00:00:00 Speaker 1: I'm Casey and you're listening to the Element podcast. 00:00:15 Speaker 2: What's going on everybody? This is the Element Truck Driving Podcast. I'm your host, Casey Smith. Actually we're driving a Volkswagen Atlas. 00:00:24 Speaker 3: If you've seen us blazing down the roads of Florida, you know what's one it was. 00:00:29 Speaker 2: It was the black Atlast that have a ton of nasty stuff on the outside. 00:00:34 Speaker 3: This podcast is brought to you by First Like Year. 00:00:37 Speaker 2: I was wearing a new piece of First Like Year that you may have an opportunity to take a look at here coming this summer. When I shot my Osiellow Turkey the other week, you probably heard that story on the podcast last week. 00:00:49 Speaker 3: If you haven't tuned into. 00:00:50 Speaker 2: That, my buddy Tyler Jones is riding in the Navigation seed over here. 00:00:57 Speaker 3: Tyler, I am the super navigator. Where we had Navigator, Man, we. 00:01:01 Speaker 1: Are headed to uh back to the Continental US. 00:01:05 Speaker 2: I guess you'd say that's probably that's that's right, man, where we had it. 00:01:08 Speaker 3: Specifically, where were we headed. We know where we headed right now, so we're headed. 00:01:12 Speaker 4: To Taco Bell. That's a peak for sure. Sometimes man, Yeah, it's been a minute that. 00:01:21 Speaker 2: You have to Taco Bell probably since coming back from South Dakota. 00:01:26 Speaker 1: Let me tell you something. If if you spend money, it's all right. If you don't, it's still going to be that old nasty you know what I mean? 00:01:34 Speaker 2: You got I mean, you can't walk away from Taco Bell with five, you know, a five dollars meal anymore. No, Like you've got to spend like upwards of eight fifty or nine. 00:01:42 Speaker 1: Man, if you ain't eating the cheesey goordy to crunch, you ain't living. 00:01:45 Speaker 3: It ain't Taco Bell. 00:01:46 Speaker 4: They have a new thing called a stacker. 00:01:48 Speaker 3: It's legit, isn't that just like a folded case of pretty much. 00:01:51 Speaker 1: So if you're though, if you're a little thrown a back right now, our friends Eric and Brian are here in the back seats with us. They're actually the uh not so super navigators and they are hanging out. 00:02:03 Speaker 3: Bryan said, Hi, Hi Eric. 00:02:05 Speaker 2: We had a like essential moment today where we were navigating and pretty much this is what we've done for the last week. Did Na Florida is is hard to navigate. I'm learning and we have this interface of on x maps and Google maps and all these other things that we're like, you know, cross referencing and trying to get to places in Brian's I mean on ex map pen to the boat ramp that we were needing to go to. Well, it just so happens that that was seven miles behind us instead of the one that we actually need to go to. This five miles in front of us. But I'll give Brian to keV wrong bridge, guys. 00:02:41 Speaker 3: That it all looks the same. 00:02:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to tell, it is, and uh it's hard. 00:02:46 Speaker 3: Have we even told them where we are? No, we haven't. Now I like to bury the lead, you know, making sure. Yeah, man, you. 00:02:52 Speaker 2: Gotta gotta make them want it, make sure you're Are you excited to tell people though? 00:02:57 Speaker 1: I mean I don't know, man, I am excited. Okay, Yeah, for sure. Tell them what's up, guys. We somehow ended up in the Florida Keys in Pop's boat. Whoa, it's been crazy. Pop's boat did pretty good. Yeah it did, of course it did. 00:03:13 Speaker 2: I mean the human bills prompt Brian Bostick, good job. I mean, we didn't have any technical issues at all, which is, you know, top notch. So anytime I got a little store for y'all. Anytime Pop's boat has gone to the ocean. The next trip at home, it has blown the motor, So we gotta not do that this go around. 00:03:37 Speaker 4: I'll give you this. 00:03:38 Speaker 2: The motor on it now is a better motor than the other two that has blown. So I feel better about our situation on that. 00:03:45 Speaker 1: You know, if we wanted to go buy an air gun at Walmart tonight, we could wake up early in the morning and run that thing through some fresh water shooting iguander or two man, we could. 00:03:56 Speaker 3: Brian's got that polse beer. Now you're think you crue Hey, it is happening. I tell you this much. 00:04:04 Speaker 2: They better not be one in the yard. So we haven't actually told too much about that. 00:04:09 Speaker 4: We have. 00:04:10 Speaker 2: So y'all know we turkey hunted. But before we turkey hunted they Yeah, we podcast from Matt. I'm assuming that's out. 00:04:18 Speaker 3: I have it checked, but I don't know who I think it is. It'll be out for this one comes out. Yeah, So. 00:04:25 Speaker 2: We haven't told them what transpired previous to they, but they know all about the turkey hunt. 00:04:31 Speaker 3: Yeah. So we made it. We made a Florida just expedition. 00:04:35 Speaker 1: We tried to do as many things in South Florida as we could. And actually before we went turkey hunting, we flew down and met the guys who had brought Pop's boat and to South Florida, and they. 00:04:49 Speaker 3: Did a great job. The only lost one thing on the. 00:04:55 Speaker 4: Michael was driving the whole way, and I'll give him credit, drove the whole way, but I kind of made remarks along the way, like you want me to drive, but he was like, no, I got this. 00:05:05 Speaker 3: But his story was different. 00:05:07 Speaker 4: He did, No I did, but it was more like, your driving is not very good. You want to It was right after the yetti instant, but uh, we're going like seventy hit a double bump and then Michael just goes, oh boy, the yetti's flying. 00:05:22 Speaker 3: We call that a dump around here. 00:05:25 Speaker 4: And so we turned around. We got like two miles down, found an exit, turned around and saw it there, and then we got to the next exit, turned around to try to get it and was already gone. 00:05:36 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:05:37 Speaker 2: I don't really blame people though. Yeah, you know, free Yeddy on the side of the road. Yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do? Drive by it and be like, well, I hope the people who lost it found find it again. 00:05:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just I don't know. Yeah, I think i'd leave it. 00:05:49 Speaker 5: Man. 00:05:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, well I don't. 00:05:50 Speaker 2: Usually just like to stop and pick up stuff on side of the road on the interstate. 00:05:53 Speaker 3: It's kind of my deal. 00:05:54 Speaker 6: It's like a little dangerous, you know, to travel two thousand miles across country and to whos just a cooler? 00:06:02 Speaker 3: It's successful. Yeah, well, don't give them a caveat with this trip home. We almost hit a cooler. 00:06:07 Speaker 4: Yeah. The other night, man Brian Onless. 00:06:09 Speaker 3: We hit a tire that flew off a trailer. I remember that. 00:06:13 Speaker 2: It's been quite the expedition Trust Florida, which is is kind of like an expedition but has a bed. 00:06:21 Speaker 3: Your truck had like some. 00:06:23 Speaker 2: Air code thing too. It has a trailer fault. Pop's boat is really messing with the electrical system on that truck. 00:06:30 Speaker 3: Man, that's weird. That might be it. 00:06:33 Speaker 6: It might have been that wiring that we did before. 00:06:36 Speaker 2: You know, I've seen I have experienced with hauling boats a long way across the country, and well, I said, across our state, which. 00:06:45 Speaker 3: Is also a long way across the country. 00:06:48 Speaker 2: Like, boat wiring kind of messes with with fuses and stuff sometimes and just the electrics on vehicles. 00:06:55 Speaker 3: So that's probably why does everybody know what Pop's boat is? 00:06:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's that's a good question because we need to describe Pop. There's a video laying it on the There. 00:07:07 Speaker 3: Was a dead shark of it. Now it's one of those stupid. 00:07:11 Speaker 1: There's a video on the mediat channel of us hunting pigs on some public with shotguns with your dad Butch and we're hunting out of Pop's boat, and uh, Pop's boat. Explain what it Pop's boat is. 00:07:28 Speaker 2: Pop's boat is a commercial flat bottom boat. It's I checked it through the day. It's only seventeen foot long. I always thought it was nineteen. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: I was thinking. 00:07:41 Speaker 1: I was looking at it earlier to day and I was like, man, I just I think I don't want to, you know, go against what you were saying, But I mean i'd like to maybe I'm measured to. 00:07:49 Speaker 2: Hear while back and learn that it's only seventeen foot long. It's aluminum flat bottom boat. But it's got a what do you call it? Like the it on it is really big, seventeen foot long and seventeen foot wide. I think it's it's like sixty sixty b five foot right, So it's like sixty six. 00:08:11 Speaker 3: I think it's wido. Nah, I don't think I thought it was too because you measure it to the gunwales, right. I measured on the outside. I measured from edge to edge. But out there, you know, right in the middle, it might be just a little wider. Still. 00:08:24 Speaker 2: You measured the bottom off the top, but on the top for sure it's over six foot. Yeah, so it's not it's not like a shallow well, but it's not a deep well either. You know, it's got some side to it. It's just the perfect rough in it boat. You know, it ain't gonna win a beauty contest, but it's heavy duty. 00:08:42 Speaker 3: Name about three or five places Pops Boat's been. 00:08:45 Speaker 2: Pops Boat has been to Venice, Louisiana. Pops Boat has been to South Texas a few times. It went to South Padre Island. Pop's boat has been to Arkansas on a deer hunting trip with Clay Nukem. 00:09:06 Speaker 3: You might have seen on the Meat Eater Channel. 00:09:11 Speaker 2: And then Pops Boat has probably circumnavigated the globe on Lake Fork alone. 00:09:19 Speaker 3: My granddad retired it. 00:09:23 Speaker 2: You know, he did the sixty three year old social security but then he kind of did some side jobs and stuff for a while, but around about seventy he retired kind of for good. And from about seventy at the age of seventy, he probably maybe like sixty nine or eight, I don't know, for about ten years straight there he fished four to five times a week and took that boat between Cooper Lake and Lake Fork mostly a. 00:09:53 Speaker 3: Whole whole bunch. Oh. We took that to the White River in Arkansas one time. A trout fish too cool. Yeah, So it's. 00:09:58 Speaker 1: Just kind of what the White River boats look like. It's kind of a little more narrow usually, but there's flat bottoms. 00:10:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that. 00:10:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, that boat man has served us well. We've put pigs in it and ducks in it and dirt deer in it. And I want to fish. I want to drop fourther in it. 00:10:17 Speaker 2: I want to like put a four whether in there, like find a reason, like I wanted to take the four other over there. 00:10:21 Speaker 1: You know, I got an idea on that, but I can't say it. I can't say it in loud. Good will I be at laced that somebody could snow. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: I think I feel real confident that it would work with like two guys in a four whether there. I don't think you'd have a problem at all my four there. I wouldn't do it like a biggin you know. 00:10:37 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:10:37 Speaker 1: So Pop's boat now has been on within twenty five miles of the most southern point in the US. Yeah, and uh, and has fished miles out from the Florida Keys. And we've put it's been in the Atlantic. Now, we've it's been in Atlantic. We put grouper, we put. 00:11:01 Speaker 2: Somebody's getting stopped behind us. I don't think it's our crew though. No, So we've put grouper in the boat. We put snapper in the boat. 00:11:09 Speaker 3: We put. 00:11:12 Speaker 1: All kinds of little tiny fishes in the boat. What else we put in there? 00:11:16 Speaker 3: Jack Vall. 00:11:18 Speaker 4: Barracudascuda's hogfish. 00:11:21 Speaker 3: I caught my first hogfish today. That was wild. 00:11:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, iguanas in the Boat's talk about that a. 00:11:29 Speaker 3: Little bit, Yeah, man, Mayne cichlids, Yeah, yellow man. I forgot how many fish we caught on this trip. Yeah, what a trip man. 00:11:39 Speaker 2: So the first evening we got here, we all met up, at least the crew met us, and we put the boat in on one of these here canals in Florida and ran up and down it and did a little iguana hunting, kind of messing around, just kind of getting a feel for the place, and then we decided to do a little bit of fishing at the end of the day and showed enough. I happened into my first and only peacock bass. Couldn't hardly believe it, man, I was jelly. It hit the most classic of lures. 00:12:13 Speaker 3: And it makes me. 00:12:14 Speaker 2: It makes me real happy because this might be the only time this has ever happened. I don't know, you know, it might be happening in South Florida more often, I think. But I caught a peacock bass on a beetlespin, and I think that that's kind of cool. 00:12:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's uh. 00:12:28 Speaker 2: They ain't a lot of people going to uh, you know, the Amazon River basin and throwing beetlespins for peacocks. So I shot my first squad that night too, and it was kind of weird, and it made Brian weird right away, and ever since then he's hated iguanas. 00:12:44 Speaker 3: But it had like. 00:12:45 Speaker 2: Fifty ticks for some reason. This's going I had a bunch of ticks on. It does not sound delicious. 00:12:51 Speaker 3: The forbidden gusher. 00:12:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, Brian, would you would you when we asked you to hop on this trip, or when we ended up knowing you were going to be on this trip, what did you think that? Is it iguana hunting different than you thought it was gonna be? 00:13:09 Speaker 3: I had it had no appeal to me. 00:13:14 Speaker 6: It was you know, you guys talked about it a couple of times and it kind of got. 00:13:18 Speaker 3: More and more interesting to me. 00:13:20 Speaker 6: And you know, I don't know what we were doing that day, but you guys were talking about putting a boat in a canal and traveling up and down and shooting these iguanas with airsoft guns, noel guns, air rifles, whatever you want to call them, air soft guns, shoot up atlastic thing. 00:13:45 Speaker 1: We ended up with some pretty awesome air rifles, which I think we're going to release a separate podcast at some point that kind of gives you a low down on these things, but we won't talk too much about them. But they're not They're not just your like standard kind of Walmart pelican. 00:13:59 Speaker 3: You couldn't go to bad proven by this. It's like one of them deals where you. 00:14:05 Speaker 2: Have to decide, I'm going to spend a bunch of money on an air gun instead of buying a real I should something might get offended. 00:14:11 Speaker 3: But instead of buying a sure what would you say. 00:14:14 Speaker 2: Like, uh, combustible combustible expansion rifle right or something. 00:14:19 Speaker 3: Whatever it may be. 00:14:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, these are loaners, of course, and we were thankful for him. Uh what's it, Danny fl Right, Donnie Donnie f L. Let's see it, Donnie fl Just to give a little credit where credits due, Donnie loan to some air guns. So if you're in central Florida, Uh, hit them up. But anyways, you're going somewhere with that. 00:14:39 Speaker 1: Well, Brian was kind of telling us if it was different or the same as he kind of expected. 00:14:44 Speaker 6: It's it was everything I expected. 00:14:48 Speaker 3: I thought you weren't expecting much. 00:14:50 Speaker 6: No, I you know I wouldn't. It wasn't something that I really ever cared to do. Yeah, but after you guys talked about it and was kind of this is all d I y And that was a pilling to me. But the way you guys put it out there is exactly how it. 00:15:08 Speaker 2: Happened, and it made it enjoyable. You didn't know if you want to do it and you end up being the first one shot. 00:15:14 Speaker 3: I loved it. It was. It was a neat time. 00:15:17 Speaker 1: You boys can hype some stuff and make it sound exciting, for sure, it was. 00:15:21 Speaker 3: It was. It was fun. 00:15:23 Speaker 1: It was man, it's it's really hard to see them things like we got we got to where we spot Yeah, when you spot one, it's like that's like half the game. 00:15:32 Speaker 6: You don't know that I ever spotted one first. Yeah, those those things really blend. 00:15:39 Speaker 3: In good Man. 00:15:40 Speaker 1: There's uh, that's it's like I said, spotting them was half the battle. Once you spot on, you kind of felt like you did something and then you know a lot of times you were going to get a shot. And they're so camouflaged and they know that that they kind of sit still, you know, and and don't they don't move into until you get really close. 00:15:59 Speaker 3: It seems like as much. 00:16:00 Speaker 1: And this kind of depends, you know, they get kind of nervous if you turn that boat around or whatever. But anyway, they were you know, we were able to kind of feel, you know, pretty pretty we're kind of a pretty remote feeling area and we were hunting these things in this in water essentially mangroves and these these things are hanging over the side. This is gonna be all this all videos, So we're gonna make a video out of this. 00:16:27 Speaker 3: Uh. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: I imagine it will probably land on the media channel, but I don't know for sure. So anyway, it's something something to keep your eye, uh peeled for. But it was you know, there's a there's a small, like a very tiny spot that you have to hit them pretty much if you want to recover the iguana. Can you talk about that a little bit of Eric. 00:16:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's uh, well I didn't shoot any but it's between the eye and I don't know, would you call it their ear? 00:16:54 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:16:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, so you I mean because you got the rundown. You were the one who picked up their guns. So that's why that can use. You kind of got the rundown from them on this. Yeah, that ear is really it's not like an ear lobe. It's like a like almost like a. 00:17:33 Speaker 3: A sound dish. It's you know what I mean, the ear drum is exposed on the outside. 00:17:37 Speaker 1: It's like a it's kind of got a little sunken spot or whatever. And you're trying to shoot. I mean, how big is that? That's like an inch and a. 00:17:47 Speaker 3: Half that right? 00:17:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you probably have depending on the size of the guan But we call these things a lot of things, right, So when I say I mean iguana, but guaner's gwand's. 00:17:58 Speaker 3: Uh under. 00:18:02 Speaker 2: Iguana whatever, they're always something funny. Say, but like at the most an inch and a half on a on a really. 00:18:09 Speaker 3: Big one, and then your your. 00:18:13 Speaker 2: Elevation is probably a half inch ye you know, like you're left and right, so you got a little more play. 00:18:18 Speaker 3: But it's like it's a it's like a. 00:18:21 Speaker 2: Twelve ring on a on a target. Yeah, that's as big as you're shooting at something. 00:18:25 Speaker 4: And it's not it's not that easy because when you're in a boat, and yeah, you gotta know your distance, and if you're floating in a boat towards them, you can easily lose the yardage. There. 00:18:34 Speaker 2: Here's the thing that I always noticed on these iguanas, guys, and tell me if I'm wrong. The air guns were awesome, but sometimes the scope made it a little difficult. 00:18:46 Speaker 3: Yeah, for you know, with the. 00:18:48 Speaker 2: Focusing, and I feel as if in the boat we were getting closer to the iguanas than a lot of people do, like because some people walk around and and shoot these things like in sub visions and stuff, and we didn't have that permission to do something like that, so you know, we were relegated to the boat, but it meant that we got real close to some of them, and that made it a little bit difficult. I almost feel like i'd have been not on all of them. And I liked the air guns. I'm not saying I didn't, but I just kind of wonder if I could have used an open site and done a little bit better at like eight yards or something than having to make a mixture like fifteen areas. 00:19:26 Speaker 6: I think the distance fluctuated so much that you know, it was kind of difficult. You know, you would set your your scope for ten yards and the next thing you know, you're six yards from them. 00:19:36 Speaker 3: We started to kind of the systems though. 00:19:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, we figured out like there was there's some eight nine yard shots we were taking and stuff, and we're like, man that, like I would rather take a twelve to fourteen yard er, you know, like let's try to back off just a few yards, which it sounds ridiculous, but like that's that's you know, in these smaller canals like that, that is a distance to consider and it gives you just a little more time as you go buy in the boat or whatever that you're not having to swing on this thing really hard, and you know, you're you know, we're in the boat with six dudes, so like it's like everybody be extremely still, don't move because if you move, the boat's going to move around, you know. 00:20:17 Speaker 3: And uh, it was. 00:20:18 Speaker 1: It was very difficult at first, but I think we dialed it into to where we were understanding that like twelve to fifteen yards was a good distance. We were we would work like into the current with a trolling motor so that you know, you could kind of you weren't like flying by it, and you weren't having to swing, and there weren't leaves getting in the way. 00:20:39 Speaker 2: You can almost stall out for like, yeah, twelve seconds. You know, at least I'm sure you're never not motionless, but there's kind of like a bell curve of a hump there where like you're are probably more of a valley instead of bell curve. But like the time when you're not really moving a whole lot in at least as a as a gunner, you could kind of predict the movement of the boat or whatever. Yeah, I noticed that absolutely, goy, what's going on here? The sorry, there's just cops and stuff going wild on some some. 00:21:11 Speaker 3: People who are also navigating their way around the world. 00:21:13 Speaker 2: Anyways, being on a really solid rist made a huge difference, Like you do not want to take an offense shot at iguana. 00:21:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, we were sitting down and using the like the gunnals or whatever and shooting off of those and these these scots are sweet, but you definitely like we had a we had range finders because there's a dope chart for these for these things, and so what you have is like you've got the scope sitting up like two or three inches above that where the bullet's coming out. So for the first like you know, fifty depending on where the zero is. 00:21:50 Speaker 3: Sometimes it was. 00:21:51 Speaker 1: Like a lot of times it'd be like thirty yards. It depended on which gun we were using. But like the one of the guns was like thirty yards. So until you get to thirty, that bull is still rising essentially, So if you're shooting and go on at ten yards, you might have to either you know, you're gonna have to move your dope to like four or something, you know, and so you and then if you move to if if the boat floats in another three yards, it makes enough of a difference because of your elevation that you're not gonna make a very good shot. So it was really actually really difficult because one guy had the dope charts that was Casey on his phone, and then the rest of us kind of had to like refer to him every time we're kind of getting up and you would like you'd be like, okay, fifteen is this, ten is this? You know, twenty is that or whatever, and then you would kind of have those memorized or hopefully try to and if not, ask And then you also are trying to make sure the boat is navigated to the right spot. If you drift a yard or so, like or a couple of yards, then your rangefinder is a different guy who's calling out ranges or whatever and making sure that you know the boat dress that you know, oh we're at twelve now and not ten or not nine or whatever. So it's it was just like it was really challenging, actually, but I liked it. It was cool because you're kind of working as a team to try to get these iguanas. 00:23:12 Speaker 2: That was a really neat aspect of it. Is like we were all rotating shooting, and then one guy would be kind of the. 00:23:22 Speaker 3: Troll motor man. 00:23:23 Speaker 2: Another guy would be like the dip net guy in case it fell in the water. 00:23:26 Speaker 3: And so like everybody kind of had this job and we just kind of all rotated through it. 00:23:31 Speaker 2: And it was pretty exciting once like a good hit happened on an iguana, because then it was like, you know it was. 00:23:39 Speaker 1: And those things there's never a spot where you stone them right, like they always flip out second pretty. 00:23:45 Speaker 3: Much because the reptiles have a very simple brain. 00:23:49 Speaker 2: They essentially have like a brain stem like we do, but that's all they got and so you're not What comes along with that is a central nervous system that kind of fills in the gaps, so they can kind of function without pretty much all their brain here at least their body is doing some stuff. 00:24:10 Speaker 3: You know. 00:24:11 Speaker 2: It's like, which was the opposite of my turkey this year this past week, like he just didn't move one single bit. And iguanas are never like that. Even if you do smoke them, they like do this back arch kind of thing and then they'll fall out. 00:24:27 Speaker 3: Of the tree or whatever. I did notice they did the squirrel thing. 00:24:29 Speaker 2: Ever, once in a while, we're like their claws they'd be out of it, but their claws were still kind of stuck. 00:24:34 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's what It Actually was a good thing when that happened. 00:24:36 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we were I mean we could were technically we're kind of hunting all exotic invasive species, but it was pretty much iguana's and what's the other bassilisk slizardsards they run on water. You may have seen them on like Discovery Channel or Planet Earth or something like that, but those are also non native invasives. Down there, we were able to shoot actually, I think it was Brian shot a pretty big one and it got down in the mangroves and couldn't get it. 00:25:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a pretty big one. That was. He fell in some very tough spots that he did. 00:25:12 Speaker 1: Man, are they disappointing because there were some big ones that fell in and we couldn't. They would like float down the current before you get to them or something. 00:25:19 Speaker 3: You know. 00:25:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was one of those deals where you know, y'all are if you're listening to this, you know it's pretty good. We ain't trying to do anything shady or waste anything, but you know, this is the invasive species thing, and that's kind of the whole pretense behind that, the whole deal there ain't supposed to be here. 00:25:35 Speaker 3: So taking one out. 00:25:38 Speaker 2: Of the ecological scenario is what you're trying to do. And then being able to harvest one or whatever you want to call it, is like icing on the cake, right, So you can go out there shoot one hundred iguan does not recover any of them, and I don't know that's a good thing for the environment. 00:25:55 Speaker 4: Yeah, hej said. The females will carry like sixty eggs. 00:26:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I felt that the eggs in one of them two. They're weird. 00:26:04 Speaker 2: They do this thing kind of like I guess like birds do, where it's one egg a day for X number of days or whatever. So they just have this you know, maybe it's like a fallopian tube or something that's just full of just eggs at different development stages or something, you know, inside of their bodies. 00:26:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of strange. 00:26:22 Speaker 2: And also the thing with them as well as their egg eaters, so you look at the natural birds. Florida is one of a really important bird area because they come across the Gulf of the Yucatan from the Yucatan and they. 00:26:39 Speaker 3: Fly in like it's one of the flyways. 00:26:40 Speaker 2: Right, you have the flyway through Texas, and you have the flyway through Florida for at least songbirds, and a lot of them nest here, right, and then you have a lot of other stuff like in Osciola Turkey. I don't know if there is a conflict there or not. You know, I haven't explored that too much, but essentially the iguanas eating or eating people out of house and home, both the animals around and the gardens and stuff, and it sounds like there's some opportunity maybe for some door knocking on on some gwands. We might look into that in the future, because I am not above doing that again. 00:27:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, talk real quick about. 00:27:16 Speaker 1: The different sizes versus color phases and that kind of thing. 00:27:21 Speaker 2: Well, we got all figured it out yet, but they are unique and a lot of them look different. And it seems to me like the tiny iguanas are really bright bright green most of the time, so like if you see a real bright green one, these pretty small and the pretty small ones as far as eating goes, aren't really worth shooting because they just they're like coameleion size, you know, they're pretty small, So you're gonna eat these things. Yeah, that's the plan. That is the plan. Brian's not but but I am for sure. I imagine it's gonna be a lot like frog legs. But those those tiny ones are are green. I think every iguana has the ability be pretty dark brown or black, and I think when they're doing that, they're trying to warm up. 00:28:04 Speaker 3: We sell. We've seen some really big green ones. Then, like if you want to. 00:28:10 Speaker 2: Talk about the booners, the dominant male alphas are gonna be orange and they look like Godzilla dinosaur suckers. 00:28:19 Speaker 3: Man, we didn't see any of those hunting, and it made me sad. 00:28:22 Speaker 1: We saw all actually shot a couple that were on the verge. 00:28:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw shot a couple had little orange too, and they're kind of mixed. They're pretty big. I mean, I don't know the biggest ones. We shot probably four and a half foot long with tail something like that, and they get up like six foot range. But we on the way to South Florida, like deep like the keys, we saw a couple. 00:28:42 Speaker 1: Donkeys, man, I mean big some guns they got that they got that like a knowly throat patch thing that. Yeah, going on to it's like you know, it's almost like flag waving a flag, you know or whatever. 00:28:55 Speaker 3: Man, it's a big old throat pat. 00:28:57 Speaker 2: They do a thing too with their head where like if they feel threatened and they're a dominant critter, they'll like do this thing where they like head bob and it's I think it's showing off that little throaty thing. 00:29:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, they got some weird movements, man, but they you know, and we'll, like I said, we got a we got another podcast I think that will come out that we did with our buddy PJ who Eric mentioned earlier, and he'll talk more about the guns and some of the other like human iguana conflict stuff and it it's pretty interesting stuff. So we won't hit too much more on that, but we ended up. Yeah, Brian wasn't the only mustache to shoot one. 00:29:37 Speaker 3: Oh you know. 00:29:39 Speaker 1: Oh that's right. I forgot about that. I was thinking about it earlier and I forgot to mention. So our buddy mister J. P. Frantz, who pitches for the Houston Astros, was down in the West Palm area where they do their spring training type stuff. Right, that's what it's called, Eric, right, and they you know, are getting ready for the season, which I think starts tomorrow and uh that's tomorrow when this when we're doing recording this podcast. But anyway, he's he was down doing some training with the Astros. They were playing some games. They played the Cardinals. Cardinals deal. They handled him pretty well, I think, uh no, but they he decided he had a little extra time one afternoon and came out and smoked the first iguana shot. Dude, he throws strikes, you know, he does. Man, some people just have that accuracy thing. He he also smoked a turkey with us one time. Uh not on this trip, but on a different trip last season, and he just yeah, he just he's just accurate dude. So anyway, he just fun, fun dude to hang out with. Really just easy going and good dude. He bought us a big Greek meal at the uh end of our trip was Greek food, Brian, it's just a salad. 00:31:08 Speaker 3: I got a cheeseburger at the three place. That cheeseburger looked good. It was really good. Yeah, yeah, just put that thanks. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: They put that hard grittle crust on it, man, I did that was their laptop to put some hummus on it too, No. 00:31:22 Speaker 3: I did. I'll eat it every now. And then yeah, yeah, what did you have at the Greek place? I had the best stuff ever? 00:31:28 Speaker 2: To man, it was just uh, what's it tazuki or whatever the meats called on the Uh it's uh, it's that, Yeah, it's that goes in the he that roasted stuff that they kind of flay off of that big old round deal. 00:31:47 Speaker 3: And just had that and some peta and well there's a. 00:31:51 Speaker 4: Salad in there. 00:31:52 Speaker 3: There was something else really the rice. There's a Greek rice I had. See. 00:31:56 Speaker 1: I had lemon potatoes and they were the best potatoes. 00:31:59 Speaker 3: Maybe have had. That was a good restaurant. Man, there's some good eating down here. 00:32:03 Speaker 1: I might have to stop back by there, maybe I don't. 00:32:07 Speaker 3: I want some Cuban food, man, cute. I love this Cuban food. 00:32:12 Speaker 2: I can't get off the same thing that I've been getting the same thing every time. 00:32:15 Speaker 3: It's like a like a flattened steak. You know. I just got like. 00:32:21 Speaker 2: UHD always gets a ham sandwich and I got pulled pork. 00:32:24 Speaker 6: But both both mills that we had, it's you know, the the bread was was different. 00:32:30 Speaker 3: I've never had felt like you enjoyed the second one more. 00:32:33 Speaker 1: The second one was amazing even getting the Cuban sandwich right, like the thing. 00:32:38 Speaker 6: The first one was a good sandwich, but it was really it was pulled pork wrapped in ham. So the bread was like a I've never had bread like that. 00:32:48 Speaker 3: It was. 00:32:48 Speaker 6: It was good, don't get me wrong. I just felt like it was a ham in cheese sandwich. 00:32:51 Speaker 3: It didn't fill me up. 00:32:54 Speaker 1: Well, I've been getting full because I think the Cubans are a little bit smaller than me. 00:32:58 Speaker 2: Yea, But the Cubans have a specific rice. It's called morro or moros depending on who you're talking to. Actually no World War so moros so. And it's like black beans and rice. And then some like I don't know what it is, like pork jowl or something kind of it's kind of like a throwaway meat that's in there. It's like a mystery meat. And boy, let me tell you, we got a bunch of mystery meats. There nothing mysterious about how tasty that stuff is. 00:33:26 Speaker 3: It is good. 00:33:27 Speaker 6: Good. 00:33:28 Speaker 3: Tyler got something to go the other day, Yeah, I did. It was a handy. 00:33:32 Speaker 1: I ate it while we were iguana hunting and it was I mean, yeah, you can't beat it. 00:33:38 Speaker 3: No, I thought it was good Okay, let's do we need to move on to the key stuff here? I think so, okay, I could get lost in the sauce. I'm talking about some food. 00:33:45 Speaker 6: But we made it down to the Florida Keys, and y'all were a day late. 00:33:52 Speaker 3: I forgot you early. You're welcome. 00:33:57 Speaker 2: Because Brian he wasn't gonna shoot the turkey because he didn't like turkeys. 00:34:01 Speaker 5: He says they're dumb though, yeah, yeah, but he's get a tan out there. We uh, we met it down. 00:34:17 Speaker 2: Met the guys, did a little bit of dinking around the first evening kind of just sight singing out of the boat, and then the second day it was on. Brother, it was time to compete. See, Tyler been watching some cool YouTube videos and there's been people wearing some fish out from the bridges, and we had decided that we were gonna be able to I mean, I don't even need the boat. I'm gonna go fish the briege. 00:34:44 Speaker 1: I mean they're catching keepers, you know, So I'm like God, I mean, if I don't catch them as good as them, but still come away with a few keepers and we're good. 00:34:50 Speaker 3: We're talking about casting catch here, man, that's right. So we do so. 00:34:57 Speaker 2: Brian and the crew decided to do little motor boating and we were gonna try the bridge thing at least once on those trips, Like, hey, let's have a competition day, y'all go out in the boat, see what you can get done. Ty, I'll fish the bridges to see what we can get done, and uh, you know, have. 00:35:15 Speaker 3: A little friendly go at things. It wasn't very friendly. You know, you never friendly, Brian, it's the problem. It started friendly and then it got pretty violent. 00:35:23 Speaker 2: QUI, yeah, Well, if we're going by numbers, y'all to get smoked, no. 00:35:28 Speaker 3: I don't know. We have some pretty good numbers. 00:35:30 Speaker 1: A lot of tinies, I'm telling you, you don't know. Casey pulled up four yellow tails on. 00:35:37 Speaker 2: A there's only two hooks on there. See, here's the problem, man, is is down here in the Keys there's like a bunch of target fish and target species, and and there's sport fish, and then there's like insure sport fish, and then there's like eaters, and they don't always overlap. But yellowtail snapper are kind of in that tried and true eater category. None of them get real real big, but there I've never had one you have Tyler, there's supposedly like one of the better things. 00:36:15 Speaker 3: To eat in the ocean. Yeah. 00:36:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, So our goal is to catch some of these little buggers and we did it. Just so happens that they have to be twelve inches long, and the biggest one, we call it, may have touched eight inches. 00:36:29 Speaker 3: I doubt it did. 00:36:31 Speaker 2: So. 00:36:31 Speaker 1: I just think it's a time of year thing, man, I think, because it sounds like people are catching eaters off the bridges sometimes. 00:36:38 Speaker 3: But I don't know. 00:36:39 Speaker 1: It may just be a time when the big ones come into that, you know, type of habitat. 00:36:44 Speaker 2: I don't I don't know what what it's what it's about, man, But we had a hard time catching big fish. Now seeing big fish, boy, how yeah, you can see some big fish in the Florida Keys because the water's real clear and you're there's all these bridges and structure. And you know what's really unique about the Keys proper, like where the highway is and stuff, is that you have two very large bodies of water, like one of them is an ocean, right the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and they are exchanging water on tides, and so what makes the keys. 00:37:21 Speaker 3: Really unique is not the. 00:37:22 Speaker 2: Fact that they are islands, but the fact that it's a big old ridge that runs from the tip of Florida way out into the middle of the water, and whenever the tide movement happens, it's really really ripping, like for this far down in the southern world at least, I would say, So, it's not so much that the water around here is good because and it might be because it's clear, but it's because you have such an exchange of nutrients and strong currents that move that then give big fish a reason to be in a place. 00:37:57 Speaker 3: And sure enough, the sightings were there. 00:38:00 Speaker 1: Huh dude, it's almost hideous. The amount of ginormous tarpin's the size of humans. Yeah, look I saw tarpin that. I was like, that is bigger. 00:38:10 Speaker 3: Than don't want to be in the water. I can tee you scary dude. 00:38:14 Speaker 1: So we we spent that that morning on the bridge and looking at giant tarping trying to catch them, and we kind of thought we kind of got to the point where we were like, Okay, this is like I don't know what to call it, but it's like, uh, it's almost like what you call it the red herring or whatever. 00:38:32 Speaker 3: It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good one. 00:38:34 Speaker 1: It's like, man, it's not a possibility, you know, to catch these things. 00:38:40 Speaker 3: Almost Like there's. 00:38:41 Speaker 2: A lady who was kind of making fun of me. She's being nice and fun, but she. 00:38:45 Speaker 3: Was like, uh, you gotta catch thees tarping. And I was like, well, I have to try. I can't not try. 00:38:50 Speaker 2: And then we took the walk of shame out of there, and yeah, she was like, how did you in the tarpan? Do is? 00:38:55 Speaker 3: I said a whole lot of things to them. Yeah. 00:38:58 Speaker 1: And you know, one thing that I've picked up through some of my research is that I think those tarpain are just easier to catch at night. I think they feed a lot at night. Yeah, and so anyway, we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but that's the way we fished for tarping for a bunch. We caught a bunch of little tiny yellow tail snapper and other species like grunts and stuff like that. 00:39:25 Speaker 2: I mean, what's really neat about this is a lot of these fish are pretty yeah there, So like a grunt is kind of like a dink that you just catch along the way, but you got to look at a grunt and he's like all kinds of crazy blues and all this stuff. 00:39:39 Speaker 3: It's kind of like the whole blue gild. 00:39:40 Speaker 2: Thing, you know, like long eared sunfish thing. You just think they're perch, but really like you start looking at them and man. 00:39:46 Speaker 1: They're beautiful. Yeah, for sure. And we caught a bunch of those little I mean tons those little fish. We didn't catch any big fish and essentially spent the entire entire day working hard to catch fish. 00:40:02 Speaker 3: And why are we all working so hard? I would say it's because we were playing behind. We got the fire brin. We want to win, we do, but we were really just like fishing. Well, did y'all lay the rules out there for this? 00:40:13 Speaker 1: So it was supposed to be most keepers wins. 00:40:16 Speaker 3: The rules are pretty much it's pretty much most keepers wins. 00:40:22 Speaker 1: But there was a point system for you know, obviously, like if you end up catching a blue marl and you'd probably win the whole thing, right, But if you if you caught a keeper you know, uh, I don't know, keeper barracuda, you probably wouldn't get that many points, right, because there's a lot of them around. It takes a fifteen inch or which is pretty easy to get. But you guys just got a few keepers, right, the winners will we'll take it from you. 00:40:48 Speaker 3: Let's see, let's say what you got so well? 00:40:50 Speaker 6: Yet that morning they had come up with this competition, and we're pretty excited to get after it. We quickly learned that they put a big workload on us. So they dumped all trailer, all six coolers on the trailer, made us fill them with ice. Well they were they were already had now, so they had about an hour and a half had start. 00:41:08 Speaker 1: You guys, they did. 00:41:11 Speaker 2: Us loading and loading vehicles. And let's let me just tell this. They made us go the long way around and we get here and we had to get gas, we had to get bait, we had to get some things. 00:41:29 Speaker 3: Y'all say that, I don't think that's what really. 00:41:31 Speaker 6: Y'all left an hour before us, so we were kind of playing from behind. Time was and we had a time what was the original time before y'all changed it five? So five o'clock was the end of the competition. We hidden route to an area that we were going to stay the night at and it was an hour and I think forty five minutes away, So that was gonna cut hugely into our musician time. 00:41:55 Speaker 3: Is that a thing huge? 00:41:57 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:41:57 Speaker 4: After sixteen. 00:42:00 Speaker 3: This is my story. 00:42:03 Speaker 6: And we uh So we went to a closer boat ramp as an area that hadn't really map scouted. So the other area I'd been on on X and I've looked around a lot, dropped a bunch of good pins. This was a new area, and you know, we didn't really know what to do, but we got there. I got on on X, got to looking at a couple of things. A new structure was going to be key. There was some big mangroves areas that we were going to try to fish, and I really knew that we could catch mangrove snapper on these mangroves and rack up some points pretty quick. So we fished our way kind of through some residential stuff, some deeper channels. What'd you catch, eerica some barracuda right off the bat. 00:42:41 Speaker 4: Yeah, caught a barracuda. 00:42:42 Speaker 3: We were catching a couple of barracuda. 00:42:44 Speaker 6: But we noticed that the mangroves on the real shallow flats that didn't have much water under them weren't really holding many snappers. So we found a channel and it was a creek that kind of ran through this big mangrove area and it was crystal clear water. It's about five six foot deep. And we got in there and there were so many fish. 00:43:06 Speaker 4: There was a bunch of snook that we tried to cash snook. 00:43:09 Speaker 6: They would not look at our shrimp, lower soft plastics. We threw everything at them and they were not having it. Fifty pound braid, No, we were using fifteen pound braid with fifteen pound monop. Guys, y'all weren't even there. Tarpin was really cool. I've never seen juvenile tarping like that. 00:43:29 Speaker 3: You know. 00:43:30 Speaker 6: There were maybe the ten to fifteen pound range. 00:43:34 Speaker 3: You mean those ladyfish. 00:43:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, they kind of look like a ladyfish. You know, I've caught some big ladyfish, but they know what the other nickname is for ladyfish, A ten pounder, that's what that's a common name for ten pound tarping. 00:43:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, they look like them. Four So I love kitchen fish. What else did we see? 00:43:54 Speaker 2: We've seen some nerve sharks, nerve sharks, some barracudas at one point. 00:44:00 Speaker 3: Yep, that was the day before that. That was day before. 00:44:03 Speaker 6: Yeah, but it was a really cool ecosystem in these little rivers and really clear water, and we were catching mangrove snapper at will. As soon as you drop it in you would catch them. But they were all around the eight inch mark. They made it tough. We fished our way through and it was really windy. I think we had gust of twenty five miles an hour that day and we were in Pop's boat in the ocean battling it out. 00:44:33 Speaker 3: So we went we left from. 00:44:34 Speaker 6: There and went to a bigger channel and anchored up, also really clear water, and I think that was I think that really those bigger mangrove snapper pretty smart and the heavier line and if they see you, they pushed back in those mangroves. So far you're not catching them. 00:44:53 Speaker 3: But we what do we manage to catch? 00:44:56 Speaker 4: I think points wise, I think we only scored like. 00:44:58 Speaker 3: Five or six. 00:45:00 Speaker 2: Only people that day was the lane snapper that Eric caught, right, No, we had three mangroves we caught I don't know, probably fifteen barracuda we kept them, did you? 00:45:13 Speaker 3: That's right. There were a few snappers that they cleaned. I forgot about that. Y'all didn't keep the Barracuda for whatever reason, and then from there we. 00:45:24 Speaker 6: I I've always wanted to dive the keys for lobster. So on our way back to the boat ramp closed at six, we started working our way back and we were on a dredged canal and it was real leggie and I decided to get in and die for lobster, and right off the bat found one and learned that the ticklestick, which is an aluminum probably quarter inch pole that kind of has a bend at the end and a snare on the other end. You put the the end of the stick in and you you draw these lobster out of their hole, and you put the snare around him, and he sent it tight. The one I bought was you couldn't manually sent it. It had just a snare on the end, and I would put it around. I put it around the lobster and try to like put tension on it, and that lobster felt it and he got away from me. 00:46:23 Speaker 3: I hate it. 00:46:24 Speaker 6: Yeah, you know that morning, I remember Casey saying, you need a net. And if I was it, if I'd have had a net, I think I'd have got that that lobster for sure. 00:46:34 Speaker 2: Man. 00:46:34 Speaker 3: If he hadn't thought I said it, he would have listened. 00:46:37 Speaker 6: Yeah, he makes lots of suggestions throughout the day usually and something they just take that for what it's worth, really good suggestion. And I didn't get in net. I just had that snare. We went to another spot. 00:46:59 Speaker 2: The waves big like you're scared, you don't do it. But I should have just kicked in reverse and just let. 00:47:05 Speaker 3: You just. 00:47:08 Speaker 4: I almost fell in this week because Brian had Greg moved the boat and Greg's never drew a boat apparently, and I was on the back of the boat and Greg just like floored it and I fell into the boat. 00:47:22 Speaker 3: Actually me was. 00:47:25 Speaker 2: God to put it in gear and yeah, I gotta look excited. If we would have been going backwards, air would have been gone. It's my dad's boat. I think my dad has one of those hot foots or whatever it is. You all have one of those tightler Yeah, my dad was so like on those. You do just engage, put it all the way down with the with the throat like what I call the throttle, but just like the joystick thing, and then use your foot to give it gas on and off. It just gives you more control. But with my boat. You don't have all that extra control. You just kind of use that handle and sure enough it gives it to it. 00:48:04 Speaker 6: Hum, Brian, it does, definitely does. And then from there we drove an hour to the house. We gave them another hour and a half to try to catch up. And man, listen, you know what's sad is after this whole competition thing, these guys never owned up to the world. 00:48:22 Speaker 3: Right now, we guess what their plan is. And then that's the podcast. 00:48:26 Speaker 6: There was no like, hey, congratulations, guys. 00:48:31 Speaker 3: It's not probably gonna be on video. 00:48:33 Speaker 1: It's because y'all go out and just jack around and don't video and there's no there's there's not a whole lot going on. We didn't catch nothing. So how do you know guys who are actually gonna make a video? 00:48:44 Speaker 2: You know, Brian, you literally caught a brand new fish in the both of the day and instead of showing us the camera, you just. 00:48:51 Speaker 3: Threw it out of the water. 00:48:56 Speaker 6: This is newer to me, and that's what I'm saying. So you know, I didn't know y'all wanted to turn around with pro am. 00:49:03 Speaker 3: You never heard of the proram. Yeah, production amateur, that's Brian we're. 00:49:07 Speaker 6: Going to get there. 00:49:08 Speaker 4: The thing is a good thing. Brian's a fireman, so like he is, go go go, like I gotta go put. 00:49:14 Speaker 6: Up the fire right now, you don't go go go anyways, And we have some peat balls on this cruise. 00:49:20 Speaker 3: H well, you know, sometimes it takes patience to kitchen fishes. We had no problem doing well. People get to retire for a reason. Though. How many fish do you would y'all guess y'all caught the first day? Uh billion? Would you say? One hundred and fifty million, hundred and fifty? I bet there's no way we caught A doubt what they caught. Say anything about us? 00:49:49 Speaker 2: He said, said two hundred nine dollars at the days in We got it one for one hundred and nine close to. 00:49:54 Speaker 3: Accident at the same place. That's a trippler. I had my co call it. 00:49:59 Speaker 6: So okay, these guys wanted to stay and chase these dumb turkeys around, and you know I wanted to go fishing. 00:50:09 Speaker 3: Uh huh. So me and my co pilot left. 00:50:11 Speaker 2: I'm not gonna mention his name, but probably on this podcast, and I was like, Hey, find us a place along the way that we can stay and we kind of you know, we did the VRBO and the Airbnb and we said. 00:50:26 Speaker 4: Let's not forget it. Let's not forget it's a Saturday. 00:50:29 Speaker 2: Night in Miami at eight o'clock at night during spring break, y'all stayed in Miami. 00:50:34 Speaker 4: We're close to it. 00:50:36 Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, so yeah, you may have worked out. 00:51:01 Speaker 2: So here's the deal. Brian and Eric won the fishing competition. We never established what the reward was, so I guess congratulations, guys. 00:51:14 Speaker 3: I really wanted y'all to get us a key lime pile. What a bunch of Why did you remind me of that? 00:51:22 Speaker 2: I was just secretly hoping y'all were going to surprise us with we just passed a key line factory. 00:51:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's heartbreak. 00:51:31 Speaker 2: It's probably a good one here, so I'll have to come back. So there's that heart I guarantee you man. So day two, we decide to you know, join forces like Captain Planet and just all group up together and just go give the fish everything we had. 00:51:50 Speaker 3: And we did it. 00:51:51 Speaker 5: We gave them everything we had. 00:51:55 Speaker 2: And started out with some pretty cool experiences. You know, I don't guess we should chronicle the whole day, but you had a highlight that morning. That the height of our trip. 00:52:03 Speaker 1: Dude, I think it was the coolest thing I've ever probably hooked and had on. Where we're drifting, it's really windy, and we're drifting over this flat that's got a bunch of like really humpy grass in it, like these big clumps, you know, and then there's they're on the back side of them. 00:52:22 Speaker 3: It's just but it's a. 00:52:23 Speaker 1: Little bit deeper flat. Yeah, you know, it's like two or three foot deep. Yeah, we're drifting over this. All of a sudden, some of the guys are coming back with some half baits, and we're seeing some barracudas jumping and you know, or not jumping, but chasing baits. And they're they're probably like a lot of them are like twenty inches or smaller maybe. And so I've got a fly rod with me, a ten whight fly rod, and I had bought a couple of barracuda they call them, oh, I can't think of the name, but it's a it's a cool to bait that's kind of big profile. And uh so I tie the thing on and Casey is like you might want to put a you know, like a metal leader on and I was like, oh man, because they just caught one. I was like, did you know did was your line messed up? 00:53:05 Speaker 3: Now? You know? 00:53:06 Speaker 1: Cooked him in the corner of my mouth. Okay, Well, I just want to do right now. You know, I'm in a hurry to get a bait out, you know, and I don't really know how to do a wire later, so I'm just not going to bother people. I'm gonna just fish. Well, I go to flinging this thing in case. He's kind of being my guide because the wind is nuts. They're pretty good because I have a long. 00:53:26 Speaker 2: Lead on my troll motor control panel, so I can stand on the back of the boat and kind of control the troll motor while you are on the front of the boat casting. 00:53:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:53:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I get a couple of like follows from some smaller ones or whatever, and I'm just you know, it's just haywire. Because it's so windy. Your line's just going everywhere, and you're trying not to get it home on everything. You're trying to strip it fast, but you're blowing towards your bait because you just cast it down. When a long story short I pulled, I'm ripping this thing in and I get pretty close to the boat and all of a sudden, it's like just I mean this crystal clear. All of a sudden, this dad gum four foot dog comes out and just just eats my bait like ten foot in front of us and me in case you're. 00:54:13 Speaker 3: Like, oh, and he's just sleeking out. 00:54:15 Speaker 1: He had just like completely engulfed this bait. He thought he had just ate something whole right now. I think they are just used to stoning things. Yeah, so they don't like grab it and run off, that's right, they don't hit it like that. So he I can't feel him at all, and I'm in the line is still slack because it's just so windy. So like I like strip a couple of strips really quick and barely kind of get a good hook into him. 00:54:40 Speaker 3: I didn't really get much of a set at all. 00:54:42 Speaker 1: And he turns out once he realizes he's hooked and goes back behind the boat. It would blow your mind how fast this happens, like, and this footage it's on camera and you can see my line rip through the water, and I'm like, here's the thing. You don't understand. I mean, they did when they were in boat. But this fish is seven or eight yards out in front of where my line is ripping, probably or more. As it's ripping through the water, there's so much tension and he's going so fast that the water the line is in just like a huge loop and ripping through the water. I mean, it was awesome, dude. And I counted it on video. In five seconds, I say, he's into the backing already to the camera. I mean he took like ripped a bunch of line off in no time. He gets out there like I don't know, one hundred and fifty yards or something, stupid, I mean, way out there and then just pulls out and breaks my line or whatever. 00:55:36 Speaker 3: And I was I was pretty sad at that point. 00:55:37 Speaker 1: I put on him at a leader, but it was suggestion. 00:55:43 Speaker 3: It was a good suggestion. 00:55:45 Speaker 1: I just didn't think I was gonna hook a four foot or you know. And anyway, it was. It was cool though. I was really like, I would do that every day, man, and have fun doing it. 00:55:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty cool, dude. And then the rest of the day we kind of spent explore mangroves. We smoked the mangrove snapper, it was awesome. They're kind of difficult because there's a lot a lot of snapper that are under but there's millions of them, so you're catching a bunch. And then we went off not really offshore, but come out in the gulf. Didn't have a lot of success there, and then finished the day in a canal and actually caught some pretty nice fish there as well, and then had a really long trip back in the dark because we stopped to try to fish for tarping under the lights. 00:56:26 Speaker 1: There were some tight dudes that on that trip back many. 00:56:31 Speaker 3: Anxiety. I got pretty anxious at one point in time myself. It was it was just it. There's times when it was a boat captain that like it's uh you issue, weren't Yeah, yeah, that's it. 00:56:43 Speaker 1: I I I was a little bit tight at first, and I was like, I think we're good and there it was never dangerous or heroin you know where. 00:56:50 Speaker 3: You know, when I got real tight when we saw those ghost ships out. 00:56:53 Speaker 1: There, when we when we finally I had suggested, I was like, hey, should we get the spotlight out? 00:56:58 Speaker 3: And you know, body's like, no, we're good, We're good. 00:57:01 Speaker 2: You know. 00:57:02 Speaker 3: Well, we stopped try to. 00:57:03 Speaker 1: Catch the tarpingo some lights and it got real dark. So we decided finally to pull the lights out. As we got closer to one of the bridges, we're gonna go under and we're gonna make this big loop around this peninsula and come back into our place where we're staying. 00:57:14 Speaker 3: And uh, we. 00:57:15 Speaker 1: Shine and there is a sailboat just just anchored up out there with no lights on in the middle of this dark bay, and things seem to like get real quiet and tone down out in the water, and the keys like early, like it's not like a thing. 00:57:38 Speaker 2: You mean, people, because the boat ramps all close at four thirty, so everybody's off the water. 00:57:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of a thing. People kind of wrap it up early. But it was. It was That was when I got tied. Man really dangerous. Except for that we made it at ten o'clock. 00:57:54 Speaker 4: Though. 00:57:54 Speaker 6: It's you're unfamiliar, You're in an unfamiliar water, and there is six inches of water with an hundred yards of. 00:58:00 Speaker 3: You at all times. 00:58:02 Speaker 2: You could run around extremely carecous I was navigating via on X at this point in time too, because you know, there's no channel marked or anything, so I'm just following that. 00:58:12 Speaker 3: And it worked pretty good. It was not easy, but it was doable. 00:58:17 Speaker 2: And then that was our full day, right, and then we had two day which we tried to go for some bigger fish. 00:58:26 Speaker 3: And we did such a thing. Brian. You actually, I think Brian had the best day today. I had a great day, y'all. Y'all definitely tore me and smoked him. I don't know, you ended on a pretty high but let's see, you caught a jack gravel. It was pretty cool. I broke that that first fish. 00:58:45 Speaker 6: I don't know what it was, but I broke off on him on a on a shrimp right in that right as soon as we as soon as we got anchored up. Then I picked up a slim bait, caught a Jackraville caught a pretty good red grouper. 00:59:02 Speaker 3: No, that thing was cool. 00:59:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, So the keys had Forda in general, I guess you could say has like some real specific regulations that it's one of the greatest fisheries in the world. And one could say that they keep a tight rain on things so they can keep it that way. Uh, and grouper are all out of season right now, which you know, for a fresh water guy. 00:59:26 Speaker 3: We don't really have seasons on any fish that I can think of. Is there anything like that, Tyler Man? I can't. 00:59:32 Speaker 1: I can't think of anything there is for us, at least there's like seasons when you have to keep every crappy you catch in the winter and stuff. 00:59:40 Speaker 6: I never really dealt with that, but that is a thing. It makes his fisheries. You know, most of your open fishing, I guess, is like this. But any cast you can catch a fish that you've probably never seen. 00:59:52 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the And you're. 00:59:53 Speaker 6: Looking up size limits, links and bag limits on nearly everything you catch because you're catching so so many different fish throughout the day. 01:00:03 Speaker 1: And you know that this weird way right in the regulations too that I've never seen. And I'm not sure if I like it or don't like it. I know it was difficult on this trip. I just wonder if it might be might just be because I'm not used to looking things up this way. But most game or fish departments or game in fish departments tell you what you can't do. 01:00:24 Speaker 3: Can't do this, can't. 01:00:25 Speaker 1: Do that, illegal, to do this, no on that. Well, this, like everything we encountered this past week, was you can do this and then no mention of what you can't do. So you're always like, well, am I just not seeing where there's a regulation saying you can't do this? But it's always like it's like a positive spin to it or whatever. It's like, yeah, here's some things you can do. 01:00:47 Speaker 2: One of the real difficult things for us on this trip is a it'd be nice to see here's the things you can't use for bait, yeah, and all the other things you can use for bait, And there's no answer to that. 01:01:00 Speaker 3: Catch this little fish. 01:01:02 Speaker 2: That's small, and you're like, I'd like to use that for bait, and then you're like, well, I don't know if you can. It's got like some blue stuff on it. Kind it's pretty ka or man, I like that, you know. 01:01:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody's willing to stick their neck out on the forums either, you know what I'm saying. 01:01:13 Speaker 3: I use these all the time, yeah or whatever. 01:01:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, that kind of gets to be weird. So I used a lot of bait shrimp and they weren't pretty good. 01:01:22 Speaker 3: In fact, I caught ah. 01:01:25 Speaker 2: We think was a young goliath grouper on a shrimp today, which I thought was weird. I thought it was gonna be a fili at the keeper mangrove who'd been looking for. 01:01:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, I caught a mangrove today. A mutton. 01:01:38 Speaker 2: Mutton, excuse me, Yeah, I was caught a mutton today that we were pumped about. I was like, I gave you a high five. Oh this is sick and you have to be eighteen Oh no, yeah and sixteen and a half is it was? 01:01:53 Speaker 3: I mean, it was a nice fish. It was the biggest snapper we'd seen whole trip. 01:01:56 Speaker 2: Uh. The goliathough for me was probably the highlight of my trip, just because cause I mean I've been watching people catch them things since they were called you fish, you know, and just I remember. 01:02:06 Speaker 3: Watching a video. I can't remember who it was. It might have been Jose with Heabe. 01:02:13 Speaker 2: They were catching golthe groupers, and then they decided to die for them and one golith grouper came up and like looked at him like he was gonna try him out. 01:02:25 Speaker 3: And ever since I was. 01:02:27 Speaker 2: Like, oh, those are cool because you know, they get to be the sides of Volkswagen beetles. 01:02:31 Speaker 3: I like to get to be monstrous. That's why they're called go live groupers. 01:02:34 Speaker 2: And so. 01:02:37 Speaker 3: Anyways, That was a pretty neat catch for me. 01:02:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. We had some cool So you caught that hog fish today too? That was neat. Eric hooked up on something. 01:02:48 Speaker 4: Yep, I've caught big fish in my life, but I would right, yeah, that's right in the white world. I like, I've caught a lot one hundred and twenty five inch fish, but nothing real big. And so I hooked into this and it's like, I know, not too real when it's pulling, but like it was pulling and stopped for like a second. It was like, Okay, I can reel, but it's already pulling again. And I did something dumb too, right right before I cast it, because I got a new poll and I was messing with my drag and I loosened it quite a bit and hooked onto that fish and thought I needed a tighten the drag, and so I started a tight and that's when he broke off. But I've never hooked into a fish like that. We're just kept pulling. 01:03:33 Speaker 3: That was pretty drag ripper, man, It was pretty cool. So what did you catch that on? 01:03:39 Speaker 4: I was using a swim bait pretty much all week. Yeah, I got tennis elbow right now, from it. 01:03:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, make you kind of tiredy yeah. 01:03:47 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:03:47 Speaker 1: Well, we uh we had a we had a good outing in the boat, and we decided, uh, we're gonna try something different. We're going to get uh, get out of the water and go look for some a different bridge to fish with the boat. Long story short, all these ramps are closing early. We would come to find out we can't really get anywhere and fish what we were wanting to fish with a bridge, you know, bridge wise, with a boat. So we we're gonna either make an hour and a half or so and try to get launched at a place that you can fish until dark pretty much. 01:04:27 Speaker 3: Or we're gonna just somewhere we haven't been. 01:04:29 Speaker 1: At all, yeah yeah, or we're gonna fish a bridge that we've been on. Well, we go to fish in one of the bridges that we've been on, and it was tough. The current was really really really ripping a shallow bridge. We saw a ton of tarping there to day or day before, I guess, and then nothing. We didn't see hardly any tarping when we were there. That was today this afternoon. We fished for a while. 01:05:00 Speaker 2: Uh, we use chum blocks a lot on this trip. It's a it's kind of a thing I had never done before, and they're pretty effective. 01:05:07 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:05:08 Speaker 2: Well, we go out there and I tie the chum block off and apparently the current was real strong and no more chum block within five minutes. 01:05:15 Speaker 3: So that, you guy, that was a neat fish. 01:05:21 Speaker 2: That was like, definitely a a fish. I'm gonna show my kids, you know, we caught pigfish. That's another like I want to show my kids that fish, you know, like. 01:05:30 Speaker 3: Fish, pork fish. 01:05:32 Speaker 2: There's a lot of animals, a lot of fish that are named after swine in the ocean. Got Porky's piggy perch, what is this? Okay, goodness gracious. 01:05:41 Speaker 3: But hog fish, all the things. Man. 01:05:44 Speaker 1: But anyway, so we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, we're fishing this stuff and hoping that the current's gonna change and this and that and munch boats show up and we think that's a sign. 01:05:56 Speaker 3: Well it just it just didn't work. 01:05:58 Speaker 1: And we were starting to get laid in the city and the day and we're just like kind of burn out on this bridge. 01:06:03 Speaker 3: There's like a twenty minute nap. 01:06:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like an hour, and then I'm like, man, let's go back. That water was deeper at the other bridge we fished yesterday, so let's go back over there. 01:06:15 Speaker 3: What do you what do you think? And so we kind of talked about it, mulled over. 01:06:19 Speaker 2: And we going back to each other a million times, all the different options that we could do, and it's. 01:06:25 Speaker 3: Like, you just don't. 01:06:28 Speaker 2: It's real hard for me in the fishing world, in our situation at least that we were just in to say, hey, let's go over there instead of here, because like we're in the unknown, and so your decision could be a really bad one. 01:06:44 Speaker 3: But we knew it was deeper. 01:06:45 Speaker 1: We knew there's some big koods around yesterday, so we decided to go over there. We start walking out on this kind of long bridge and water looks good, current still ripping, pretty decent, but not too bad. And Eli Eric spots some fish on the way out. 01:07:03 Speaker 4: I thought it was a dolphin. 01:07:05 Speaker 1: It sounds like that, And so next thing you know, we're freaking out. It's tarping. They're everywhere, and they're mandos. Long story short, we can't really get a whole lot to bite. We think we're gonna get some live baits, so that we can maybe get them to bite. 01:07:25 Speaker 3: It's starting to get darker. We're we got a bunch of bait. 01:07:30 Speaker 1: We still got several live shrimp, and we're trying to get something to happen. And I can't remember if it happened. If Brian hooked up before, Yes, you did before I started baiting live shrimp or chum, and. 01:07:44 Speaker 3: You had to. You had to hook up on what kind of rig were you using? 01:07:48 Speaker 6: The first I dropped a live shrimp in and had one turn on my bait twice. I could see him try to get it and then he came back try to get it again. But then you know, it never happened again for me. You hooked a couple of live baits and I put one under a float. It was a popping cork, you know office for tarping in the past with floats. I put the popping cork on, put about a probably a four foot montofilament leader live hooked one of those fish and floated it out in the current, probably seventy yards, and I set my pole down to catch some more live bait, and I heard Greg and turn around and my pole it's like my my pole had it was it was laid on a concrete ledge that was probably three and a half foot tall. 01:08:41 Speaker 3: It was a very secure position. 01:08:43 Speaker 6: It was my pole raised up and the bell of my spin cast pole caught this reel from going over the edge. And there was a darping on my pole. I it had the line had so much tension. Had flipped my bellow and it was kind of free lining. And then I flipped my bell back down and just that much attension that tarpin was running quick pop the line. 01:09:09 Speaker 1: Well, we were sad after that, and it started started getting darker quickly, and we had maybe half a dozen or ten live shrimp still and I was like, okay, I'm gonna throw these upcurrent of these tarpin we've been seeing, and just see if I can get them excited, right, let them kick around. These shrimp kick around and excite them. So I throw I throw like five shrimp in and the last one I throw in, I'm looking and probably a thirty or forty pounder comes up and just rolls on that shrimp, and I was like, I freaked out. You know, all of a sudden, we're back at it, trying to drift stuff down to them. 01:09:48 Speaker 3: We work on that group for a while, nothing happens. 01:09:50 Speaker 1: It's starting to get a little bit later, and I'm like, all, if they're gonna eat live shrimp, I'm gonna throw one free you know, free line on my new reel and rodden reel that I bought pretty heavy duty. And I, you know, Greg had said there was a few on the other side of the bridge, so I love over there. I go over there and I see them. I make a few casts, kind of have a decent drift or two, and then I see these ones kind of come up high in the water column, and so I like cast this thing up so I can get to sink down, you know, to their level or whatever into the wind. And it starts drifting down and I can see the path is like kind of left of this tarpin, and he uh. And as it gets kind of where it should be pretty close, I can't see anymore. It's sunk down far enough. I see that tarpin turn to the left, and so I let it. I let it float for a couple of seconds, thinking he might be getting close to it, and then I just like bump the reel around and I feel a little tension, and I make one more crank and it was there and I pull into him pretty hard and I started freaking out. 01:10:52 Speaker 3: I was like, I got a fish, I got one, I got one. I got one on. 01:10:55 Speaker 1: I got one on and uh, he like starts doing these head shakes. He's just in the current, just head shaking a couple of times, and then finally realizes he's hooked and I don't have a big enough hook, and he jumps straight out of the water just like you see him with the head bag and gills flared and everything, and back down into the water and kind of makes a loopy. He's still not sure he's hooked. I don't think because my hook was kind of small. And he ends up darting underneath the bridge and I'm like about to fall in the water. I'm hanging so far over the bridge, trying to get my make sure my line doesn't cut on the edge of the bridge, you know. I'm pushing my pole way down towards the hole there. And he runs and then shakes his head about three times. I can feel it, I can't see it anymore, and the hook pulled. I thought I broke it, but the hook actually pulled out and that was that was the end of our Florida Florida Keys trip pretty much man. 01:11:51 Speaker 2: It was. 01:11:53 Speaker 1: Now we're headed headed to Taco Bell somewhere and hopefully getting some cheesy, cheesey Gordy crunches. 01:12:00 Speaker 3: There's a lot of fun, man. 01:12:01 Speaker 2: I'm glad we did it, and there's definitely some unfinished business to take care. 01:12:06 Speaker 3: Of for sure. 01:12:08 Speaker 1: Just jumping to tarping was awesome, man, Like I could definitely I could do that several more times and still. 01:12:13 Speaker 3: Be pretty happy. 01:12:14 Speaker 2: Man. 01:12:14 Speaker 1: But you're on tea anyway. There should be some videos coming out from this trip. I don't know how soon, but we're gonna have turkey season come up soon. Be talking a lot of turkeys. I appreciate you guys listening. Thanks Brian and Eric for coming to helping and doing all the stuff. 01:12:27 Speaker 2: Man. 01:12:28 Speaker 3: So I got to do some fishing. Remember this is your element, living it.