books of poetry similar Similar to Saddam, krist Dombrowski has, No, you don't have any novels, novels, not yet books of poetry. I think that you're probably the first poet, the first actual real live publishing poet that we had on the show. That's fantastic, But I mean the only three of you. Harrison's dead, right, that's true, that's true. It was his birthday yesterday, by the way. Oh it was. Yeah. Chris used used to guide, used to you were like a guide for Jim Harris. Yeah, I wrote Jim down the river. Guiding is probably a you know, not quite an accurate an exchange of money. No, No, you guys are just hanging out and and every time I would you have an idea, he would say, go to the other bank, you know. So if anything he was he was guiding, but not rowing. So you were just like a facilitator, facilitator, a wine opener, dispenser of chicken thighs like you got a lot of you know, as a guide, right, you've seen the thousand people cast? Right? Is he a good fisherman? He was an exceptionally good caster. Absolutely. I remember being so thrilled when the first time I saw him cast, and I've realized that he could actually cast. You know, because I grew up in Michigan. I worked for this, as did he, as did he, as did you, as it as did uh so many Michian Tannins. But um, you know, I can remember I worked at this lodge up in Grailing as a kid, and the experts, the so called experts would come through and you'd always be so disappointed when you actually saw him cast. You know, they were so bad compared to you know, your buddies whatnot. So the first time I said, Jim Cass, I thought I was I was, well, yeah it was. That is a relief as a guide when you see h the client cast and they're good and you've never seen it before. It's definitely just like yeah, But then you hope that that doesn't come with some real she expectations. It usually reverses the karma, right, you know, yeah, if you're if you if you're telling me that you're Mike's two fingers off your lip. Yeah, he's got really big hands. April fulkey are you are you? Are you familiar with Have you ever met Chris before? No, we haven't met. We met about five minutes ago. Okay, had you had any when? Uh? Had you seen his book around? I saw this afternoon. Sorry, Chris, but I'm excited to learn more about it. We sprang this on April. We didn't give April the long lead time. Well, in order to go read up on on body of Water. Ryan actually sprung it on me last night because I I was podcasting Ryan this morning or this afternoon, and I still see you tomorrow. He goes, oh, yeah, for the Chris podcast, and I went, who what? So, but what a pleasure. I'm I'm thrilled to be here. I'm glad share professional connections though because of the whole you know, fishing world. Are you guide still? I still got about eighty days a year? Yeah, I've count that. It's still being a guy. Dude. We have at this table right now are four people who have at some point in their life done professional been professional fly fishing guides? Are you the only one who hasn't? I'm the one that hasn't, the smart one with so that meaning there's four people at this table who horror themselves out and one who hasn't. Open that the driven snow. I think it's real good for recruitment purposes that you never guided anybody. Uh. That's the voice of Ryan Callahan who's also here, and then um, then Yannimani, Hello, So we talked about that. I was asking you a couple of news items. Yeah, um, a dude, Okay, a guy in Alaska. Check this out. A guy in Alaska. Uh, just got jail time in a one hundred thousand dollar fine for poaching some moose. Man, those guys do not mess around in Alaska. What do you mean some moose? Because he killed three He killed and ditched three moose. Here's what they think. Okay, we talked without four like in Alaska. Depending on where you are, there's always exceptions, but generally, like generally for a bull moves to be legal in Alaska has to be either depending where you are, has to be either a three have three brow times on one side, or be fifty inches tip to tip antler spread. Or you might be in a unit that's what you'd call a four brow time unit where it has to have four brow times on one side, oh were and or b fifty in tip to tip. And then there's other units that are like any bowl or whatever. But but typically you're either it's either a three brow time or four brow time area. And it's when we're hunting moose, like it's real nice to see the brow times because gauging fifty inch tip to tip is some tricky ship, real trip it's nerve racking, like to shoot. There's a lot of guys like my brother Danny's a very experienced moves hunter. He is not. It makes him very uncomfortable to shoot a bowl on spread and to not shoot a bull on brow time count. But it seems like this feller was just real bad. It seems like real bad at judging, and he'd kind of check them once they were down to see if they're legal. Three of them hundred thousand dollar fine. I like that, man, I was gonna say, it's so be it. I mean, that's pretty ignoring because now and then you hear something doing something like agreedgious stuff. Then is he winds up with a misdemeanor, has to do like a day of community service. They don't mess around, man Like Alaska does not mess around on game and fish violations. They treated like business. Is there not some sort of calculation that you can make from afar? Yeah, So that's where the stuff gets tricky. If he like, let's say he's broadside and turns his head and look at you, there's all these little tricks like if that outside swoop hits the midpoint on his hump, or you know that a standard run of the mill bowl is ear to ear. I can't remember. I can't either, but it's out there's a measurement of like, hey, like your typical mature bull is x inches ear to ear ten per year and plus ten in between. Yeah, so you got like that, and then you imagine does it go you know, a percentage of that? That way all this stuff, what you arrive at is unless like a friend of mine, is a guide, Like unless you look at and you're like, you know, it blows like you you feel that your heart's gonna stop because it's obviously don't mess around? So wait, did they did they count? Did they measure? Then did it come in? It? Like one was I read the article. I came here with the other ones, but one, the biggest one was around Okay, did he take any part of the animal? Says more? All? Most of all three went to waste? Most so is he stripping backstraps and stuff? You know, you're asking a lot of great questions, and I think that, uh, we have to do a little more reading. Body mind just sent me the article. So I'm a little bit guilty of having not done a ton of research. But the outline of it, I have a sense of the outline, but that um it said like left most to rot. It sounds like a hundred thousand. It's fair. That's big. Yeah, and I do. I was wondering if there's a little more to the story because I can see that price tag climbing, if I can see that fine being less. If it was like guy was caught with three moose that were fully processed going to feed his family the ditchen the ditch of definitely probably colors that many favorite past violations probably covered. Some states have a thing where if it if it's a trophy animal, then your fines go through the roof. Yeah, poaching a trophy class animal costs you a lot more money than than then if you're like a pop hunter, then they slap you down harder. Uh. What a couple of things I want to talk about. Oh, guy had some feedback on something. Cal you were here for this conversation where our buddy Steve kendrot this is tricky. Check this out, Chris Uh, Our buddy Steve Kendrott shoots him seek a deer down in Maryland and it's missing a time in Antler time. His buddy shoots a sea Kadeer and he's skinning it and there, lo and behold is Steve Kendrot's antler time embedded in the buck. So they are these are pugnacious little fighters, you know. And he snaps his antler time off in the buck, and so the guy uh kept the antler time. Steve was able to take the anler time to match it up. And I was saying, how I felt that if that friend of his was an honorable friend, he would have given Steve Kendra at the antler time. Steve Kendra, I'm glad you said that, because everybody that rolled in we took a vote at that day at the table. I mean, cal you said, you've made a good point that well maybe the story, because I agree with you, like he should have just given it to him. Becaw said, well, the story is just as good if the anertine's hanging like near that trophy that head, because he's like, this is what I had in my neck and I was still alive, right, but go ahead. Well, the guy, one of the guys, one of the many guys that wrote in about it, was looking at it like this. He's contrary to my my personal opinion, he says, contrary to my Steve's opinion. Um, he's like, the fight between these two things happened outside the realm of man. The fight was the fight, and it wasn't involved I didn't involve people, And there's there's no room to weigh in on the people perspective. They had a fight, and he likens it to this. Let's say you've got a knife fight. Or let's say someone came up and stabbed you in the leg and in the scuffle, the his knife blade snaps off in your leg. Whose knife blade is that? Now that's a good no? Wait later, would that guy say, oh, I need you? Would like, what would your response to that fair enough? That knife blade would go in my shelf? Absolutely, and when people came over and be like, see that knife blade? But would you feel differently if in this fantastical world it was his finger that he had jabbed into your thigh, broken his finger, and I would have it on my shelf and when people came over and they were and I caught him looking at it like you see that, and I would tell them about it. I don't think it's a great comparison. I'm sorry, I think that's a horrible comparison. So the time was in the animal or in the animals donlers you know what, because you missed it was in the animal right and animal. So this book a like Buck A and Buck B. Yeah, they get a fight and Buck A's antler ends up snapping off into Buck B. My body shoots A, who's missing it's antler, and his body shoots B and finds embedded in its body, and the body keeps be bark. No, you've explained it. But my thing is, what is what is that buddy going to do with it? I mean, it's one thing if it was if it was wedged into the antler somewhere and it told the story like what you're talking about. That makes sense. That's a piece of art. You know, you're putting the story up to mount on your wall. But it was ingrained in the shoulder. You can't just hang it on. It's like that's like having a fish sculpture and hanging a fly out of it. It's got some stupid chuck an. It's ridiculous. Give it to your buddy so he can superglue it onto his You know, he mounted We thought he should hang it from it in a deck with some decorative. Just set it next to it, your guys. Is decor is a lot different in my opinion. But okay, I don't think. I don't think bringing a knife to it is is necessarily the same. Analogy. Great analogy. Okay, one more quick one and then we're gonna we're gonna talk about other stuff. Um, I know how to really attack this one. Not long ago we were talking about this. We're talking about that when you're sitting in a tree stand and it's cold out and a big buck comes through, and you get all excited, and then the big buck wanders off about his business unscathed, and then I personally all sudn't feel like I'm cold, like it left me like I then I'm like, this is like, God, am I cold? And that guy was talking about how my brother when he goes he calls going off to take a growler, going off to take a heater. Right. The guy wrote in about a doctor writes in to explain these two things. He says, you haven't autonomic nervous system of the human body and has two parts, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system releases epidephrine, EPERN and other stress hormones to prepare for what is often referred to as fight or flight response. Some of these things with like UH affects of these hormones increase heart rate, dilate pupils, vassal constrict blood vessels. It shunts blood to the core vital organs. The skin becomes pale, cool, and diaphretic. The vassal constriction of peripheral vessels is why a person might feel cold after a stressful encounter with game animals dragon. On the other side, the parasympathetic nervous system is known as the rest and digest nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is active when the body is not under stress, i e. Eating fornicating. Now, poor word choice on his part, because fornicating means having sex outside of marriage. How do you know that? Yes, there could be probably only if you're married. Yeah, but I'm saying you could be having like some serious stressful Let's say you a fella was a woman. Let's say a woman was married and the old man's off at work. I feel like, right now he's got a little bit of bad word choice with fornicating, because he's saying when the body is not under stressed, I e. Eating, fornicating eating. Yes, fornicating isn't just synonymous with love making. Fornicating means marriage outside of or sex outside of marriage. So a woman could be in a situation where she's you know, like nervous about being discovered by her old man, you dragon, which could make it stressful, which would then involve the other side of the nervous system. Yeah, where there's like you got the fight and fight going on because you're poor. You know. I think he should have said, um, love making, which is makes that that word just makes people uncomfortable. So the parasympathetic nervous system is active when the body is not understressed, I eat, eating, love making, or in this case, pushing out a grumpy The act of bearing down to defecate stimulates the vague nerve, which is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. When the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated, you get vaso dilation to peripheral blood vessels, therefore increased blood flow to the skin, resulting in a warmer sensation. Therefore, bearing out my brother's observation that when he goes off in the woods on the cold morning to turn over a rock, so to speak, Um, he feels warmed up by it all, that's all. And can you confirm that you do feel cooler or colder gonna a big deer walks by? And what's the different? Where does adrenaline fall into all of this? I think it's what he's saying is that when a big buck comes by, you get the adrenaline spike and then it drops and you're that's when I become cold. And I do feel that you get warmed up going off and rolling over rock. Definitely. You guys have a lot of strange ways of saying taking a poop. I've heard three different ways in two minutes. Because that's what you're saying though, right is you know, like the term like turn out saying earlier that makes people uncomfortable growler growlers? Oh love making it. Yeah, going poop it just sounds so personal. I love it. I think it's great. Pooping sounds fantastic. We use that like that's what our what with our kids? Yeah, they need to poop, they're pooping. It's just like I feel like it's very family a family term it is, but taking a growler is a hunting term. I'm in laden. I've learned a lot so far. Well that's interesting. That's a very wordy way of saying. Um, yeah, you know, but I'm so happy that that's explained it just like it makes sense right, seem like not engaged. I've been thinking about poop a lot this fall because I've been, um, I've been hunting hungarian partridge a lot. So I'm just uh, you know, they like a covey of partridge. Huns will roost together, and they roost tails together, so when you find their roost, you actually find this neat little pile of poop um And I can't you know, they're tough to find. Bird. I have a great bird dog, but a lot of times you're just walking around looking for sign which are these little white tip dropping So the same thing they come in, they back, they back into each other and make a little circle and make a little collective like poop group. No, I was not disinterested. I was lost in thought, you know, doing my poet thing. How do we getting out of that? How best? How best to to get get to our subject matter at hand? Well, I could tell you why I think huns are the No, not that. Oh, what is our subject I want to talk about? Uh? I want to talk about your book of course in bone fishing in general. Yeah, well that's what I was gonna say. I could tell you about how huns are the bones that do that. So I have been thinking about them a lot this fall, and and uh there's something to the um the seemingly uh mundane habitat and huns living you know, uh, grassy hillsides there their seat mostly seed eaters. They don't um, they don't need a whole lot of agriculture to survive. They're really hearty birds. Um. And they covey up. They group up a lot of times. You know, bone fish will uh we'll school up as well. But you're doing a very good job man. For the most part. The reason why I enjoy traversing that wide, wide country. It reminds me of being on the flats. You know, there's there are these what mcgwaen called these long silences you know between would you actually find a covey of birds when your dog goes on pointing. Uh, it's usually you know, right about when you think nothing's gonna happen. And then suddenly yeah, uh, I found some hunts. I shot some huns one time of my late buddy Eric that had their crops were full of um grasshoppers. Oh yeah, they that's their chief chief food in the in the early fall, and then they go to cheat grass after the hoppers, you know, die off for the My buddy told me he found one, uh clean one last year and the hunt had in its crop a grasshopper that was still kicking when he cleaned it. That doesn't surprise me, So it upsets me a little bit, but doesn't surprise for the just just like it'd be like a little bit startling, I guess cleaning the bird and there's a live grasshopper in there, Well, I wouldn't feel bad for him. Uh. You guys have all you I mean, as you've caught a whole pile of bone fish right April. Yeah, I think I've caught a few. Never really yep, yeah, I always kind of poo pooed those things. Got a lot of white fish in my day. You can go if you're if you got something else to do, because we thought you'd caught bone fish. So oh really, yeah, I've seen him. I took a couple of casts one time, yeah, a few, though only a few. Fifteen years ago. I was down in Belize for I don't know, a couple of weeks and I maybe landed a half dozen. Okay, nice, So your butt Chrissy explains how that fish went from being it does a lot of things, but explains how like how that how the bone fish became a celebrity fish when it used to just be a what well, they threw it into piles that went into making dog food back in the day. You know, the commercial netters would, uh if bone fish ended up in their catch, they would basically throw it into a pile that went to uh to purina or or some other uh, you know, undesirable pile of fish, right uh. And that the evolution of that is really what, as you say, the book is about, at least on um on the surface level. Um. Why nineteen fifty one was when the first Bahamian bone fish lodge was erected, this guy named Art See I read the book, but I don't remember being that early really, so people in we were thinking like, oh, this is a cool fish to catch. Yeah, well, not very many people. There was wealthy Floridian guy named Gil Drake Um who had bone fish in the keys. There were a few guys that had bone fishing the keys. Now most most people that kind of famed Bahamian bone fish guy. This guy named Crazy Charlie Smith. You know that Crazy Church is the fly everyone knows about. But I got I got a small problem. Yes, what's the guy's name again? Because here's the guy you got me thinking, the guy that shot the moose and got in trouble. Guess what his name is? Gil Drake. No, he's got the perfect No, Rusty counts. Rusty counts. That sounds like, yeah, Rusty counts. Okay, So Gil Drake, Okay, so Gil Drake. And about nineteen fifty one, I actually had to listen to this book on audio book to remind myself of a few things. Yeah, I hadn't read it in a couple of years, so I had to re requain myself. But uh, fifty one sounds right. Gil Drake was this wealthy Floridian guy who lived in Palm Beach in his is um. His wife basically fronted into money, uh to go down to the Bahamas and build a lodge um and he you know, the flight from Palm beach to the east end of Graham Bahama is really thirty five forty minutes, right, So he found this at the far east end of the archipelago, this little island that was that came to be called Deepwater Key. And uh after a few months of being down there, he hired a man named David Pender, who who he hired to basically uh cleaned the island of mangroves and helped them lug rock and and you know rudimentary construction project. But soon he found out that Pender, who had been born and raised on this tiny little island, uh knew a lot about where the bone fish lived. Right for what reason? Just be he I mean, he grew up foraging. He was a shore for his father had been a sponger, you know, and had drifted uh uh kind of islands, islands, island. Pender says in the book the sponger like got to collect sponges from the exactly and that's not ornamental, right, that's for sponge. They were so yeah, they were selling them for sponges. Um. Pender contends that that the sponges were over harvested at one point. Uh, so you know, he was basically a sponger's son who had spent in an ordinarate amount of timeand this tiny little island at the east end of Grand Bahama, and so he knew where the bonefish lived. He was basically be mused when uh Drake said, you think you could show us where to catch them because of you know, of what use was a bone fish? Right? They were uh tedious to eat at best, you know, and there was snapper plentiful and and uh lobsters and whatnot. So we talked about this that in Hawaii they make a ground up patty. They're not bad. I've I've eaten one, I mean, but regardless, one thing we gotta do. Yeah, somebody needs to explain, like what a bone fish isn't where it lives. I can do it, go for it, all right? Well, so it's a um you know, the bone fish is a a sport fish. Now it's really average is about three to five pounds. Um. It's a fish that lives in deep water. Looks to you know, the Western I or even the Midwestern I like a whitefish. Basically, if you caught Lake Superior whitefish in Michigan, or you caught Rocky Mountain whitefish, Um. The bonefish looks very very similar. UM. It can travel with speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. UM. So it's a you know, a super sporty fish when hooked right, UM strong strong, kind of straight ahead laser sharp runs. Not not real. UM. It doesn't make a whole lot of buck rockets when you hook them. The line going through the water, I cameber I came up with this somewhere else? Did I don't know, Maybe I stole it from someone. When that fish takes off and your lines caught in the water, it sounds like someone ripping news print. Yeah, that is exactly what it sounds like. If you did steal that. That's a good theft. Um. You you actually in the chapter I'm kind of describing the physicality of the bone fish. I quote a bit from Meat either the book. You have a great line where you say their nose looks like the working in of a rechargeable vacuum. I finger like your mas va, your mom's the kind of vacuum like stick in the wall with tell. I forget what those are called, but dust something and that's not so that's not um anyway. So they live um for the most part in deep water where they're rarely caught, but they come onto the flats defeats, so the saltwater flats being ankle to knee deep really um and and exceptionally clear. Uh. They eat crabs, they eat shrimp, they little benthic worms, They eat sea urchins, they eat small perch. They even eat small bone fish. There's a great story in here where this old guy, David Pender who I mentioned, uh, just catches a bone fish that has a small a twelve pound bone fish that has a one pound bone fish, uh, actually still alive and in its in its belly. Um, it's the only fish you can maybe that's the only one. But when a very few fish you can track down. Oh sure, yeah, because they leave signs. They leave signs. They go up and go into the mud and make a little looks like it looks like someone like kind of jammed golf ball down on the ground and pulled it back out again, and you'd be like, oh, they've been through here. Yeah, you see like dark gray patches the MUDs everywhere. Yeah, and then those little little what you call little divot rootings, Yeah, little rootings. But they don't you know, they don't jump. I think they are certainly fast, but they they're probably best renowned for their speed, right and their and their strengths for their size. And I think at the time when Gil Drake this this Floridian was thinking he could make a fishing lodge based on this bone fish, it was their their fickleness, you know, they're the difficulty um of pursuit that kind of made them a target as a sport fish. Um. I'm assuming he never fished permit, you know, he would have, he would have chanced upon him in the keys. Um. His wife actually became an actually his son's wife, Into Drake, became an incredible keys guide, and Fat Harrison used to fish with her. Um. Do you do you don't recognize that name, Linda Drake? Yeah, she she was. She was. She also guided for this lodge where, um, most of the book takes place, called Deepwater key. Um. Yeah. So anyway, this old old man, David pender Um started guiding basically for five dollars a day, and yeah, five bucks a day, five bucks a day, right, um, And he had been working at a some kind of a missile detection site near Freeport. You know, I'm making probably five bucks a month. So five bucks a day was just incredible raised for him and opportunity um and over the course of because there's a great story where he's like working there and he must just be doing hard labor too, and it's him and two other dudes, and that's when uh Rap comes up and he's looking for a strong, healthy worker and he's literally he doesn't know anything about these three men except just he's just sizing them up. And Pinner gets picked and he's like that that was the day of all my days. That was the moment that wasn't life changed? Right? It's an amazing It's a really a beautiful moment. I think, Um it was. I want to say it was whatever. Ruination Day is the same day the Titanic sank Um, the Titanic sinking has a name, yeah, Ruination Day, and it's based off the Titanic sinking. Well, I had this argument with with my editor actually because she said it was um it was a Gillian Welch phrase or invention, but whatever, the same day, same day Lincoln was assassinated, right and in the Titanic. Yeah, anyway, so man, the guy a shot Lincoln. What a nut job that guy was? Man, I didn't realize that I recently was watching something that I mean, you're obviously nut job, right man, But I mean just like, you know, it's kind of like a drunken derelict, you know, total loser. You can't believe it even besides, like how bad you are to kill a man, let alone kill the president. But in addition, it was just like a drunken Yeah, they're walked into the playhouse. Drunken theater. Guy, go ahead, though, all right, I will see if anybody had any doubts whether or not the assassin. But I could be like, now there's a fine specimen of a gentleman did Yeah, So it's Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the Titanic sinking and the Black Sunday dust one adds up to ruinations. There you go, and everybody's saying bad things happen in threes. And then Gillian um First brought attention to this historical confluence on her two thousand one album Time Good Yeah, okay, now remind me, remind me the guy that goes down and he and he opens the thing up to try to establish a fishery, right, Gil Drake? Does he need to because he's trying to take a fish that no one cares about and make people begin part of his job to market the fish. He needs like manufacture a clientele. Yeah, but he's still decades really away ahead of himself as far as acts concerned. I mean, this is the fifties. So um, he's really just putting up a cool place for he and his buds to go hang out. Um, but he thinks it's fun and doesn't care if you think it's fun exactly. He's he's fronted, his wife's fronted in the money. He's he's going to go down and enjoy himself and and then um, the fishery kind of begins to take off, um, and and some crazy things coinside. Uh. Timing wise, so as the rise of f ye fishing uh for bone fish starts to happen, Um, we're also looking at the height of the Columbian drug cartel. Right, so um, you know Deepwater Key becomes this destination probably next to uh Charlie Smith's Bang Bang Club, the great Bahamian bone fish destination at the time. Right, what's Charlie Smith's Bank Bank Club that's over on Androws. Yeah, that's over on Andrews and Charlie Smith is probably the real famed. Uh. If you ask people who started bone fishing, who was the first Bahamian bone fish guy, almost everybody will say Charlie Smith. They won't say David Pinder, who is at the center of this book and actually was the first guy. But there's really Pinder has that that's a generational family, right because I was guided by a Pinder when I was there. Yeahah, you might have been guided by William. You might have been guided by Joseph. His two sons, David Jr. And Jeffrey guide up out of Freeport. They're all, you know, incredible. And then, um, third generation is a guy named Miko Glinton, who's who's people know from his his YouTube world and his I mean I think he and I fished. Yeah, we fished for a day and he would do this like he does the Michael Jackson turns. He'll do a cast and the in between castle do this, you know, Michael Jackson turned on the bat with the boat and complete his cast. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. He can throw his he can throw the whole line with just his hands, you know. Um, so yeah, Miko is third generation and um, you know the book. I'm getting ahead of myself. But if we go back to the seventies, Gil Drake's son comes around, becomes this also a great young guide in the area, and um, bone fishes. The bone fish is like a viable sport fish. Now suddenly people are traveling to to the Bahamas to you know, catch this fish. Right. Um. Meantime, the Bohemian economy is in the tank, right Yeah, we're just getting to the drug cartel. So we're still I mean, some people like Prime Minister Linden Pindling are getting exceptionally rich, you know, taking bribes from from the cartel, but everybody else is, um, it's floundering. And about that time someone discovers that the bone fish is the reason people are coming to You know, we didn't use they didn't use the term eco tourism back then, but um, someone had a good sense to say, look, we can keep giving the Colombians all this money, um or all this you know, play in the islands, or we can kick them out all together and see if our economy can actually be based on this this fish. So as it would turn out in two thousand and ten, that same fish that Pender guided toward for five bucks a day in the fifties. The bone fish is a hundred and fifty one million dollar industry tourism wise per year in the Bahamas is then the Bahamas alone, So it's and that's you know, eight hundred thousand people, maybe nine thousand now, but it's the it's the crux of of their eco tourism industry. Um, and what's one day of flats fishing out there right now? I want to say it's seven seven bucks. Now, maybe there's a friend of mine who did what it cost to go fish. That's what it cost to go up and stay at a lodge and fish in Alaska right bcs it lodges. They do a lot of you know, week long packages. So it's great for the entire economy there. Yeah. Um, the can you still do like? I don't know why you wouldn't be able to? Like in ninety six, my brother flew to Cancun, took a bus to apply Adele Carmen and then ball shiploads of beans and rice and a bunch of water and just walked and slept on the beach and fish bone fish And you'd like now and then run into do it? Who was doing it? But it wasn't like a thing people were doing. So just do I y on the beach has complicated that a couple of years ago. I mean you could still do it in Mexico. You can still do it and believe. Yeah. So if we go if we take that, uh, that five dollars a day in the fifties, and we compare it to the seven per guy day today seven dollars seven hundred and nine dollars per day. Um. According to this Econ guy that I talked to, nothing but gold has appreciated more in that span of time. So you take this fish that was basically thrown away, uh, discarded into piles for dog food whatnot, and it literally becomes the crux of this whole whole country's economy, gets him out from under uh the drug cartels, um, you know, the shadow of the drug cartel. And really now that we're talking the third generation of Bahamian guides, uh helps a country becomes self sufficient. Um. This guy Prescott Smith, who's uh, go ahead, you can take You can take this on later if you want. Um. Is the money phone to Bohemians or is it all phone to Americans? Good question, because take that when you want, well, I'll take it on now is about where I was gonna go. So um, Prescott Smith is the son of Charlie Smith, that crazy Charlie guy, right, And what's Prescott? He's a bohemian yet and he's funny. I didn't want to I was. Oliver White recently corrected me. I said, oh, is your wife bohemian? He said, bohemian? Right, it is. It's easy to confuse it to you. A fact. When I was working on this book, I must have said bohemian a few times, and people thought, like, God, this guy. I knew this guy was weird, but I didn't think even that weird to write a book about bohemian. If crazy Charlie was a local, yeah, so crazy Charlie. He has a famous lodge over on Androws, and his son Prescott has become the voice of this second third generation of guy's basically saying we have to get these lodges out from under the ownership of these wealthy um Floridian dudes or or or wherever they're from, and we need to we need to own these lodges because only if we own them will the conservation be uh. The necessary choices in conservation he made right. Um, he talks. That's a bold statement. It is man, and he's a he's a hated dude in a lot of ways. UM. You you asked about the UM, can you just get a bag of beans and rice and go kind of dirt bag it? Uh. In the last couple of years, the Bahamas UH passed the law that basically said you can't do that. And when I was in the Bahamas, I mean I did a lot of d I I knew that when I was going there. You still couldn't guide there as you know, if you weren't from there, but you could do it yourself. So they've changed that in the last few years. In the last few years, I shouldn't say this, Well, that's the thing. It's not. I was actually down there. We went down as a family, UM to celebrate the book with this whole town, this little town of maybe three people called mcclean's town, and that's where David Pender lives. We went down to celebrate the publication of and I wanted to take Luca our son bone fishing, so UM I had to get him a license. But no one thought you needed to have a license. They thought the old rules were still in place, so to find the actual license was as a classic high jinks of like, you know, island time, you should go over see Steve. Well, Steve told me to go over see April. You know, blah blah blah. Um. So no one appears to be monitoring it, but I had We had an argument in the Bahamas, uh, and I don't want to say where, because it's kind of not a place, not when people go to. We had an argument in the Bahamas with the guy we were rent in a house from where he was insulted when we suggested the need for a fishing license, and was especially insulted when we when we mentioned that there was uh distances from the land where you cannot spearfish, and he's like, didn't not that he didn't like the law, was like insulted that we would be so stupid as to bring up the idea that someone could possibly even make that law. Yes, I had the same conversation with a gentleman who who thought that going to try to buy a license was the stupidest thing. But you know, he's like, he's you're telling me that there's no way it could be true that you can't use spearfish where you want money, that's great anyway. So Prescott Smith has become a kind of a controversial figure. But what he talks a lot about conservation wise. Um, the Bahamian Archipelago is a fascinating um geological specimen. If you will, right, if you um, if you want to forego you're ambient tonight, just pick up a book on Bahamian geology. Um, it's it's a real sleeper. But everything but every like five pages or something, you you discover some really cool things. For one, UM, slavery didn't really take in the Bahamas. Um, the Bahamas had a um way different narrative in terms of colonialism than most of the Caribbean. Uh because culturally it wasn't suitable ground to grow cane both but the latter for the most part. So for the same reason that cane didn't grow there. The limestone. Right, Um, we we get this thing called the freshwater lens. So obviously the islands exists in salt water, but rain falls onto limestone and basically percolates through the tiny um holes in limestone and then spreads out and makes what's called the freshwater lens. It's like a meniscus of freshwater that um allow the mangroves to flourish, floats on top of the salt water. It floats on top of it. Yet is that why when we were catching baby tarp and they were saying it was I mean I knew it was brackish. Yeah, That's exactly why I was hearing how they could have how they could have brackish water in that area. So that's how it doesn't make any sense until you, you know, see this gigantic map of so. Prescott Smith is a huge proponent of preserving these freshwater lens is because they are the places where mangroves can flourish. And if you can get mangroves to flourish, you can get you know, the bait fish to flourish, the lobsters which they commercially fish for to flourish all of these things. Um, when that freshwater lens is destroyed, uh, basically according to Prescott and really um, this other biologist named Andy Danield Chuck who works at you Mask you know, so he was you know a great content that study, that study that they did, he and his wife, Right, they did that incredible study. Right, I mean, he's probably one of the people I talked to scientifically the most while while working on his book, and he helped establish, you know, the value of these. I read the whole paper. It was fascinesting it is. It just starts saying body of water instead of the book, so it burns into people's head. Thank you. What the name of the story is the body of Water? Two things about the freshwater lens body of water. I have often in body Water you mentioned the freshwater lens. Um, dude. I spent a lot of time puzzling over how in the hell, Like, let's say you see a little island. It's got mangroves on it, but there's no fresh water, there's no pond, there's no creek. I've often been like, how in the world does that things survive? That's what I'm wondering. So is that is that a Is that a lens there? It's possible that there is one. But mangroves are really like the most hardy plant you'll ever come across. I mean, they can live basically underwater. Their roots poke up and kind of snorkel for air, you know. They um they can store salt water and shed it basically through dead leaves, so they're an incredible survivor. Um. I don't know that you know direct answer to that question, but but I would say the kind of tenacity of mangroves has something something to do with it. Can they clip all their freshwater from the simple rain? It's got to be that, right. This second point is you talk about saltwater, how freshwater float on saltwater. I dove in a in a body water in the Philippines where there are freshwater species, and then you dive down and there are saltwater species because it's like it's a freshwater lake that has an out like like like a cave entrance that leads out into the ocean. And so there's there's these like sicklids that are up in the freshwater portion, but then down in the saltwater portion you'll run into barricoot and other stuff that come in and out. You can dive down through and the temperature changes unbelievable. Do they have blue holes down there? It was like one of it was one of those. They didn't call it that, but it was it was like a blue hole setup. Right, there's a few of those around. Somehow these freshwater fish got established in that these freshwater fish somehow got established in there and formed like a little population. You dive down, the water's warm and you dive down in there, and also the water is like frigid, and there's that open ocean salt water. But that somehow that that that body of water fresh water on top of the well. So I mean, if you if you imagine this, this table here is is an island in the Bahamas. Whenever a piece of ground is developed, an infrastructure is put in, they basically have to cut into that limestone and when they do that, they destroy that freshwater lens. So if you look at um places like zuma Um where the fishery has kind of been uh destroyed by resorts and such, that's what guys like Prescott Smith are trying to stop from happening, and really are are allowed in the guiding community UM because they want to take this Bahamian resource and keep it a Bohemian resource. They don't want, you know what what has happened for generations. Someone comes in, build something, mess is something up, leaves, it goes somewhere else, and mess is something up. You know, they don't want that same process. Are our bone fishing resorts doing that level of development. Like when I think of a bone fishing place, I think I'm being real chill, Well, how long does it take for that so when you dig up the flats bottom? I mean I heard it takes an astronomical amount of time for it to get all of its nutrients backs. Right, how long does it take to do that? Well, I mean all, I would say, exponentially longer than it takes to destroy it. So a little tiny island like deep water Key Sorry, um, that's like a two square mile island. I think you know they proposed the economic well being on the island is it was for a long time owned by a guy that you know, we talked this about this but um on the island, and they proposed putting in I think a hundred houses. So that would that would do it? I mean that would, um, a hundred houses would on a two mile island basically damage significantly that habitat nearest the island. Now, everyone wants a dock, right, everyone wants a dock. And if you look at the damage that all of those docks do, it's it is unbelievable. And then you get the outboards you've ever seen all the scrapes, yeah, Chris, especially when you're flying over that kind of when you're flying over those flats and see all those out, those engine scars out, and those take forever to repair. I saw recently. So the guys want to build a house. They're trying. They want to do like a golf course model. Yeah. Yeah, basically come down in golf fish, right. I mean, the notion that a small island could support kind of a an ocean reef club sized development is crazy. But over and over and over, management the management of this small island changed hands, and as changed hands, you suddenly somebody needed to make more money in the endeavor than the last guy did, right, Um, And so uh essentially, as the as we find it in the book Body of Water, Um, the island itself is at an impass, and um the community is is about to be uh damaged by what might transpire. Right. So um. David Pender, who was was the original guide, he goes basically through Um he becomes famous, if you will, as a guy. He's he guides like a J. McClain and Joe Brooks and all the famed you know, magazine stars of the day. And they come down and they write about him and he makes deepwater key what it is, the the great destination of Bahamian bonefish lodges. But there's there's kind of a caveat as he's as he's working all these decades, he's not wearing polarized glasses, so he's developing severe cataracts on his eyes. And as the lodge itself grows kind of into fame, uh, his site declines and he's eventually you know, ship can by the lodge and given a severance of I want to say, eighteen thousand dollars is the amount they gave him for forty year or so years of service, which um was the severance back that was you know, a dollar an extra dollar twenty five a day. We should point out here that the that these fish, and you can talk about this as well, um, the preferred way of catching them just to see them, yes, see them, stalk them and cast him. I mean I've caught him out just like dicking around too. But yeah, if you're one vision, one's vision. I was just saying, one's eyesight is quite important. Absolutely, yeah. I mean apparently Pender was so skilled at finding these fish that one lodge owner said he hears the fish, he doesn't need to see them. But um, you know it was a knack to it for sure. Man like spotting fish. It's huge. Like people, you can be like no right there, no, no, no no, no right there, right there there. It's like spot mule deer. But it's not the prefer I just want to say, like, it's not the as fly fisherman to people, you know, think we're just trying to make it harder. It's not the preferred method. It's it's the most efficient method. So if you could, you could blindcast all day and don't get me wrong, when you find a whole school of bone fish and they're mudding up, you can cast into that enormous mess of fishing and you'll catch a bunch of little I mean catch them out of channels because they travel the channels. Yeah, but you know you're gonna be blindcasting all day long. You're gonna be much more productive if you start pulling the flats and you're siting them, and then you can preferred because it's more productive. Because if I said it's more productive to blow them up with dynamite, that doesn't mean you're going to blow them up with dynamite. I would actually argue it's more that it's still more productive to fly fish for them then blowing up up with dynamite. Okay, He's like, No, the fishery is what it is is because people want to go down and site fish for the fish. They're not like I want to catch a bone fish and I don't care if I'm if I'm out in a hundred feet of water with a pound of lead and a live shrimp. They're not. They want to come down and they want to see that fish. If you prefer to come down and see that fish and stalk that fish and present fly whatever four ft off the end of its nose firs, and you're not gonna scare the ship out of it and have it pick it up. Like that's the thing. If he's like all cunning and I and I it was a tough day, you know, And I said, I'm gonna give you a heat seeking bullet and you can safely shoot it onto that mountain side and it will find you know, the wouldn't do it. I don't big we talk, So my only point I mean to derail the conversation. But I was just saying, like when the dude loses his right like waynes you're kind of but as I say, Wayne is according to the ownership at this lodge. And this is the you know, this is the point in the book where he becomes kind of that that you know, the classic archetypal figure that was cast aside. Right, he helped basically, he literally built the place with his hands. And then when he becomes a little yes, less useful, he's cast aside. So he um, he takes on a little bit of this this mythic quality. And and as I would discover, he actually, um, he didn't lose his sight altogether. We fished together quite a few times, and he was just as good as a spotting bone fishes, um as you or I would be, because he could hear him, I don't know, he could send them somehow, or or his eyes healed up. He got cataract surgery and didn't tell anyone. You know, there's a there are a few kind of mysterious missing pieces in the in the narrative. Um, not missing because I didn't research them, but missing because I got different answers from you know, different people. Um, how what what even brought you down there in first place? Were you trying to work down there? No, I my original uh tripped down there was on a how to Are aware two piece for you know, Outside magazine, And um, I had an old friend and old client. I'm sure you how long have you been guiding or were you guiding before you? So you probably have a large group of people you would consider your friends, right, that you have from your client set. So I had this awesome client, a guy named Jeff Miller who grew up in St. Louis and had fished at Deepwater Key from the late seventies early eighties. Um, and when I went down there, he said, you gotta meet this guy, David Pinner. He's he's the guy that started at all. If you if you really want to write about bone fishing in the Bahamas, you need to know David Pinder. Of course, you know. I went down with the hopes of dashing off an article and fishing the rest of the time myself, right, Um, But on subsequent trips I would bring groups of clients down. On subsequent trips, I met Pender and spent a lot more time with him and realized that he was one of those kind of singular dudes, I mean, a person who has spent his entire life on a two mile island. I mean he grew up foraging for snails and crabs and whatever he could find. Um lived on the same plot of land that entire time. So um, the more more time I spend down there, the more time I realized that he he was the subject of whatever this this book might be. And when you say you brought people down like you were a promoter, no, I was a host. I just hosted a group of my clients who wanted to go down and bone fish at this lodge. What's that relationship look like? It looks good if you get it for free? I mean, yeah, so if you get eight people, then um, you get to go for free and then cut your check for whatever. The April used to do that, right, But I also heart well, no, and I used to do. I've done trips to the Bahamas and Belize and yeah, and I'd get a check, But I also would sit there and I wouldn't fish, and yeah, that's right. But I would host these trips and unless my client caught a permit, for example, I'd be sitting on the boat being like, oh, and I don't know about you, but my clients are great steelhead fishermen, they're not all great in a flat boat. So I did a lot of just sitting and watching. What do you mean you would be like anxious about them being successful? But no, I no, yes, no, I couldn't catch a fish. Professionally, I didn't feel comfortable fishing until my clients had caught a fish. I mean, there are two different kinds of hosts. There are some hosts that that don't have that same consideration. I felt it would be a professional courtesy to take a back seat. What are they asking of you though, to talk to them and just give them advice. So these be people like in your in your case you guys steelhead clients, you become friend professional friendly with the clients and they say, man, I would love to go fish bone fish, but I'm not comfortable just going down there and cold rolling in Like you're be my host so that I have a familiar face when I arrive and when we arrange everything right, So it's not even so April is going, I'm gonna make sure we're going with the right operation. They got the right boat. We're going to make sure that we're weve gotten in with the right tides and the right you know, guides and when something goes wrong, it's kind of on you. Yeah, and you've been there before, right, you sussed it out. You know how to get from the plane to the shuttle to the lodge. And have you done this? M It's something I'd no longer do. Um. I find it really exhausting. It's a lot of work. Yeah, and well it depends on I mean a lot of my clients are amazing and for their friends, you know, it's a great time. But you you still have to be on And I don't know, did you did you take a back seat? I wouldn't do a great business. No, no, I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't do it again. How many times you do it enough? A dozen't? Yeah, you know half it doesn't. I think it's a young five fishing guy though. Boy was something you dreamed about? Man, Because you get at that point, Oh yeah, you're here like senior guys talking about doing these trips and you're like if that sounds like paradise? Oh yeah, but you end up you know it. Your your commission gets put towards air fare and stuff, and yeah, you don't make any money off of it, and you get to a point as you get older, I think you're like, I would rather pay to not have dude take a Yeah you, I mean your guy. By the time I stopped doing it, we our family was growing. I didn't want to be going from the family at its best. It's a free week of fishing at it's best. Right. Yeah, So it's so just so I'm understand the business right, it's more of a way because like guiding, I appreciate that guiding can be lucrative, but I gathered from the guides I know that it's a pretty it's like a bootstrap, it's seasonal. Yeah, it could be a tough way to make a living. Just terms two thousand to uh, is that what you're saying? No, No, that wasn't. I wasn't referring to anyone's particularly. My sense of it is is that as a guide, it's like a great lifestyle that people want to do, but when it comes it's not like you know, there's a lot of guys out there that aren't meanting money. So it's the hosting do I'm understanding the business right. The hosting is the thing you do because you want to go down in your position. I would love to go down. No way, I'm going to spend the money on that. All I need to do to make it that I can go is to assemble this trip. It's usually I can't afford to pay that money to go on that. Here's what I'll do to make it happen. There are a number of book booking aige would you call a and sees that that's their whole business, right, the entire business. It's like it's another service that you can provide to your stable of clients that keeps them hanging out with you. Also, right, and so hey, I mean I've done it on the hunt side, and I mean really it's I mean, be honest, is doing a something very very similar every time he sets up a meat eator shoot, right, And you get a taste of it when you invite somebody out to hunt with you, and there's that kind of like gnawing feeling in the back of your head where you're like, I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I really want these guys to have success. I hope everything goes well this trip. I hope we at least see something that's not just total goat rope. The whole time. The difference is is if you bring one guest on the show, you have to deal with one person. But if you have ten guests, there's usually a sour apple in there somewhere, so it can make things interesting. Yeah, the lodge, the post phishing lodge dynamic does not always show people out their best. You know, April caught a twelve pounder. My biggest fish was five cow. Kind of permit, what everyone's disappointed? You did you see any permit? It turns into pretty much drivel pretty pretty quickly, I think, or even well, I wish they would have told me to bring that fly, you know. And you're like, or why is the host always getting the best guys? You know, that's a big one too. I've heard nightmare stories from different like or about different hosts. There's some great hosts and there's some real shitty hosts. So there, as we all know. I won't mention them, but yeah, there's some shitty one they're just selfishly trying to get that free trip. But there are other hosts who really care about your quality experience, and a lot of a lot of people who host trips own fly shops, so for them it's an opportunity for them to sell gear. Right. Oh, no, ship man, just like a neat little business you guys all got involved in. There's a work you know you're talking about, Like I think he almost said scam. No, No, there's a I was gonna name I want to name my daughter after my mother, but I wanted to name my daughter uh zinny uh And Zinnia is a word. It's a word that has to do with the guest host bond, the bond that forms between the guests and the host. And I believe it's somehow related to it comes from the action of a flower and the pollinator. Point being, I'm interested in this guesthole situation. Don't get too interested. It's really not that great. It's really not It was a way for me to get down to get back down there. I had a good buddy who he kind of was a fixer of sorts for destination lodges, right, um, And you could hire him and he would go hang out at your lodge and help kind of ferret out the usual crap that happens at those things. Right. Had a little bit of theft, a little bit and like not you know, taking cash under the table instead of running at through the books type of stuff. And and he had quite the experience out there in the Bahamas and and just taught. He's like, man, I he's like I had. He's like a part of the deal is like I could take a boat out and go fish and I he's like, but I didn't get to enjoy any of it because there was so much animosity between me, the white dude, and the staff, right the local guides. Um. And he said the friction was like nothing he had ever experienced. And but that's really what it was. It was during that time of like, hey, we gotta make sure that we control this industry and and because nobody's gonna take care of it the way we wanted to be taken care of. Yeah, yeah, no that I I saw that dynamic at work too, And um yeah, I think you know, Um, it's funny because funny you bring that up. Of all the things that reviewers talked about in regard to this book Body of Water, no one would no one would touch race, you know, even though it's definitely a subject in the book. So you write about race with the reviewers that want to talk about how it talks about race. Yeah, even sitting here right now, I don't want to talk about it. I mean stories, I've got stories for days. But I'm just like, okay, I got more tell me about Okay. Well, I mean there's it's not surprising to me to hear that there's a little racial tension between Well, there isn't every recreational economy, and it's not like necessarily black, white, brown, white, whatever it's you're from here, You're not from here. And even though I'm making my living off of this industry, it is totally totally hyper focused on people not from here as an American, and you're going to feel it. It's nothing to do with color, So it's more insider outsider, but it happens to be overlaid with race rather than being black versus white, right, I mean, according to Prescott Smith, the guy mentioned earlier, he all, he says he's different really Island Island. He says, you know, on on Androws, race relations are far more evolved than they are on say the east end of Graham Bahama, which I would gather after spending a lot of time, there's there's a lot more in the wilderness, if you will, right, Um, But with that kind of racial tension though, man, it does. It's there's a lot of it in Hawaii, and there's an inside. It's insider outsider, but it's also not because look at the like the derogatory term for an outsider is like a howiy right, So ghosts you presume like white ghost so like it's it's us them we they inside outside, But it's overlaid by racial So there's a moment in the books, it's probably two thirds of the way through. There's this guy, Walter Recley, who's guiding me uh On on a given day. And Walter did an interesting thing. After guiding for this prestigious lodge deep Water Key for twenty five years or so, he along with another local guide from mc cleanstown, got together with a couple investors and said, we want to build our own lodge. Will you front us the money for this? And the investors, who had fished with them for thirty years or so, said yeah, let's do it. You know, we'll build it across the channel from deep Water Key. It'll be within i shot but and it won't have its own island, but you know, you'll have your own boats, you'll have your own dock, everything, and um, this is a place called East End Lodge, which is still in existence and still like yellow Dog takes people down there. Um. But for a couple of years it was floundering, and so Walter had to go back to work for the lodge that he had turned his back on, and of course, you you know, fall in at the bottom of the totem polled. So we're sitting at lunch one day and we're talking about this, and I'm trying to dig a little bit out of him from a research standpoint. You know, I kind of play this conspicuous role in the book and my poet and my a ficient guy to my a nonfiction writer, what am I doing down here? But he finally caves and and says, like, um, how would you feel? He says, how would you feel if where are you from again? Manitoba? That's what he says, And say Montana? And he says, well, how would you feel if, um, if someone opened up a lodge in Montana? Or if you worked for a lodge and you worked your entire life but you could never own the boats, you could never own the equipment, you could never really get ahead, right, And that's a you know, a moment in the book where I and epiphany, if you will, where I begin to see far deeper into the lens of these local Bahamians because it's the answer is obvious, right, you feel like shit, I understand exactly where they're coming from. Look at believes now compared to what it used to be when you know, you Americans, when I bought up everything or standing to San Pedro, right like yeah, you guys, you too, do the culprits. But yeah, I get where they're coming from. I mean, it's a limited resource. Do you see this up and BC? I mean BC is a lot more controlled in some ways, right it is. But yeah, there's always going to be that little bit of I mean, you can be an American and have a lodge, but we want to see that you've put your time into you know, be one of us, because it's just it's like, why are you here taking from the resource? And what are you giving back? That's the big question. What are you giving back? So that's you know, the same question this guy, Prescott Smith asked the same question. Walter asked, alright, So by the end of the book, we um body of water, body of water, we we see this lodge, uh called North Riding Point also kind of an old prestigious lodge in the Bahamas which becomes managed by this guy named Paul Adams, who had grown up on deep Water Key, had grown up um with David pinder as as a friend, as a mentor. His his parents had managed the lodge, and then he goes off to prep school and college whatever, ends up back and at this lodge called North Riding Point. Their model is far different. They want um, you know, we talked about Miko earlier, Miko Glinton. They hired Miko away from deep Water Key and said, we want to groom you to be the manager of this place. In the meantime, we're gonna send your three kids to school, private school and freeport. We're gonna give your wife a job as assistant manager. Uh. Samantha is also a masseuse, you know. Um. And so that that old kind of antiquated post colonial model that deep Water Key had been following for so long is beginning to be usurped, if you will, or um bettered by by some newer lodges. So they're giving back, even though the money is presumably coming from somewhere up here. I don't know exactly what makes it tricky is that the industry is driven by outsiders, right right. It's like, it's not like there's this economy going on and then outsiders come in and they're like, Oh, what a cute thing you've created here, We're gonna grab it from you. It's like, well, no, ship. There's a lot of outside interest in the economics of it because it's fueled by outside and trust. If it wasn't for the if it wasn't for outsiders coming to fish, those jobs wouldn't exist. So what it's not, it's not it's clean, right right. But I mean eventually it's the same discussion we're having here in Montana. What is sustainable and what isn't? Right? Um, what is erecting fifty or a hundred houses on a to mile island sustainable to the environment? Probably not? Um, Could this economy support it? Probably not? Would people continue to go there after years and years? No, So you'd end up with something that's not sustainable and was it? And it's one of those things that, yeah, you have the cliche loving something to death. It's one of those things that in in pursuit of an ideal, you wreck the entire You wrecked the entire point of it all. Yeah, I mean I I see the statistics in Montana were the outdoor recreation industry is bringing in billions, literally billions of dollars seven point one billion is the last stat that I saw. And outfitting and guiding is third in outdoor wreck tier of things, a lot behind lodging and gas. So we're also contributing to those as well. Um, but yeah, there's a breaking point for sure, I think, And and these are good examples, right, It's like, yeah, it's like, well I was in Belize when it was really good and it wasn't bought up, and so I don't even want to go there anymore. So then you move on to the next spot and ruin that. Like before you guys get any of that, Like when you go around you you're kind of rolling loud at this point, right, I mean, had a role real quiet, and we typically do roll real quiet, and if we don't roll real real quiet, it's not good, right, So people, we try to be discreet. Man. People don't know where somewhere. People don't know we're somewhere unless they hear it from a name until the episode airs, and then do you hear it not. I mean we have starting that blew up a place. Is that what you're getting at? No, I'm not accusing you that, I'm just saying like I mean, when you go and do like a kid that amazing caribou hunt you know where you see that fifty miles string of caribou coming through? Are your email inboxes getting lit up every week? Like you want the thing that we've been We get asked about most. We get asked by by a factor of ten. Um. We get ask most about a particular antalope unit. No kidding why Um? Some things are self limiting okay, because of inaccessibility, because of uh needed to like draw like limited entry permit lotteries for tags right where there's only a set number of participants that can engage anyways because they have a cap. You could be carible hunting in a place that has a quota. So it's it's the quota gets filled every year. Right, Um, you could make it, you could make you could blow it up and that you make it. Participation become harder because there's increased interest and so therefore getting one of those permits becomes more difficult. But in a lot of places, including the place that we would never in a millionaires divulge um. The the Antelope unit, we would never divulge. Uh. You can't blow it up because there's that limiting thing. There's gonna be set. A number of people are engaged in the activity every year and that's kept by law other things. Yeah, you could, you could blow it up. And I think that that happens to some extent, but a lot I think that a lot of the people that watch the shore are like, honestly just interested in seeing the experience, and a lot of it's not something that people it's not something that a ton of people really want to go do. Always um, in cases where we are up front about it, sure, I have absolutely no doubt that it that it that it does a negative to it. Um. And there's all kinds of arguments to be made about to what uh, to the extent that awareness and advocacy and people's engagement with the resources is beneficial. And there's two really good arguments. There's two really good arguments, and I can articulate them both, and I vacillate between the two. And the one is that, um, there's this great stuff out there. I don't want anyone to know about it. I just wanted for me. And the other argument is is that that mindset, we'll sink you in the end. Just had this discussion earlier today. It's a it's a balancing act. Yeah, did my old my old boss, This guy, Rusty Gates, he owned a lodge on the Assemble up in Grayling, Michigan and was one of the first fierce conservationists in that area. He um, not a lot of them. No, he fought off like Nestley and some big oil wells from going in, and he amassed this group of doctors and lawyers who were his clientele and basically said, look, they're gonna screw this river up if we don't fight them. Until he started this thing called the Anglish of the Assable. But you say, in fact, I quit throwing my refrigerators and old exactly. But I remember when I started bird on and he said, you know, CD, that's not a that's not a sport. You want to get too many people into. So there is that, there is that feeling. But I read an amazing book. Um. I was asked to write a blurb for an amazing book by a writer named Dean Kuiper's called The Deer Camp, which takes place in Michigan and Keiper's He wrote for Spin magazine forever and has written a lot of kind of environmental justice pieces, but he talks a lot about all the Leopold's philosophy and basically that notion that I'm gonna write read this note I wrote. He says something like, we can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, or otherwise have faith in, you know, so that idea that um, yeah, you want to keep something yourself, but if you keep it really all to yourself, the next generation ceases to have the ability to have to that direct contact, you know, that thing that inspires uh, stewardship and conservation and and whatnot. And and that's the that's the the razor's edge you walk right, It's I want to influence people. And you got a book like Body Water here that's going to be very influential to who reads it. But you want to inspire folks just enough to where if they get asked, if hey, just by chance, would you care if we ended fishing in the state of Montown, they'd be like, boy, you know, I don't fish there personally, but I don't think that's a good idea, right, but you don't necessarily want him out there on the on the river. You no doubt know the fishing writer John Geerrick, Yeah, and then his uh, he's got a fly time buddy a k bas No, it wasn't a k Best to said, it's Yehny, who's the guy that had the quote about what are you doing over there taxing? Brody? Know what I'll bring this. I'll help you sell people on why you're doing that, and I'll bring it full circle and say, Brody's a fishing guide too. That's right in Colorado and he used to do quite a few of these hosted trips. I'm just keeping I'm just keeping your little side activity and making it seem like it's have many side activities going during these conversations. Help me out. Though, it wasn't a k beast who said the role casting quote that I'm gonna quote. Yeah. We even asked John about this in some fishing writer, some fishing writer who John Gearrick Admiers was saying, I won't write about any river that I can roll cast across, and I can roll cast a long way. That's a great I think that's a really really great rules. Sure, it's okay to write about the Missouri. It's like, are you bigger than right? What do you like? You can keep that secret? Yeah, this Missouri. You speak up, but you're walking the line, dude, because there's no doubt. Like I read it, I've done that, I've done that. I've five for bone fish in Mexico, I flat fish for bone fish and Belize, I fly fish for bone fish in the Bahamas. Okay, but kind of like whatever did it? Moved on to other things. But reading I'm like, damn, that is pretty cool, man, I do It's like makes me want to go back because you write about it. But we haven't talked about this, but you write about it very beautifully. I can tell. I can see you struggle as a poet and writer because you're trying to mix. You're you're putting a poetic sensibility into certain passages, but also there's a journalist sensibility, and those two things are not always dancing nice. There are not always like dancing nice dances and dirty. But the point let me fish this thing to take the writing on. But want to finish the point here, you're sending people down there by writing beautifully about a place that you feel could potentially be destroyed by people going down there. I know you're setting up a real conundrum. It's the thin edge of the wedge, right, Yeah, I know it's I think. Um, you know, a place like deep Water Key has been developed to the extent that it can be developed, and it sounds like the money was pulled. No one's gonna be able to build fifty houses anymore. That that's kind of a pipe dream. Um, But I do think about that. I've never written one fishing piece on Montana that even remotely refers to a body of water that you could locate. In fact, I try to obscure it as as best as possible, right, I try to, um super cute. Um, you know, I'll I'll obscure it as best possible hunting hunting pieces in the same way. Um, but back to your notion of that that kind of poeticized journalism or whatnot. When um, I showed David James Duncan an early draft of this, who's a real good friend of mine, probably my first readers, uh hisn The manuscript came back and every now and then he would write this acronym which stood for poet colon right pros exclamation point. You know so, um, it did take me a long time to try to weed myself out of the impulse to um to poeticize something that really didn't need to be poeticized. Are you better because um? Are you better because you just can't make poetry pay? Oh? No, that took me, you know? Are you better because one cannot make? No? That's why. That's why poetry. There's a great guy Clark's song about that, right, that's what keeps the poet free. I forget what the actual line is, but yeah, no, poetry is not supposed to pay. It's uh, it's below money, it's above money. It hovers in the ether. It's romantics. Is lovemaking that? Yeah, in the right field. I have a fun way to make it pay. But a matter of fact, it has cost me quite some money. But um, so you don't do you still write poems? Yeah? I have a new book of poems coming out in March called Ragged Anthem. It actually has there's there's um, there's three hunting poems in it. I can't trying to remember, because you were once telling me you you didn't like to mix fishing in poem. Right, no, no, there's and I actually went back and look there's there's one poem in there. The last poem in the book is it's not a fishing poem, but it is a poem that has a brook trout in it that's actually grabbed, you know, by hand and eating over a stick fire. Um, it's you know, you can what you can say about poetry. Everybody's gonna just turn their phones off. Let me rip Let me rip out a lot of poetry, and you tell me who said it. Okay. Um, there are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold pop service, Sam Maghee. Okay, all right, you got me? Can I rip out another one? This is the only poem I know? Okay? Um? How was the hunting Hunter? Bold Brother? The watch was long and cold? Rob Service? Okay? Group bottle line of poetry? Oh man, Uh you know yesterday was Harrison's birthday. Uh. He has a great line from a poem called Cabbage. If only I had the genius of a cabbage, or even an onion to grow myself in their lamon a from the holy core that bespeaks the final shape. Oh yeah, yeah, gives me a little choke. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know you mentioned gear Rock. He was sweet to this book. He I'd never met him before. I've grown up reading him, you know. I read everything I could. Uh. And then, um, my publicist called me up in November, right after the book came out and said, you know a guy named John Guy Rich. I said, um, what some writer John Guy? I said, John gear Rock. She said, yeah, you better check the Wall Street Journal. He just wrote a review on Body of Water. So no, yeah, he had he'd written a beauty this quote on the back of the book. You didn't know he was putting that in there. And that's the paperback, so um, you know he wrote the review about the hard back and I had no idea. No, I just saw the literal paper, which was fantastic. It was the first thing I saw when I well, I mean, obviously it's the top quote, but definitely stuck out to me. I saw the Body of Water. But he came up to Missoula last year to give a reading. Fantastic crowd out there, and we had a nice dinner and he said, you know, um, he said, he wrote a good book. Thanks not. It's really humbling to hear and he said, but you can only write one bad one, so you know, get back to work. All of the book, he says. Krist Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport made me long to try it again and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. It's amazing. I'm excited to read it, but I'm kind of scared. I don't want to get sucked into wanting to fish for bone fish again. You know what's funny, I have such little desire to fish for bone fish at this point. I know, Yeah, why What I don't miss, what I don't think I'll ever not want to do, is is the hunt, the visual hunt for the fish. And we were talking about this earlier, you know, the preferred, the preferred way. I think it's preferred because it does it takes us back way back into that like place, to seeing brain that has really not been missing from our world for too long. It's you know, our new brain hasn't been in existence, not up to date. No, it's not. So we desire that, we we crave that that language, of that visual language, and that that doctor was talking about. I mean, I would imagine if it got cold out there, which it does. You know, you heat up in that moment and then if it's cold to get cold again, chill if you have to take a heater. So I've been thinking about something you said, April. You're right, Uh, dynamite is not. No, I'm not kidding. You're right about this. If one found themselves in bone fish country and someone and uh put a gun to your head and they're like, you catch one as fast as possible or I'll shoot you. Um, yeah, man, that's probably what you would set out to do, is go look for one. Yeah, you wouldn't go out and start wailing away out and look you and a for you guys are probably more an expert on this than I. But I know people that guide bone fish in the Keys, and I think that if you put that question to at least two of my buddies down there and what tool they would use, they'd say a very nudely spin casting rod with a shrimp on it. But but I wasn't necessarily saying that the fly is the most proctive. I'm saying sit site fishing for then and casting to them like a live crab in the flats that's going to clean up everywhere so it doesn't matter if it's flier or bait, but it's the site fishing and specifically tracking that fish rather than just blind casting over and over again and hoping one goes by. In the likelihood that you're gonna spook one if you're just casting over you know what books sent me down to want to go catch one real man? Uh remember dude, I don't know if he's on the scene anymore. Randall Kaufman. Yeah, he was kind of big, like Oregon and ship like that and sold fly tian equipment whatnot. He had a book, yeah, Kaufman stream Born. He had a bone fish book. It's big, it's hard back, great photos. And then my brother Danny had one of those my bro Dames of Fisheries biologist. I think you know this. Uh, he's a big fly pole fisherman. He uh to this day. He had one of those calendars where it's like cool fishing pictures. I think I had this too, Yeah, and everything third one was a bone fish picture or some dude on the flats or some dude doing something like that, and you know, every third day you're like, damn, that looks cool and that's what like, you know, it was being inspired not by people. I didn't know anybody that's ever done it. It wasn't being inspired by people who did it. It was being inspired by art. I feel like it's one of those things that art sends you to do it. Art doesn't send you to fish through the ice. Something else sends you to fish to the ice. It's not art, but art propels one, you know, madness, It sends you to the ice and hunger, hunger or a buzz. But it's just so easy to catch a lot of bone fish in a lot in a lot of places. I mean not always. I always say to people that you know, especially people who are new to fishing, salt bone fish are an excellent way to hone up your skills. I don't want to take you permit fishing if you haven't gone bone fish, because they're just gonna be like miserable. Well and there, they can be difficult, especially those big ones. I mean, they are just a whole new world. Right. If you see someone getting nervous in front of a bone fish, you know they're just going to free a permit. But I think there's a lot of opportunity for this art because it is pretty I mean you can go to wile Ease and catch fifty bone fish. Really, especially if you're casting into like a big over a day or I mean over a trip that depends, but definitely easy over a trip, easy over I mean there'll being a big mud pile. Right, so you're literally just casting, you're flying and stripping and anything's gonna bite. It makes you feel like I was going about it all wrong, and we do. We're kicking ask to catch a few of them. Well that's what it should be like. Yeah, they're you know, the the purest frown upon throwing into the MUDs. But if you're a guy, you're a guide or a host and it's day six or hate into a mud, I think personally I really don't care. But but for some people yet it can be deemed the mud is really cool. There they You know, you see this kind of dense cloud of milky water and then you just see a little flash or two up to little tails and wagging around. Do you have to kind of disagree with you like you're earlier comment in April and which bone fish Like, hadn't you ever heard of permit? What do you mean? In the fifties by him? Yeah, because I mean just think tongue in cheek. It's like these things coming in and out of fashion to like fly fishing or fishing in general is you know, it's like driven by what's cool not And I know a lot man who love bone fishing and do not like to go fishing for permit or even turpin. You know a lot of people who are into that. But a lot of this also has to do with like in the fifties, I don't know, we don't have enough time to drive you know, to jump into the history of like Joe Brooks and a lot of those guys. But a lot of that, like you're saying it was fashionable or a lot of people knew at that time that they could catch bone fish, but they didn't know that you could catch permit, so it wasn't necessary that. I mean a lot of it could have just been that he didn't didn't know that he could catch permit. Yeah, pure ignorance. It's just like nobody fishes, you know, five years ago, nobody threw flies at trigger fish, and like everybody wants to catch trigger fish. Well they did five years ago, but it's really trendy. Yeah, you know, it's the hip like, you're right, it goes to it goes well, that's I was going to get to that. I mean, I think even ten fifteen years ago, people I thought you couldn't catch permit. You know, now we think they're tough. Late in the book, this guy, David Pender, this amazing human being and one of the great guides and anglers in the Caribbean, tells this story where at almost dinner, this tiny little shack of dinner in mcclean's towns conch fritters, lobsters, you know, peas and rice. I always get it wrong, peas and rice. Um. And somehow one of his his son's winds him into this glory story of having guided back in the eighties a man, a Coca Cola executive into a double on permit. He and his partner doubled on permit and landed him simultaneously. You know. Um. So it's a story that that's told in great detail, and um it's like an amazing One fish goes east, peels into the backing and leaves just a couple of cranks left on the reel, and the other fish goes north and does the same thing, and and penderested make these incredible adjustments to land both of these fish and um and they do. I remember going home after hearing that story and uh and thinking, maybe, you know, we'd fallen over into the edge of of and and lore and this didn't actually happen. But at this point in the book, I was gonna give Pinder his own his own voice, right, he'd earned it, and um so I just I left it his is. You know, he told the story. It happened, But in the back of my mind, I was always thinking, was you know it was that a little bit of a fish tail? Um So, the book had been out maybe um three or four or five months, and I get this private message on my Facebook author page, and it's a picture, an old black and white picture of this old dude they called the Coca Cola Man and Pinder sitting on the dock with these uh two permit And yeah, the picture had been sent by uh, this guy who basically captain's a yacht for the Coca Cola Man and they go all over the world and and fish. And he said, I was reading your book and I got to this passage about the double on permit and I said, oh my god, hey, boss, come here, you gotta take a look at this or whatever. So he, you know, procured the picture. Was down in the the lodge or or the bar of the yacht, and he took a picture of it and sent it to me. And that's great. I'm told this before, but on the difficulty of permit I was with I was down with my brother one time. We were in the Bahamas, my brother Danny, and he was out wanting around looking for bone fish, and I was taking some We had been spear fishing, and I was taking some snapper heads and catching some little sharks, and uh, I hook a big ray. You know, permits like the following. So the ray goes along, and the ray just goes along, and he's moving along and he's silting, stirring up the silt and spooking up stuff, and so permit just in bone fish were just getting the habit of following behind him to see what they kick up. So here I have a big ray on the end of my line. Okay, And after a couple of seconds, there's to permit in mudding behind the ray because he's raising the real ruckus because I got him on my line. So I motioned frantically for Danny to come over, because here, what better scenario you have to permit that you know, we're feeding there, like looking for food because they're following behind the ray and the rays kicking up so much silt that there's like dust in the air, dust in the water. So it would presumably like impair the permit's vision in some way. And he is able to just take cast after cast because I can reel the ray in and then let him back again, let the drag loose. He goes back out on the permit and the ray go out and the permit the ray come in the permit, and meanwhile he's like cast after cast after cast after cast. Sons of bitches would not know because they're like so yeah, like that, they like run up, they want to I'm gonna kill that thing. I'm gonna stop and smell it. Look at the size of their Did you cook that ray on purpose? No, I was trying to get sharks and the ray picked it up. I um, that ray lives today. Well, let's something else killed the hammer head shark might have come and killed it. I don't know. I didn't mess with it. Kristen Browski body not though body, but body of water awesome, man, thanks for having me. Yeah, people should go read the book, man, please do. It's got like a real It tells a cool story and it tells you and it tells you what to do about it. There's a bunch of good guiding David guiding stories in there. Another one pops into into the head where he's got the investor in the original owner in the boat. And I'm not gonna give it away because you gotta go get and read Body of Water to get this story. But that's a good one. Like there's a fish on and then I'll hope is lost. But then the guide says, you know what, let's try this and yeah, and this is coming from a former guy, right, yeah, yeah, I could go on. I know we're short on time, but I was just thinking about the times where rowing a boat, you know, you got to fish on and they're not just like any two fish where you're like, yeah, just skip that thing across the surface. But these things are like bone a rod over there on the bottom of the river, and you're like, okay, what am I gonna do? How's it gonna work? Oh, there's a rapid coming up, Holy sh it. And then somehow you at the bottom of the rapid and you've got to fish in one net and it's just everybody's Yeah, those are good times, good stories. Kristen Browsky Body of Water. Folks can go buy it on Amazon, right, And you gotta know that you have influenced at least one more dirty bum fishing guy to pursue his writing dreams. And my buddy Colin Scott, you wanted me to be sure to let you know that he uh really looks up to you, and you let him know that it is in fact pop boy. So he's still bumming at in ak and writing screenplays. So you're not only are you ruining bonefish people clouding it up, you're ruining writing and bringing in all the kind of writers now competing precious limited resources. Pretty soon they're all gonna have TV shows too. Come on, it's great to be here. You guys are fantastic. Thank you very much everyone,