Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 213: The Return of the Latvian Eagle

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Ep. 213: The Return of the Latvian Eagle · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You Can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you stand with on X. Okay, yanni, Uh, since you're
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: not like the you know you're not a co host anymore, Um,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: because your eyes gone. What I want to do is
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: go back to the thing we used to do when
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you were kind of up and comer. You can just
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: call me a very experienced guest. Yeah, very seasoned guest.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Well i'd like you to do is um do like
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: we do where like if I have a heart attack,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: but here like I because around the ice. Okay, let's
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: do that. All of a sudden, Um, the ice beneath
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: me shattered and I vanished from sight, and the current
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: carried me under the good ice and there was no
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: possible way out for me. We're just like and here
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you are. You all of a sudden realized that, um,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: you need to introl the show. I gotta jump in,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: you gotta jump in. Carry the flag. So let's hear it,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: so like like, you gotta set everything up right, you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: gotta make listeners feel like they're here. Morning, folks. I'm
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: glad you can join us today on Hunting and Fishing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with Yanni. Steve's gone, he floated underneath the ice. That's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna call the show now, Yeah, Hunting and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Fishing with Yannie, Like, yeah, Jimmy Miller came up with
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: that years ago. He's what do they call that? A
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: voyeur something? No warriors when you get your jolly's off
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of what someone else is doing. Well, what do you
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: call when you can see into the future? Clairvoyant? Clairvoyant? Oh,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I just figured with a name like that, he was
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: some kind of marketing whiz somewhere jim Miller. Where the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: story we tell about Jimmy Miller which told me to
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: be sharing many times that Jimmy Miller wants found a
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: buck all tangled up in the twine used to bind
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: hay bales, and he freed it and then the buck
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: kicked his as. Yeah. So anyways, today on Hunting and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Fishing with Johnnie, I'm joined by my friends Rody Henderson, Hello,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan, Miles and Nolty and Phil the podcast engineer
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Taylor he um, should we have a little moment, you know,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of silence for it for Steve at least the toast.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I would, I would. I would really like uh to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: do that kind of thing people do when um, when
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: everybody shares a word. Oh, just go around and everybody
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: says sharing memory or something. That would be that would
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: be it would be great. Yeah. Yeah, Well, being is
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: how I'm more into the logistics of things. I think
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: we gotta figure out how we'd tell the fam and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: then also figure out if we're just gonna keep borrowing
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and stuff like he's still here, just divvy it up
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and take it, or divvy it up and take it. Yeah, um,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I'll start uh yeah, but also generous. We fish out
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of the day, well at least until the bite slows down.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: He would want Yeah, he would want that. He'd give
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: you the shirt off his back. I learned something. So
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: we're here ice fishing and bows in Montana. It's uh,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: super sunny out, so bright and sunny out that we
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: decided to erect a nice eskimo. What's this? What's this
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: pop up thing called the fat fish? Yeah, just like
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: it's like a like I don't remember the numbers. It's
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like you wouldn't fit this thing in a trailer part.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's a very get a double wide lot. Well, Cal
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and I lived in it for a few days. It
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: was very comfortable. Tell me about that. We just came
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: back last week. We went on a little high mountain
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: ice fishing trip, chasing around bourbon and brick trout and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: whatever else we could find, and we we just put
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the tent up and slept in it. It's big, it's
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: insulated head tons of room for gear cots. If you
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: just heard Brody do a very faint um, think that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it was, but Brody does. Um. Oh, that's because when
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you're guiding and someone it's you gotta be quiet. Oh
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you can't be like, oh you can. That's that's that's it.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Never mind. Um go on, Yeah, I'm still on the ice.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You're still under the ice? How where where do you want?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for this. This is you're about done.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I'm busting up through the ice. Okay, Hey, Steve, I'm
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: real quick. You're still not biting real quick? Um. A trifecta, well, okay,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: there's a trifecta. Finger stories. It just came in oh oh,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: something about people getting their fingers chopped off all the time. Um.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: The inspired a guy go on Instagram. I just put
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: it up. It'll be old now, so screw by the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: time you hear to scroll way ass down. Uh, you'll
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: see a great picture. A guy to send us a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: picture of UM snagged his old man so hard on
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a bad cast with a big saltwater fly. He snagged
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: him so hard, did he? Uh? He bust it off
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: forty pound tip on the on the forward stroke, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: it was a great picture of half his old man's
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: face with his giant hood just an inch below his eye.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I posted on Instagram at Stephen Ronella. But a trifecta
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: good finger stories came in. Guy wrote in uh oh,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that might be the fish of the day there. My
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: father is an electrician and was wearing his gold wedding
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: band at work. That's a good conductor. Um. You know
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: when people like to do things about like how we
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: won World War two, like we couldn't have won World
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: War two without beaute Montana. Yeah, because yeah, well you
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: stole my thing. Well, there's a version that we couldn't
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: have won World War two without the hydro electric Damns
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: on the Columbia because smelting aluminum um requires so much electricity,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: requires so much energy, that we were able to out
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: our the crowds. Mhm. Still calling him the crowds. Huh yeah,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: for another generation. I might have my children's children retire
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the anger, you know, my kids, when my kids have kids,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have him go to Yanni solds this party
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and chop into the log their anger at the Germans
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: having fired upon their great great grandfather. And it'll be
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: gone after and then the family um, the family animosity
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: towards the German army, we'll be over. Uh. They shot
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: a hole right through my dad's rain Poncho Brody scared
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: ship out of them. I get it. I got it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And I could tell you some more horrible stories. Uh.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: He made me lose, betraying thought things that won the war.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. There's an argument that our hydro electric projects
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: along the Columbia UM I don't know where it is articulated,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: was like we were able to produce aircraft and at
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: such like an astonishing rate because we had such an
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: ample supply of electricity from hydro electric projects. I'm not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: telling you this is a fact. I'm telling you this
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the theory I heard another one Cal explained the one
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you were given. Well, uh, beaut was uh producing more
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: copper than any other place in the world at that time.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And and are all of our a bunch of stuff
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: for fitting out chips and everything else, but also brass
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: for shell casings. And I heard wiring that like the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, all that stuff was gold wiring. Oh wow, Um,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: there's a great there's a guy. Uh, Ed, there's a
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: right if everyone to read a story about all this.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Ed Dobbs has a long article about beaute in the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in the metal mining and butte called pennies from hell. Um.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: It's a good explanation of what we're talking about anyhow.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: But why was I talking about that? Though? Somehow I'm
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: figuring this power plant or the damn has to do
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: with someone losing a finger. Oh it does. God, thing
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I was saying that gold is a good conductor is
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: what I was trying to get at, because about the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project and how they use gold wiring. So guy,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: his old man's an electrician, he's got his gold wedding
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: ring on it. Work does all makes sense? Now? He
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: got to energize wire in contact with his wedding band
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: on one side and the ground wire on the other side.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Melted the wedding band into his finger and had to
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: have it surgically removed. Now he just has the scar
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: ring and doesn't need to wear a wedding ring anymore.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: He's scarred into like marriage. Uh, scarred into marriage, scarred
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: out of marriage. I mean you see guys do their
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: gals tattoo the ring on similar concept? Another guy? Uh right,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: so north Uh, same guy? So the man, the man
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: that did this to his finger. Okay, he gets in
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: his head to make a jewelry box for his wife
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: for Mother's Day using some locally sourced Russian olive from
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: along the Yellowstone River. M hmm, that's cool. Probably some
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: squirrels around there too, loses the whole damn finger on
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the router couldn't find the finger in A week later,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: they found it stuck to a window in the shop.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: WHOA last place you looked? Last place she looked? Um? Right? Oh,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: go ahead. Oh. I was making a bunch of foe
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: sighting for the first light Trade show booth, and I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: had to drive it all down to Salt Lake City
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and and was on a real tight schedule, and I
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: had to go came up a little short, so I
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: swung by the wood shop that I was borrowing and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: was zipping. You know, I was basically making veneers, right,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: which just take the fancy looking face off aboard and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: cut it real thin. And then you just take that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: so it's not structural or anything, it's just ornamental. Um
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and and put my thumb right into the end of
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the blade on the table saw. But you still have it,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: still have it. But I'll tell you, um, immediate recognition
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of the whole situation, right Kelly might explain to people
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: how you're fishing and why effectively. Yeah, no, I give up.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: You're right. That's why earlier I thought you were wrong.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: You didn't invent this, But I just dropped his fish
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: as the whole explain your explain your approach, cal Then
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I got one letter, the last of our trifecta finger story.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: So the the approach is basically just using the rod
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and real dead um, dole out enough line and keep
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the line organized and out of the way, and then
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I just hold onto the mono filament and jake with
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: my fingertip. Um. I'm over here just doing it like
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the old timers with the pole. But the reason being
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: is like, I'm just not a good I don't have
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the feel that you Midwest folks do for perch. Yeah,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I can see that. Uh. Here's the final one, final
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: finger story. I like this couple. It's a couple and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: for Valentine's weekend, they're going wolf Fund okay and uh
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: a little Valentine's trip. But as they're loading up the uh.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: As they're loading up aside by side into an enclosed trailer,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the dad has the mom guiding the winch line. Oh right.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: At the first knockle oh, he says, happy Valentine's Day?
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that one forever? Uh, Here's what I've
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: been wanting talk about for a long time. A guy
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: from in the U. S. Marines. This is this is
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: like you pay. Like most of stuff we talked about,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you just ignore, but don't ignore this. The guy in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the marine says he's watching our show Meat Eater on Netflix,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and he notices that when I am scanning my surroundings,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I scan left to right, which is true. And he's
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: not talking about through binoculars. He's just talking. He just
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: walked up onto a little rise and he stopped you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: take a look around. He said that we get used
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to this because in our culture, not all culture like
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Jap In Japan, like you start at the back of
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: what we'd call like the back of the book and
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: read it right the wrong way. Um here right we read.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: We do a lot of uh, left or right. He's
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: saying that in the Marine Corps, they are taught to
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: scan right to left. Does it make stuff jump out?
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Because it makes things jump out. I've been doing it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: It is not the same like because you're so used
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to going and just moving too fast, you go to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like I just started looking out my window because I
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: scanned the hill behind my house all the time, and
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I scanned it left or right, and I started doing
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: it right left. It's a different experience, man, you experience
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: everything differently trying to look right to left. I think
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: it's a guy. I need to do both ways because
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: it's different, Like your eye hits different ship going right
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to left. It's a good tip, hot tip. Last last story,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: the finger losing stories. Lad to you if people who
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: regular listeners have been following UM lead you a lot
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of nipple losing stories. Uh nipple ripping? Is anybody actually
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: lost in this guy did feeding a horse. Oh as
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a kid holding a bunch of hay for a horse.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: The horse got a gro and irritated took the nipple off.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: That's terrible. I'll bounce for my mom's horse. Bit right
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: through my jeans. One time, he says he gets fans.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Get everything back. It's a guy telling us about his
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: buddy that has happened to him. But he says he
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: gets fanom nipple syndrome now and he gets within a
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: hundred feet of a horse and his good nipple starts
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to twitch. You think of that, I'm gonna close out
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a horse coming. I'm gonna how do you know? I'm
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: gonna close out this round with what I think might
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: be a bogus finger losing story. Guy. The guy says
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: they used to always sneak into us to a swimming
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: pool they weren't supposed to swim into, and one day
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: they get busted, so they run out of the pool
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and jump the fence and his buddy loses his finger
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: jumping the fence. Then later they go back to find
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: it and check this out. This is I have a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: hard time believing this is why we might be tied
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: up and finger losing stories because it might be that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: it's just entered the bullshit, he says, they go back
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and find a different finger. I mean, is they're like, yeah, dude,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: what do you do? Then? Do you be like, well,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: put it anyway? It's a finger. That's what I've got.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Cal uh a woman sent Have you seen this box
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that we just got in the mail? We got a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: box full of a bunch of kinds of baby hand
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: sanitizing wipes and ziplock bags that are marked one says
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Ryan and one says Steve. And it was at uh
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: watcher of the show remarking on how filthy we seem
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to be all the time and our filthy food handling techniques,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and thought that we would uh be wise to start
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: carrying these labeled bags full of these wipes, thank you,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: you know, which got me thinking. I had a note
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: for a long time to talk about a thing like
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: we used what a lot a lot of wet wipes
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: uh in in in place of toilet paper in addition
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to toilet paper backpacking, and um, I made a note
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to talk about this when you get a cold morning
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and you got a frozen one? Yeah, how much that?
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: What I like to do is I take to have
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: frozen one out and I actually tuck it against my
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: skin on my shoulder up. That's the first thing I do.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Then I pulled my pants down and you know, no,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta think ahead. Then I had that
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: sucker and it is wet and warm. That's a hot tip, man,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: That's better than scanning all that left it right. I'm
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: not not a traditional uh baby wipe you user, you know,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you know it's I always get disgrunt told with extra
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: stuff and what is extra stuff? And what's just like, yeah,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: but what about extra stuff on your butt? Well? Uh,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Miles and nys uh. Like that last ice fishing trip,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I was having a bit of what they call monkey
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: butt your jap ass, Yeah, a lot of a lot
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of later like, I don't like calling it monkey butt,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but um but hold on now, Well you might not
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: be talking about two different things, but I feel like
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: monkey chap has this to do more with like the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the outer meat in the chaffing and then where your
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: butt cheeks. But it can happen from having a poopy bottom,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: I think, and not to me, but I've heard from
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: reliable people. Well, even if it's not that, I feel
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: like the solution, though, clarify, is to get get again,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: talk about what the problem is exactly. Oh, just like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: a chap butt cheeks where they rubbed cheeks. We're talking cheeks. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: because it's a friction sitch here. Spinster is fine. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I think people's spinsters have anything to do with chaps,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: but I think, oh, but sometimes I've had an irritated
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: spinster from I'm sorry, how are you think the word
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: you're looking at we're talking about hold his heroes. It's
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: like talking to the who's the guy Colonel Clake? The
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: way it's a tough one. I'm gonna take a shot
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: at it. Uh, spin spinters, there's no season. I just
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: call it one of my orfic So. We had wickedly
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: lower temperatures, right, and um, all we know is like
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: in Town, the one night hit thirty six below in Town.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I think we had a bit of an inversion so
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it was warmer. But also we had a bottle of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: bourbon freeze up there, so that's when you know you're fishing. Yeah,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the bourbon freezes, and I've never seen that happen. We
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: woke up in the morning and the bottle was frozen
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: solid and I did a little extra research on that,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and it seems like most folks agree that, um, somewhere
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in that negative fourteen a negative eighteen range is what
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: it takes to freeze a bottle of eight proof whiskey.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I said bourbon first, but you know whiskey anyway. Um,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So I went out to one of our ice fishing
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: holes that we hadn't been using and just punched a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: hole through that and gave myself a good, good cleaning
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: out there on the ice and really totally fine, even
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: at you know whatever, negative four teen to eighteen to twenty,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: it's totally fine, like, and I didn't walk away from
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: that being like, man, I wish I had baby wipes. Yeah,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: I'm with you, baby wipes spring up, but there's a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: disposal issue, yes, with baby wipes. And what I like
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: is I like these single use wet ones. Granted I
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: don't use them every time, the single use wet ones,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: because what I'll do is I just do like though, uh,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: it's just a light touch up, a light check, a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: quick check at the end with a wet wipe. Then
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I just tuck it back into its little baggy. Okay,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: got you? But or you can dry it out if
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: you got time, you dry it out in the sun
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and you can burn it. Yeah. I don't have any babies,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: cal I think if you had a couple of laying around,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you'd use the wet wipes. I'm gonna advocate for wet
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: wipes beyond just just the be hole though. Like when
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I was when we were guiding a wilderness cab in
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Alaska and you didn't get to bathe very often, Like
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: taking one of those the end of the day and
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: just kind of hitting up the necessary areas with a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: quick once over really kept you going and kept you
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: fresh enough for like however long you had to be
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: out there. It was. It was kind of a lifesaver.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: You ever see the giant ones called like shower in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: a bag, it's an ample. It's like an ample sized
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: wet white for doing a wipe down at night. You
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: feel good sometimes you know, it's amazing, like you need
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: nicely done, nice man. That's the howie Jake, uh yep, yep,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: y honest tell everybody about about your People have been
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: asking like how you got kind of like equit being
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: on the show and everything. You threw that one back too.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a big one that's a fat perch.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there, we haven't pulled one out of the ice.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It isn't a big pregnant female. You know. They're a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: free cast spawner. Oh they are. I thought they did so.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: No nests. No, they like to go off wind points
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and free cast spawn Let's try to blue
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: bluegill being a bluegill being a nest spawner, bed spawner.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Let's try to keep eggs eggs and see if we
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: can't cure them. Have you ever done that? We fry them,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: but you know I've fried him and I've poached him.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I have not tried curing perch eggs yet. Well it's
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: very simple to do so it wouldn't take but minutes
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to try it. So Miles, you're actually being humane over
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: there and and dispatching your fish. That is what I do.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I know not everybody agrees, but I don't think you
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: can disagree with it. I think it'd be more like
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: whether you take the time every time. I think I
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: think that's a better way of putting it. Uh yeah, Like,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: let's say a big thing grab. We talked about four,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: but big thing grabs you brooties on big thing nice
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: perch a big thing, grabs you and drags you under water,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: has no intention of letting you go. Would you rather
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: it drove a big spike through your head or the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: wait until you uh, you know, died. I'll take the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: spike through the head. Yeah, you've been gone a lot, mum.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Can you tell people what you've been like? The project
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: we've been working on. We've been working on project called
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the tentatively called the fur Hat Ice Fish Tour. Is
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: there to keep hearing that there might be a different title,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I like, there's no. I don't think who did you
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: hear that from? Miles was involved in one of the conversations.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think about calling it? No? No No, No,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: it's it's just that we're kind of separating out some
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: episodes into the tour part, coming to the local part.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be fur hat ice fishing, no questions. The
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: ones that I worked on hat, yeah, the ones that
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: we went on were you know, when we were traveling
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: around that's the fur hat ice Tour. Yeah. Because I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: made it a point to packground not only my for
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: beaver fur hat, but also Steve's dad's uh coon skin
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: fur hat, and then Steve's beaver fur hat and uh
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of the guests that we uh speared and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: fished with for him. We're quite excited about it. And listen, man,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: those hats are no jo, They're amazing. Dude, Cal warm
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a f cal and I I slept. I was told
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: on Instagram that I moved farther away from being a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: boomer by using a F in my post the other day. Yeah.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I guess that's like a real hip thing to do, anyhoy.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, so Miles and I Miles have been
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: producing this content and we took a couple of videographers
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: with us. I want to right now formally put to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: rest any notion of this not being the fur hat
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: ice tour. Okay, chief creative officer speaking, um and uh yeah.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: We went to uh Minnesota first and we fished unnamed
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: or speared and unnamed lake very the very very first
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: thing with Mark Norquist. Not that it's unnamed. You just
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: don't want to get into it. Yeah, it has a name.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It has a name, but he asked us to keep it.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I got you keep his spot quiet. And uh we
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: spirit some pike and some whitefish. Uh. And then Chef
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Lucas Leaf Uh cooked us up some delicious whitefish cakes
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: and uh what else some fried pike. It was really good, delicious.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: You know, years ago we did some white fish spearing
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: on Whitefish Bay. Hm. You know on the record the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Adaman Fitzgerald, he says how they would have made Whitefish
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Bay had they put fifty more What does Gordon say?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Does he say fifteen more miles hinder? The searchers all
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: say they'd have made white Fish Bay if they'd put
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: fifteen more miles behind her? Yeah, that sounds anyways in
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: that bay? What what what happened with your fish? Uh?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And the spirit at bay? And uh? Did you guys
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: line the bottom with anything for for visibility? No? Because
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: it turns out that and and everywhere we have speared
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: as had the same rule. You can't really do that.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You can't lay down anything that you can't retrieve it's
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: organic matter. That's a good rule. Because we were just
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: kind of like younger and not didn't really think things
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: through as much. We would sliced potatoes very thin, Yeah,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and then drop sliced potatoes down the whole to where
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you got a nice white bed on the floor wild
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: so you can see the fish pass over it because
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: it was deep, murky water and you'd have those taters
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: down there. But what's funny about it is there a current.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: So you guys have some dude outside the hut drill
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a hole and the current would vary. So some guy
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: outside the hut would drill a hole and fired down
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the potato slice and you yell out like a little
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: farther and they gotta go and drill another hole and
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: drop tato slice and you're staring down your hole and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: try to see that if also when he's out on
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: bull's eye, it's like live ammo. You know. Then you
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: start firing in tat slices because they're they're bombing in
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: at the right spot. But my brother Danny, he really
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: kind of pioneered this for our group of friends. And
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: uh but man, you'd fish all you well, you like
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: drinking fish all day to get a handful of these fish.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: But man, was it fun. And then you're shandy. You
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: had to have your name on your shane. Remember one
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: year they had their name on the shanty. But this
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: thing froze in like wood and it throws into a degree.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You weren't getting it off, so they tried to just
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: leave it begin being young and dumb, they tried to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: just leave it, and then they got a note us
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: like get your shanny, and they came out and had
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: to burn that son of a bit out of the ice.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: There was no getting it out of the ice, which
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: is also illegal most places. So I wonder if there's
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: like a middle ground there where you could be like, well,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I put a bunch of pontoons. I fixed a bunch
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: of pontoons to the shannon and tied it to the beach,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: waiting for it to float. All right, So I'm sorry, guys, No,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that was a good divergence. And I've never I've never
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: done I mean, I've done open water ocean spear fishing before,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: but I've never done ice spearing before. The difference being
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: that you're throwing a spear through a hole in the ice. Yeah,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: it's really but it's a it's a hell of a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. I didn't know how I was gonna
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: feel about it. You know, there's a lot of sitting
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: and waiting, and I didn't know how that was gonna go.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: But man, I I don't know about you, Johnny, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I thought that was that was great. I'm gonna have
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: like a final wrap up thought comparing general ice fishing,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: like what we're doing now to spe Oh no, I
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: haven't got it. You haven't even started yet. I know
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I have a lot to go through. Because you want
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: to talk about the sturgeon. Yeah, so, uh yeah, we
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: speared there and then we went over to Lake Winning
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Bank explained the process. You want to get deep here.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I wanted to. I want you to tell people about
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: because you've engaged in three kinds of spearing, northern spearing,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: white fish spearing, sturgeon sparing. True, but the white fish
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and the northern sparing was through the same hole. And no,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: but they're not drawn to the same thing they are. Yes,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: we were using the same decoys. Oh, you know, we
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: used to use the lure men. Sorry, In amongst the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: tator slices, we're a lot of boiled the smallest macaroni
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: you could find boiled. And you felt like that was
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: chilling him. You do I feel like it eating the macaroni? Yes,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I bet they were taking them for a little grubs
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: that look just like CM knows in and he's picked
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the macaroni that landed off target and watch him and
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the son's bitches to be down there eating maxi. So
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: why were you were you spearing him because that was
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the only legal method of take Why weren't you fishing
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: with macaroni? Uh? These were a species of whitefish called
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: monominee and they have a they have a mouth that
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: would make like the pupil of your eye look big too.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: But they would go down and kind of it's just
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: like very hard to hook. Uh. And it was deep
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: and you didn't throw the spear. It was a very
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: heavy weighted spear with very fine needles, many needles, probably
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: like twenty needles across. We used to make our own.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: We made some of her own. Uh. And it wasn't
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: like a fan blade that you could propel that you
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't like you know that white Some of those white
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: fish spears have like a what's the word I'm looking
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: for plane, like the even plane them like you could
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: shoot off at an angle. This you would have to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: hold over it directly over the fish eyeball down it
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and just open your fingers and let it fall. And
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it was waited like you take a pipe and fill
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the pipe of lead, and out of that pipe with
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: all these needles and drop it on them them the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: bottom but small little fish, but there's no way they'd
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: come into the same lure you'd use for a northern.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: So you're picking up fishing taters at the same time
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: fishing taters. It's funny you mentioned that because you're right
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: now and then you would get a tater. You could
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: get a tater on your thing. I'm like, I'm like
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: a poser. Danny and and our friend Matt Rolls were
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: they were like the guys that they pioneered it. I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: just would go up and visit them and and I'd
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: go out there and you know, basically be like mooching
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: off them, like their ship, their spot there, no how
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: and I'd be it sounds fun right, Yeah, we wanted
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: to do that. Like I said, when we were spearing
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: for the pike and whitefish, were not allowed to put
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: anything down that you couldn't retrieve, and the water was
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: pretty clear. We were only spearing probably five six ft
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: right um where you could really see the whole bottom,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: which was sweet because when the perch came in. Of
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: course they did that when we didn't have a rod ready,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and then the next day we had a rod ready,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the perch didn't come in, but you could just sit
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: there and watch them hanging out doing their thing, and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: you know it's nice you just watching watching the the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: plant life down there moving around the current. When you're
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: just staring into a hole that where there's no bottom,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit tougher. You know, it doesn't have
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: quite have that slow TV field because you're you're fishing
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: northeast in such deep water slow I mean sorry, shallow
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: where we could see the bottom very well, so we
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: didn't need staring into a hole with no bottom. Well
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: that comes later. That that's the sturgeon. Can you do it?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Can you discuss this form in a way that it's outlined,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: like what the how we moved through the tour? Is
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that what you're asking? No, I want to outline by fish,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: So picture like Roman numeral one, yeah, and under that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: is what I'm also like fishing, so I might not
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: miss something. But what are we on right now? We're
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: still on pike and whitefish at the at the first stop. Okay,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: But but I don't want to talk about them in
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the same way. But well it's hard not to because
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: we were doing the exact same thing. One would just
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: show up or the other one. We literally changed nothing,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: nothing same speeds, same decoy, same whole, same everything I
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: do it. Um. Yeah, so well, if you really want
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: to start a step one, we went out there, we
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: drilled a hole. We drilled, drilled, and then peeked down
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: into that hole with the jacket over are our heads
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: to check for clarity and for depth. And when Mark
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: felt like we had both of those nails, and what
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: did he like? Uh again that you know? I think
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: he was looking at five to six ft of depth
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and looking for just good clarity so that we could
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: see fish coming through and a hole in the weeds
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: that were looking And you want, you want to have
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: a sandy spot in the weeds that you can look at,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: um for visibility. Yeah, not that you couldn't clear some
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: some plant matter out of the way once you drilled
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: your spirit hole. But then it would, you know, muck
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it all up. It would take a while to settle out.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: So it's better just to find a hole for better visibility.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I'm realizing how much I missed you just hear you
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: explain this. Um. Oh thanks, that's nice. Um. Then we
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: drilled I think six holes kind of like what we
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: have here right in front of us. UM in a
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: rough three by four ft um pattern and then connected
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: those drilled holes by using a hand powered saw that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: was specifically made for um cutting ice. Is it like
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: my ice saw? I don't know if I've seen your saw,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: but like a you know, solid three foot blade folding folds.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Was it blue blade? Yeah? It was to have a
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: pin that. Yeah. You know, we used two different manual now,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: one of them was that blue one. And the teeth
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the teeth very far apart on it. Yeah, yeah, it
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: cuts surprisingly well. I was, I was shut out. I
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: bought one for beaver trapping, but just never used it.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: I used the acts and stuff. So we cut a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: hole and here we removed I say here because later
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: when we did some surgeons fishing, we also cut a
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: hole and we did something different with the ice um
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: that we cut there, but here we removed it, put
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: screws in it and pull it out. You know, it
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: kind of broke apart. And so uh, he just had
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: these giant tongs, giant metal tongs that you could grab
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: these big chunks with and yank yank them out ice tonks. Yeah,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and uh it works pretty slick. And I think it's
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: additive when I tell you little things that I think of.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I think that it's uh, it's just part of the deal.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And my sister in law's ranch they still have they
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: have a pond that was made for their ranch. Is
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: some old ass ranch. Yeah, I've walked across that. They
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: still have a pond called the ice pond, and they
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: still have the ice house. That's awesome next to the pond.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And the pond was made for the purpose of like
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: it would freeze, you would cut ice and drag it
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: into the ice house for the summer. That's really still
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: sitting there. That's amazing. Go on, Um, So we remove
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the ice and then we set up a dark house.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Very important when you're spearing that the inside of your
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: shelter is black dark. It's colored dark. Yeah, I mean
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: not all of them are, but I thinking helps because
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: what you're trying to do is limit the reflection, any
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: sort of reflection onto that open piece of water that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you've just created. So you also throw snow all around
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the edges so you're not letting in any you know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: light coming. The only light you want is the stuff
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: that's going through the ice outside of your shanty or
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: pop up tent and then coming up through the hole.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I just thought of something. Tell me. Uh, this guy
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: rode in and his body had his fish finder down,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and the guy was fiddling around his own hole next
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to him, and his body's like, sees something, you can't
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: tell what it is. When he sees something dropping m hm,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and they think it's like a fish. They can't tell
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: what the fish is doing, like the fishes at the
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: surface but drop down. And later the other guy realizes
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: his phone was gone, the heat on on his flash
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: er he'd watched. The guys were go on, I'm done.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm just gonna keep my thoughts. That's too bad.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: We don't believe you. I'll make a bet. No I woke.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: It's so annoying. Gone. Um. So there we were inside
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: of our blacked out I sent miles were using an
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Eskimo I sent similar to this one. Weren't we exactly
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: like this one? One time I was out ice fishing.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I'm joking and uh, I'm trying to think. Well, oh yeah,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: so the decoys, the decoys are a huge part of spearing,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and Mark had decoys from maybe even as a grandfather,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: from grandpa, and just like they hit it in a
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: really cool old school briefcase. Yeah, the briefcase was a hundred.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: The briefcase was as cool as the decoys that were inside,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Like a legit briefcase. Yeah, yeah, like you know how
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: it is. It's like random briefcase laying around nobody's using.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Let's put the decoys in there, and so it was
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: handed down. I think he said that he had he
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: had a sort of share it with his brothers, but
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: he he was the keeper of the briefcase. Pretty funny. Yeah,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I just dug a briefcase out of the dumpster there
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: at my condo complex. I don't know what I'm gonna
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: do with it. I just didn't feel like it should
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: have got thrown away someone else. You found Cal's story.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: I want everybody to know. This is something Cal thought of,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: not me, but it got me thinking about what he
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: was already telling me yesterday. Go ahead, Kel, I don't
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: know what you're going on, but I found two pairs
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: of boots in there too, what I'm talking about, And
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel like either one of one brand spanking new,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the other one spanking new ditch diggers. Yeah yeah, irrigation boots.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And then the other set is like a nice pair
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: of ropers that just need a little bit of love,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: but the souls like leather soles and totally in good shape.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: So then Cal's got to go hunting around for a home.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: And those the ropers that you left at my house,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: those are the ropers I left at your house. Yes,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: what a mystery. I've been asking everybody, and he's like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Like, yeah, there's a pair
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of boots out there with heels on him, laces done.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Nobody knew, Well, I asked, I asked your wife if
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: if she, I was like, I don't want to leave
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: these with you. If they just turn into something that
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: then you have to go take the goodwill, right. But yeah, anyway,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I got this neighbor who keeps like, if you want,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: there's a government building right next door that's got a
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: recycling dumpster for cardboard. And this dude like just the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: amount of cardboard that is in the dumpster like clogs
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the whole dumpster with cardboard that is totally recyclable, which
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: ticks me off. And then he's always throwing away brand
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: new stuff. So I'm always every time it makes me
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: not want to go to the trash is every time
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I go to the dumpster, I'm climbing in the damn thing,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: pulling stuff out, saving the world cattle. Yeah go and
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: uh yeah. The decoy with the pike and the white fish.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: We had a decoy stick which had line just between
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: like two small nails that were pounded into the stick.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Line wrapped around it, so you could just length of
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the line down your decoy and one guy if you
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: if your spear with two guys, one guy sits there
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and and uh works the decoy stick. And the decoys
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: have fins on them that aren't there just for looks,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: but actually you can tweak them. They're usually like alluminum,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: so you can adjust them, and how how much the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: decoy um sort of planes out, and how wide of
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: a circle it makes when you drop it, so you
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: can sort of, you know, jake it fast, jake it slow,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: and then just let it glide. And some of them,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: if you bring to the top of the hole, they'll
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: glide for I don't know, ten seconds before it quits moving.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Were these guys not into the Are they not into
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that little real there's a real you hang from your know,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: some guys will do the pulley system. None of the
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: people we were with did they go direct Rod yeah,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty. It's not even calling a rod
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: is not it's a stick jiggin pole. It's just like
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a stick you pick up off the ground, a couple
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: of nails pound. It looks more like Harry Potter's wand
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: than a fish and pole. Do you guys get the impression? Though?
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: The actual look of the decoy is a factor or
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: is it just something about the size? I think for
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: pike it matters, but for none of the others. My
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: limited knowledge which is granted, very very small, but it
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: seemed to me the pike we're going to be keyed
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: into something because they were the only ones that we
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: were spearing that are predatory fish. Yeah, and when they
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: came in, some of them came in hot, you know,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: and like looking like they're gonna smash your decoy. I
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: don't think we actually ever had one want to actually
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: eat it, actually eat it. Okay, But well those guys
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: like say, ah, this white and red decoy is not working.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try the green and yellow one for sure.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: It ain't no use. It ain't no use. The red
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: and white was actually the hot call was and is
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: this stuff that we can look forward to on some footage,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you're gonna see it, and then it's so far below
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the ice. Do you want to work that because you
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: want to bring them up right, you want to bring
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: him up into spear range. Well, the bottom was only
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: six ft away, and I speared fish from the bottom
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: all the way up to probably two ft below the surface.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: When we used to set tip ups, like if we're
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: setting tip ups and tw water, we and this is
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: in Michian where you can use live bait, h if
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: you're in water, we would we would hang that suckermento
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: six ft off the bottom, thinking that he just has
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: better chance of seeing it from way the hell off
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: rather than it being down high and long. You're like,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you're imagine him cruising long on the bottom and seeing
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: that black suckermento against the white ice. That was always
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the logic, right, Yeah. Then it might be that he's
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: reluctant to then leave his little zone maybe, but that
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: was a thinking I like that. Yeah, I will say
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I picked up one tip from my own mistake with
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: with pike spearing, and uh, and that is when you
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: see one coming in, because sometimes you can see him
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: a ways away and the one of the only really
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: what I think was really big pike that I saw
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: coming in. I got a little too excited, spooked him
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: and I was like bike guys pike and that things
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: blew out. Yeah, he didn't even come to the hall spooked,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: like turned and blew out and coming from a ways
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: because of electronics or because my naked eye. Because the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: whole salt. Right, So you got a three by four
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: ft hole, and um, you could were your cal i
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: sitting are sitting opposite of each other right now here
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: in this hut. And so if we had a hole
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: cut here underneath us, I could probably see well passed
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: underneath your butt. Okay, especially if a fish was two
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: or three ft below the ice and you could see
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the same thing underneath my butt. Did you take that
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: saw and angle cut your edge so you get even
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: better visibility? You know, we had a shallow ice there. Um,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but in a later spearing story we do angle cut it. Yeah,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that's a good trick. It's it's it's a good trick,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: but it's freaking creepy. When you're sitting there, it looks
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: it looks like there's no ice. It's it's a trip.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so we uh jake, they will decoy around
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and uh. And the thing with decoys is is that
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you can have the one that looks like a fish, redhead,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: white body, chart, shrews, whatever. And then the next thing
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the guys like, yeah, but you know what my favorite
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: is is this golf ball. And he's got a golf
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: ball with an islet sticking out of it, and he
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: ties that thing on and sits there, and after ten minutes,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sorry, but let's go back to the
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: fish with the redhead. Um. They got all kinds of
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: stuff that they'll put down there, and it's illegal to
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: hang a sucker down in there anymore. They changed the
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: law in Minnesota. We just found this out that you
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: can now we had at one point we had suckers
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: on harnesses swimming around down there. Didn't do us any good,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: but we tried it. That rule has changed, did he
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: do you remember when he said it changed in the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: last five years. I want to say, like like like
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: a fourteen age sucker. No, we were fishing smaller than
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: they were, more like four inch suckers. And when you
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: say harness, it's like a set of hooks, right, You're
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: not like a little handmade little chest harnesses for like
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: seeing people with their dogs these days. No, it was
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: not hooked. There were no hooks in that that fish
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: at all. What purely harnessed? Can you guys explain why
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: people would choose to spear rather like kind of as
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Steve earlier, but like why were why were you spearing
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: instead of fishing? I think a lot of times it's
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: way more productive. Well, that's my question. Why we're sitting
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: here with gigs right now? You know, many paying fish,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: we'd have not many ship because they're down there staring
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: at it. We don't have a camera down by guarante
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: either down there staring at it. I think there are
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: a couple of answers that question. One is a lot
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: of people get into the historic nature of it, right.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Spirit has been around for a long time. It's it's
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: a tradition. You know, Mark, who we were experiing with,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: was taught by his grandfather, who was taught by who
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: knows before him, and for him there's a sense of
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: nostalgia and pride in continuing that tradition. So I think
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I think for some folks that's part of it. Um
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: with the white fish and the pike, I don't know, man,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I think we probably would have done better just standard fishing.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: But it's so much fun. It's so interactive and engaging
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: because you're just looking into this hole and you can
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: see him coming in. If you're not like me and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: get all excited and spooked fish, they actually come in
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: and you can spire him. That to me was it's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a different way of fishing, and I found it to
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: be differently satisfying. And then we haven't got there yet.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Yeahn he hasn't got there yet. But when you get
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: to the sturgeon, you're not allowed to fish for them
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: with line, So that's the only way that you can
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: take one of those fish. Okay, briefcases out you're jigging
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the golf ball. You go back to the red and
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: white fish. Um. Yeah. And then eventually, sorry Brodie, eventually
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think what the first fish was it
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: came in. Was it a white fish or a pike?
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: To remember. But it's tricky because you're you need to
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: make sure you know there's other fish swimming around in
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: these lakes that you can't spear, you know, and if
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: he's at the bottom, you'll be like, Okay, you gotta
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: know for sure what you're what you're throwing a spear act.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: There's no catching release, you know, with the old spirit
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: giant barbs on it um. So either way, I don't
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I can't remember as a pike or or a white fish.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I got really lucky. I think I ended
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: up spearing two of each and then I only missed one.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I had a four out of five hit ratio over
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the course of two days. Yeah, big whitefish. Yeah, they're
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: both like, uh, I don't know, it's the twenty three pounders.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe sounds a bitch. Really, Yeah, those are nice whitefish man, Yeah,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: for sure. Just so folks know, these are not Mountain whitefish.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: These are Great Lakes whitefish, Lake Superior whitefish, right, because
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: they're like you call him like Lake white Wish and
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: then people get confused. But yeah, lake whitefish. That should
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: say Great Lakes because they're all over the damn place
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. I think I think they're just Lake white Wish. Yeah,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: they're up here in Flathead Lake. But the ones not native.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: They call Lake Superior whitefish because there's both, right, there's
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: mountain white fish and ye in those cays. So what
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: happens Jonas, Now when you go to hawk the spear.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Is it a jab? Is it like? Uh, like you're
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: hawking it. It depends on what what your targets doing.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Because if he just comes in and then he knows
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the dcoins just sitting there and like Miles said, they
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: were spooky and so um, you're holding you know, you
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: have your one prong of the spear just stuck in
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: on the far side of the ice hole, and so
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: when you see the fish comment, you just slowly grab
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: it and kind of get it ready the head and
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the heads into the heads below the water so you
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: don't get the refraction. Yeah, and uh yeah, if he
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: just came in and sitting there looking at the decoy,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: you just slowly moved right on the top of him
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: and you can just drop it. But we had other fish,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: like the white fish. Really whether or not they came
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: to the decoy hard to say, but they're pretty much
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: just swimming through the hole. So it's like, there he is,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna throw because you're you're almost having to
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: lead him a little bit. So I might be right
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and that that that white fish doesn't give a shit
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: about that big decoy. Absolutely, I saw nothing. I was
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: trying to I was trying to like you saw me
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: trying to like milk it out of your honest, but
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: we it's hard to say. I don't think we know
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: enough to know that. I never saw a white fish
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: that was clearly locked into a decoy. But maybe they
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: might have been somewhat interested here that that brought them
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: to the general area. I don't know. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I have only speared for whitefish two days. So once
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: I've got a hundred days under my belt, I'll give
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: you a better answer. You know, I got you watching
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: through the ice with a camera. You can lower big
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: stuff down. Little teeny fish that have no they can't
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: have any notion that they're gonna eat it, are still
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: like what the hell's that? Can? They approach it like
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: out of curiosity? They're not like zooming in. Did I
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: come by and like what the hell is that? And
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: then just swim off curiosity satisfied. That's something different. I mean,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: you know you're swimming around down there, everything looks more
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: or less the same. You see something different, you're probably
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: gonna check it out. I've been living in this pond
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: for a year. I've never seen that. See. Um. The
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: thing about the spearing, though, that. Uh, And this is
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: true for both the sturgeon spearing and this white fishing pike,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: is that you really get this feeling much the same
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: way you do when you're fishing through an eight inch
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: hole and you look out on the expanse of a
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: giant frozen lake and you're like, man, we're really hoping
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: these fish swim through this twelve square feet you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and not all that other stuff. So you're like, hundreds,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: why not have something down there that may attract a fish,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you know? Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you for any missing any like interesting details about
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: the you know, one thing and that that was different
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: than than what we did later was the the replacement
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: of the ice back into the hole and then setting
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: up all the sticks to freeze into the ice just
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: from in there, which you know, seems super obvious, but
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I've never done it before, and I hadn't thought of
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: that until we got out there and Mark started cutting
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: brush on the way out. Yeah, where I grew up,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: you put your Christmas tree down in there, because then
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: when the ice melts, and this is illegal, but then
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: when the ice melts, depending where you are, when the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: ice melts, the tree falls in, and then it supposed
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: it's great for croppies. Well, we used to. We had
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas tree sunk and you would catch croppies in the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: spring off those Christmas trees. Yeah, this is a separate conversation.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: But the reason that became illegal is because a lot
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: of d n R bowed just for going. This is
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: changing the pH of the lakes in a really negative way.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Everybody dunk in their Christmas trees. I'm not advocating. I'm
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: just telling you when we were young, like in high
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: school and whatnot. Uh, we lived divorced from any divorced
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: from knowledge. Just people. Old people did stuff and then
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: they told you to do it, or you just did
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: it too, know that was what you did. Red squirrels
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: eat the nuts off fox squirrels. It's just just what happened.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: It's just wait, how how things are. So it's not you.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: You put your tree out of the ice, damn it,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and so does not do they're comie. When we were
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: done with Mark and spearing pike and whitefish, Lucas made
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: us some nice like I was saying saying earlier, some
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: white fish cakes delicious. So he cooked and then formed
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: his patty or formed his patty with raw fish. Raw fish?
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: Huh yeah, how do you? How do he mince it
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: hand mints? Right? No, he cooked him first and then
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: cooked him just till they were flaking, and then made
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: his patties and then quick fry very large chunky pieces
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: of flesh in there. You know, it wasn't all super
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: shredded like a crab cake. Almost. Oh yeah, very much,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: because I was I got a whole mass at karp
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: and I was thinking about just running through. The highly
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: recommend food processor works good because the bones when you
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: food process it the bones, you're cutting the bones up
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: enough or you don't need to worry about it. What
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: my folks used to do with suckers is they didn't
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: do this a lot, but they now and then do
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: it is caught up the socker, not worry about the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: bones and pressure pressure can it. Yeah, pressure cooking in
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: jars and then put the jars on the canning shelf.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: And then anytime you're just go and take that socker
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: meat out and the bones would have dissolved, and then
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: you make fish cakes with them. Got it? Because the
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: pressure cooker just zap the bone, you're gonna have to
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: shoot me a good fish. I mean, I can whip
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: something up. But bomber recipe for going to have one
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: up on the website very soon from Lucas Leaf. We
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: got one coming. That's a tip. A hot tip on
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: fish cakes is um just you can just cook your fish.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Just bake the flame, let it cool, shred it up.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: It's picking bones is easier once it's cooked. Shread it up.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Make a fish cake good used for leftover fish too.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: I got one other tip from Lucas on that that
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I really liked, and that was just frying batter, which
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: was just cheese. It's put through a blender. Cheese. It's
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: pancake mix. Crucial ease pancake mix that you still have
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: to add egg and milk and whatever, maybe oil, whatever
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: else goes into pancake mix. Not the stuff is just
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: just add water. That very important to him and I
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: tried it. It came out good. I tell you gotta
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: have a good food processor blender for the cheese. It's
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: because you've gotta get super fine. You gotta get just
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: as fine as the pancake mix. Otherwise, you know, when
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: you batter in it, you end up the big chunks
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: come out first, and then you're just starting to work
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: with a finer and finer mix. But yeah, tell me
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: about tell me some more efficient delicious. We headed over
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: to uh old Lake Winnebago, uh Milax, which means thousand Lakes, Mhma,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: thousand Lakes. I think, just oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, I
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: got you now mile Ax, and uh I meant a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: lot of very kind Midwesterners. I mean, I learned a
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: lot about hospitality and just politeness and um, but you're
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: from the Midwest, I know. But growing up there, how
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: how you can't you can't you can't. Yeah, you can't
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: judge because yeah, you're that's your home place, and all
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: you hear about is Southern hospitality. And I'm not gonna
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: like really dog on Southerners. I think they're they're pretty hospitable.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: But I'm married into the South and I've really enjoyed
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: the hospitality down there. But now, I mean we're living
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: out west for two decades and then going back to
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Minnesota and Wisconsin blown away, Like I feel like they're
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: people will actually invite you into their house a stranger
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and give you like a place to eat and sleep,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: like just very very nice. I just want to give
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: a plug for the old Midwest. So yeah, we went
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: over to Middle Axe and where the plan was to go.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Whileye fishing with Mandy yer You know you're not supposed
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: to generalize. It's bad to generalize negatively, but general shouldn't
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: it be bad to generalize positively? I mean, no one
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: people are gonna get less pissed about it. But your
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: point is valid at generalized positively, I think it is.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, that just makes people feel good. The problem
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: with generalizing negatively is that it makes people feel shitty.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Where so we got Mandy Yerke generalizing super nice people.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: They're super nice people and Mandy Yorke was gonna take
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: h take us fishing for Wally. Tell me about this individual,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Mandy Yerke. Uh, Mandy is remember her actual title for
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the Minnesota DNR. She's like a habitat planning director. She
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: basically works on on all all manner of habitat projects.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: And I think she even I mean like dumping Christmas
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: trees in. I mean it could be. It could be
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: like a brand new um even though it's not like
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: what you think of while life habitat, but it's it's
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: part of land that Minnesota and our manages. But she
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: might work on a new campground one day, infrastructure, and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: then it could be you know, getting a piece of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: land is just gonna be used for um, grouse habitat
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: or something. Right. That's sound about right. That good job explaining, Mandy.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: I hope I'm doing doing your justice here. And then
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: on the side she is a very very busy angler,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: professional bass angler, and then a recreational angler of just
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: about everything. Um. And that's just now She's got a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: great story. I can go on for a long time.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Just very quickly. She grew up in a family that
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: owned a fishing lodge on Devil's Lake in North Dakota,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: and Um, out of her whole family, she was cow.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: You got there an old boot, uh maybe edge of
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the whole something cal snagged up. Um. She had brothers
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: and a sister. Nobody took to the hunting fishing like
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: she did, and at a young age they knew that
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: she liked it so much that her dad just started
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: sending her off to other outfits to learn how to
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: be a duck hunter or a duck hunting guy, how
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: to be an elk hunter or an elk hunting guy,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: And so very early on in her childhood, she was
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: getting shipped all over the place to basically learn any
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and all different kinds of hunting and fishing, but she
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: never went the guiding route. Yeah, so after she got
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: that dialed in, she she did some guide for a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: while and then I don't know really what took her
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: out of it, but uh, like I said, now she
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: works in Minnesota, DNR. It seems to be very happy. Ah. So, yeah,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: she took us out ice fishing on Malax and Milax
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: is a giant. Oh missed him. I did too. That's weird.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: The school came in and I'm out of the game
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: over here messing with my setup. Uh. It took out
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: on milax. Relax is interesting because it's got a lot
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: of controversy going on around their fishery. They have an
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: excellent fishery, Like when it's when the fisher biting, which
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: they really weren't when we were there, but when they
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: were three days prior, they can catch trophy size. While
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I almost one after another, that's fair safe from my understanding.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: We never saw it firsthand. Yeah, we saw plenty of pictures.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe should be in the weeds. No, I had I
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: had a legit um it's the tightest slot limit I've
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: ever heard of. Three a two inch slot, right, Um,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: what is going on? And you can only keep one now.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: It obviously makes for a really good fishery, but a
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: lot of people are bummed because not too long ago
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: you could keep six that Yeah, okay, so tight slot
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: for a fish that people are primarily going after for
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: food after for the fighting. No, No, they like them
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: because they're good in the grease. Yeah, it's so to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: only be able to catch one is Yeah, you know
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: what percentage of fish that you're hauling out of the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: ice are hitting the slot? Well? For us zero zero
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: it's tough to catch slot limit wall over there. And
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: and I think that part of the reason we wanted
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: to go there is that this isn't how they got
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to this place with such a tight slot and such
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a low harvest for recreational anglers. Is an interesting story
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, Minnesota DNA are trying to keep
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the fishery really, really healthy, but at the same time
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: keep a few people happy. It's a it's a they're
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: on a tight rope over there. Yeah. At the same time,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: that lake it's changed for a lot of reasons. Um,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: it's become clearer than it used to be. And miles
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: getting correct me here if i'm if I go straight
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: with my knowledge and how ship works. But um, when
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the water is a little bit dirtier, and it used
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: to be dirtier because of zebra muscles. No, well, but
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: it was dirtier because it was actually uh, you know,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: not straight up sewage, but treated you know, human gray
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: water going into the lake, which causes micronutrients. Stuff eats
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: micro nutrients. The bigger stuff eats that. And while I
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: like it cloudy, they they're like they're a low light predator.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: And yeah, zebra muscles cleaned it up. And the fat
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: they said, no, you can't dump this water into these
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: lakes anymore. Cleaned it up. Hurt the walleye fishery. But
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: it's made for a great smallmouth fishery. It's made for
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: a great pike fishery. Trophy muskie. It's got drum, trophy
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: drum in there, talking like freshwater drum. Yeah. Obviously what
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: they call sheep's head over there, call them gasper goose.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: In Texas, what are they call gasper goose? It's a
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Louisiana termine. Didn't missed on the eating on those, man, Yeah,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: weird texture, like flames, look like they should be so good.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: The first bite you're like, it's not that bad, but
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: just like a third you ever cut the enthusiasm. Yeah,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: we get the rocks out. My kids got a handful.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: The one we got to uh this summer out of
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: river here in Montana and they were excellent. The flesh
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: is like eating cheese kurds. It's weeks when you bite.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: It's that dance dance squeaky cheese, squeak man. They I'm
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: bummed to hear that, because I was like, boy, I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: am gonna come back here and target. The enthusiasm does
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: not grow as you eat the fish. Then your little
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: kenny eat mixed like pepsi and milk, and the first
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: city like it's good, right, but you just couldn't you
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: know whatever finished it. Talking to a guy who knows
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: who's a commercial fisherman in the Midwest and harvest those.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: He claims that he can grade the drum filets based
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: on color and that if you find the like the
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: pearly white ones, he claims you can't tell the difference
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: between those and perch. He will even sell them his
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: perch filets. Do they have any yellow to him? Then
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: they're really only good for the smokers. That's what this
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: guy told me. Yeah. Interesting. I was just bummed by
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the like the physical makeup of that fish. You look
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: like you're gonna get a load of meat off of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that thing, low yield a lot ahead. You did a
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: great job. We caught some walley with many Um she
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: did most of the catching. I did watch and the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: very interesting that I've seen now they've done all this
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: ice fishing is just between while I on different lakes,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: completely different techniques, completely different like jigging strategies. Um, Mandy's
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: jig was see maybe you can describe this. Look at
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: my hand in my rod tip. Yeah, the old pencil.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I mean it's almost just like you're you just don't
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: have a steady hand. You got the coffee. It's like
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: your your hands just shaking. That's I thought you were
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: just shaky. I thought you. I thought you're demonstrating the grip.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no, just a shake. That's like, yeah,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: you're literally And but it was funny. Is that so
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: we're using um hummingbird uh sonars that what you call
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: that to eyes flasher, which it's not like a true
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: vex lar flasher, because you're just you're watching like a
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: graph like you would on your your regular fish finder. Um,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: but you can see your jake down there doing that
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: little shake. When you're doing that to it and you
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: don't want it. There's no that you're not lifting it
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: an inch, two inches, six inches, there's none of that.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: It's just the shake. Good job, gal, go on, come
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: over here. Um, so you're sitting, you're you're actually this
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: is where ice fishing gets interesting. I wanna see what
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: you guys all feel about it, because here we're not
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: looking at a flasher. There's no camera down but would
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: be too distracted. Yeah, okay, well there we're looking at
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: a flasher. You're not really paying attention to the hole
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: too much. You're pretty much just watching that graph, and
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're your Your bait depends on
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: what colors you set up. Your bait's like a little
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: squiggly blue line, and you're watching it shake around. Every
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: now and then you lift it just to make sure
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: that's what you're looking at. And the bottom is red,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: and every now and then again again a red line
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: the size of a fat night crawler lifts up off,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: comes up out of the bottom, and that's what a
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: wall I looks like. And it comes right underneath your
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: little jiggly blue line and just kind of suspense right
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: underneath it. At that point you start this sort of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: dance with that red line, your blue line with the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: red line, and it's you jake a little bit less.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: You stop, maybe for two or three seconds, and at
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: this point you're waiting for the tug, but you might,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you know, lift it up a little bit. The red
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: line follows. Sometimes you get to take. If not, you
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: drop it back down or the red line loses interest.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: And again red line is this wall I down there,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: loses interest, drops back down to the bottom. So you
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: drop your bait back down and you're just trying to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: hold it, you know, inches from his nose. Just just
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: eat me, eat me, eat me. And um, it seemed
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: like I, like I said, I only caught maybe I
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: don't know, three or four over the course of two days,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: maybe five. Um, it seemed like the bite I would
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: jack jack jake, or shake, shake, shake, and I would
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: just let it sit still. In three or four seconds
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: into letting it said still, you'd feel a tug and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: you pull the walleye out, did not catch a single
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: one in the slot. Manishing real hard for me, man
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: real hard. Yeah. I think well, within the group, you know,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: we had some other people helping, and while we were manning,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: I were fishing, they'd be fishing off by themselves, and
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I think we end up catching a couple over the slot.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Most of them were shy, most of them were eighteen
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: to twenty inch type fish. Um and uh but no
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: nothing in nothing in the slot. I mean we got
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: him and then we got him at twenty four. Uh.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: And you know that's which makes sense. That's such a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: popular like so many people fishing. Any of those fish
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: that are in the slot, they're coming home with people
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: like you gotta think there's a lot of people who
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: just avoid that lake, right, Like, well, I'm just just
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: want to not mess with this trophy lake. And I'm
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: not I'm not like I don't know enough to criticize.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing the management decision there. I'm just saying
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: for me personally, like I view walleye as waal air
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: for eating. That's why that's why that lake is an
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: interesting story, right because it's not that far from the
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: twin cities. Tons of people grew up walleye fishing there
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: and taking tons of fish out, and the the fishery
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: has changed, and more and more people are fishing it right,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: and they want to make sure that they've still got
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: a walleye fish man so said, not being critical, No, no,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. But to me, it's
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: it's not a sense of like whether or not you're
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: being critical. It's it's that this, if you're looking it
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: at the universe of fishing stories, that one, to me
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: is worth checking out because of all the things, folks,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: all the things that different things that are having to balance.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: They are the different user groups, the amount of anger
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: that exists in that community toward that slot. Yeah, people
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: are up in arms, and well, you know it's not permanent,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: not necessarily. No, the fishery rebounds, oh man. But if
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: folks could have the ability I'm saying in general, you
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: go to these fisheries or hunt areas, if folks had
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: the ability to look beyond what they're doing that day,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: the world would be a much different place. I mean,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: my gosh. And the other thing is funny, there is, yeah,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: the the walleye fishery, it's still great. It's not what
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: it used to be. But people are piste off and
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: they have one of the best, arguably the best small
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: mouth fisher in the country now as a result of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: the changes to the water clarity there right like when
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: when it was really turbid and the walies were kicking
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: ass because they can outcompete everything else. Now you have
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: much clearer fishery. Small Mouth there really really good. They're
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: not an ice fishing fish on that lake, but in
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: the summer they are. And pike are really really good.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: And they heard a number of people in the Midwest
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: tell me that that is the best trophy muskie fishery around,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: hands down. Period. Like you want to get musky. It's
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: like Green Bay or there. Just changes. It's just funny
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: to complain about. You know. I'm so piste off about this.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: We have great small mouth and musky. Now I'd prefer
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: to catch either one of those fishes, just like the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: pace of wildlife management is never going to meet the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: pace of expectations will be good. T shirt, Well, I
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: tell you what, they have them not figured out that
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: small mouth tastes almost as good as while I either.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I brought that up to a lot of them. I'm like,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: why don't you guys just start frying small mouth? I mean, really,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna like put some bunch of batter and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: seasonings on it and then fry it, eat the small mouth. No, no, no,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: you know those are those are just for catching relates.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, well, maybe you guys will learn later.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: I know that on the half shell gets tire something
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: for folks, but that's man. You cook that thing on
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: the trigger. Indirect heat is all it is. But with
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: the skin on, scales on, skin on small mouth. Yeah,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: and that fat just bubbles up through the meat and
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: you can take that hook your fingernail into that skin
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: and just give it a little shake and that whole
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: slides right off. The whole chunk of meat just slides
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: onto whoever is played. Oh my gosh. It makes a
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: guy like me who can't play anything, well, look a
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: real guy, all right, jump into the sturge and Johnnie. Yeah,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much what we did with Mandy, right, try
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: to try to catch while I and trying to understand
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: what was going on in Molex. Yeah. So we left Minnesota,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: came home for a bit, then we went over to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: with Skans and and uh yeah, first thing we did
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: was went to Lake Winnebago for the opener of sturgeon
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: spearing season. Miles and I had applied for sturgeon spearing
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: permits back in I don't know, sometime in the summer October,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: October October maybe, And if you apply, you get one.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: It's not like a draw thing. Now. Lake Winnebago is
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: part of a chain of lakes that um, the what
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: river that's oh Man Wolf River. Well, somebody comes the
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: fox further on down you can correct us, um and uh,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: the upper Upper River Lakes have a permit, uh fishery
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: there because as well get into your we've we had
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: a spear, deeper, dirtier water. The Upper Upper River Lakes
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: are clear and they're shallower and so there you're much
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: like you just see you more sturgeon. To point to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: make it make sense, Lake Winnebago has about a five
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: percent success right, the upper Lakes are closer to like
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: fifty or sixty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. It takes
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: about seven years. Don't apply because Steve and I are
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: starting to apply, um this year and we want to
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: go and everybody messing us all up. Yeah, so don't apply.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: It's not that cool. I'm gonna make it sound cool,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: but it's not that cool. So, yeah, we hooked up
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: with Jake Andrews his whole family. Uh and uh when
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: I say his whole family then includes a bunch of cousins. Uh.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: They they make up for at least point five percent
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: of sturgeon spears on Lake Winnebago. No, I'm kidding. It
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: did seem like that though. Um. Yeah, and the and
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the Floyd family helped us out a whole bunch. And Uh,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Jake is like the he's sort of the captain of
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: their sturgeon spearing team, and he does a lot of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: the scouting, which I'll get into what that looks like,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: and he helps everybody get set up. Everybody else pretty
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: much rolls in besides Buddy Brian. Bryan also is hardcore,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: but pretty much everybody else. I think we had seven
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: or eight total shacks. Everybody else just rolls in for
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: cut in day, which I'll explain a second, and then
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: they fish for the season and then they're done. Jake's
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: out there not year round, but once the ice comes
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: he's thinking about surgeon, getting ready for for sturgeon spearing.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: Everybody just draws off his teeth. Yes, for sure. And
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: he's very happy to be helping everybody out. He really
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: carries that like he feels a lot of pride in
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: anybody spearing Sturgeon from because he's put so much time
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: and effort into it, and he feels a lot of pressure. Uh,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Like the first day, he's like, as soon as someone
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: just sees one and we can say yes, we're like
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: we've chosen. Well, we're in a good spot. Somebody saw
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: a surgeon. Pressure, he can relax a little bit. Um.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So uh, yeah, we hook up with him. So prior
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: to us sucking up with him, his scouting um and miles.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: You can tell Phil if we get if I get
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: to too many details here, we're gonna cut this out.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: But a lot of a lot of people do this.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: They go out and they look, you're protecting his trade secrets.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: We there are certain things we can talk about and
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: a few just a couple of things their trade secretar
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: trade secrets. Yeah, so I think I think you got
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: to start this. I'm sorry I interrupted. Yeah. Well, the
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: first thing that they figure out is is it a
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: shed or shad year? Yeah or not? Or not? Yeah?
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: And well, there's a fish in there called the gizzard chad,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: which is a non native correct and it's at the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: northern end of its limits. So on a warm year
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: they come up in there and they spawn and they
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: do real well. Um, and they die off every year
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: because the water just gets too cold for him right
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: to get this massive shad die off a lot of years.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: If it's just too cold altogether, they just don't show
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: up in that in that lake at all. Right, So
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: if it is a shad year, all these shad um
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: it tripped me up at first. I was like, well,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: hold on, how does a bottom feeder all of a
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: sudden start eating on shad. Well, he's still eating on
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: the bottom because he's just eating dead ones. So yeah,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: he never chased you never hear it Like we used
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: to see those big shad die offs where I grew up,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: and all kinds of fish would get on the bottom
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: and eat those things, catfish and all stuff. So if
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: it isn't, if it is a shad here, then he's
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: got his orbits endorsed guide head doing me a lot
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: of good today. It's supposed to be doing me good
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: if you're an endorsed guy. Um, So if it is
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: a shad here they find the big beds shad and
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: they're basically gonna spear over these shad beds because you
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: can get a lot more protein out of a shad um.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: It probably takes I don't know, a hundred red worms,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: and a red worm is basically a chronomid larva, so
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe the biggest one was an inch long,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe half an inch more likely. And uh so
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: this year it was not a shad year. So you
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: gotta go out and find worm beds. Okay, worm beds
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: are there there year after year, but like the the
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: nucleus of the worm bed could change by fifty yards
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: two hundred yards maybe fifty ft looking for density density exactly,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: so they got these. Jake had his own homemade contraption
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: which basically looked like a coffee can wormometer with U
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: with closing flaps at the bottom and uh, drill hole,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: drill two holes. You can you need a second hole later,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: drop your can down there and it's on a change.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: You can kind of hand the bottom with it just
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit, and then on like the third or
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: fourth pound, drop it in there and the old flaps
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: are open and then you pull up the secondary chain
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: which closes the flaps, and you basically have taken a
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: substrate sample. This is great, man three. So what's an
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: example of something you can't tell me? This is high level?
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: This is like high test fishing. Yeah, but there's a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: lot of guys doing this, not a lot, but I
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: think we asked and he thinks that maybe like ten
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: ten of the surgeon spears are doing worms. And then
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: he knows even more stuff you can't tell Yeah, and
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: give me like like tell me pig latin. You gotta think,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: you gotta just think that this right here is a
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: level that a lot of people would be like, yeah,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: I know of it. I don't want to deal with it,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: but it makes me curious about what is the thing
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: he's doing? Absolutely pe in the hole? Did he take anything?
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, we filmed so yeah, but like was
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the mud just crawling with those worms. We didn't actually
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: get the film because he'd done all this this scouting beforehand,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: so when we filmed it, it was it was sort
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: of like after the fact. We didn't get We didn't
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: prove around until we got a real dense Yeah, but
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: he'll basically run a grid pattern and then may and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: then draw it down on a piece of paper and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: then start writing numbers of per sample, you know, three worms,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: five worms, six worms, three worms, and then all of
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: a sudden it gets to tent. I can't remember what
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: his threshold of good was, but I think eight or more.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: And so then he'll go out from that point and
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: sort of triangulate and be like, okay, right here, there
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: are in these five holes around it, there are more
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: worms per scoop than everything around it, So this must
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: be the where the money shot is. That's pretty interesting. Yeah,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: it's like gold prospecting. Yeah for sure. Now other guys
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: also will go out and and just literally sit in
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: a shock watching a camera over a weren't better not
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: waiting for a scusgeon scouting to go trail like running
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: a trail camp. Yeah, but you can't. There's no like
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: trail camp for under water, So you just sit there
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: trail camera. Yeah. Um, And they like get onto one,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: like he's here, this is a zone. Well, I think again,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: you're looking for like consistency. No, you're not looking for
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: one particular st an area. They like, yeah, you're like, okay,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: I was in this zone and I saw three today
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: because this is a big gass lake, huge and the
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: density of sturgeon is not very high. There's one surgeon
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: for every four acres of lake. Yeah yeah, so let
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: me just like put that into perspective when you're you're hoping,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: just put it a quarter sturgeon for acre. It was
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: a very weird way. They're big fish or quarter one. Um. No, ship,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: this is great. It was very interesting, very interesting television program,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: I hope so so yeah, Jake had the spot picked out.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Am I missing anything else? Oide of scouting? Not that
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: we can talk about. God Man, would I like to
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: know the secrets? Just teasing that out there? Yeah yeah, um,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: but he I think I think one of the things
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: to mention is that it's not like he just goes
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: out and samples once to go I'm good. He'll go
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: out day after day before work and keep checking, like
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: is his worm bed still here? Is this still the
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: center for months? As long as he's got good ice
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: up until opener. I'm gonna go out on a limb
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: and he goes out in the dark man to do this,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: But I'm gonna go on a limb and suggest that
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: this man is not a skier. This man does not ski,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: not in fun to act. This is a true outdoors
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: he is a he is a I don't know what
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: you call a guy that that runs a um sugar shack,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: a tapper, a tapper, tapper sapper. You can just throw
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: it into the foraging bucket though, you know, Okay, so
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: here you are, you got your worms down there, you
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: know you're on the worms. Yeah, so you're not allowed
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: to put a dark house spearing shanty. Now, these shanties
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: are specifically built just for spearing sturgeon. You do not,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could, but it sounded like
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: these shanties are out for the two week sperience season
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: and then they're back in your yard for the rest
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: of the year by law. Yeah. Well again you could
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: use you could go out there and jill holes and
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: just ice fish through it. But I don't know why
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: people must use different for that reason. But these are
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: set up there, man, I forget the dimensions. He's got
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: probably uh ten by six, twelve by six. I know
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: that it was six wide. Yeah, I think I think
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: they were all exactly same. It was right around there.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: They came in different shapes and they get into painting
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: them you know, the classic one is um finishing like
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: a in a sheet metal right riveted corners and then
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: like a pretty plain two or three ft like spray
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: painted or plasma cut sturgeon. And it's got to have
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: your name and address on it. You know. There's what
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: we saw one that looked like a Green Bay Packers helmet.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: We saw one that was painted as uh Pink Floyd
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Dark side of the Moon, so people get into it,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: uh that the Money's on. I feel like Money kind
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: of ruined that album. I don't know if i'd say
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: I go back for it. It was the radio hit
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: um so that you can only put them out there
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: the day before and the day before it is called
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: cutting day because you're gonna cut in a giant hole
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: in the ice. So we roll out there. Jake's like,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: I'm putting my shack right here on the money spot.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: You guys all make a horse shoe around me, and yeah,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: and I forget exactly what that was for. Maybe just
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: the Wi Man, maybe luck, but how much maybe the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: way the worm bed was running. I can't remember how
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: much of a between shacks. Yeah, what's you're spacing like?
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Probably fifty feet? Okay, you're not jumping, No, no, you
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: got I mean there, you're not right on top of
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, if someone if something happens in a
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: nearby shack, you can hear him yelling. Could you have
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: jumped down, swam over and popped up. That would be
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: a great trick, would be a good way to get
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: jab the spirit? Yeah, oh my goodness and die. Oh
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: so yeah, we um cut in day. We all pull
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: out there. That's not a legal thing though, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: you can't. You can't cut in and set out till
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: the day before. So everybody's out there on cutting day, everybody.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: But after the season it's okay. You said that you
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: can hang out in your shanty after the season. You
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: can't cut your big holes. You can't have spearing holes
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: after the season or before. Oh okay, okay, I cut
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: the day before the season opens is what we call
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: cutting day. You can you can start setting up for spearing,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: but you can have a bole four season one season ends.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: I'm with you now, I understand. Um. Yeah. So it's
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: like a mad flooded people and Jake to protect his spot.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: We actually didn't go out until late afternoon because people
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: know what he looks like. Drives. He scouts. He knows
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: they know this group, and he doesn't want He believes
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: that the surgeon do react a little bit to activity,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: especially a lot of truck activity. Um. And so he
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: wanted he liked a spot that was quiet. Like we
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: only had a couple of other shanties outside of our
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: group that were like within a couple hundred yards of us.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: There's plenty that were four or five yards away. Um.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: But he wanted a quiet spot. And so we waited
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: until pretty late in the day to go and do
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: the cut in. So we all these shanties are on
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: um uh, their sleds basically runners. The ones we had
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: weren't on runners. They were actually he had full suspension.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: But you have them on runners, you have them on wheels,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: you have on a full suspension. They're all people are
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: dragging him out there in any way they can anyway
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: they can get them out there, if you can move
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: a shed or shanty or shack. And and a huge
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: variance between the really really nice ones that are you know,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: hooked up on tongues and have a full suspension and
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: the other ones that looked like someone just took their
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: plastic gardenship and there's a guy low playing that actually
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: makes the frame and the trailer that everybody builds their
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: custom shacks on. And it's set up in such a
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: way that you basically unhook a couple um pins and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: the tongue lifts up and that lets the shock fall
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: down onto the ice um. So yeah, you kind of
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: you mark your spot and where you want it and
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: uh then he bust out of chainsaw and uh cut
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: yourself a like I said, ours was probably the biggest
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: hole because he has the biggest hole inside of his
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: shanty and it was six by three maybe three and
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: a half. You had to be able to jump over it,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: just big enough that when you go to jump over it,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: you're like, pay attention, dude, you don't you know, pass
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: me the trail mix. And at the same time, you know,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: like you're like, where's the safety bar to hang onto
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: as I cross this chasm? Oh, so you take a
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: chainsaw and cut it, and like you said, you cut
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: at an angle. It's it's funny because you think it
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: would have to be steeper to get that effect that
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: you were talking about where you can just see farther
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: and there's not an edge of the edge of ice
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: that you're looking at. But it wasn't that steep of
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: an angle. I mean maybe I don't know fifteen degrees,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: and uh it's spooky because it's spooky for me because
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Jake cut the first two edges. I'm like, Okay, I
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: get it. You have to hold the chainsaw opposite handed,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: which will work good for you being a lefty, so
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: that you're always keeping your air intake. I don't. I
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: don't hold us all that way up top rightow I
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: throttle with my right hand. Okay, so it'd be opposite
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: for you to but yeah, you hold it. I held
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: it opposite so your air in takes up top so
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: that and your blades always running bottom, so that because
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: you're pushing a lot of water and you keep you
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: want to keep your saw dry. Obviously the engine and
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: uh so I'm cutting a second too. But to get
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: to be able to cut and hold that the saw
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: the proper way, I've got to be standing on the
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: chunk that I'm cutting out of the ice for my
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: last cut from runner. Yeah, and I think we're we're
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: working with like eight minimum, I think up to fourteen
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: inches of ice right in that zone. They had a
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: really crappy year. A lot of people did not just
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: add this in right now. Most years they have they
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: sell about twelve thousand permits, they have ten thousand spears.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: This year they probably sold twelve tho permits because they
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: have to be bought in October um and they only
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: had five thousand spears usually five thousand shanties or no, sorry,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: five thousand shanties. Ten thousand spears this year or shanties.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: They figure about two spears per shanty. And it still
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: seems like a lot. Yeah, it is, it is, but
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: remember it's a huge lake, and that was because it
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: was just not good. Yeah, so most people drag out
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: with um trucks and the ice just wasn't of truck
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: safety thickness, and so a lot of those people would
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: either have to get like a TV or a side
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: by side or a snowmobile. And if you don't have
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: that equipment or your you know buddy doesn't have it,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna get to go out sturgeon fishing in
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: the anthropo scene. Man, Yeah, spooky. So this chunk that
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: you're cutting out, though, I realized it has enough buoyancy
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: that a two pound man can stand on it and
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: and cut the last corner and nothing's gonna happen. You're
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: not gonna wildly coyote it down to the bottom of
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the lake all of a sudden. Yeah, it kind of
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: bobs a little bit, but you're fine. Um. So once
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: you kind keep when you got your rod on your
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: leg like that, you keep thinking of getting hits. It
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: really throws me off. I kind of watch everybody's I'll
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: set it down. I'm gonna fish high in the water column. Ah.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Then you take these giant UM's. Yeah, it's basically what
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: twelve foot pole then using a fire they were They
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: were actually like firefighting equipment poles. Yeah, with big hooks
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: on hooks. It's got a hook and a spike. Oh
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: that kind of yeah for poking. Yeah, kind of like holes.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: And so what they do because it's a big, big,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: gass chunk of ice, you can't just tong it and
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: lift it out. And if you did, and by the
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: end of a two week season, it'd be frozen solid,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: so you'd be caught. You'd be making you sort of
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: have two dangers then, right, that's an open hole plus
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: a giant chunk of ice that someone can run into
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and have issues with so they do what's called sinking
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: the cake. They call that chunk of ice the cake,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: and they sink it. So all two or three guys
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: are pushing down on it to get it below ice level,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: and then two guys get from one end and start
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: pushing it underneath the ice. And then once that gets going,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: then the guys that we're pushing down all come to
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: that end, and everybody pushes as hard as they can
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: and try to get that one chunk of ice as
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: far away from the whole as possible, just in case
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: if you have a sturgeon that's near the surface, you
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: don't want him to be coming towards your zone, your
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: hole and then see that big chunk of ice and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: then cause him to veer away. I gotta avoid that. Yeah,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: so you're trying to get it away from you. Um,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: then you pull the trailer over the top of the hole,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: drop it down, shovel snow all around the edges again,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: get the light out, and you basically open a big
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: hatch in the middle and there you are. So you're
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: basically sitting on ap plywood floor that's carpeted real nice,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: and uh, you just got a hole in the ice
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: that looks like you're not sitting on any ice because
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: of the angle you cut in the ice. Um. Now
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: we were bearing in like fifteen sixteen ft of water,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: which on a clear year you can see all the
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: way to the bottom. But this year you can only
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: see about twelve ft. So bottom feeders are gonna be
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: on the bottom. How are you gonna see them in
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: that depth? Taters, well start because you gotta be able
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: to retrieve them if they If it's if it would
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: have been just a little more clear, we all would
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: have had down crosses made out of um vinyl uh
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: soft material like ten inch soft it. They basically just
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: make an X and then drop that thing down in
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: the hole that's attached to the string so you can
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: later retrieve it. And so you're looking at a X,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: and even if it's kind of murky, if you get
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: a big white X down there, it would give you
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: some reference. And then if you saw a giant black
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: shadow go over it, you would throw at the shadow.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Too murky for that. So instead we're running can risk
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: and the same fish camera that everybody has. You basically
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: run down hit on mine. You don't think so well?
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: My rod was up and now it's yeah, could have
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: been you guys are distracting. Um. So yeah, you run
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: a you run a camera basically between your feet, if
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: you're sitting in the middle of the hole, you run
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: a camera straight between your feet, straight down and then
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: it's maybe eighteen inches off the bottom and just pointed
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: straight out in front of you. So you're looking at
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: depending on the water clarity, you're looking at a cone
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: that might be go out to six ft. For us,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: it was so dense that we were figured we were
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: looking maybe three to four ft. That's all you could
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: see is a cone that went out to three three
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: or four ft in front of your camera. And you're
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: supposed to spear the fish off of what you're seeing
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: on the camera. Very very difficult. So Jake had a
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: camera down between his feet, and then between the two
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: cameras we had a decoy. They just hung from the ceiling.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: There was no jigging this one. It just was stagnant
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: there static not doing anything. Um. Sturgeon decoys were even
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: crazier than the pike and the whitefish decoys. We went
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: up into a gal's uh attic who's been spearing for
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know, seventy years bowling pins, uh Bart Simpson dolls,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: orange Um, traffic cones, things that did look like fish.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Calendars were very popular for decades that like when it
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: would come up to be during super being station, you
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't find a calendar in any kitchens store, thrift store, nothing.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: Everybody want to drop down a calendar. The latest thing
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: that's very popular is the white coffee mug. And then
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: gotta choose if you wanted to coffee mug suspended or
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: actually sitting in the muck at the bottom. So again,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: people go people go nuts on their decoys. Is doing
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: a good job? Is It's like, you know, like in
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: theory you're supposed to go on vacation and come back
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: all like reinvigorated for work. It's like that's what happened
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: to Yanni. Oh for sure, I felt it, just tearing
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: it a new one on we haven't been gotten to
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: the white fish and with Pat Durkin another I don't
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: want to burn it all up right now? Um, so yeah,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: we picked a well we're still on cutting day cameras.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: No you're not. You're on the coffee mugs and whatnot. Yeah,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: well I'm telling you about the decoys they're using. But
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: the camera deal. I think most people are just looking
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: at their little six inch ten inch screen that's attached
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: their camera. Right. Well, Jake's an electrician, pretty handy with
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: that sort of ship, so he's got too big screens, yeah,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: two inches. So we're sat We sat across from each other,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: so my screen was directly behind his head and his
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: screen was behind my head. So instead of staring kind
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: of down at it with your net getting store and
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: looking at a tenant screen, you can kind of chat
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: with the guy at the same time you're looking on
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: the screen behind his head, and they're thinking, man, this
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: guy never breaks his gaze when he's talking to me,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: totally um, And that takes place of staring into the hole. Now,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: there is a chance that you could have one comes
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: suspended through at ten ft or even six ft, and
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: it has happened. We heard plenty of stories where the
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: fish came through like his back rubbing the top of
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: the ice, and like, you had to take this because
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: our spears actually hung off of a they just had
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: I think one side. He had an actual hook that
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: was just barely it was bent open, so it just
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: still had a little bit of a lip to hold
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the islet of the spear. Mine actually was just a
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: just like a deck screw that was just at the
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: right angle and that little lip of the deck screw
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: was enough to hang it onto. Because we also heard
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: some stories where people had the giant sitting there looking
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: at their decoy and they couldn't get their spear off
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: of their hook and then the fish ran swam off.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: You know, so you gotta be ready. It's gonna happen fast. Um.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you're sort of percent of time you're watching
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: your screen one percent of time, and short glances you're
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: just looking down. It was interesting too, is what Jake
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: made clear to tell me about was that don't expect
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: to see in this murky water. Don't expect to see
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: a six ft sturgeon when he's down there at eight
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: ten ft, it's gonna look like a football. But you're
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: just seeing like the main part of the mass, and
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: you just know that there's you know, there's three ft
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: on either side of it or two ft on either
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: side of the football. You know, you're just seeing the
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: main mass because that's what's coming through. That's what your
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: your eye can pick up. Um. So yeah, the heads
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: of the spears, the spears are heavy. They they've come
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: up with regulations because people were getting a little bit crazy.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: They're like, imagine like ad teen broad head for a turkey,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: which is like two big razor blades, like four intros
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: to diameter. But they took that idea and took it
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: to sturge and spearings. So they had these like two
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: ft cross criss crossed, and so it's just like you're
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: covering more service area. When you throw the spear right,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: you have a better chance to get a tie in him.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Ours were I believe the limit was sixteen or eighteen.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: I think it was. Ours were a couple of inches
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: shy of that. We probably had eight times we were
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: working with um. The spearhead detaches from the handle, uh,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: so that you can fight the fish, you know, more
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: easily because it again, you're not it's not like you
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: just speared a five or ten pound pike. You not
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: gotta fish that might be fifties sixty upwards, too close
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: to two pounds you gotta Yeah, he's attached to a rope,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: So the rope's tied into the shanty. There might have
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: been twenty feet of slack line. I think, you know
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: between where it's tied off and where the in the spearhead. Um,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: and the times too are serious. They have um oh,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: what's a little toggle called flips out like a barb. Yeah,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: but it's like a harpoon. Yeah, I think it's in
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: line and then when there's any back tension, it's out.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: It's out. And we saw a couple of them gets
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: speared and it's like literally one time through a minimum
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: of four inches of flesh and it's not coming That
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: fish ain't coming off of their Plus the sturgeon is
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: it's a that skin is like shark skin, so scale it. Yeah,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: it's not coming off of there. Um. So yeah, fast
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: forward to opening morning. Uh, you get there maybe six thirty.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: You can't start spear until seven Surgeon spearing goes some
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: seven am till one every single day. Everybody's inside a house. Yeah,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: well you can't have your spears inside the house. It
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: always open like your your trap doors are open. Your
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: spears have to be outside the house until seven am
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: and then at one pm the spears had to go
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: out while you're closing everything down. Once the hole is closed,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: the spears can come back in. You know. Um, you
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: used to be able to spear twenty four hours a day,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: shine a spotlight down in there. Yeah, and they they
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: that actually, um proved to be a little too effective. Um.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: They used to have these party tents like forty ft across.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: They would cut giant holes and the whole thing would
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: be lined with dudes and spears, just eating, drinking and
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: waiting for a sturgeon to come across. I mean a
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: thing that you could swim across, you know, and just
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a giant ass tent. And um, they'd run them all
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: night long, big big light in there. Ship sounds like
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: a good time. Um. But uh yeah, so for me
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: opening day, so yeah, basically it's seven, it's like, okay,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: spears in and then start watching the camera. Um. And
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: I think it like the group started seeing some around nine.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: We might have had someone missed one at nine, and
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: it wasn't long after maybe ten eleven. Am. Um, Jake's
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: like he caught a fish on his flasher, so he
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: was running a flasher just to be like, maybe it
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: might give us a second heads up that a fish
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: is coming here. But he's like, um, looks like a
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: small fish. Looks like a small fish. And then all
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, he sees it on his screen.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, no no, what's there. Surge and Sturgeon like
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: get ready, you know. So we all jump up and
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at my screen. I can see so in
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: my screen, I can see a decoy and then his
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: camera behind it, and he's seeing the decoy in my
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: camera in his screen, and it looks like the fish
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: has come up and is basically angled and right at
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: the decoy, and so I see that I kind of
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: placed my spear like parallel with the line of the
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: decoy going down. I look up again. He's still there.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: And at the same time Jake and I we weren't
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: counting or anything. It just happened both of us throw spears,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think that we corralled him because I
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: look back up of the screen and I just see
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: the tail swimming straight away from I mean, I can't explain.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: It means like the decoy was there. I knew where
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: the fish was on the right side of the decoy.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: Both of us had spears on the right side, and
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: it was either that. We also heard stories that, um,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: their head is so bony and you can deflate, so
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: there's a chance we could have reflected the head, especially
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: because he was right out of decoy, because I probably
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't the heads eighteen inches long, and so I might
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: have not been back far enough. But do you remember
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: when remember in Guyana and we had that big catfish,
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: that big banana catfish, and I cocked back with my
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: bow and a fish arrow on there h and shot
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: and everybody, oh, you missed, you missed, too missed. But
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: it ricocheted off his head. A fish arrow out of
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: a bow, no water, You aim for the head, not aim.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I held it up to his head. I don't remember
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: that a fish arrow, right, So there you go. It
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: could happen, yea. And probably what five minutes after that,
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: we had one swim under our shack and did a
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: similar moment. And it's it's difficult to describe how hard
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: it is to triangulate your position because I didn't have
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: the big screen TVs. We just had a little ten
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: inch Markham's. And I'm looking down at that going okay,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: that's what the screen says, there's the decoy should be here,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: and just hucking that thing and praying, and I thought
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: I thought I nailed that first one. I was so
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: excited because there was a bunch of tention on that line,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: and it was coming up kind of wiggling back and forth,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: like oh I got him, I got him, Bran, I
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: got him. And what I had done was drilled three
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: times through that soft it and it was just buried
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: in that muck and started coming up and like I'm like,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: oh man, I got him. No, not even close. You
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: can get one dislike him at home depot. It took
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: me a good half an hour to dig those barbs
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: out of that freaking soft it. Like I had to
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: take the whole thing out of the shack and it
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: took forever. So out of your out of your party. Yep.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: What was the hall too? Which is really really good
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: because that weekend and I think that not weekend three days.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: We finished Saturday, Sunday, Monday speared and I think the
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: whole leg produced around a hundred right, Yeah, I'd have
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: to go back and look, I've been reading the reports
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: as they come out daily through the whole season, so
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: my my memories muddy to be, but I'm pretty sure
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: it's right around a hundred and three days and that's
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: five thousand spears and we got to fish. I think
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: the Jake's homework pays off and we missed I mean
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: I missed two. Yeah, you guys, we definitely had We
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: definitely had some other opportunities in the group. Having not
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: been there, I'm sitting there being like I would have
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: gotten them all here somewhere. Something didn't imagine how good
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: you would have done something. Something to mention is that
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: the camera use is pretty controversial because of what we're explaining.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: Right you're basically chucking it into the darkness hoping to
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: get a time in there. You don't know sometimes you
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: know what's happening down there if you're hurting them at all.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: The DNR has surveyed the public like two or three
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: times about it, and it's every time it's been a
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: third are cool with it, a third don't give a ship,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: and a third, uh, don't aren't into it. So they're like,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: until right now, it's like kind of a social problem
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: because there's just people sort of you know, fighting about
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: whether they should be using or not. He's like, until
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: it becomes a biological problem and it becomes too efficient,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: Like it's not our problem, what's your personal take on it?
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: Can here you are king of the king of the universe. Um,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: even with the cameraman. It is hard. Yeah, so I'm
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna let it roll. Um. He spreads people
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: out too, because listen, there were there's like the other
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: side of the lake because of currents um and you know,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: less allergy bloom or whatever. There was plenty of people
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: that we talk to that speared surgeon in eight feet
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: of super clear water and they could see the bottom.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: So you could choose to go and do that. But
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: Jake's series like, yeah, that's fine, you're gonna see the fish.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: But over there, I think that there's ten percent of
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: the fish over there then where we were fishing more water. Yes,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: now it spreads people out. Did you bring me a
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: container of the caviar? Yes, how we haven't handed it
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: over to me. Oh you, I didn't bring you a
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: personal little uh steve container. I brought home one court
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: and it is in the office refrigerator, and Miles and
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: I are planning on having basically an office little parties
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: everybody can get in. There's so much that if you
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: want to take some of home, you will be able
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: to hou. We'll have some crackers. Yeah, you want to
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: keep it simple. Are you got you got your ivory spoons? No, oh,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: I used to have a caviar spoon, man, when I
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: was working on my first book. I had occasion when
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: I was working on my first book to get a
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: caviar spoon. But we want to be we had so
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: much whitefish can vy are like great, like you know
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: lake whitefish caviar. We're eating it on cool ranchedritos. I
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: mean we couldn't get through it all. Man. It was
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: a weird like salsa. Yeah, it was just like like
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: a too many eggs. Man. Did you you make your
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: your tasting spoon out of you know, something highly illegal? No,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't do that. I wish I would. Um, I
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: can't remember how. But as part of the book, I
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: can't remember why. But I did order a couple of
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: caviar spoons. Not legal ones though, like you know, like
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: abalone shell, ivory, mother of pearl and stuff. Yeah. Did
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: you get robbed over there? Your bait get robbed? You?
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: I still got half of it. I'm gonna let it roll. Yeah,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: it was a lot more to it, man, But you,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: like I said, phenomenal bit of hole like great job,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: good interesting day. Yeah, there's anything we need to wrap
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: it up on. I mean we could the cultural part
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: was awesome. Yeah, we do. You need to throw a
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: shout out to Mary Lucia talking about the big you know,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: she's the decoy car. Remember the rhythmics kind of the videos.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: I don't remember the video well, like yeah, like Anie
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Lennox would be doing everything, but then that dude wold
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: always be in the background. I feel like that's Miles,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: Like Yanni's like any Lennox and Miles is like that
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: dude in the rhythmics. It was always being like in
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: the background. Oh, I was listening to Train in Vain
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: the other day. Is that season closed based on quota
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: or just a date? Does it just stay open? And
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: if you're looking at when does the Sturgeon season end,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: it ends in one of two ways. Okay, let me
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: hit that. Uh, how so the season is two weeks? Yeah,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: let's say conditions are perfect and just people are just
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: killing him NonStop. Is that a possibility? Yes, it does happen. Again,
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think we
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: heard of seasons that were closed in four or five days. Oh,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to ask. So they so the
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: season doesn't necessarily run its course, it has every year
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: for the past five years because the water clarity has
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: been pretty bad the last five years, but before that
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: they had consistent good years and the seasons were closing,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: you know, as soon as DNA would set a quote
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: limit saying based on population, it is feasible for us
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: to take this many without hurting the spawning. And it's
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: male female quotas both, and the female quota is the
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: one they're really looking at. When so many females are speared,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: it's over got you, got you. But the last four
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: years it's run its course two weeks, sixteen days, sixteen
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: days a sixteen day season. Yeah, yeah, I guess that
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: makes it three weekends probably. So when you uh, they
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: have way in and checking stations all over the lake,
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: not on the lake, but these uh bars, they call
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: them supper clubs. Um. We went to Jim and Linda's
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: and right out there in Pipe, Wisconsin, and uh crowd
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: gathers there every day right around one pm, because usually
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: people wait all about one if they have a fish
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: to go and go and check it in, and uh
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: there's a pretty big crowd gathered there. You weigh it
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: and then the dnr um cuts it open. Check see
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: if it's a male or a female. They then scan it.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: They're looking for tags. If it's if the fish is
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: tag if they can get some data off of it, um,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and then that's it. I mean, I think they you
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: give them some of your personal information and uh, you're
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: ready to go, and it's It was fascinating to me
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: because sturgeon spawn and I think it's generally a six
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: year cycle. Okay, so a female will take six years,
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: males are shorter. Female takes six years in between spawning runs.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: And they'll run up river to do that UM. But
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: they'll they'll cut it open and just by looking at
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: the color texture the eggs, they'll call it an F one,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: F two, F three, F four all the way up
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: to six, depending on how developed those eggs are. And
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: the F six everybody wants, right, those are the really
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: really that's the best caviar um. But they had one
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: fish that they had tagged. It was like one of
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: the biggest ones. They were tagged up river when she
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: had spawned and she was she she came in at
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: like two pounds or something, and then the next year
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: she got speared and she had shed like sixty pounds weight.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: Same fish same link, just between those cycles of spawning,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: how long it takes for those eggs developing, how much
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: mass they have. Are most of these guys, I get
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: the caviar by most of these guys, they're grilling it,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: frying it, cubing it up, and putting cocktail sauce on it. Man,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people did not respect
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: the meat of that fish enough. We heard a lot
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: of people saying, oh, it's not very good. I thought
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: it was fantastic. Everywhere we it's it's a fish that
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: they love as much commerce conservation that's been done around it.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: They loved, kind of hate it because it's not like
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: when you look at it, it's not the most appealing
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: looking thing. It's kind of covered in a slimy mud.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: You know. The first thing everybody says, you guys, do
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: sin as you get at home is pressure wash it,
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: you know, before you start you know, fileting it or whatever. Um.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: So that was a little bit interesting because we didn't
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: really find anybody that was like, oh, I can't wait
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: to put some you know, hopefully I'll get some free
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: from sturgeon meat from my freezer. But it was sturgeon meat,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: and I mean habitat destruction. But it was like commercial
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: harvested knocked them down so bad. Yeah, but that was
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: about all about the eggs there after. Yeah, Now we
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: did get lucky and went over to our friend Chester
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: and Ike and Fenton Floyd's parents house, and there they
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: invited us over for dinner. And we said, you know,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: dinner sounds great, and since I could spired a sturgeon,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: it would be awesome if we could try some sturgeon.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: We really want to try some sturgeon meat. And um,
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: a few a few people have said, oh, you guys
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: are going over the Floyd's for dinner, lucky you you know,
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: is it Peggy? Peggy real good cook? You know we're
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: taking okay, well, you know yeah, typical Midwest mom, you know,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: don't probably throw it out and be some good cooking.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: Well we roll in there and she's prepared six courses
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: that would go toe to toe with any of the
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: six courses that I could prepare, like just solid. She
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: had smoked some and then turned it into a dip.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: She had I don't know what she did with the meat,
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: probably posted or something and turned some into fish cakes. Um.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: She did her plain fried piece over a little salad
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: with a little vinaigrette. It was just like her name. Um,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: she's happily married. Um. But she did that one specifically,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: She's said. As for me, I just I don't know.
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: She might be wondering. She did specifically so that, you, um,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: so that we could just taste the flesh. You know,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: it wasn't covered up with sauces in this, that and
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: anything else. You know, I'm really gonna taste for it.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: Um what else was there? Oh, I gotta make curvefish
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: curry more. You know, we've had it a couple of
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: times over the years, and for some reason, I just
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: don't do it at home. But she made fish curry,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: serve it over rice, real plain and simple and just awesome.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: So and then a a sturgeon schnitzel really with asparagus
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: and hollandaise, Oh, buddies, like a double red carpet gold
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: line man. Incredible And every one of those preparations. That
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: fish was really very Uh you know, Steaky's go down
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: to that supper club place and through a little sampler
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: so people stop being dumbasses about their sturgeon meat. Well,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: I mean it's one of those things. And we talked
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: about this all the time, right, It's how you take
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: care of your game, is what it's gonna taste like.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: And a lot of the tradition there is you get
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: your fish and you paraded her round the ice to
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: every bar, like, look what I got. Yeah, it's cold out.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: It's probably still not the best way to handle your fish. Yeah,
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: but when you get some beautiful blue fin tune, I
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: doubt they No, they tend to probably get it on.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: Do you want to get that thing iced up real
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: quick and away from the guts? Uh quick story she
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: didn't turn into hot dish or cast role. That's the
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: next day. I gotta I know a guy that, uh
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: you know they're close relative the paddlefish. Um, I know guy,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: it caught a paddlefish and he was it was a
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: giant and he wanted to get it officially weighed, and
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: he wrapped it up in a uh what he gotta
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: sleep He was camping, so you gotta sleep bag, dunked
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: in the river, wrapped the paddlefish up. I heard this
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: through the tax nevers. Tax nevers telling me a guy,
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: a guy caught a paddlefish, wrapped it up in a
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: wet sleeping bag. Drives to the hour to him because
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: he wants it mounted, but he doesn't need the body,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: and he's gonna wait on it. But the textures doesn't
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: need the body because they just use a fire glass form.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: He takes that paddlefish down to the river and the
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: same river that came out of it takes down the river.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: Let's go on. It swims off, no ship. That's awesome
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: driving around, driving around a guy's trucking a wet sleeping bad.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: I met you, the surgeon. Even with a couple of
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: spear holes in their tail, they could probably go to
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: a couple of bars and hang on a fish pole,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: for it's basically like a big buck pole. But they
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: haven't met these bars for the surgeon and hang out
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: there for a few hours, and he could probably release
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: those things and they probably swim off too. I'm not
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: saying that. I'm not saying it to contradict your observation.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: You have to take it care of it because, like JT.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: Van's aunt says, man, when you catch a fish and
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: you treat it right towards the meal, you're sort of
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: like setting there's like a spiritual quality to it. Yeah,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: you're setting a thing into motion, you know, that you
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: haven't touched the fish. You gill it, you wash it.
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: It's like you're you're, you're you're putting it on a path,
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: a path of respect. Yeah, and you're you're conceiving of
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: that fish as food from the get go, not just
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: something to be proud of it and show off to
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: your buddies while you get drunk. Which nothing. No, I'm
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: not dogging that practice in any way. I've done that
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: many many times. But with these fish, to me, it
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: seemed like the culture, and who knows, will change, but
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: the culture really was more about being excited about the
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: catch more than being excited about the consumption. And I
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: was skeptical. I mean, I don't know where you were, Yohnnie,
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: but I've heard so many people were like, you can't
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: eat them. I mean, we do talk about Biggin's. Everybody
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: else got had any rods in their hands? Miles, Yeah, great.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: I know we didn't cover all of the fur head
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Ice tour adventures will be more in the future. You
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: brought me some caviart will not necessarily me, but you
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: brought some caviart that I'm gonna be able to partake of. Um.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: Good to have you back. Sure, you'll miss more of
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: our shows. Thanks everybody. That song you were singing earlier,
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: changes that saw a dog run by change uh fill
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: the engineer. I assuming you enjoyed yourself. You didn't really
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: say much. I'm just soaking it in. I don't have
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: much to add, but I don't want to try some
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: sturgeon though. Good job Phil, Thanks way to bring her
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: home all right, Thanks everybody, see him se