Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 953: You Can’t Afford Not To Fish

Transcript

Ep. 953: You Can’t Afford Not To Fish · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: more news on America's most divisive issue, which is LiveScope.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We've got only Finn's Katie in the studio. We've got
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a market report on panfish filets, as the Cajuns call them.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: We're going to cover Ted Cormorant Killer Cruz, Senator out
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of Texas. We're going to talk about how Phil loves
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: video games. U.S. Senate candidate and Alaska native Mary Peltola
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: joins us to talk fisheries. And more. But first, we're
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: going to get into that LiveScope deal with the one
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and only Seth Morris.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yep. Hold on, Seth. I've got a new sound, and
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: it's very important. Oh, Phil. This is the headliner, right?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Take it away, Phil.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I couldn't tell what he's saying.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Meteater News Headliner. It's early, but you've got to stay.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: That's great. Love it.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: That's not good. Damn it. You think that's good?
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's pretty good, Steve. It's early in the show,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: but you, the listener, you've got to stay.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: You've got to be.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Here for the whole show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: The audience is going to love it. All right. We're
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: joined by Ryan Gary, who is the title black bass
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Welcome to
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: the show, Ryan.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's good. Can you cut over to me
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: real quick? Yeah. Just because of Randall. That's Carbon County, Montana,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. Come on.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Anyway, back up.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: This guy's a very important figure in mine and my
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: children's lives here. Thank you. No, not you, Randall. Cut back, Phil,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: because then Randall can quit campaigning.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Randall.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Randall doesn't know who this guy is, but let's vote
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: for him. Carbon County.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: That's good, Phil. Sorry.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I just had to get, I didn't want Randall to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: be there for hours.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Like I said, Ryan Gary is here joining us today.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: He's titled black bass manager for the Maryland department, natural resources.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: And he ran, which I would consider the most legit
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: live scope study that I've ever seen. So Ryan, can
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: you please give us a rundown on this study?
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thanks for having me and thanks for that compliment.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: So I think I heard a little bit on this show,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: you know, a year or so ago, but Major League Fishing,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: which if anybody's not familiar with, is one of the
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: largest bass fishing organizations in the country, made a big
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: change to one of their big tours, the Bass Pro Tour.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: And that was basically dividing up um, the period, the
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: tournament periods into being able to use live scope and
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: not use live scope. So there's three periods throughout the day. Um,
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: and they restricted use of live scope to, uh, to
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: one of those period out of the three. Uh, and
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: so when I heard this news at the beginning of 2025,
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: you know, as a scientist, as a biologist, um, you know,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: the first thing I thought was this is a perfect lineup, uh,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: for a scientific study of, you know, How does live
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: scope or forward-facing sonar affect catch rates?
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Because we can compare.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: These periods where they're using it to the periods where
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: they're not using it. And even more so, working with
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Major League Fishing has been awesome because they're really focused
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: when using some of this data and how people like myself, biologists, scientists,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: can use this to further research.
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: And further his management.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: So the Bass Pro Tour is a catch-weight release format,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: which differs from typical bass tournaments where you fish all
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: day for your biggest five and you weigh those at
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: the end of the day and whoever has the biggest
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: five wins. The catch-weight release format basically is cumulative weight
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: throughout the day. So these anglers catch a fish, they
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: weigh it, they release it, and they keep fishing. And
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: the total cumulative weight of all the fish they've caught
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: throughout the day counts to their bag. And really important
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: with that is because it's a professional tournament, the bottom line,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: each one of these anglers has.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: An on-boat officiant.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So that on-boat officiant weighs that fish, leases it, and
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: then of course, really important data points that are associated
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: with it, not just fish weight, but also GPS locations
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: of where it was caught, the lure that it was
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: caught on, the depth of water that it was caught in, habitat.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: It was caught on.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Riprap, it was caught on open water, it was caught
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: on a brush pile. And so we were able to
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: use this really in-depth data set to.
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Analyze the 2025 Bass Pro Tour.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Which was eight different events spanning from Lake Conroe down
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: in Texas all the way up to the Potomac River,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: which borders Maryland, Virginia, one of.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: The trees that I manage, and then all the way
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: up to Saginaw Bay.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: So eight really diverse fisheries that And that accounted to
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: 73 individual anglers that fished in these events that we
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: could analyze their data. And over 12,000 fish caught during
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: that time span that we can analyze. And so it's
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: really comprehensive, the data set. It allows us to compare
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: these fisheries. It allows us to compare the anglers' performance
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: when they're using the technology versus when they're not using
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the technology, compare them to themselves, and then also you know,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: compare them throughout these systems. And overall, what we really
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: found was that across these eight systems, generally forward-facing sonar
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: or live scope increased your catch rate. So how many
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: fish you caught per hour, but that varied across those
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: different systems.
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: So we had two systems that really stood out.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: That really forward-facing sonar really increased the catch rates. One
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: of those increased the catch rate by 1.6 fish per hour.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: So if you're fishing across in an eight-hour day, you know,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: that's an increase of, you know, almost 12 fish throughout
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the day, which is pretty substantial. But only two of
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: those lakes did not have any significant difference in the
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: catch rate. So forward-facing sonar did not make a difference.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: But what's really important there is, is that, you know,
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: at best, this technology through our analysis was a wash.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: So never was not using forward-facing sonar an advantage to
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: using forward-facing sonar. The other thing we looked at was
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: the average size of fish caught. What kind of surprised
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: me doing that was that, you know, we didn't really
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: see a large difference in the size of fish caught
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: when using forward-facing sonar or.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: When not using forward-facing sonar.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: So across those eight systems, generally there was no difference
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: in the size of fish you caught when you were
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: using the technology versus not using the technology. And the
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: last thing we did was we looked at those habitat
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: factors that I talked about. So the depth of water
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: that fish were caught in, you know, was it caught
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: on a brush pile or riprap or open water? And
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: what we found was that anglers were almost three times
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: more likely to catch a fish using forward-facing sonar in
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: deep water, so water that was deeper than 10 feet,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: and more open water. So what I kind of equate
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: that to is, you know, having a set of binoculars
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: when you're out hunting. So if you're hunting grouse, it's
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: probably not going to be helpful in deep, thick woods
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: to have binoculars. But if you're out in an open
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: desert environment hunting elk, having binoculars or a spotting scope
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: is going to be a big advantage. And that's kind
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: of the results we found from that habitat analysis using LiveScope.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: So that's just kind of a quick, dirty dive into
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: the analysis that we did on this tournament series.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: So what was the lake you saw the significant difference?
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: difference in like higher catch rates?
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Uh, so we saw significant difference in increasing catch rates
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: on six different lakes, but the one where we saw
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: the largest difference was Lake Conroe down in Texas.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Um, and that was.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: That 1.6 fish per hour increase when you were using
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: the technology.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Now, could that be from time of year? Um, just
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: where the, the fish are setting up. Um, you know,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know Conroe. I've never fished it
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: But like if it was a spring tournament, maybe they're, they're,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: they're just, it's like better fishing in the spring compared
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: to a different time of the year.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: So we, we weren't able to compare, you know, these
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: tournaments happen throughout the year from from February all the
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: way to August. So we weren't really able to substantially
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: say whether seasonality played a difference, but one of the
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: things we kind of speculated on is that Lake Conroe
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: has a lot of really good shallow habitat in the
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: summer and good, aquatic vegetation. But the Lake Conroe tournament
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: happened down in February. And typically that's a time of
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: year down in Texas where we would see them in
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: more deeper water, more open water. And Lake Conroe also
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: has a lot of submerged timber. So while it is
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: more open, there is some structure out there, but it's
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: not incredibly complex. So that's kind of one of the
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: things we speculated on that During that time of year,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: you know, when those fish typically tend to be a
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: little bit deeper, you know, this is probably one of
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: the reasons that may have contributed to that big increase
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: in catch rate using the technology down at Lake Conroe.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Let me kind of hit him with a clarifying question. Yeah.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Were you saying that live scope is never a deficit?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: So in our analysis, you know, we looked at eight
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: different lakes and we never saw that or that live
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: scope negatively impacted catch rates at its worst. When you
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: were using live scope, it was a wash.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: It was equal to using water. not having live scope.
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: Interesting.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: A little bit makes sense. A guy pulling into a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: brush pile, he's going to fish it. He knows where
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: to catch it. You know how to work it. Out
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: in that big open water, Instead of being like, I'm
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: going to cast a whole damn lake is what you'd
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: have to do. Or it's like, no, I'm just going
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to cruise and find a fish. Yeah.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I think, I think once, when this technology came out,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: like it significantly changed the offshore fishing in, in these
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: lakes that, you know, you couldn't like, like you said,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: you just, if you're offshore, you don't really know what
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: you're casting to unless you like see, you can, obviously
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: if you can read a map, like these days there's
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: maps so you can tell if like you're on a
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: hump or something.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Offshore, it's tough to fish without it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Just needle and haystack.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Needle and haystack. What you were saying, Ryan, fish that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: are set up in deeper water, it seems to be
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: more effective, which makes total sense. Especially in lakes like
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: you were saying, they were on Lake Murray, right? I
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: think Lake Murray is a lake where there's a lot
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: of suspended fish that aren't even around structure. They're just
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: out there, which technology really helps for that. Ryan, when
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: you looked at this study and were following these anglers,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: was there a angler that really stuck out as the
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: premier live scoper?
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: We didn't get really that far into the weeds on it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, I had all these... I could obviously tell.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: what I had anglers names associated with catch rates and
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: associated with fish caught. But, you know, we had it's
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: such an immense, immense data set, you know, 12,000 fish,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: eight different events, you know, all throughout the day.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: And so I didn't narrow it down.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I'm sure, you know, I could have looked into that
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: and seen, you know, what anglers were better at using it,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: which were not as good as using it. But in general,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: I was just looking for these larger scale trends on
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: you know, how is it affecting catch rates or fish
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: size in some of these tournaments?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Gotcha. I know it varies a lot from lake to lake,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: but in your opinion, is, is live scope something that
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: we're going to be, do you think in 10 years,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: kind of like crystal ball, is it something that's going
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: to be banned in areas and free to use in
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: other areas? Is it going to be like a, state-to-state
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: thing or a lake-to-lake thing? What's your thoughts on that?
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I think it really depends on the lake and the species.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: You know, one of the main reasons we did this
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: study because we were hearing from our anglers that.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: Were concerned about, you know, is this having an effect
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: on fisheries?
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: And so I really see this as You know, if
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: you have a shallow system that's really complex habitat, brush piles,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: submerged aquatic vegetation, you know, I'm not as concerned about it.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: But if I have a deeper lake, you know, where,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: you know, there might be a subsect of the population
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: that's now available to be targeted because of this technology,
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: I might be more concerned about it. You know, we
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: looked at just black bass, you know, which is largely
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: a catch and release fishery. So the only thing that
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: we're really concerned about is, you know, angling mortality, you know,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: is that increasing as a result of increased catch rates
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: and targeting these different subsects that weren't previously available.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: But I think if you look at other species, you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: like paddlefish, there's talk about it being banned.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: And I think it is banned in North Dakota or
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Montana using LiveScope because you can, clearly see these large animals,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: you know, 100 plus pounds.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: And it's, you know, it's not very ethical, at least
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: in a lot of people's opinion.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: So I think it really depends on the species and
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: the fishery. You know, what I really recommended to a
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: lot of, you know, biologists or fisheries managers in this
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: research is that, you know, if you have one of
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: these fisheries that's more conducive to increased catch rates with,
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: This technology, you know, a deep in more open water system,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe if you start to see concerning trends
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: in your fisheries population, you know, investigate, you know, what
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: is the prevalence of forward facing sonar and, you know,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: how effective are they being in that fishery? I don't
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: necessarily see it banned except in, you know, some of
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: those certain cases like paddlefish.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: But I do really see.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Fisheries managers and state agencies reacting to the efficiency of
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: the technology. And we've seen that in some situations where
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: there have been lakes throughout the country that have reduced
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: their bag limits on certain species as a result of
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: the increased prevalence of forward-facing sonar.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Ryan, you don't need to comment on this, but you know,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: one of the things I think you're going to, there's
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: going to be a reckoning sooner than later is on
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: gator hunting. Me and Seth were just down gator hunting,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: live scope gator hunting. Oh my gosh.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's effective.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think I'll have to reckon with that. We don't,
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: we don't have any gators up there.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Live scope gator hunting is a whole deal, man.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: But I can, there's, there's no bounds at which the, uh,
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: the forward facing sonar hasn't reached.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Be like, Oh, that one's nine feet, four inches right there. Yeah.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: It's pretty wild. Thinking he's all hiding at the bottom. Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Well, cool. Ryan, man, that that's, like I said, I
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: think this is the, the most in-depth, uh, study we've
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: seen on it. And, um, you got a lot of
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: good info there and I don't know. I'm curious to
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: see where the future with the future holds for forward
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: facing sonar, but yeah.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Only fins Katie. Have you ever fished? Have you ever
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: seen this? Oh yeah.
• 16:16
  Speaker 7: I've seen it online for sure. I've seen videos.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: You haven't fished it. No, no, no, no, no.
• 16:22
  Speaker 7: Um, I can only comment so much being so removed
• 16:25
  Speaker 7: from a lot of sports fishing, but to me, I mean,
• 16:29
  Speaker 7: I think it makes sense in a lot of instances.
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: I was actually talking to Corey about it yesterday where
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: I was like, dude, if you're a guide and you're
• 16:36
  Speaker 7: having people pay to like catch and kind of your
• 16:40
  Speaker 7: professions on the line, Totally makes sense there. Style of
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: fishing I'm doing, I'm like, I think there's a difference
• 16:47
  Speaker 7: between getting better at fishing and getting better at finding
• 16:52
  Speaker 7: the fish. I feel like there's so much personal reward
• 16:57
  Speaker 7: when you can do that on your own in a way.
• 17:00
  Speaker 7: But dude, I mean, totally makes sense. There's a time
• 17:03
  Speaker 7: and place for this technology. It's super interesting and fascinating
• 17:07
  Speaker 7: to me.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: What's cool these days is like these pro-level... tours like
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the elite series or the best pro tour, they're splitting it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So like, like what Ryan was saying, they have three
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: periods during the day. One of the periods they're allowed
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: to use it to the periods or not. And like
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the elite series, you can, they do a coin flip.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: So you can like 50% of the, the places where
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: they fish, you can use it. Um, 50% you can't.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: So it's, it seems like these organizations are, are noticing
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: that it's like, it's a, it's a thing. And so
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: they're kind of going back to the old days of
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: not using it. But they're still using it. So they're
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: just splitting it up. That's the biggest question. And I
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, sorry, go ahead.
• 17:54
  Speaker 7: No, sorry. That's the biggest question I've had is just, like,
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: how people feel about it being used in tournaments. Because
• 17:59
  Speaker 7: I feel like that just, like, drastically has changed what
• 18:02
  Speaker 7: it means to be involved in sports fishing. Yeah, man.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: It's... That's one of those things where we could sit
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: here for hours and talk about it.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: In fact, we have.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's thousands and thousands of podcast hours you
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: could listen to on different opinions. Some people love it.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Some people hate it. That's kind of all I can
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: give you. It's pretty split, in my opinion. What you say,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: so Ryan, in your experience.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's definitely pretty split.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of guys that, you know, feel like
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: it takes some of the skill out of it, and
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of guys who feel like, you know,
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: this is the new wave and it's coming, so hop.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: On the train.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. I hear that a lot. Hop on the
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: train or get run over.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Hate the game, not the player.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever. Thanks, man.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Ryan.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: I appreciate you guys having me on.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: All right, take it easy. All right, Phil, hit it.
• 19:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Dang.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Steve, why don't you make me like a bullet point
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: list of things that you would like to see or
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: hear here in a drop? Oh, you want to know?
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: You want to know?
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Specific sounds.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: The viewer can't tell. The viewer can't tell this is
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: a problem.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: The cardboard. Oh my God.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Well, now they know.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: We repaint this whole damn room. Nate restains this table. Beautiful.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And then you come in and put all this cardboard around.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Audience, write in if you can see any of the cardboard.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: No, he hides it from him. He hides it from him.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Here's the deal. As I've said before, I don't traffic
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: in emojis whatsoever. But, except with my daughter. I'll put
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: emojis in there because it's just a running joke between us. However,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I was like, if there was, I was like, there
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: is an emoji I want, and the only emoji I
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: want doesn't exist, which is a tough titty emoji. That's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the only one I would ever use. If there was
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: an emoji, people are like, thumbs up, people. If I
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: had an emoji for communicating with my kids, I would
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: be able to save most of my text messages and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: send them a tough titty emoji, which made me be like,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: what would a tough titty emoji look like? It's got stitches.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's like a random, stimpy, like it's a hog.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It's a hog. Teat. Stitches. A pierced nipple. No. No,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking like a hog teat with calluses. Like a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: real Ren and Stimpy kind of thing.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: You can't go into super detail, though, because these emojis
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: are small.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I know, but here's the deal. I was talking
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to one of, I was talking to Logan Dove. I
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: was like, man, we should have, you can get, we
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: should design a package of emojis. They call them stickers
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: when you do this. I didn't know that. Design a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: package of downloadable emojis that would be appropriate for The
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: tough titty will be like an add-on. It'll be like
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: appropriate emojis for people that hunt and fish and stuff.
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: Like dead deer.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a big buck dad emoji. Bucks with like,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you know, drop to, I don't know. So he says
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that's easy to do. But what we need is people
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to write in with what emojis they feel they're missing.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Like their arsenal of emojis is short on.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Like what is the emoji if you had, like for me,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: the tough titty emoji, what emoji do you wish you
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: had to facilitate quicker communication with your peers?
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: I haven't thought about that.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: So if you have ideas, we could do 10, we
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: could do 20, and we'll create a package of emojis
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that you could download and put on your phone. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: it will include, once you figure out what it needs
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to look like, it'll include a tough titty emoji. So
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: if someone's complaining to you, you send them that. So
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: right into like, I really don't understand what's going on
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: with this meeting later. You'd be like, don't even need
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to reply, dude. I mean, you reply, but.
• 22:08
  Speaker 9: Never in my life did I imagine that I would
• 22:11
  Speaker 9: be involved in even creating a distance and creating a
• 22:16
  Speaker 9: pack of emojis.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I might become a user. If I found, if I
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: found a collection of emojis that helped me, I would
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: switch and begin using them. Hmm. Where should they send these, Nate?
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: We need to work up like a dozen. Yeah. A
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: dozen emojis.
• 22:33
  Speaker 10: The Meteor Podcast at TheMeteor.com. Subject line emoji dash whatever
• 22:38
  Speaker 10: you want.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Like emoji idea.
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You'll figure it out.
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Don't put an emoji in there.
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: A light bulb?
• 22:46
  Speaker 10: Yeah, because if you put an emoji in there, you're communicating.
• 22:49
  Speaker 10: You wouldn't need our emojis.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Are you demonstrating that you already have, you already facilitated
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: an emoji communication?
• 22:55
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, Way of the Hunter.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Steve, that's right. Moving on to more things that I've
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: been doing that you probably have a problem with. First
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: of all, I just want to say, I thought you'd
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: appreciate the Steve Miller band. You didn't like that?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Man, you know what?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: He didn't even know it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I hate the Steve Miller band.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: You know, that doesn't really surprise me, but I just
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: thought that the 70s rock would.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: You know... It would be endearing. I hate, hate, hate. Really?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: The Steve Miller band.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Is he alive? That'd be a good one for Dead
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: or Alive.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: I don't think he is. I don't think he is.
• 23:32
  Speaker 8: They're just too chill for you. Too laid back.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I just, it's, no, I've never, I could never stand
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller. The only thing good about, well. Yep.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: 83 years old. Corey Googled Steve Miller Band guy and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: it pops up Steve Miller.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: You gotta assume his name is Steve Miller. What's his name?
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller Band. You know, the main.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Guy.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: You know what I want to do? I keep trying
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to get Spencer to do this. It's a game called
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Dead or Alive 3-Pack. Because everybody knows Dead or Alive.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: But a Dead or Alive 3-Pack is you take three
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: dudes named Steve.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: So he's alive.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So Steve Miller, Steve Buscemi, Steve... Jobs. Jobs. And then
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you got to go alive, alive, dead. It's a dead
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: or alive three-pack, but he won't do it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: Doesn't work with our trivia show.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Spencer's right.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: On that one. You can do a dead or alive six-pack.
• 24:37
  Speaker 8: You can do 20 of them.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: That'd be hard. You're not going to think of 20
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: dudes named Steve.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Bob.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan. Bob Dole. Bob Seger. That'd be a BD3 pack. Anyways,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Way of the Hunter.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Steve, I've been playing a game. It's called Way of
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: the Hunter 2. It came out in September on PC,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles. It's a hunting game.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: You kind of have to suspend your disbelief here because
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: you sort of are the overseer of this reserve and
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: you're in charge of kind of restoring it, rebuilding tree
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: stands and managing the wildlife.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: So you- My kid plays this game.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 25:20
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Randall, you've been playing the game as well. What are
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: your thoughts? Because I invited Randall to play because I
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: do not have the context of a real-life hunter, a
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: lifetime of hunting exploits to compare this to.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Phil's like, so this is what it's like. Yeah.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I know all about it now. Ask me anything.
• 25:38
  Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, I haven't been playing video games seriously
• 25:42
  Speaker 9: since I was 20, 21 maybe, 22.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: Got laid off from a construction job.
• 25:50
  Speaker 9: And bought a bathrobe and an Xbox 360 and just.
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: Got after it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 9: So when Phil invited me to play this game with him,
• 25:58
  Speaker 9: I was thrilled. I've been coming to the office more
• 26:01
  Speaker 9: so that we can play this game. I've found perhaps
• 26:05
  Speaker 9: what was most rewarding was the ability to make a
• 26:07
  Speaker 9: ton of mistakes in the game that perhaps then I
• 26:11
  Speaker 9: could avoid in this fall. But yeah, it's.
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: Been a blast. It's been a real blast.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Phil, what would you like me to add here? This
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: is footage of you two playing this? Yeah, yeah.
• 26:22
  Speaker 8: You guys look great in there.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: You got a dog.
• 26:24
  Speaker 9: Yeah, what I told Phil was when I last played
• 26:27
  Speaker 9: video games, it was before the era when people filmed
• 26:30
  Speaker 9: themselves playing video games.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You can get this dog. You can pet the dog.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: You can call the dog.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: It has all these different commands.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: The dog's a new feature in this one, the sequel
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: to the first one. It tracks blood. It can look
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: for tracks for you. It's very, very helpful. So you
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: kind of oversee this reserve in a North American... landscape
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: called New Laurentia.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I jump a lot.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: This is Randall actually hunting.
• 26:55
  Speaker 9: I jump a lot more in the game than I
• 26:57
  Speaker 9: do when I'm ordinarily hunting.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I fell to my death several times, too.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of wildlife you can hunt. You got
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: white-tailed mules. Little turks. Oh, yeah, you got turks.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: The biggest thing that I like about the game, which is,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: which I think is the most interesting is the herd management.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So each animal has kind of like a fitness levels.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: You can kind of determine the health of the animal
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: and the age of the animal and the, the herd
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: size and, and sort of health will change depending on
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: what kind of animals that you kill and you harvest.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: And certain animals will grow throughout the years of, of,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: of playing in the years are condensed into sort of
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: smaller time, time periods, but you'll see like the landscape
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and the herd sizes and herd health change depending on,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: on how you're hunting and, If you're only shooting trophy bucks,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: it'll look a lot different than if you're shooting the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: younger animals or stuff like that.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: This dude wheeled in the red dot shotgun. He's hunting Turks.
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's me. You can see my shot placement there.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: This is the bullet cam.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Not ideal.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: It shows you all the internal organs of the animal
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: and where your shot placement was.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: You totally missed his head. Is that a rope dragger?
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I can't see his beard.
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 28:07
  Speaker 8: It says it was 100% flesh.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: No spurs.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: There's female.
• 28:12
  Speaker 8: Oh, poacher.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really gorgeous landscape. The one thing I
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: liked about it as a sound guy is the sound design.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: There's sort of different biomes depending on where you are
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: in the area. So the swampy area sounds a lot
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: different than sort of like the alpine hunting and stuff
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: like that. But I've been having a lot of fun.
• 28:31
  Speaker 9: You can hear in your headphones the direction of the animal.
• 28:35
  Speaker 9: So if you hear something break, like a twig break.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Who's that guy?
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Phil introduced me.
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: To all these characters. I was less interested in them.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's been great. And all due respect to Giannis,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: hearing a far-off bugle in this game sounds a lot
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: better than Giannis' far-off bugle sound.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Was that a grizzly bear? It was.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: Did you just shoot it?
• 29:01
  Speaker 9: I shot that one a bunch of times.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: So we're, for those of you who are only listening,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: we're watching a video of Randall and I playing the
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: game and you can watch the whole 15 minute video
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: on the media.
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: I fall to death.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Do you guys, cause you guys are big buck hunter fans.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Is this more fun than big buck hunter? I mean,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: it's gotta be, it's, it's way more absorbing, way more immersive.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: You got a truck. Oh, okay.
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: No, the truck was fun.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Can you hit the animals?
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: I crashed the truck. I did a lot of things
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: in this game that I don't do in real life.
• 29:37
  Speaker 8: Phil, why is the camera quality so dang good there?
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: It's better than we have in the studio.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Shout out to developer Nine Rocks Games. It's great.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Why do Phil and Randall look so good?
• 29:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah, they're like triple HD.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: That's in my office. Film that in my office. Here's
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Randall driving the truck into... He's.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Running that snorkel deal on his truck like he's from
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: New Zealand.
• 29:58
  Speaker 9: What I really enjoyed the most about this is getting
• 30:01
  Speaker 9: up in the morning and drinking my coffee and Sidney
• 30:05
  Speaker 9: asking me what I had to do today. And I said,
• 30:09
  Speaker 9: Phil and I have this side project going on. We
• 30:11
  Speaker 9: need to make this video.
• 30:13
  Speaker 7: And.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: That's Phil celebrating a lot.
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: Phil's way better at video games than I am.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Phil's trophy room is going to be incredible. Get him again, Phil.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Get him again, Phil. Phil's really good at this game.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: That was stressful.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: If you want to see the entire journey of Randall
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and I playing. And guess what? There's going to be
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: two more videos. So there's a North American area in
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: this game. There's also a whole African biome with a
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: bunch of different African animals as well.
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Phil's taking me to Africa.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: That's right. So check out the Meteor Clips channel if
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: you want to see us in New Laurentia in Way
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: of the Hunter 2. And then next month you'll see
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: us in their African biome.
• 31:03
  Speaker 8: I noticed Phil heart shoot a big whitetail there and
• 31:06
  Speaker 8: it even did a big death kick.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, had that hump up you want to see. It's
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: good stuff. A couple of corrections real quick.
• 31:13
  Speaker 8: Your news.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Is this your news? Yeah. Sorry, Phil. Play your little dude.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. You know what? We'll just skip it today.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: How about that?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: No, play it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Let's skip it.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: No, I insist.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. Guy wrote in. So we did a meat eater
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: sheds episode on our family fish shack up in Alaska.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And a guy wrote in that I had some, and
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like I looked this up online. I'm wrong
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: or he's wrong?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: You're wrong.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 31:43
  Speaker 10: Well, we got to have sex as the camera guy, but.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: But either way, there's a scene where there's a couple
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: of American flags put up in our outhouse. And I
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: want to, like, I found those weirdly. I found those
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: floating in the ocean.
• 31:58
  Speaker 10: Oh.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: I slacked in that picture. And rescued them. And then
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: looked up how I'm supposed to put them to hang
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: them that way. And I screwed it up.
• 32:06
  Speaker 7: Hmm.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: So how are they supposed to be? And this isn't
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: something where the camera's like... That's what I got to ask.
• 32:12
  Speaker 10: So if there's a picture.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Seth will be able to answer that. I don't know.
• 32:15
  Speaker 10: A guy writes in, Logan Hanson.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: No, because the hand sanitizer is where it belongs.
• 32:22
  Speaker 10: And he said, I noticed something I couldn't brush past.
• 32:25
  Speaker 10: I even went back to make sure I saw it correctly.
• 32:28
  Speaker 10: In the outhouse of the Fish Shack episode of Meteor Sheds,
• 32:31
  Speaker 10: the American flags are hanging with the Union portion, the stars,
• 32:34
  Speaker 10: to the viewer's right-hand side. If this is due to
• 32:37
  Speaker 10: camera flip process, then I stand corrected. But if not,
• 32:40
  Speaker 10: we need to correct this detail.
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: No, the slope of the hill makes it seem like
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: it's definitely.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: No, that's right.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I'm wrong.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I'm going to fix that pronto. See, we
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: looked it up. Unless there's some problem with the other
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: side of those. No, there's not.
• 32:50
  Speaker 10: Flag code states, the U.S. flag code, when displayed either
• 32:54
  Speaker 10: horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be
• 32:58
  Speaker 10: uppermost and to the flag's own right. That is the
• 33:01
  Speaker 10: observer's left.
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: Good.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: So you got to flip a book.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I apologize to America and I'm going to,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and thanks to this guy for pointing that out and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I'll be fixing those quick. And I'm trying to get
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: like points, points, redemption points by pointing out, I rescued
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: those from the ocean.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I have a flag in my office right now. It's
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: hung just like that. So I'm going to flip that around.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, geez.
• 33:23
  Speaker 8: Easy way to remember now, just be red, right? The
• 33:25
  Speaker 8: red side goes on the right.
• 33:26
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: You can remember that from Marine navigation, red, right?
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: Returning.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Red, right flag.
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: So that's the first correction.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Second one.
• 33:33
  Speaker 10: Over the last few months, we've mentioned that we were
• 33:35
  Speaker 10: unaware of the right to hunt and fish being used
• 33:38
  Speaker 10: in legit legal proceedings. In episode nine, Nicholas Rodriguez writes
• 33:42
  Speaker 10: in episode 943, Steve mentioned Rhode Island as one of
• 33:46
  Speaker 10: the states where he suspected a more radical animal rights
• 33:49
  Speaker 10: agenda would be tested as opposed to Colorado or somewhere else.
• 33:53
  Speaker 10: I want to share a little context about my state.
• 33:55
  Speaker 10: Rhode Island and California are the only two states whose
• 33:58
  Speaker 10: constitutions explicitly protect the right to fish, but not the
• 34:02
  Speaker 10: right to hunt. In 2008, a commercial fisherman challenged Rhode
• 34:06
  Speaker 10: Island's fishing license restrictions, arguing they violated his constitutional rights.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: This is Riley versus Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
• 34:13
  Speaker 10: Our Supreme Court upheld the restrictions, reasoning that the constitutional
• 34:16
  Speaker 10: right belongs to the public collectively, rather than granting individual
• 34:20
  Speaker 10: commercial fishermen unrestricted access. The court also emphasized the state's
• 34:25
  Speaker 10: authority and responsibility to conserve fisheries.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Signed, Nick.
• 34:30
  Speaker 10: Behind enemy lines in Rhode Island.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 34:33
  Speaker 10: So that's just interesting. We thought North Carolina's deal this
• 34:38
  Speaker 10: year was kind of one of the first ones.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: Rhode Island.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: But point out that in this case, someone... I want
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to very quickly frame up what we're talking about. Roughly
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: half of the states in the country have a constitutional
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: right to hunt and fish. Apparently there's two with a
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: constitutional right to fish. And I was questioning, when is
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: that right ever leveraged... legally to affect change. He's got
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: an example, but in some ways it's a non-example, because
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: here's an individual trying to use it unsuccessfully. I'm interested
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: in a situation where a piece of legislation comes up
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that would infringe on one's right to hunt and fish,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And then some lawyer, some attorney would point out, Hey,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: this violates my constitutional right to hunt and fish. Therefore,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I would like to see this corrected and have that be,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: or that a piece of legislation proposed legislation would be
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: dismissed as unconstitutional because it infringed on one's constitutional right
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: to hunt and fish still. Thanks for sending.
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is an example.
• 35:49
  Speaker 9: The, the analog would be some guy yelled fire in
• 35:54
  Speaker 9: a crowded theater. And then the court said, actually, that's
• 35:58
  Speaker 9: not protected speech.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Good job, though, Rhode Island dude.
• 36:04
  Speaker 10: Finally, our third correction. Last week, we were talking with
• 36:08
  Speaker 10: Melanie Thornton from TRCP about the Colorado River, and we
• 36:11
  Speaker 10: mentioned how Las Vegas recycles water and gets rid of grass.
• 36:15
  Speaker 10: So Tor Leonard, T-O-R-R, just kind of wondering about the
• 36:19
  Speaker 10: origin of that name. He writes in, When Steve asked
• 36:23
  Speaker 10: about whether removing grass in Las Vegas was required by law,
• 36:26
  Speaker 10: the guest said she thought it was voluntary. But Nevada
• 36:29
  Speaker 10: passed a law in 2021 requiring businesses, apartments, complexes, apartment complexes, HOAs,
• 36:34
  Speaker 10: other properties to remove decorative grass that serves no practical
• 36:37
  Speaker 10: purpose by the end of 2026. Homeowners' private lawns are
• 36:40
  Speaker 10: generally exempt.
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: Just a clarification. Remove the grass that serves no purpose.
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: I like it.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just wonder how you go like, well, no,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: mine does. Yeah. I don't want to do a whole
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: show on that, but I wonder about that. What that
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: means exactly. If you go like, no, no, no.
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: Producing oxygen.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I go out there and I lay down on it.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: It serves a purpose. I'll just be curious more. We
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: don't need to follow up on it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: It will just become one of those things on this show,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: one of the many things on this show that never dies.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Peter out.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: We'll send out.
• 37:20
  Speaker 10: We got to vote on the best one. Setting out
• 37:22
  Speaker 10: a Moultrie camera, whoever's the best.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Flags. 100%. I'm flags.
• 37:27
  Speaker 10: What are you voting for, Katie?
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Flags, Rhode Island.
• 37:33
  Speaker 7: My vote matters here?
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Anybody in the room, even Phil votes.
• 37:39
  Speaker 7: Yeah, the flags.
• 37:40
  Speaker 10: Alright, the flags have it.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Logan.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: We good? Okay, jumping over. This is not one of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Phil's things, Katie. You like that one?
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: One of the better. Okay. Thanks, Katie.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Only, only, only, only Finn's Katie. Do you know, can
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I tell you how I know about you and why
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: you're here?
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: I'm so curious.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Yes. You want to know how I know about you
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: and why you're here? Yes. Not why you're here, but why? Yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: How I know about you. My, I've had the same
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: literary litter. I can't even say the word. I've had
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: the same literary agent for over 20 years. he brought
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: you to my attention. He thinks you're a very good writer.
• 38:24
  Speaker 7: Love to hear it.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And he sort of wanted me to, he sort of
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: wanted me to like, he didn't say this, but he
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: kind of wanted me to suss you out. Okay. Cause
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: he thinks you're really, he thinks you're a great writer.
• 38:36
  Speaker 7: I appreciate that so much.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: But you make, but you're, you tell, tell people about
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: your Instagram page.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 38:43
  Speaker 7: Instagram page only fins, Katie. Um, I love a good pun. Um,
• 38:49
  Speaker 7: I essentially started this Instagram page now 63 days ago
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: or so under the guise of fishing every day until
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: I can quit my job and get paid to fish.
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: It started as just kind of holding myself accountable to
• 39:07
  Speaker 7: get out and fish every day and learn how to fish.
• 39:10
  Speaker 7: I had not fished really until maybe I'll say like
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: February of this year. I went up in Kern and
• 39:17
  Speaker 7: Sequoia and Fell in love with trout fishing, got super addicted.
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: I was just using a Zebco push button rod and
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: reel combo.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Randall knows what those are called.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: Spin cast.
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: There you go.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Spin cast.
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: The spin cast.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 39:31
  Speaker 7: Anyways, fell in love with it. My current day job,
• 39:37
  Speaker 7: you're staring at a screen all day, every day. I've
• 39:40
  Speaker 7: always loved nature, hiking, camping. Fishing was just another thing
• 39:45
  Speaker 7: to add to the outdoors arsenal.
• 39:46
  Speaker 12: That I love.
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: Anyways, started this account, started with me just like learning
• 39:52
  Speaker 7: in front of the public how to fish, putting myself
• 39:55
  Speaker 7: out there, engaging. I don't have anyone within my family
• 39:59
  Speaker 7: or friend group that fishes. I didn't have anyone to
• 40:02
  Speaker 7: go to to like guide me on how to fish.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: And you live in L.A.
• 40:06
  Speaker 7: I do live in L.A. Best place to fish. Best
• 40:09
  Speaker 7: place to learn how to fish.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: But how did fishing come on your radar?
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: Uh, camping. So Kern County Kern river is this beautiful,
• 40:21
  Speaker 7: beautiful river that runs through Sequoia. I like to liken
• 40:26
  Speaker 7: it to the better version of Tahoe or the less
• 40:28
  Speaker 7: explored version of Tahoe. People hate when I say that, but, um,
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: very undiscovered pristine rainbow trout fishing there. Um, I was
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: just like, why not?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Why not?
• 40:38
  Speaker 7: I love camping already. Let me just buy a cheap $ 30.
• 40:42
  Speaker 7: Zebco and try my hand at fishing. fell in love
• 40:46
  Speaker 7: with it it was awesome uh caught a bunch of
• 40:49
  Speaker 7: rainbow trout did a catch and cook um probably went
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: back again maybe like two weeks later and then again
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: like the month after that and then i was like
• 40:58
  Speaker 7: okay there's something that i love here um let me
• 41:02
  Speaker 7: upgrade from the zebco um let me explore the ocean
• 41:06
  Speaker 7: i mean i'm from la and the ocean's been there
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: at my fingertips for forever but had never even tried
• 41:12
  Speaker 7: saltwater fishing. So then I was like, I need to
• 41:14
  Speaker 7: get my hands on a saltwater set up and get
• 41:17
  Speaker 7: out there.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 41:18
  Speaker 7: Surf casting is, is no joke. I swear. The people
• 41:23
  Speaker 7: who surf cast know they're never going to catch anything,
• 41:25
  Speaker 7: but whatever.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Cause you fish a lot of, um, I don't
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: want to be mean about it. It's not me. You
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: fish a lot of not great fishing spots. I, Because
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: part of your deal is like, you're just going to fish. Exactly.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: And you're in LA.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: And if it's a drainage canal, if it's a crazy
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: park pond, it's like, if it's water, you're going to
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: fish it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 7: 100%. I mean, there's only so much. I mean, yes,
• 41:51
  Speaker 7: the ocean is there. I live in East Los Angeles.
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: Getting to the ocean can take two hours plus. I
• 41:59
  Speaker 7: have a day job. After work, there's only so many
• 42:02
  Speaker 7: places I can go to fish. So, yes, unfortunately, sometimes
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: it is a drainage ditch. A lot of the times
• 42:08
  Speaker 7: it is the L.A. River, which so many people will
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: talk shit on and say like, oh, it's so disgusting.
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: You're fishing in there like you're going to get a disease.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: But you catch a but you catch like an enormous variety.
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, yeah, it's insane. That's one of the things that
• 42:23
  Speaker 7: people have loved to see is like, wow, that's all
• 42:25
  Speaker 7: the fish that you can find in the L.A. River
• 42:27
  Speaker 7: or whatever weird ditch I'm in. Like there's no like a.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Lot of kind of fish. Yeah, you catch fish I've
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: never heard of.
• 42:34
  Speaker 7: It's, it's almost every fish I catch now at this point.
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: Now I know a decent amount of what's local in
• 42:40
  Speaker 7: the area, but, uh, that was such a discovery to
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: me too, just like every fish I was catching was
• 42:45
  Speaker 7: new to me. So getting to learn about all the
• 42:48
  Speaker 7: different species was awesome, but yeah. Oh yes.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: You caught a first scorpion fish and landed in the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: emergency room. Oh man.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 7: That was a good time. That was a good learning
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: experience in front of the internet. Yeah, I did. I
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: was going after spotted bay bass and ended up reeling
• 43:06
  Speaker 7: in a California scorpionfish, also commonly known as a sculpin.
• 43:10
  Speaker 7: I thought it was just a normal rockfish. And this
• 43:13
  Speaker 7: was day seven of fishing every day. And went to
• 43:17
  Speaker 7: unhook it. And this is me being ignorant, touched the
• 43:23
  Speaker 7: fish right on the dorsal fin and several other places.
• 43:26
  Speaker 7: It stung me like I think it was like five
• 43:30
  Speaker 7: times in my finger. And I was alone fishing. I
• 43:34
  Speaker 7: didn't know what was happening. I was just like, oh,
• 43:36
  Speaker 7: it was a spine, whatever. My finger hurts. Kept fishing.
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: And then I was like, oh, shit. Something's traveling up
• 43:41
  Speaker 7: my elbow. Something's traveling up my entire arm. What's going on?
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: Went on the internet and was like, oh, my God,
• 43:46
  Speaker 7: that was a venomous fish.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: Didn't, I was alone, didn't know what to do. Went
• 43:53
  Speaker 7: to urgent care. They didn't know what to do with me.
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: They were like, we don't know what you're supposed to
• 43:57
  Speaker 7: do with this. So they sent me to the ER,
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: which was just kind of hilarious.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:03
  Speaker 7: They had to take x-rays of my finger because there
• 44:05
  Speaker 7: were like spines still within my finger. I honestly think
• 44:08
  Speaker 7: there's still one in.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: My, it doesn't act right yet. Yeah.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: Um, she was like, you could have permanent nerve damage.
• 44:14
  Speaker 7: Who knows? Um, anyways, um, Amazing learning experience and lesson
• 44:20
  Speaker 7: for me to obviously do your research before you touch
• 44:24
  Speaker 7: any fish.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: What's the biggest fish you caught so far? You catch
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of, with all due respect, you catch a
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: lot of like interesting little small fish out of, right?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: But have you caught some hogs out there?
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: Oh my God. What I would consider a hog is
• 44:41
  Speaker 7: probably nothing to all of you guys. Yeah. I think
• 44:45
  Speaker 7: the biggest fish I've caught at this point was within
• 44:48
  Speaker 7: the LA Aqueduct, which is another not-so-pretty destination to be fishing.
• 44:55
  Speaker 7: But I caught a channel cat that was 11 pounds.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, nice. Okay, that's a good channel cat.
• 45:02
  Speaker 7: But yeah, my audience affectionately calls me the queen of
• 45:07
  Speaker 7: the dinks, and I have come to be more than
• 45:10
  Speaker 7: okay with that, and that's okay.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: When you say that, what in your mind does it
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: mean to make a living fishing?
• 45:21
  Speaker 7: So when I started this account, I had no idea
• 45:23
  Speaker 7: because I was like, dude, you see these people catching
• 45:27
  Speaker 7: actual hogs and they're real anglers. I knew I would
• 45:32
  Speaker 7: never be that. I'm like, dude, I don't know what
• 45:33
  Speaker 7: I'm doing. Like, how am I going to make a
• 45:35
  Speaker 7: living fishing every day? It was just kind of a
• 45:36
  Speaker 7: joke of like, I just want to stop looking at
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: my computer screen all the time. And then the channels
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: kind of evolved and this kind of circles back to
• 45:45
  Speaker 7: like original just question of like writing and everything. But
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: as the channel evolved, like if you start on day
• 45:53
  Speaker 7: one and go to the most recent video that I
• 45:56
  Speaker 7: posted for me, Fishing Montana, the other day, it's just
• 46:00
  Speaker 7: content wise has drastically changed to where. I've kind of
• 46:04
  Speaker 7: found myself where I can fit within the fishing community.
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: And it is just a lot of humility, a lot
• 46:12
  Speaker 7: of learning. But also, it's turned into almost like this
• 46:19
  Speaker 7: philosophical travel history science channel disguised as a fishing channel.
• 46:26
  Speaker 7: I'm using fishing as... the entry point into culture, history,
• 46:33
  Speaker 7: a lot of pop culture references that I just love
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: to inject in there too, just because it's something that's
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: so easy for people to relate to. But it's almost
• 46:42
  Speaker 7: turned into this like very mini educational platform, which I love.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you get into space exploration, gentrification, different videos, gentrification,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: like existential issues. Mm-hmm. uh, the impending doom of artificial
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: intelligence all tied into like 90 second fishing videos.
• 47:05
  Speaker 7: Oh my God.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I think that's why my agent thinks you're a good writer.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: You have a good line too. You talked about that.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: It was a really gloomy day and you caught a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: bluegill and he said he had all the colors he
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: could get his fins on and like good lines.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:19
  Speaker 7: I mean, I've always, I love reading. I love writing. Um, Originally,
• 47:26
  Speaker 7: when I was in, like, high school, I thought I
• 47:28
  Speaker 7: was going to be a journalist. Okay. Have always had
• 47:30
  Speaker 7: a strong passion. And then my actual nine-to-five job is
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: within the creative industry, not writing. But it's just, like,
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: a skill set that I've always loved, but I've never
• 47:42
  Speaker 7: had any sort of, like, reason to express or utilize
• 47:47
  Speaker 7: so much. And then this account just, like, slowly started
• 47:51
  Speaker 7: to evolve into that. And I was like, wow, I
• 47:52
  Speaker 7: love this. This is turning into, like, everything that I
• 47:56
  Speaker 7: truly love into like this little, little perfect, perfectly packaged thing.
• 48:03
  Speaker 7: It's like the fishing, the outdoors, science, history, writing, um,
• 48:08
  Speaker 7: and being creative. It's been awesome.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people watching cause you're in some
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: crowded spaces.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's your tackle shop? Like you throw
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: to your tackle shop now and then.
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: Um, yes, I have to do it. I have to
• 48:21
  Speaker 7: shout him out. Martin. He's, um, Martin's Fishing and Tackle
• 48:26
  Speaker 7: in East LA. Funny enough, the only reason I found
• 48:29
  Speaker 7: out about his tackle shop is I was like in
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: Marina del Rey pulling up to a harbor and I
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: was like, can I even fish this harbor? And he
• 48:36
  Speaker 7: pulled up and I saw maybe he had like 50
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: rods in his van. And I was like, I got
• 48:41
  Speaker 7: to pick this guy's brain. Like, what's up with this
• 48:43
  Speaker 7: fishing spot?
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Like he must get a discount on rods. It wasn't.
• 48:48
  Speaker 7: I just wanted to know about the fishing spot, man. Um,
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: and then he was just like, Oh yeah, dude, you
• 48:53
  Speaker 7: got to hit up my spot. Like I'm right in
• 48:55
  Speaker 7: East LA. He had no idea who I was. Um,
• 48:58
  Speaker 7: and at the time I think I was maybe on
• 49:00
  Speaker 7: like day 10 of fishing every day and, uh, went
• 49:03
  Speaker 7: to his shop and just, he's such a, he's such
• 49:05
  Speaker 7: a homie, um, gave me so much info at the time.
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: This was actually before this was day six. I know
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: this because day seven is when I got stung by
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: the scorpionfish. I was really on the hunt for a
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: spotted bay bass. I'd heard so much about how the
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: fight is awesome. They get massive in parts of Marina
• 49:24
  Speaker 7: del Rey, which is close to my office. So it
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: was easy to jet over there after work. Had been
• 49:32
  Speaker 7: on the hunt for one. Couldn't land one. They kept
• 49:34
  Speaker 7: taking me under the rocks. I was like, dude, what
• 49:36
  Speaker 7: am I doing wrong? Like, what is going on? So
• 49:39
  Speaker 7: I was telling him about my journey to catch a
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: spotted bay bass, and he gave me all these tips.
• 49:45
  Speaker 7: He's like, bro, you're using the wrong bait. You need
• 49:48
  Speaker 7: to be using these jig heads. What are you doing?
• 49:51
  Speaker 7: He set it up. He set me up. I went
• 49:53
  Speaker 7: back to that spot, got stung by the scorpion fish
• 49:56
  Speaker 7: because I caught the scorpion fish on his setup, went
• 49:58
  Speaker 7: to the hospital, and immediately after getting in the ER,
• 50:00
  Speaker 7: went back to the fishing spot.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: You got a baby.
• 50:02
  Speaker 7: I'm literally, like, fishing with my little hospital band on. And, yes,
• 50:06
  Speaker 7: I land a.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Spotty, dude.
• 50:07
  Speaker 7: And it was big for me. I think it's big
• 50:10
  Speaker 7: for that area, too. Please, someone say that I'm right
• 50:14
  Speaker 7: and say that I actually caught a big fish. It was, yeah,
• 50:16
  Speaker 7: it was awesome. And now I, like.
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: Dude, now the spotties I can slay up and they're,
• 50:22
  Speaker 7: they're so fun to catch. They're awesome.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: One of the, one of the first, one of your
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: pieces I watched, what made me laugh is, you know,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: like the term like fighting a fish. So when you
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: reel a fish, you dub in the sound of gunfire.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: To make, to kind of like amplify the fight.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 7: Some people hate it so much.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Like machine gun fire and stuff.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: It's a fight. You gotta, yeah. It's a battle. You're
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: battling the fish.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you're good about reporting on what tackle you're using. Yes.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:52
  Speaker 7: Um, I feel like if I'm learning and other people
• 50:55
  Speaker 7: want to know and want to learn with me, I
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: gotta give the free, free information.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, you don't, so you don't cat, you
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: don't cook these fish up ever.
• 51:08
  Speaker 7: I've done a catch and cook once on my channel.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: This is when I was, I just mean like never
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: even mind making a video. Like, just at home for dinner.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: You don't cook fish.
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: Oh no, I love fish. But dude, eating fish out
• 51:20
  Speaker 7: of LA is a little gnarly.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not about to eat an LA river fish. So
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: like the bluegill, for instance, you just thought, I'm not
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: going to eat a bluegill out of that water hole. No, no, no.
• 51:28
  Speaker 7: If you were to actually see that little lake, that
• 51:31
  Speaker 7: beautiful lake, no shade to this lake, but it's pretty dirty.
• 51:35
  Speaker 7: You don't want to be eating there. Even like the
• 51:37
  Speaker 7: ocean water within the LA area. One of the things
• 51:42
  Speaker 7: I love about fishing is so much that I've learned,
• 51:44
  Speaker 7: but In the 70s, a bunch of DDT barrels were
• 51:48
  Speaker 7: dumped in between Catalina Island and Palos Verdes, and they
• 51:51
  Speaker 7: still to this day are leaking out chemicals, and the
• 51:53
  Speaker 7: fish that get tested there just have gnarly amounts of
• 51:57
  Speaker 7: it within them, and there's fishing, eating, what do you
• 52:01
  Speaker 7: call it?
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Guides.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: Consumption advisories?
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Yes. All around the area. Seth pays attention to those.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: He's the only guy that pays any attention to those things.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: You and him.
• 52:09
  Speaker 7: It'll say you can have one yellowfin croaker a week
• 52:14
  Speaker 7: technically like, and it didn't do it. I have no shade,
• 52:17
  Speaker 7: like tons of people, 90% of the time I'm out
• 52:19
  Speaker 7: fishing in the ocean. A lot of people are bringing
• 52:22
  Speaker 7: them home and eating them. Um, I, I want to
• 52:27
  Speaker 7: say that eventually I will, I think it's just maybe
• 52:30
  Speaker 7: in the ocean specifically, I haven't felt like I've caught
• 52:33
  Speaker 7: something worthy of like taking home and eating. Like it'll
• 52:37
  Speaker 7: be some, you know, queen of the dinks. I'm catching
• 52:39
  Speaker 7: small guys that I'm like, okay, yeah, technically I could
• 52:42
  Speaker 7: bring this home and eat it, but it's not that
• 52:44
  Speaker 7: much meat. Let me send you off to get bigger
• 52:46
  Speaker 7: and hopefully you're waiting for me when you're bigger.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: So someday you might catch the queen mother of all
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: eaten fish and cook it up. Totally.
• 52:52
  Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean, I've done.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: I don't really care. It doesn't matter to me.
• 52:55
  Speaker 7: No, I've done up in further north in like Morro
• 53:01
  Speaker 7: Bay area. It's called Moss Landing. I caught two beautiful,
• 53:05
  Speaker 7: beautiful turkeys. chunky, uh, black surf perch. And I did
• 53:08
  Speaker 7: a catch and cook with those guys. Cause that water
• 53:10
  Speaker 7: is a bit cleaner. Um, and then when I've done
• 53:13
  Speaker 7: the fishing in the Kern river for the rainbow trout,
• 53:15
  Speaker 7: I've everything that I catch there.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I eat. Okay.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: I got a question. It's going to, you're going to
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: roll your eyes. I got to ask when you're running
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: around LA, like at night in weird ass places, are
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: you having, um, and I know you bring someone with you,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: but Are you having like crazy run-ins? I mean, do
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: you ever feel like, man, I'm going to wind up
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: getting like, like, uh, accosted, abducted, like some shit's going
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: to happen to me if I keep doing this?
• 53:47
  Speaker 7: Um, it's been, yeah, that's like so many people are
• 53:49
  Speaker 7: concerned for my, like my audience.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: That's why, that's why I said you're going to roll
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: your eyes when I ask.
• 53:52
  Speaker 7: Just like, I'm like, you know, I swear I didn't
• 53:55
  Speaker 7: roll my eyes. Um, LA has a very valid stereotype
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: of being sketchy for sure.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Um, Yeah, but you're going, it's not just, you're going
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to where, if I was a sketchy dude, I'd be like,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to set up shop down along this canal.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Dude, yeah, no, I mean.
• 54:14
  Speaker 7: It's, it's, you head on a swivel. You gotta, you
• 54:17
  Speaker 7: gotta be super aware of your surroundings. Um, specifically like
• 54:21
  Speaker 7: parts of the most, I think people get really concerned
• 54:24
  Speaker 7: when I'm in the LA river under freeways fishing at night.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Valid.
• 54:28
  Speaker 7: But dude, honestly, like, uh, the first time I fished
• 54:31
  Speaker 7: under the freeway at the LA river, um, a homeless guy,
• 54:34
  Speaker 7: was fishing there next to me, and he was going
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: for carp all he had. He just had the fishing
• 54:41
  Speaker 7: line and hooks. We actually exchanged tackle.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: He was hand lining.
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: He was hand lining. We exchanged tackle.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 54:49
  Speaker 7: He was giving me all his carp tips. I was
• 54:52
  Speaker 7: giving him hooks.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you guys have a little camaraderie.
• 54:56
  Speaker 7: We have a little camaraderie. There have definitely been times
• 55:00
  Speaker 7: where it'll be, it just starts, you just get a
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: vibe and you're like, it's time.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: To wrap up.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: It's time to go to a new fishing spot.
• 55:06
  Speaker 7: Or just, it's time to go home. Like it's 2 a.m.
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: What are you doing under this freeway?
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: So I'm not crazy to bring it up, but you don't,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: you haven't yet had a, like it was a scorpion
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: fish that put you in the emergency room, not another canal.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Not another human being. Not yet.
• 55:25
  Speaker 7: Fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I try to be, yes,
• 55:29
  Speaker 7: I know I'm fishing some sketchy areas, but Um, dude,
• 55:32
  Speaker 7: you just gotta, I mean, that's like anywhere you are,
• 55:34
  Speaker 7: like be aware of your surroundings.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Do you ever have this last, this is the last
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: like angle I'm going to take into this subject. Yeah.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Are there spots, like let's take night fishing. Are there
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: spots where you'd say, I'd love to night fish that,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: but no way. Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. Yes.
• 55:51
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: That's what I should have asked in the first place.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: So there are spots you'd like to hit, but you
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: would need a security detail.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: To then go hit it. Um.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 56:01
  Speaker 7: I don't know if anyone's heard of MacArthur Park.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: That's the under the bridge park. That's the heroin park.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: It's made famous by Red Hot Chili.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: There's good water in there.
• 56:12
  Speaker 7: I see videos of people fishing it during the day, though.
• 56:15
  Speaker 7: Catching massive carp in there. And I'm like, bro, I
• 56:19
  Speaker 7: gotta hit that up. But it is definitely sketchy. Their
• 56:23
  Speaker 7: city is trying to do their part to clean it up.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: But you don't even want to day fish it.
• 56:27
  Speaker 7: I don't know.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: It's on my list. A carp's not worth a heroin deal.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: But you wouldn't... You'd day fish it, but you wouldn't
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: night fish it.
• 56:37
  Speaker 7: Yes. I really want to. I want to day fish
• 56:40
  Speaker 7: it pretty badly, but.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: I gotta.
• 56:43
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:44
  Speaker 7: I want to.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 56:46
  Speaker 7: It's a little sketchy.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: What's the thing you think, like... What's the most surprising
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: thing you've learned about fishing and fishermen?
• 56:53
  Speaker 7: Surprising?
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Fishing and or fishermen. Um....
• 56:59
  Speaker 7: Dude, it's not even surprising. I never thought that fishing
• 57:03
  Speaker 7: was easy, but it's fucking hard. The amount of resilience,
• 57:10
  Speaker 7: maybe this is just LA fishing, but resilience you have
• 57:13
  Speaker 7: to have to just find the spot that's not super
• 57:18
  Speaker 7: pressured because there's only so many freshwater spots within the city.
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: It's just like, Maybe that's the most surprising thing is
• 57:24
  Speaker 7: just like finding a spot that's going to be like
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: a honey hole and juicy and not overfished and not
• 57:30
  Speaker 7: super pressured. That's been hard and surprising. But at the
• 57:37
  Speaker 7: same time, the other side of the coin is what's
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: also been surprising in a good way is like there
• 57:43
  Speaker 7: actually are a lot of places to fish in LA.
• 57:48
  Speaker 7: I feel like I'm rediscovering the city. I'm born and
• 57:50
  Speaker 7: raised in LA, but I feel like I'm rediscovering the city.
• 57:53
  Speaker 7: And this completely different lens. And it's turned into like,
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: like my account, I feel like for all the LA
• 57:58
  Speaker 7: content has turned into kind of this like love letter
• 58:01
  Speaker 7: to the city in a way. It's like so cool
• 58:03
  Speaker 7: that I'm like, dude, why would I ever have been
• 58:06
  Speaker 7: under the 405 freeway in this ditch?
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:11
  Speaker 7: Why would you ever have that reason?
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: But here I am.
• 58:13
  Speaker 7: And now I'm like learning about the LA river and
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: like how important it actually is. And like, there's actually
• 58:17
  Speaker 7: 200 different bird species that live. and this weird little
• 58:21
  Speaker 7: ditch and however many different fish and this thriving ecosystem
• 58:25
  Speaker 7: and learning the history about why it is now this
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: concrete channel that it is now. But I guess that's
• 58:33
  Speaker 7: this other surprising thing is just rediscovering the city and
• 58:36
  Speaker 7: getting to explore these areas that even maybe I had
• 58:39
  Speaker 7: been before, but rediscovering it within the fishing lens has
• 58:43
  Speaker 7: been so cool. I mean, dude, the Santa Monica Pier,
• 58:48
  Speaker 7: have been there maybe like four times in my life,
• 58:50
  Speaker 7: even though I've been in LA and have always had
• 58:52
  Speaker 7: like a very bad connotation with it. Cause it's just
• 58:54
  Speaker 7: like hell. No, now, I mean, it's an awesome fishing spot.
• 58:59
  Speaker 7: It's also hell because of how many people are there, but, uh,
• 59:02
  Speaker 7: it's a vibe.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: It's a vibe.
• 59:03
  Speaker 7: Um, I don't know if I need to fish there
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: more than a couple times a year because of what
• 59:09
  Speaker 7: you have to go through to get to the end
• 59:11
  Speaker 7: of the pier. But yeah, it's been awesome just like
• 59:13
  Speaker 7: rediscovering all these places.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Do you have a day count at which if you're
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: not making a living fishing, you quit? No, I'm so stubborn.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Would you hit day 4,000?
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: I mean, fingers crossed that doesn't have to happen, but, uh, dude,
• 59:31
  Speaker 7: I want to say I'm so stubborn. I want to
• 59:33
  Speaker 7: say that like, no. And if anything, like fishing is so,
• 59:37
  Speaker 7: I'm saying this from someone who has not been doing
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: it that often, but it's so ingrained in my life
• 59:42
  Speaker 7: now that I'm like, I don't do like, it's just, it's,
• 59:46
  Speaker 7: I'm going to be fishing forever. It's so addicting.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: What did you, was it like, if you had to
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: rate just the whole experience of fishing with Corey? On
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: a sliding scale of 1 to 10. Just the whole package.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 6: It's like a Disney movie, how perfect it was.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 7: Dude, it honestly was.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: It was a 10, dude.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: The experience of Corey.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 7: Corey is a 10.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: A 10?
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Dude, you should have.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 9: Been there for the first time in his life.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 12: Dude, listen, listen.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: No, I have to say it.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: When we first talked about where we were going to
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 7: be fishing, Corey's like, we're like trying to brainstorm what's
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 7: going to make sense. Cause he's, we're like, dude, the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 7: content is like, you're fishing in all these urban weird spots.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: That's not Montana. And he's like, but maybe there's a spot,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 7: there's a spot under a bridge. So it's kind of
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: this urban feel.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: We'll try. Not just any bridge. I mean, it's like
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a bridge that, that bridge connects Seattle and Chicago.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 7: I didn't, I haven't had my chance to do my
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 7: research on where we were fishing, dude.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: It's the I-90 corridor.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 7: Um, We were there, yeah, we were there, and I
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 7: started with my spinning setup, and I don't know, it
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 7: was like my, maybe my fifth cast or something caught
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 7: a whitey, and I was just like, bro, yeah.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: On a spinning rod? Yeah. What was you using?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 7: I was using a salamander Panther Martin spinner.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was all her.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: Her decision on the lure.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: Good choice.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 7: Well, and the day, so when I arrived, I've got,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 7: I got here on Friday and Saturday, Sunday, I didn't
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 7: have Corey to help me. I just went out and
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 7: fish Saturday and Sunday freezing, by the way, I'm going
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 7: from like 90 degree weather in LA to like 30
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 7: degree weather over the weekend, have never fished in snow
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: or any weather below maybe like 50 degrees or something. But, um,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 7: Had my waders for the first time. Got into the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 7: lower Madison, fished that, and then fished the Gallatin. And
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 7: I caught a brown trout. I was happy. I was,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 7: hell yeah. And you got to watch the video, dude.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: It's up.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 7: Caught a little brown trout. Was getting some bites in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 7: the lower Madison, but couldn't land anything. And then switched
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 7: over to the Gallatin because it was just like, I
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 7: don't know, this spot just.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: But you were freezing your ass too.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 7: Oh God.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 7: But I was fishing. I fished until I think like
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 7: 7 PM both nights.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Huh?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 7: I was, my feet were numb. I was scared.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: And then, and then how many fish did you guys
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: catch yesterday? How many whitefish?
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: You lost count.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 7: Uh, I did lose count, but did he get.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: You on the fly pole at all? Dude?
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 7: Yeah, he did.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: He did.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 7: I started with the spinner and then the spinning rod.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 7: And once I caught with a spinning rod, I was like,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 7: I've accomplished that.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 10: Fine.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 7: We'll fly fish.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: You picked it up super fast. He's a professional. Did
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: he tell you that?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I've taught a lot of people how.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: To fly fish, but you were roll casting like a pro.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: He's just saying that.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: It's fucking hard, dude. Compared to just coming from like... Yeah,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 7: having to get out of the motion of... You just
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 7: cast totally different. It's hard to snap out of how
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 7: you'd normally cast a spinning rod.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Any dudes camping under that bridge? Nope.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: A lot of graffiti.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of positive graffiti. Tell me about that. Real quick.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: I didn't see what you guys went and saw.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: Was there a Pokemon?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 7: Oh no, we were just cracking up. There was like
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 7: a Pokemon graffiti thing and it's just within my content.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 7: Whenever I catch a new fish, I'm like, add it
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: to the Pokedex. It's just like a thing, you know?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I love it.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 11: All right.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: That's good though. He's going to smoke these white fish up.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: They're smoking right now. Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: As we sit here.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: They should be ready for lunch after this.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: I think we caught six.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: That's a good smoked fish. That's a very good smoked fish.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, this was my first time
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 7: catching a white. I got to add it to the Pokedex.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: That's a good native fish, too. Yeah. Browns, rainbows. Those
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: are fish out of a barrel. Those aren't native fish.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: They're not from here.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I was reading. They're introduced by Europe.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Suckers. Whitefish is a good native fish. Speaking of fish,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: over to Spencer Newhart's market report on panfish.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 8: Here's how Katie can try to make a living fishing.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. The commercial sales angle.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Genuine walleye canal flays or something. You know, your own
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: little business.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I bet they're good. All right.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 8: For this week's market report, we are looking at panfish prices,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 8: specifically the big three panfish, bluegill, crappie, and perch. We'll
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 8: start with bluegill. Bluegill are one of the most farmed
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 8: fish in America, but very few of those farmed bluegill
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 8: are raised for their meat. at least for human consumption.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 8: The USDA estimates that 98% of commercial bluegill revenue comes
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 8: from selling juvenile fish that are used to stock private ponds,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 8: both as a forage fish and a game fish. So
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 8: there's a lot of bluegill raised here by folks, but
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 8: very few of them get eaten by humans. It is
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 8: uncommon for them to be raised for direct human consumption
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 8: because they are expensive to feed and don't grow as
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 8: fast as other farmed fish.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 7: Hmm.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 8: The wild caught bluegill.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: I'm learning so much, dude.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: This is good.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 8: We got a lot. The wild caught bluegill that do
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 8: hit the market are largely coming from the Great Lakes,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 8: specifically Lake Erie. from anglers. That's my hand, actually. Way
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 8: back in my hatchery days. If you go to Wikipedia
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 8: and look at bluegill, it's not like an 8-inch bluegill.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 8: If you go to Wikipedia and look at bluegill, you'll
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 8: see my picture on there. That's my hand.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Really? Did you do that?
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 8: No, it's because I worked for the U S fish
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 8: and wildlife service. And so all my photos I would
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 8: take when I worked for them were owned by them.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 8: And when they're owned by the U S fish and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 8: wildlife service, their public domain. So they end up all
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 8: over Wikipedia. Um, so I have like, I don't know,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: dozens of fishing pictures on, on Wikipedia, this being one
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 8: of them. Uh, so a lot of the wild caught
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 8: bluegill that hit the market come from Lake Erie. Uh,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 8: it's from anglers from both sides of the border. The
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 8: American South also has a small wild-caught bluegill market, but
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 8: it seems like those fish largely come from private ponds.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 8: The commercial licenses for Lake Erie are pretty affordable for
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 8: most Great Lakes states. It's less than a couple hundred
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 8: dollars to legally net and sell fish. And in some places,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 8: the bluegill can be one of those fish. As for
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 8: the prices, I break all these fish down into two groups.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 8: One is your local markets. Those are like farmer's markets,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 8: local grocery stores, Craigslist. And then there's your online retail.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 8: These are the large seafood distributors who ship frozen meat
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 8: to your front door. They're the same places that will
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 8: sell you crayfish and tilapia and catfish and crabs. So
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 8: for local market prices right now in the United States,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 8: you're looking at about $ 18 per pound. For online retail,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 8: it's significant.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: For fillets.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 8: For fillets, yes. Online retail, $ 35 per pound.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 8: Here's an example. Oceanside Seafood. sells wild-caught bluegill fillets that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 8: are skin on and bones off for $ 40 per pound.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: That is an expensive fish fillet, man.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 8: Very expensive. They say it takes 15 to 20 fillets
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 8: to make a pound, so that's about $ 2. 25 per fillet.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 8: They have 53 reviews for an average of 4.3 stars,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 8: so people are generally pretty satisfied.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Do you mind if I read a quick little bit
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: of that description?
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 8: I'm going to finish here my bluegill thought, and then
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 8: it's on you. Prices are now about double what they
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 8: were 15 years ago. The price increase has outpaced most
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 8: high-end seafood. One online vendor labels them as, quote, a
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 8: seasonal and nostalgic luxury item. So that's how the sellers
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: view Bluegill. It's a seasonal and nostalgic luxury item.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: $ 40 a pound.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 8: $ 40 a pound, and that's bones off, skin on. What
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 8: do you got from the description?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I just was noticing they call it with a mild,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: slightly sweet flavor and tender texture. That says it all.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: 40 bucks a pound.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 8: $ 40 a pound.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: Phil, could you click over to the... This is a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: screen grab.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 8: What were you wondering?
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: I wanted to see the dish that they made. I
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: just wanted to get a better look at it.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: Fried bluegill. I wanted to get a better look at it.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: I understand.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Can I say it one more time? 40 bucks a pound.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 8: Next, let's look at crappie. Similar to bluegill, most crappie
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: sold as food are wild caught. According to the USDA
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 8: records that I found, there are 65 registered crappie ponds
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 8: in the USA, crappie farms in the USA. Most of
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 8: them are in northern states, which surprised me. In my head,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 8: that'd be like, oh, yeah, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, they got
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 8: crappie ponds. It's actually like New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Yankees, man. Yankees in there catching all them crappies.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: So of the 65 crappie farms, only seven of them
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 8: raise them to be food size. All the rest, just
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 8: like the bluegills, they're solely sold as juveniles to stock
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 8: private ponds. The source of those wild caught crappie has
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: recently fluctuated. Up until this year, anglers on Lake Champlain
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 8: in Vermont could sell the crappie that they'd catch with
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 8: a rod and a reel. And these crappie made up
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 8: the majority of the wild caught fish from American waters.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 8: But Vermont recently changed their regulations to outlaw this practice. Now,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 8: if you want to read about America's crappie market and
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: how it used to be on Lake Champlain, go read
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: Pat Durkin's article on the media.com called Cash for crappie.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 8: So previous to this year, though, there were a lot
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 8: of crappie coming out of Lake Champlain that were largely
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 8: sold in Vermont and New York. Now, most of our
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 8: wild caught crappie market is made up of fish from
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 8: the Canada side of the Great Lakes and tribal waters
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 8: in the United States. All right, here's the price breakdown.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 8: Local markets, you're looking at $ 22 per pound. And online
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 8: retail is $ 34 per pound. So the local markets are
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: slightly more expensive than Bluegill because it's harder to find
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 8: local fish. And the online markets are cheaper than Bluegill
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 8: because Canadian anglers can satisfy the market.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: This is from Walleye Direct.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 8: Walleye Direct sells wild caught Canadian crappie in five pound
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 8: batches for $ 169, which is $ 34 per pound. They say
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 8: you get nine to 16 fillets per pound which comes
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 8: out to about $ 2. 60 per filet. Their crappie listing has
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: 31 reviews for an average of 4.7 stars. What do
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: you think of that dish, Randall?
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: I like it.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: I was about to say that's a nice-sized dish photo.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Interesting to me. I'm glad to see it because I agree.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: Interesting to see that the crappie filets are less expensive
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: than bluegill filets. My gripe with crappie filets being that
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: they're too delicate. They are. And they have a structure
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: that absorbs too much oil, I find.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 8: Now, online retailers, again, remember, these are largely coming from
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 8: Canadian waters. Online retailers really lean into the Canada aspect
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 8: for marketing, advertising that their crappies come from the cold,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 8: clear northern waters, so they have less of a muddy
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 8: taste than our disgusting American crappies.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I would tell that to the Kentuckians, man.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 5: Under how it tastes, tastes like it just came out
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 5: of the lake, period.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: And then they also, they also describe it quite similar
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to bluegills, but this is, this, this is the best,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: this is your finest work. I got to point out, but, um, um,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: $ 40 a.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 8: Pound, $ 40 a pound for bluegills. Last one. Let's talk
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 8: about yellow perch. Unlike bluegill and crappie, the perch market
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 8: is heavily subsidized with farmed fish of the USDA registered
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 8: 83 perch farms and Half of them raise the fish
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 8: to be food size. This is a result of them
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 8: being a greater demand for perch fillets than bluegill or crappie.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 8: So remember with the crappie, it was seven of 60 something.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 8: This one is like 40 out of 83 of the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 8: perch farms are selling their perch for food. The wild
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 8: caught market is dominated by the Great Lakes, specifically the
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 8: Canadian side of Lake Erie. And the buyers are located
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 8: close by. It's estimated that 70% of all yellow perch
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 8: sales in the United States occur within 50 miles of
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 8: a Great Lake. This is from a study I found
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: back in the late 90s, I believe. Those would be
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 8: places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toledo, Green Bay,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 8: Grand Rapids, Rochester, Akron, South Bend, Duluth, and Erie. Those
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 8: cities are basically the whole perch economy. And I think
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 8: it's something we now need to refer to as the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: perch belt. of america that's great that's 70 of our
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 8: perch are being sold uh the perch belt one seafood
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 8: distributor estimates that the perch belt eats about 70 million
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: pounds of perch annually uh perch is just the quintessential
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 8: fish fry fish in that region for our southern listeners
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 8: it'd be like a catfish to them is a perch
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 8: to folks in that part of.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: The it's like it's like it's a fish that It
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: was just made to be consumed in large numbers.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 8: If you were to go to a cafe and they
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: had fried fish on the menu, you'd expect it to
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 8: be perch in that area.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: If someone invited you over for a perch. It would
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: be smelt or perch.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: Like if there was a bar that had fish fry
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Friday night, it's going to be smelt or perch.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 8: If you lived in that area and someone invited you
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 8: over for a fish fry, you would almost certainly have
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 8: perch there.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 8: So price-wise, local markets around the Great Lakes region, you're
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 8: looking at about $ 20 per pound. Online retail- is $ 35
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: per pound. Farm Fresh Express sells them for $ 30 per pound.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 8: All of their perch come from Lake Erie. They say
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 8: you get six to nine fillets per pound. So that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 8: comes out to be about $ 4 per fillet.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: God, you can't afford not to fish.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 8: Here's a summary for you. For the listeners who are
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 8: trying to justify gas money and bait and new gear,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 8: according to the market, Pan fish per pound are more
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 8: valuable than walleye, king salmon, and dungeness crabs. Taking average
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 8: current prices into account, the keeper bluegill is worth about $ 4. 50,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 8: a keeper crappie is worth $ 5. 20, and a keeper perch
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: is worth $ 8. And if you were to have a
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 8: 25 pan fish limit, a mix of these three, you're
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: looking at about $ 150 for the fish. It's just some
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 8: fine dining.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I have photos where there's $ 2, 400 where the perch piled
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: up on the ice.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 8: The market is strong right now.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: That was a finely crafted segment.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: Did you make that graphic?
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: I asked.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 5: The screenshot of the journal?
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: It looks very similar to your Spencer's Orchard graphic.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable quality of the content.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 8: So $ 5 a bluegill, $ 5 a crappie, $ 8 a perch.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: That's where you're looking at today's prices.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable segment.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Too bad the Academy Awards or something.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 9: I'm wishing I could go back and prepare better for
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 9: a video game segment.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: We take another swing at that?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: In a month. Unbelievably good segment. Thank you. Let me
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: tell you what I liked about it. Here's what I
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: liked about it. This is something that like this is
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: close to my heart. So panfish. So to learn all
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: this new stuff about something I already know. Well, it'd
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: be like, if you did a report on my wife
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: and you're like telling me stuff, I'm like, I didn't
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: know that.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 8: Her favorite food is.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: It'd be like, I was like, man, I didn't know
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: all that about her. That'd be a great report.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: What would have you guessed? That report was like that.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 8: I would, I would have get, I would have put
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 8: these prices like half of what For a segment like that? No, no, no, no.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 8: Like the price of a keeper perch. What would you
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 8: guess that would have cost?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, at least half of that, I would say.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: If you said, hey, what's this perch worth on the market?
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I would have said, I probably would have come in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: at like, maybe it's a buck. Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: A pound of bluegill.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: I would have guessed $ 15 a pound.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: Now those prices per fish, that's uncleaned also, which I
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 8: think is part of the market value. Like to pay
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 8: somebody to clean a hundred bluegill- That's a, you know,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 8: someone's spending a lot of time doing that. I don't
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 8: think there's a machine pumping that out for them.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I was just forced to
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: clean them.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't get paid to clean them. You come home
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: from school and had to flay fish. It's terrible.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Aren't there, I think there are fish flay machines though
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: that could do those.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: There's a, there's a machine that does Great Lakes whitefish beautifully.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: There's probably a perch machine.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: There's a machine you run that flay through, flays it,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: pin bones it, skins it.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 8: You're right, Seth. There's got to be a machine doing
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 8: this for this. Otherwise it's, I would assume the price
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 8: was baked into that, though. Like, when I see that price,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: I'm like, that's because some poor.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Soul is cleaning hundreds of bluegills.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. Senator Ted Cruz on Cormorants. This might be
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the first. I don't follow Ted Cruz too carefully. I
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: don't think of him as a wildlife guy.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Well, think again.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 6: It's going to be hard to follow up Spencer here.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: Did you have any, like, interesting graphics? No, dude.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of time.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 6: We've been fishing.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: No, I understand.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: Wasn't Ted Cruz the guy that said Texas is 2%
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: public land and it's 2% too much?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not a big public land guy whatsoever. I
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: just don't think of him as, I feel him, he's
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: not an outdoorsman. Yeah. I just was surprised to see
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: him weigh in on wildlife, but when he weighed in
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: on wildlife, it was to like 2%. Kill a bunch
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of it. Right. You know, which is whatever. Let's hear
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: the segment.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Well, just you wait here.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 8: Just this last September, U.S.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 6: Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: introduced the Responsible Cormorant Management and Control Act of 2026.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: A companion bill, H.R. 1, I'm sorry, 8195, was introduced
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 6: in the House earlier this year by Representative Tim Wahlberg
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: of Michigan, and that was advanced by the House Natural
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 6: Resource Committee Committee. That legislation would require the U.S. Department
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 6: of the Interior to develop regional management plans for double-crested cormorants.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: So why are these elected officials so worried about cormorants?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Same reason he was just talking about.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Because they're getting pressure from commercial fishermen.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 6: They're not as worried about the cormorants. They're more worried
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 6: about the aquaculture, agriculture operations, particularly the catfish industry, as
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: well as recreational fisher folk. and fisheries biologists and how
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 6: the rebounded population of double-crested cormorants are and have been
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: wreaking havoc on the fish and their fish farms. A
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 6: recent study, a 2021 study, so not that recent, out
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 6: of Mississippi State University found that in the Mississippi Delta region,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 6: one cormorant can eat approximately one pound of fish per day.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: Wow. Commercial catfish. How much does his ass weigh?
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 6: They're pretty big birds.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: That's a good question.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: They're giant.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: They're way bigger than you think. 12 pounds. That's my guess.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: But go on.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 8: Oh, I bet they're less than that. I bet an
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 8: eagle is like 12 pounds.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 6: Is a pound of fish in his neck? It's hard
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: to say. Commercial catfish make up 33% of a cormorant's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 6: diet in the Mississippi Delta region. And during the winters
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 6: of 1617 and 1718, cormorants consumed 1.2 to 1.6 million
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: pounds of catfish, or about 10.3 and 12 million catfish, respectively.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 6: Cormorant depredation on commercial catfish farms industry-wide results in a
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: loss estimated at the range of 25.8 to 65.4 million
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 6: dollars annually.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Them suckers are... Can you edit out my earlier guess, Bill? Yeah.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Or dub in me going 2.6 to 5.5 pounds. Yeah,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I'll take the time. So he's eating a pound of catfish.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 8: This says a double-crested cormorant is 3 to 6 pounds.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 8: A bald eagle, for comparison, is 6.5 to 14.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: Go.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: Big wingspan.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: Big neck.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 6: I dove pretty deep and watched a lot of videos
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 6: of cormorants eating fish.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: It's pretty wild. I mean, they're swallowing huge fish. Just
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: sucking them down.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 8: Ninja bird.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: Boy, what a fun pairing between the two stories.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: I know, they're very similar. Here's a brief North American
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: double-crested cormorant timeline.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, please. This is great. Is there a graphic? No,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I got nothing.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 6: Starting in the early settlement days in the 1800s, early
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 6: European explorers like Samuel de Champlain and naturalists like John
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: James Audubon noted large native cormorant colonies along North America's
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: regional coasts. As westward settlement expanded, humans frequently shot the birds,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 6: viewing them as dirty, gluttonous, and a threat to their
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 6: fish stocks. In the late 19th to early 20th centuries,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: intense hunting and local persecution drove steep population declines. The
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: birds were completely extirpated from certain areas, such as parts
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 6: of Massachusetts, by the late 1800s.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 6: In the mid-20th century, populations suffered another major crash in
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 6: the 50s and 60s with widespread use of DDT, which
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 6: caused eggshell thinning and breeding failures alongside losses from oil
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: spills and other water contaminants. But since the 70s, particularly 1972,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 6: double-crested cormorants have been protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: Populations have grown roughly 2.6% per year between 66% and 2019,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 6: doubling in some regions like the Great Lakes.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: And today, the U.S.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there's between 870,000 to over
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 6: 1 million double-crested cormorants within the United States and Canada.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: So that's potentially a million pounds of fish per day.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 5: Got it.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: The Responsible Cormorant Management and Control Act of 2026, if
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 6: passed in both the House and Senate, would readdress that
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: 1972 amendment. The bill still has a way to go
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 6: before becoming to law, but for now it represents a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 6: step towards science-based regional management of the double-crested cormorant, while
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 6: still requiring cormorant populations to remain at sustainable levels. The
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 6: hope here is this would better protect the fish resources
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 6: that support commercial fisheries, America's catfish industry, as well as
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 6: recreational anglers.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: This ties in to the new executive order. on priorities
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: around fishing, where it talks about taking a greater look
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: at predation of fish, that wasn't addressing aquaculture facilities, but
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: just wild fish. I actually, I like this. I like this.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think you want to knock them back to
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: 1972 levels by any stretch, but I don't, I'm not
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: opposed at all to, to lowering cormorant numbers in order
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: to increase fisheries output.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 8: At all.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 6: I'm hoping soon we might have a new Pardon My
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 6: Plate episode with a cormorant.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 8: They kill them in Canada.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And they already got egg crushing programs on islands
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: and stuff. But I think it's real case by case.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 8: They can't possibly taste good.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 12: No.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 8: That's got to taste like eating a minnow out of
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 8: the minnow bucket.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: There's a lot of hilarious recipes out there where you
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 6: say like put the bird on a brick, light the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: brick on fire, you throw the bird away, eat the brick.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: That's the oldest joke I've ever heard.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: I'd be curious, though. So what more? That's about it.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 6: I have this really funny recipe from this cookbook in 1965,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: but we can move on.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: When zebra mussels came into the Great Lakes, what kind
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: of gave away the ending?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: Zebra mussels.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: This ties into both y'all's segments. There was a yellow perch...
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: in the Northern Great Lakes in the 90s. I mean,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: just yellow perch stocks just plummeted. And a lot of
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: people were assigning blame and a lot of the blame
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: was assigned to cormorants. And I had some close friends
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: that were involved in this prolonged predation study where they
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: went out and netted thousands of yellow perch and put
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: a little micro tag next to their dorsal fin. And
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: then you wait a while and they would go to
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: all of the cormorant rookeries looking for their little tags
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: to see how many of these yellow perch were getting
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: digested and excreted out in cormorant rookeries. And the verdict
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: was already out among them. fishermen in this area they
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: knew what the problem was the problem was cormorants and
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: that was like a joke for a long time like
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: god cormorants you know people hated cormorants i i i
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: might be wrong but i think they found a tag
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: a tag So in that case, in that area, blame
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: was put on the double-breasted cormorant. But that was when
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: things were really tipping and the ecosystem was getting so
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: upset by zebra mussels. And it threw the whole system
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: out of whack. Changed fish distribution, changed bottom structure, changed everything. Food,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: water clarity. But again, it was like people look and
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: they see a thing and it's visible. And they had
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: attribute it to it. But you can't argue with the numbers.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like people say with wolves, like, I
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: don't know. They eat seven pounds of meat a day.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: It's got to come from somewhere.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: You know, we should make sure it says ban cormorants,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: not live scope.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: That's a good idea for sure. Put that new in emoji.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 6: The big cormorant just sitting above.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: They're wild looking. Good.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 10: Mary Peltola.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to jump over to... Speaking of fisheries,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: this is a very well-constructed episode. Wow. Speaking of all that,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: declining fisheries, we're going to step over and speak with
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Alaska native and Senate candidate Mary Peltola from the state
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: of Alaska. okay, everybody, we got a, we got a
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: super interesting segment right now because we're, we're joined here
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: with Mary Peltola from Alaska, who is running for the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: United States Senate. Um, Peltola has held a U S
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: congressional seat, but is, is looking to, to come into
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: the U S Senate. Should she, should voters send her
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: to the Senate on November 3rd? Um, I would argue
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: that she would be probably the least conventional, most unconventional
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: senator to ever enter that chamber. In that, she grew
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: up in coastal Alaska, surrounded with subsistence fishing, commercial fishing,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: just a very unusual background. And Mary, thanks for taking
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: a couple minutes to talk to us. I know it's
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: a super busy time of year from, for you, uh, you,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: you political folks. So thank you very much.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 12: Thank you, Steve. It's good to be here.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Can you tell people a little bit about your, you know,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: I want, I want to stick to fish here as
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: we discussed, but can you tell people a little bit
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: about your childhood relationship to salmon and some of the
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: activities you were brought up around some of the activities
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: you were brought up doing?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 11: So I'm from the Kuskokwim River. The Kuskokwim is in
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 11: the southwest portion of Alaska. We're above Bristol Bay and
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 11: right below the Yukon River.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 12: We're huge. And we have historically had.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 11: Millions and millions of salmon returning every year, all five species.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 11: The tributary that I'm from, that my mom is from,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 11: is called Gwihluk.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 12: It means bad river or muddy river.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 11: And even that tributary had millions and millions of chum
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 11: salmon returning historically, millions of Chinook salmon, silvers. In recent history,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 11: like the last 80, 90 years, we've also seen the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 11: in-migration of sockeye salmon, reds. And it was really interesting
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 11: growing up with my mom's first cousin, Robert, he would
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 11: talk about when they first saw reds show up and
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 11: they were, what is this?
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 12: What is the species?
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 11: And In Bristol Bay, they have historic massive runs of sockeye.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 11: So we use their word for red, saillite. And now
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 11: you're seeing them migrating even more to the north, which
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 11: is really good for reds. Reds are one of the
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 11: salmon that do really well with ocean temperature rise, with
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 11: their one or two degree temperature rise.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Huh, okay.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 12: Yeah, the reds.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 11: Salmon that do the worst under those conditions are Chinook salmon.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 11: And that's why I think statewide, every single tributary in Alaska,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 11: we've seen a massive decline in the number of Chinook
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 11: salmon returning. But when I was growing up, we grew up,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 11: I grew up commercial fishing. My dad had a commercial
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 11: fishing permit and my sister and I would take turns
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 11: being his helper. And so when I started, I was six,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 11: she was nine. He wouldn't bring us both at the
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 11: same time because he found that we were either playing
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 11: or fighting and not being good helpers. So we would
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 11: each take turns going out every opener. And I just,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 11: you know, one of my earliest memories as a six-year-old
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 11: was commercial fishing with my dad. And 4th of July
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 11: is the peak of our chum run. And my dad
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 11: was borrowing a really small wooden homemade skiff, really, you know, small,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 11: short sideboards.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 12: And the runs were so huge.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 11: The returns of salmon were so tremendous that a couple
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 11: long drifts, you know, I grew up commercial drift net,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 11: gill net fishing. And at that point, we could use
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 11: a full shackle. So 50 fathom net, just a few drifts,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 11: you could practically, you could swamp your boat. You could
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 11: just catch so many. You know, all of us kind
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 11: of have these stories of setting your net around the
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 11: 4th of July, hoping to catch like six chums. And
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 11: by the time you've got the full length out, it's
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 11: sinking and you're panicking.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 12: And it's like, get this in as soon as you can.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 11: Don't even bother picking the fish because your net is
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 11: literally sinking. And, you know, you're pulling them in kind
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 11: of like grapes, you know, like clusters of fish. And,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 11: you know, when I was in college, I worked for
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 11: our state department of fish and game. And during this time,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 11: I remember in my sleep, I would see these tangled
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 11: up chums and chums are spinners. They get in the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 11: gill net and they spin around and they circle back
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 11: and they get in these real tangled pockets. So even
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 11: in my sleep, I would see this mess of chums
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 11: that you'd have to try to untangle to get out.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 11: But this was kind of the abundance that we grew
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 11: up with. So many salmon, it would swamp your boat.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 11: So many salmon, you're kind of having nightmarish dreams about
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 11: picking your net.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 12: There's just so many.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 11: And then fast forward to around 2009, 2010, 2011, and
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 11: it was shocking. My husband and I, the scenario had
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 11: always been when we were going to check our set net,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 11: we were really worried that we would catch too many,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 11: so many that we wouldn't be able to harvest them
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 11: in one day, like 80 or 90 at a time
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 11: with these really short set nets.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 12: But then we were showing up and there'd be, you know, 20.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 12: And then one year we.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 11: Were checking our set net and it was single digit numbers. And,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 11: you know, that's when we all have to kind of
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 11: stand back and pause and say, what is going wrong here?
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 11: What are we collectively doing wrong to create a situation
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 11: where there is just so few fish now?
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: Can you explain a little bit about the. The decline
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: in fisheries that you're talking about, some of the things
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: that might be contributing to that. But also it's just
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: been interesting, within that answer, if you can touch on this,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: it's been interesting that as people are looking ahead to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: the election and really anticipating, is the Senate going to flip?
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: And Alaska is one of those states where there's a
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: lot of attention being paid due to that question. But
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: at the same time, one of the key issues is,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: one of the key political issues in Alaska are fisheries.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: And so we're in this really weird situation that might
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: seem very strange to people in the lower 48, or
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: as you guys would say, the people on the outside,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: is we're in this strange situation where fisheries are at
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: a level of heightened national significance right now because they're
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: so important to the race in Alaska and because the
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: race in Alaska is so important to control of the Senate.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: So just again, to remind you, like it's a two-part question.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things happening to deplete fisheries
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: in Alaska? And how has this turned into a political issue?
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 11: Well, and honestly, as an Alaskan, as an Alaskan who
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 11: depends on our seafood resources, our salmon industry, our, you know,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 11: just a healthy ecosystem up here, I am so thankful
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 11: that this is a marquee issue in Alaska, that it's
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 11: a marquee issue in the lower 48, because for so
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 11: long we have felt like this is the best kept
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 11: secret in Alaska and the best kept secret in.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 12: The lower 48.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 11: So I'm really thankful that this is the topic. In Alaska,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 11: we recognize that there have been so many changes in
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 11: the last 20 years in terms of You know, farm
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 11: fish has taken up such a huge market.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 12: Share for our commercial fishermen, and that's a huge concern.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 11: I think as Alaskans, as commercial, as the commercial industry
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 11: realizes that's one of the biggest threats is the farm fish.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 11: The other big threat is ocean temperature rise, and I
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 11: mentioned it at the beginning. The winners in an ocean,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 11: one or two degree ocean temperature rise are sockeye salmon,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 11: and that helps Bristol Bay grow. But for those of
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 11: us in every other river system who really depend on
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 11: Chinook salmon, that's one of the biggest losers. And, you know,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 11: we had five snowless winters in the early teens. And
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 11: because of that, like by the fifth summer of a
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 11: snowless winter, we had chum salmon floating down the river,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 11: completely unmolested, like nothing. There were no gillnet marks or
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 11: there was nothing that outwardly killed the salmon. And then
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 11: they find out that they're actually having heart attacks or
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 11: having heat strokes because the river is 70 something degrees, um,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 11: above zero and it's, you know, 90 degrees, um, in the,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 11: in the shade. Um, so that those are all, you know, very,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 11: very damaging and challenging on salmon. Um, we know that, um,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 11: Ocean acidification is also a problem. One of the biggest
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 11: food sources for salmon is zooplankton, and zooplankton needs a
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 11: certain level, you know, a certain pH. And when we
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 11: have a really acidic ocean, that just really impacts the
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 11: salmon's food.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 12: But on top of that.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 11: You know, for so many decades, it has just felt
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 11: like statewide candidates have just kind of brushed the fisheries
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 11: issues aside and said, oh, it's too complicated.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 12: I can't understand that. And that's just silly.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 11: It is not that complicated. Yes, there are a lot
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 11: of complicating factors, but the one issue that we are
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 11: really seeing a movement on, because it's hard to impact
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 11: acidification and ocean temperature rise at the state level, at
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 11: the federal level. So one of the easiest things that
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 11: we can do is get our arms around the trawl fleet.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 11: And this is industrial factory trawling. And we're talking about
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 11: metric tons of forage fish being harvested and then metric
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 11: tons of bycatch. And every fisherman knows that bycatch is inevitable,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 11: but chucking over metric tons of juvenile halibut, salmon, and crab,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 11: it's got to have a cumulative effect. And there really
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 11: is a movement across Alaska and it's So nonpartisan, this
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 11: is not a partisan issue. Food and food security and
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 11: taking care of our environment and not being wasteful, that
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 11: is not a partisan issue. And so across Alaska, seafood
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 11: and salmon and fish, whether it's herring, halibut, crab, salmon,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 11: all of these things are part of our cultural identity.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 11: And this is how we really see ourselves. And so
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 11: when we're seeing this really wasteful industry that does so
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 11: much environmental damage and yeah, you know, and, and I
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 11: can see why they would feel like it is not
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 11: just us and we're not saying it is just that,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 11: but this is the one thing that is easy to
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 11: get our arms around. This is a practice that is
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 11: not tolerated in most parts of the world. Most fisheries
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 11: have said no to industrial factory trawling and the fact
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 11: that it happens in Alaska legally on our own shores
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 11: by our own government. And so much of the um,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 11: economic benefit does not impact Alaska. We've got these industrial
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 11: factory trawlers, not only are they usurping and really, um,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 11: taking so much of the resource, but they're also processing
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 11: it offshore. So where our small communities aren't even benefiting
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 11: from the processing of it. Um, and then they don't
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 11: have to, um, be taxed at the rate they would
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 11: be if they were processing onshore. So there are some
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 11: cascading effects, but all of this is such an affront
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 11: to Alaskan values of not wasting and then being better
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 11: at sharing.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: What do you feel could happen on the federal level
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: to address this? let's say the one issue that you
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: said that can be addressed, like the commercial trawl industry,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: what could happen at the federal level that would start
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: to address it or, like you said, get your arms
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: around the issue? Because that does seem to me, you know,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: coming in and battling ocean acidification or battling the warming
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: of the oceans seems, you know, like brings to mind
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: like the Don Quixote, but the trawl thing seems more solvable,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: but what would it take at the federal level to
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: start getting a handle on that industry?
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 11: Well, the political will, and honestly, that comes from the outside.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 11: We need voters to really move the dial on that.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 11: So much of what happens in the Senate and the
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 11: House and at the legislative level, people imagine that the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 11: legislator's are the thermostat.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 12: It's really the public. The public is demanding this change.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 11: And I think that the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 11: we really need to look at the composition of that
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 11: management body. When you're looking at the composition of the board,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 11: what dictates that is the Magnuson-Stevens Act. And Ted Stevens
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 11: is one of our most revered senators. And he is
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 11: one of the co-authors of that legislation. And it dictates
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 11: who sits on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. We
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 11: have a member from Washington. We have a member from Oregon.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 11: We have agency staff. And then it is primarily the industry.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 11: So it's the fox watching.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 12: The hen house.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 11: And in my opinion, we really need that body to
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 11: really reflect Alaska more. There has been a movement for
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 11: years to have tribal members sit on the North Pacific
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 11: Fisheries Management Council. They wouldn't have a majority. They would
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 11: be such a mini minority. I don't know what the
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 11: threat is of just having members who are more reflective
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 11: of Alaska. We don't have enough people who are not
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 11: industry folks or agency folks who really live off the
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 11: land and depend on those resources. They've really kind of
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 11: been aced out of the conversation. I know there are
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 11: a few members on the AP. It's one of their committees,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 11: but not enough to make a dent, not enough.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 12: To really move the dial.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 11: The few individuals who get on there from the public,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 11: it's just like you say, it's Don Quixote.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 12: You know, you're just so alone.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 11: And it's so easy for these industry folks to just
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 11: kind of gaslight and gaslight the situation. And we just
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 11: want a body that is reflective of the user groups
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 11: and not just the industry. And if you're somebody who
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 11: lives on the Kuskokwim River, it just feels like legal corruption.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 11: And it really is our most present example of corporate greed,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 11: where we have these huge corporations coming in and just
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 11: usurping all the resource, taking all that money and leaving
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 11: the state And, you know, we don't even have scraps left.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 11: We're fighting over crumbs here. And on our rivers, like
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 11: the Yukon River, they have been told they are not
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 11: allowed to fish for salmon for seven years running. This
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 11: has just had such damaging effects. And then on top
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 11: of that, you've got the war in Iran and the
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 11: exorbitant fuel prices now.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 12: Shung Naks paying $ 26.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: 82 a gallon.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 11: Most rural communities are paying around $ 10 a.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 12: Gallon for gas.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 11: And on top of not having that, just, you know,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 11: we really became one of the most foundational parts of
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 11: our culture in Western Alaska is the reliance on salmon.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 11: And we are accustomed to being able to harvest hundreds
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 11: of salmon a year for each family. And that really
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 11: is the foundation of all of our nutrients, it is
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 11: so expensive. So it's just insult to injury. And we're
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 11: not having conversations with people about this around the state.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 11: And I think that's another reason it's such an emotional
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 11: and one of the reasons we're so fired up about
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 11: this is because folks in these rural places are feeling
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 11: starved out and feeling like no one is even coming
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 11: to talk to them about these issues.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: My last question for you, and it's as much an
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: observation as a question, is that you've spent your life
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: in fisheries, and you know that oftentimes when there's a
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: sort of resource argument, you find that recreational fishermen will
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: feel like they're pitted against subsistence fishermen, and subsistence fishermen
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: will feel like they're pitted against recreational and commercial, and
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: the recreational guys are blaming the commercial guys and vice versa.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: It seems to me that the the situation with the
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: salmon fishery and halibut fisheries in Alaska is becoming more
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: of a unifier right now. And then I think that there's,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: I I'm feeling like a lot of different kinds of fishermen, meaning,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: you know, recreational tourism, people that come up subsistence, people
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: like how you were brought up commercial people, um, that
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: they're all coming together and realizing that there is a
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: problem that needs to be addressed. And it seems like
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: it's moving beyond just blaming each other for it. Is
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: that your feeling from when you're out talking to people
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: in communities in Alaska?
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 12: It really is.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 11: And we've all gone through the phase of blaming each other.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 11: We've gone through, I liken it to the stages of grief.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 11: And you go into these management meetings and you can
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 11: see where different people are. And, and a lot of
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 11: times you're, you're just kind of sliding up and down,
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 11: you know, the, um, range of emotions in these meetings, but, um, no,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 11: we are, it is really impacting every sector, whether it's commercial,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 11: like you say, or sport or, or, um, those of
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 11: us who are living off the land, um, And it
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 11: is galvanizing. And this is such a nonpartisan issue.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 12: And it's a movement.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 11: And I know I often get the credit or the
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 11: blame for elevating this. It is not me elevating this alone.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 12: This is a movement.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 11: I am one of tens of thousands of Alaskans who
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 11: have just had it on this.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 12: And people have been.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 11: Going to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council for years
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 11: now saying the same thing. You get I think two
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 11: whole minutes, if you're a member of the public to
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 11: try to encapsulate, um, how damaging, how impactful this is
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 11: to our families. Um, and I think folks, you know,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 11: we're so thankful that this issue has been elevated to
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 11: the level that it is being elevated to. We're so
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 11: thankful that this campaign is about Alaskan issues and issues
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 11: that really resonate here with people on a day-to-day basis. Um,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 11: is so often in national races and in election cycles,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 11: these discussions seem to be about really abstract things, things
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 11: happening in faraway places, and nothing is more personal to
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 11: Alaskans than the way we eat and how we hunt
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 11: and fish and our access to hunting and fishing and
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 11: our rights to hunting and fishing and being able to
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 11: pass on those traditions and the values inherent in those traditions.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 11: You know, I can't teach my kids how to be
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 11: Alaskan or how to be Yupik unless we're actually hunting
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 11: and fishing. I can't teach them from a book or
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 11: with words or pictures. The only way to do it
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 11: is to be actually doing it, to be out on
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 11: the land, teaching your kids how to read the weather,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 11: how to respect your catch, how to make sure you're
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 11: sharing your harvest with other people, maintaining that balance and
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 11: coming to hunting and fishing with.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 12: The right attitude. just the, the tiny rules that we
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 12: have to live by.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 11: I mean, you'll, this'll resonate with you, Steve, just the
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 11: basic rule of when you're outdoors camping and fishing, you
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 11: don't complain. You don't talk about being hungry or cold
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 11: or tired. Um, that's off the table. Um, you, you,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 11: those are not things that you learn unless you're really
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 11: out there doing it. Um, so, and you know, one
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 11: of my favorite values is like, you know, when you're
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 11: processing fish, when you're, um, interacting with your game, you
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 11: have to be in the right mindset. You cannot be
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 11: in a bad mood. You have to be grateful. You
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 11: have to be calm. And what a great value to
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 11: teach people. You cannot say disparaging things or things that
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 11: might disrespect.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 12: Your harvest, your catch.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 11: Just everything about living off the land teaches you such
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 11: important values and skills that are transferable to everything. So,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 11: and As Alaskans, this is not a partisan issue.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 12: This is just who we are.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: Well, Mary Peltola, thank you for coming on and talking
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: about the issues. And we'll be watching. I'll be waking
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: up on November 4th, very curious about what happens up there.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: So thank you very much for coming on.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 7: Thank you.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 11: And it might take a few weeks for all of
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 11: our ballots to come in. So it might be around
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 11: Thanksgiving by the time we know how this race turns out.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 11: But it's neck and neck. So I'm going to need
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 11: every vote I can get.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Thanks again. Thanks, Steve.