Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 387: We've Got Weights In Fish! - The Full Story From The Man Who Found Them

Transcript

Ep. 387: We've Got Weights In Fish! - The Full Story From The Man Who Found Them · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right, man,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this is a good one. This is about you know,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: this is the show I'm looking most forward to for
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the whole year, even though even though our guest thinks
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: it's stupid, he's over it. Probably he's what he's so
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: over it. We have in studio the guy Jason Fisher.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: It's a great last name for what we're talking about.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Jason Fisher, the guy who caught the the Whalley chee
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Ds and the now infamous. And it's like, I don't
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: know is it famous or infamous? It's infamous, Yeah, the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: infamous wall Ie tournament cheating scandal of of Ohio, of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Lake Erie. He's shaking his head. No, I still don't
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: even know what I'm doing here. This is it's it's unreal,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: what's going on. We're still getting phone calls from news
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: outlets and podcasts and all these people want to like
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: think we're interesting, and I'm just like, I have no
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: clue how this went such a worldwide thing. And here
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I sit with you out here in Bozeman in Montana,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: ready to talk about it. But but let's do it.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: You know what I knew the story was. I mean
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the minute I saw it, I knew it was interesting,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: but I I just thought it would be very contained.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And I knew about it right off the bat because
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Chester's Walleye Derby partner Seth that we work with. I
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: was with Seth, and Seth like stays hip to all
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: things Walleye and all things Tournament. So it wasn't like
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: it was like hours after that after it happened. He
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: had knew him, he knew something shit about it, and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: so right away, um, I was like, oh that's good,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And I was that day. I think it
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: was the next day after the term, I was telling
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: get the guy in the show, Get the guy in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the show, and uh, then it blew up and I
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: knew it had officially blown up when I saw a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: guy on barstool Sports of all places, trying to describe it.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: This dude, it's like his zero idea what he's talking
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: about he said today were putting metal balls in the fish,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: metal balls, the metal balls. Right after that happened, Seth
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and I got like, I don't know how many, like
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a hundred d m s people like, did you see
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: this already? We're like, yeah, we saw. I used that
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to gauge the I used that. That's one of my
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: primary metrics to gauge how interesting some thing is. The
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: people is how many of my friends will independently, um
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: send me something so like the Coronado ship. Remember that,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: how many maybe five probably more people said the Mammoth
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that they were able to reconstruct his travels based on
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: them call it. But if you're late to the game,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it's like, don't even bother sending it to Steve because no,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: because I need it. You've already heard it. I need
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to use this text message. I'm like whatever, I'm just
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: trying to clog up your phone. No too, I get too.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I get like Titta. Later, if I get up into
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: four and five, I know we're on something up and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I'm this probably shattered the record, even though you think
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: it's stupid, so so, and the crazy thing is is
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you were first man. I mean, so it's it's I swear.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So it turns into the day of you know, people
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: within our our our community are anglers. I mean they're
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: just rapid fire, and they're starting the memes or starting
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: this or starting and the favorite is my favorite is
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the I think it was you as Trump and WALLEYE.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Fisherman has Biden. Yeah, yeah, that one. I so again
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I received that one. Like you said, you gauge how
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: good something is by how many people. So I have
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: like friends from high school and just people who haven't
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: talked to in years. They're like sending me like, oh,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: look at this, you know, like I haven't seen it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: already times. But but but then so, like the next
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: day after this, I start to get calls from all
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: these media outlets, and then you texted me and you're like, hey,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Steve Ronella with meat eat, like like nobody knows who
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the hell you are. And I'm like, yeah, okay, this
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: is probably one of my buddies, like trying to trying
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: to joke on me, because at this point nobody was
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: nobody like that. No, no national level me media outlet
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: is trying to get ahold of me. It's just it's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: just people burning my phone up. Buddies and then I'm like, yeah,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: all right, you know, and then I'm like, what, I
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: don't believe you? So you call text I know it's you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Well the first thing you told me, the first thing
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: you said is I don't know what to say. They
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: cheated and got called. Yeah, it's it was just one
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of those where I'm like, why I didn't realize. I
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: can understand Lake Erie. You know, it's a big fishery.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I can understand tournament fishermen nationwide, even bass guys, catfish guys,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: all these fishermen. I can understand why those people are
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: going to be upset. But just the the whole vast majority,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: like you see TikTok TikTok went nuts with just parodies
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and memes and people using like the the sound, and
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I to me still right now, I have no clue
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: why it turned into such a big deal. I mean,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna calls from New Zealand, Australia, you know, London,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: all these media outlets wanting the story, Norway, and I'm
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: just like, this is unbelievable. Meanwhile, meanwhile, my wife's like
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: you got kids to watch, Like I don't care. She's like,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: you you worked all day yesterday and you know, you
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: got to take care of the kids right now. And
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, Like this is the Discovery Channel or something,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and she's like, she's like, I don't care who it is. He,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you know, get up and take care of your kid.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: He's need some food or something. This even spread into
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: a circle of video game journalists I follow on Twitter
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: who were like, Wow, I'm learning about a whole new
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: world here and there spreading a game journalists on Twitter. Yes,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: are you surprised by this? Twitter is not dead after all.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I guess now fills but he'll be able to say
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: what he really thinks non Twitter. Now think about So
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: you still have no idea why this? Why do you
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: think I'll tell him his his his worries are over.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell him exactly by it centering, But first
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: we gotta talk about a couple of other things. You
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: got a minute, right, I got a little bit. Let
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: me tell you why I think it's interesting. You want
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: me to tease it for you. Let's tease it. How
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: in the world would you not think that someone's gonna
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: realize there's big ass lead balls in a fish. Just
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: think about that one for a minute. If they had
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: gotten caught reading a scale, no one would care, right,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: But there's an audacity, there's like a crazy audacity to it.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: And then also also the way in which the gentleman
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: in the video, the way in which the perpetrator just
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: decides to stand there and hang his head and take
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: his lumps as though he'd been tied to a whipping post.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was. It was. Oh I would have
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: run one of two. One of two stayed there, the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: other one did run. Run. Yeah, okay, that's great. I was.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The other guy was in his truck or something, but
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: he knew what was going on. So I'll tell you
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: all about it. Well, that's what that's what you're here for.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: The whold texts. We gotta talk about something else. Real question.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna give you a cliffhanger
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: right back. I was pleasing. But that that in and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: of itself is a great story too, because the guys,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: not me, the anglers, is who make this story interesting.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: These are the guys that just wanted to punish these dudes.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Because I'm the facilitator, right Like, if we're all here
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and we're betting, we're you know, we're playing darts or something,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and you say, hey, Fisher, hold the cash. It's not
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: my money, it's your money, right, So I'm not the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: one I'm upset because it's my it's my venue. But
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: these guys it's their money, it's their time to shine.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And that's that's why this story is bad for all
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: these dudes. You but you wind up being well into this.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But you want to being like Gandhi. Oh yeah, totally,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: like you could feel it was ready to teeter over
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the edge at any second. You know, I was good.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: There was another uh you know, Henry Kissinger want a
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. But had I said you were like Kissinger,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: people be like you mean like, uh, the um clandestine
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: bombing operations in Laos and Cambodia or do you mean
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the or do you mean the Mobile Peace Prize? So
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I went Gandhi, Yeah, Gandhi's a better choice. Gandhi wouldn't
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: approve of Walleye fishing, probably not, but it was Gandhi
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: esque what you did. You didn't want these that that
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: you that you thought to you like like the lady Justice.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: You the first thing on your mind was being like
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the individual safety sensing the heated passions because you'd have
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: thought it was gonna wind up being that someone was
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: gonna get their you know, I'm not I'm not saying
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: that I saved the day, but I truly believe that
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: had it gone on for a little bit longer, one
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of these guys would have just said the hell with
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: it and just and just went after I'm sure you know,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and uh, then they would have enjoyed the full support, well,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the whole, yeah, the whole. Then then we probably wouldn't
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: be here because then the story would be twisted in
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: a different light. It wouldn't be somebody, you know, put
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: some weights and fish. It would be you know, big
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: brawl at a walleye thing and then fisherman. Right, Yeah,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: we would probably never be able to walleye fish again
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: on on the lake shore. You know, they'd be uh,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: there'd be articles about the further testament to the divisiveness
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of American culture today. Um, alright, couple things that hit
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: on this one. There's the thing that we've been wanting
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: to talk about for a long time, but we never
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: never It's very important to me that I talked about it,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: but it never seems like a good time to talk
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: about it. So let's gonna talk about it. Um, there's
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: this new U. S. Geological Survey report. People are gonna
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: be sitting there being like, why in the world are
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: you talking about this when we can hear about we
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: got weights in fish. Okay, here's the thing I want
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: to talk about. I don't know what it's. I just
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: want people to know about this because I don't know
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: what I don't know what any individuals gonna do about it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But we'll talk about it. So we've covered in the past.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: If you watched me either the television show, you saw
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: an episode we did about sage grouse. Okay, and in
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the episode about sage grouse we covered the the sage
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: brush sea or the sage brush ecosystem. A new report
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: came up from the U. S Geological Survey. Uh. We've
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: also in the past had on people from the U.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: S Geological Survey. We had on a guy who's ran
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the process of trying to count how many grizzly bears
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: are in the lower forty eight. We had on a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: guy that works on the way ducks move do z
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: ease UM, particularly the way asiatic diseases flow into North
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: America via ducks. UM. Now I'll point out the Geological
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Survey is not a They're not a policy making agency
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: US Geological Survey. They don't manage land. They don't do policy.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: They do science for policymakers. They're saying that we've lost
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: half of the original sage brush ecosystems. We are losing
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: one point three over the past twenty years. We've lost
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: one point three million acres of sage brush habitat per year.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Another thing I didn't realize the sage brush ecosystem I'm
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: reading for this report. The sage brush ecosystem is the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: largest terrestrial biome in the lower forty eight. Like, what
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: you mean by the biggest terrestrial biome in the world
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is the tiger. So it's that mixed aspen black spruce
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: stuff that you met that like crossed most of Canada, Interior, Alaska, Siberia.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: The tiger is the largest biome. But this is the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: largest biome, largest terrestrial so land based biome in the
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: lower forty eight, sixty million acres spanning thirteen western states. Uh,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: there's a recommendation in here that people have been focused
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: for a long time. Sage brush recovery has been focused
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: on looking at compromised sage brush areas and trying to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: restore low quality sage brush areas. And this report and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the people thinking about this report are suggesting that it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: be like a radical reconsideration, it seems to me, and
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: switch gears and just try to preserve, not just try
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to focus on preserving the remaining thirty three million acres
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of sage brush. Which it's kind of like it's almost
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: fatalist because it's kind of like kissing the ones that
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: are there goodbye. No, that's depressing as ship. That is
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: what is the like We're losing so many of those
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: acres due to what Like what's the main thing that
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: is for? So I'll tell you it's a great question. Chester.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: They're gonna get to your thumb and your baby um
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: increased fire when you burn it. When it burns, cheat
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: grass beats it to the punch I got. So after
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: you cook it off, then an invasive comes into cheat
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: grass is like hicks, and it just grows everywhere. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: it's just the stage brush is too slow to recover,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and so non non natives get a foothold. They never
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: need us grab hold. Also related to fire suppression and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: other things and climate issues um juniper encroachment. Seeing a
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: lot of that where which wasn't Colorado. Which are those
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: junipers native? Yeah, but they're just they're just out competing
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: sagebrush and in some play in some ways they look
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: at fire suppression because you don't historically you have these
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: very low level, fast burning fires often right that would
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: be adversarial to stage brush and ben adversarial to juniper.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: But through fire suppression, you've got junipers that grow in
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: on stage brushes. All these pictures like they'll find like
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: some hundred year old picture and you go and get
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the photographer to stay in the exact same place and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: take a picture now, and you're just like, holy shit,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Like even you wouldn't believe you're when you're cruising around now,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you're not getting like even in this area, you're not
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: getting a sense of how open ship used to be.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: For most of Lodge Pole juniper just pine and croachm
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: on grasslands and it's just like anything like in the mountains.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Now those fight it's just based off of fires mainly
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: you know, hot burning fire. Now we'll just you know,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: wipe out the undergrowth and whatnot, and then it gets
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: beat by these like super prevalent non natives. And the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: other thing is human encroachment. UH subdivision's oil and gas development. UM.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: That's like kind of the most immediately controllable one. It
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: looks like this report says about a quarter of the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: impact is attributed to urban development. That's that's a lot.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You look at the Gallatin Valley, it's like where can
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: we build and it's basically just like out towards between
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: three Forks and Townsend that's all sage and that's like
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: huge development area right now. That's why I'm like, I've
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I've over the years become like a very much cow's
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: not condos guy. Man, you have that bumper sticker. I
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: need to get one. Like a lot of people like
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: people on the sort of like do's not even want
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to say radical. There's a lot of people from the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: environmental and conservation space that are always very quick to
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: point fingers at ranchers um because of various things like
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: cattle on stream banks and stream bank erosion and eating
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: grass whatever. Well, I'll tell you what, man, you look
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: at that or a parking lot, right there's a real
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: finality to concrete, Yeah, you can't a real finality to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: a crop field. Cropfield looks to me like currently doing
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: something and has so much future potential concrete done. Not
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: many people have killed the Hungarian partridge in a Walmart
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: parking lot. Probably, I mean I could also be mistaken
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to say this, but I my sense is that a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: fair number that people who are maybe throwing farming and
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: ranching under the bus, or those who are moving into
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the condos are buying the condom. Yeah, that's true. And
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: also they're like they're absolutists and they're they don't think
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: they're I don't think they're even kind of realistic. Only
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they're kind of realistic to be like, oh, oh industrial
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: egg or go away and it will be replaced by
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: national parks. It's like, no, won't. Yeah, you're never going
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to get back to where you were two d years ago.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And this is talking about sage grouse, um, talking about
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: prong horn, mule deer. It even mentions cattle grazing. But
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: you just take the wildlife end of it. Um, those
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: species aren't imperiled because of cattle ranching, right, not like
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: they are from not like they are from concrete development. Yeah. Uh,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Chester cut his thumb open and had a baby. Yeah,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: we want to talk about first. Well, first I had
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the baby. Let's cover that first thing. Um, we were, well,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the little little pooper is still supposed to be in
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: in the oven right now, not supposed to have been born.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I think he was due the uh of this month, November,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: and he came, uh the ninth. Yeah, he came the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: of October. What the thing I find most interesting about
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: your baby who I visited in help, is that you
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: thought it was nice of you bang his meat loaf.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: You thought you were gonna do you see those hats
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: green chilies in there? Yeah, they're delicious in my agbor
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: gab those to me, my neighbor, jet boat pat to me. So, uh,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: what I was gonna say is you thought it was
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: so funny is you were trying to angle how we
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: were going to go hunting this coming weekend because the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: baby wouldn't. People like, man, it's pretty close to the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: do date. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I was
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: actually gonna make that happen, but you gotta you gotta
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: entertain the idea, as things are never gonna happen. So, um,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I thought about it, But the more I thought about it,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the more I wasn't gonna gonna go mule their hunting
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and uh yeah, no this we almost delivered the baby
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in the car. Danielle went from her busy, normal self
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: running around town, editing photos, yelling at Chester for yelling
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: at me for laying on the couch saying I was tired. No,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that didn't happen, but she, uh yeah, it was just
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: her normal busy self. On we went to bed and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: she said to me, I've got I've got some kind
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of weird cramps going on. Um, she's pretty tough, but
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: she's like, you can go back to bed, it's fine.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And this is probably at midnight and I wake up
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: at like two and she's like, I still got these cramps.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go take a hot shower. And she started
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: getting a little The cramps started getting a little worse,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and she called Boseman Hospital here and they're like, maybe
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you should just come in and have us check you out.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And then her water broke a little bit. But she
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: still wasn't like in pain or she didn't think she
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: was in labor. She was in in labor. And uh.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: We put her in the car and we started at
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: about seventy on the on the Interstate and we started
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: driving to Bozeman. It's about a twenty five minute drive
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: by the time we ended up, you know, between Belgrade
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and Bozeman were I was probably going a hundred and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: five because she said he is coming now, and she
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: was even out of her seatbelt, back arched up in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the air. Her hands were like down there because she
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: thought he was coming. And I'm sitting there like just
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: inside an emotional wreck outside. Did you think about pulling
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: over and just trying to have the baby. No. I
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to do that until she was like he's
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you know, he's there. Yeah, my old man delivered a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: baby on the side of a road one time. Yeah,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the woman that was trying to get to play. He
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: pulled over and he said he we'll delivered it in
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: that he just caught the baby shout out. Yeah. I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: was like, dear God, please just make him stay in
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: there just a little bit longer, because I had a plan,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Like it was like I was gonna pull up call
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: nine on one immediately and then if I was going
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to get pulled over on the interstate, I was going
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: to keep going and also called nine one one and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: tell him bullets fly. Yeah, but we made it. We
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: got a mad chase at the hospital exit. Yeah, he's
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: falling over at the er. Anyways, I pull over at
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the er, quick back pedal a little bit in the car.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: She didn't have a baby bump anymore. You know, she
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: had his feet what I think we're his feet now.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: He was so low his feet were pushing on her stomach,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: so there was no baby bump. It was like a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: triangle and you could see his feet like pushing out
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: on her stomach. I think that's what it was. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it was like something out of a sci fi And meantime,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in my head there were some not so good thoughts
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: coming going around because give me an example. It's I mean,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean. Honestly, I'm not I'm
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: not sure cute. I thought something was real wrong because
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: it was early and oh yeah, and you know obviously
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: she was in labor. It's my first time having a child.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: She's in pain. Pain. Uh. I look over and it's
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: not a normal baby bump. It's this weird two feet
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: trying to kick himself out. Um, so it's early. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: early too. So anyways, we got to the hospital. The guy,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: uh security guard and like look scared to death. Because
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Danielle was like, get me, get me to the you know,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: delivery room, and he's running her down the hallway. I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: parked the car, run back in and I sprint down
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: this long hallway and at the end of this hallway
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: are two doors, and you know, it's the delivery room.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's kind of weird how it's just, you know, this
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: long hallway and at the end of it is the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: room we run into. Danielle gets on the bed, She's like,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: can I get an epidural. They're like, well, we'll check
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you out real quick. They're like, no, honey, you're having
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: this baby right now. Basically, the doctor comes in and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: has just enough time to snap on his gloves and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I grabbed one leg and nurse grabbed the other leg,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and out pops Oscar Chester. I love you, and I
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: would raise that baby as my own if I had to.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But I will not call it Oscar. I'm gonna call
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: it Chester, telling him since day one, please please elaborate
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: he was gonna call it Chester to change his mind.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: No I didn't. I never said I'm going to call
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it Chester. I pondered the idea, but Oscar the last Chester.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Oscar Gregory O G. That's pretty good. I might call
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: him o G. Just call him o ceah, so oh
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: see that's not bad. Anyways, he's he's healthy, he's small,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: so he was on oxygen for a little while. Um,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: but he's he's cute as all kid. Well now he's
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: gaining weight too. Yeah, he's still not as big as
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: those walleyes. I tried on the day when I got
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the text message that your baby had been born. I
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: got a little angling in that day, and I wanted
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: so bad to catch walleye and that. So I can
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: always tell your little kid, yeah o G. I could
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: always be like, dude, I called a wallet the day
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: you were born. Ever forget that, That's what I would
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: have said. Instead, all I got was a mooney cares
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: about that? I caught a moon eye, like I got
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a sagger. That's close. It would have counted. I mean, yeah,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: let's count. So yeah, we've been at home, um, kind
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of enjoying this time off, just me and mom and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: my wife called it the baby bubble. The baby bubble. Yeah,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: going to a baby bubble. Yeah, it's kind of odd.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Hold up, Yeah, I've got some projects done around the house. Um,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: put a heater in my garage. Um, I got out
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: bow hunting one day locally here with the longbow I
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: built a few years ago, and I saw a bunch
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of deer shot a dough. She took a couple of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: steps and I was trying to get another arrow out
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and I sliced the heck out of my thumb. Back
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: down to the emergency room, back down to the hospital.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Trip here we go. I got a few stitches in there.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Slow any chases on this trip or no, no, no, no,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: that's great man, Yeah, no, it was. It's been good.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Now I'm here, we're gonna talk about but you're, um,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: it's amazing what they can do now with the babies.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: You could have a baby that early in that small
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and now that babies at home gain weight, right, that's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: like the one thing that they want to see is
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: weight game. So we feed him every three hours and
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: they're like they check his weight. Um, but we have
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: oxygen tanks at home, which he has been off of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: him for a while, and then a little monitor, so
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: we gotta every time we move them, move chords around
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and stuff. Um. But like you said, like I don't know,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: twenty years ago, could you have taken him home probably not.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know, go back far enough. It had been
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: just like I don't want to talk about what it
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: was like. But not good, no, no, but he was
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: actually right when he was born off oxygen for two
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: days and then he kind of he was working so hard,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: got a little tired, and that's when they put him
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: on oxygen. Oscar Oscar Floyd, Oscar, not Chester. There's a
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it Oscar. There's a reason behind that name. Though.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Danielle's great grandfather was a cowboy up near have Her, Montana.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: His name was Oscar. Oh. You know what, I just
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: realized that, you know, Boone's kid, first kid that got killed,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: was named James. I'm gonna start telling everybody that's why
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I name my kid after why not? Right, Yeah, It's like,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: feel like I'll tell you what I did, all right, Jason,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: we got wait, how did you get in the wall?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: But how did you in the wall? Eye tournament business?
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: This is a good place to start. So while I
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: fishing or tournaments fishing, alright, So fishing, I've always fished, um,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: you know, just just like anybody else. Family, farm ponds,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you know, just bob er and a hook, you know,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: worm catching bass. Born in Ohio. I was actually born
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in California. Um military family, so we bounced around a bit.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: UM came to Ohio. That's where my parents were from
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: family farm and p a. Much of my fishing was
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: with my grandfather's. Both of them would take me fishing.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: The one I didn't think that you could actually catch fish,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: because we'd go out and I'm pretty sure we went
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: out on his boat just to get out of the house,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: away from the wives and the grandma's. And then my
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: other grandfather didn't fish much at all, but we would
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: go to our family farm pond and it was like
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: lights out, you know, bass and and catfish, and we
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: thought we were heroes. So I had to independently different
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: fishing upbringings from my grandfather's. UM. My dad never really
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: fished all that much with us. He was more of
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: a hunter. UM. But but I I fished with my
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: grandparents growing up a lot. So UM I always fished,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and and I got into college and I met a
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: few guys and and one of my buddies in particular,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: he grew up in Toledo and he ran fishing charters
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and his family grew up fishing Walleye and salmon on
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, and he was a big time fisherman.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: We're just studying college. Um so a lot of stuff, man.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I I I basically studied, I think girls in baseball.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Um and then I went down to southern Ohio. So
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of hunting down there. I met
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: some guys, you know. So people thought I transferred out
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of college because everything but school interested me. Um. So
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I did go into college. I end up. I end
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: up going through the police academy. Uh. And that's what
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I do now. I do that now. Um as my job.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a local city city cop outside of Cleveland, and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I worked for a nice town. But that's what I do.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: So book smart stuff's not my not my deal. And
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: hands on, I worked, you know, I grew up doing
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: construction and and underground utilities and kind of working hard.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And then I just I found my way into actually
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the real estate stuff. I was working with the real
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: estate company and then in oh six oh seven, that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: kind of crashed out nationwide and my boss is like,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: you gotta do something. Man. He goes, basically, I've been
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: paying you, but the banks aren't paying us. So I
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: thought it was a good time, you know, to go
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: back as I always wanted to do it. So I
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: went through the police Academy and and that's what I did.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: UM actually started to think about a career job. So
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that's that's when I turned over and did that. UM
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: put back to back to college and fishing. I met.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I met this guy and and he's just he was
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: an outdoor full you know, hunting and fishing, and he
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: grew up fishing. So I always went out on his boat,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: used his gear, and we learned. I learned to fish
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, I learned how to fish for walleye
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and he It wasn't a tournament style, was just basically
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: a catch style. Just get out there, troll, get as
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: many fish as you can, uh you know, go home,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: clean them up, eat them, do do the thing the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: next time. You know, is there what is the difference
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: between the tournament style and the cut style. So Lake
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Erie is a phenomenal fishery just in general, but the
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: tournament style, you you transition from trying to catch just
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: as many fish as you can. And we would do
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: that oftentimes, like you'll troll and you'll troll spoons and
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: uh you you know, basically spread them out and spoons
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: are fantastic way to catch fish, but I as a
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: tournament guy, we wouldn't target big fish that way. So
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: you would target structure or deep water, using like bigger
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: crank baits and things like that, and not saying you
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: can't big fish. You want a few hogs and not
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a bunch of littles. Right, so you're almost you're almost
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: trying to get away from the schools. You're trying to
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: fish the edges of schools because one theory on it
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: is is that the big fish don't like to be
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: around the little fish and vice versa. If if if
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: you're a big fish with a bunch of little you know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: smaller fish, oftentimes males, it's just they're annoying them, especially
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: during like early springtime spot like the males are actually
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: pestering the females. So you know, in a tournament setting,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: are you're trying to get trophy fish, you want the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: big females, and they're they're just bigger all throughout the
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: year end in the fall, So fishing styles are slightly different.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: But but just to catch fish, it's basically, you know
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: how I got brought up? Can you shed a little
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: light on that fishery from when you were fishing with
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: your buddy back in college to what it is now.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: So the answers yes, and the answers yes and no.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Because I had no idea that we actually could, you know,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: had such a good fishery on Lake Erie. It was
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: just I never did that. My family didn't have boats.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: We weren't out there running Lake Erie like a lot
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: of these guys grew up doing. So. I just thought
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: it was yeah, would go out there and it was easy.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: So now I see that it's not so easy. But
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: once you know where they're at or know how to
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: do it, it's it can be easy because you can.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: They say that they're you know, a hundred million walleyes
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: on Lake Erie. And as you were talking about the ducks,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: they are doing interesting studies. Uh. There's a biologist with
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the ode and Ours names Travis Hartman. I've been talking
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: to him. He puts out where they're spawning, where they're
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: going to you know, feed throughout the course of the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: year because they all migrate from the shallow waters of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: the west, the all the spawning structure all the way
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: back out east, and then they work their way back
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I mean in you know, Pennsylvania, Buffalo, New York and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: things like that, and then they're coming back east and
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: they're it's all food related. It's food driven, but I'm
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: sure a lot of it has to do with temperature.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: But basically, to answer your question is, I don't know
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the specifics about walleye fishing and how it's changed because
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I'm relatively new into it. But I can tell you this.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: When I started was the beginning of like this O
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: two oh three hatch where these fish were just everywhere,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you know, phenomenal fishing. And then you know, around the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: mid like twelve to fifteen, they were giants, so everybody
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: thought you thought you were a hero, you know. And
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that's coming back now because now we've had this fifteen
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and sixteen hatch where it's just continuous year after year
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: of these good hatches on Lake Erie, and now these
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: fish are like five six pound fish. And then the
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: next two years. If you if you're a walleye fisherman
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the world and you wanted to go catch
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: some trophy walleyes and catch a lot of them, you're
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: gonna want to go to Lake Erie. It's just I'm
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: not gonna say it's easy, but when you find them,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: it can be easy, and you can they're healthy, just
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the fisheries healthy in general, and it's and it's thriving
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: out there. Wold be good little trip for you an Oscar. Yeah,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if should we invite seth Okay, So
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you get turned on the wall eyes and so I
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I go, I go to buy a boat. I want
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: my own boat now, I want to be I want
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I I'm tired of borrowing my buddies gear. I want
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: my own boat. So I transitioned from like stuff that
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: you should not be on the water with, you know,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: meaning it's almost like a boat that that some of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: these refugees are coming over from like Costa Rica, Like
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you should not be on Lake Erie on these boats,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like a garbage can with it with
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: a motor on it or something lake fast and and
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and you know the boats that I transitioned into the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: lake area with is just you know, that's for a
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: whole new day. But so I go to buy a boat,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and I bought The first boat I bought was aluminum boat,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and it was brand new, new motor started every time,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and that was something if I've made it to the lake,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: fired up the boat, fished and got back. We were
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: having a good day no matter what you caught out there.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: My first boats. If we made it like out and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: back without a call to the coast guard, we were
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: doing good. So this is a whole new thing. We
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: got a brand new boat, new gear, and I'm out there.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: We're just trying to do things, you know, by ourselves.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: And this is around that you know, twelve to fifteen,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: where these fish you're just catching giants. So you know,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: we went out there and I worked, you know, evenings,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: so my cousin and I would fish every single day.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I'm talking rain, sleet, or shine. If it wasn't blowing
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: thirty miles an hour out of the northwest, we were
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: out there fishing and we just acted like we knew
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: what we were doing. And we started to learn and
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: catch these fish, and like charter guys would call, hey,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you know, how do you guys do today? What are
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: you doing? Like they had no clue that we were
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: so new at this that they should never even me
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: talk into us, but they were asking us for advice,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: and you know, it just transpired into this thing where
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: where I just I just love to do it. So
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: we started fishing every day, and uh, I got into
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: getting a new boat from the boat shop that I
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: work at a little bit in and these guys started
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: to see me tinkering around with my boat. I'd always
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: put something on it. I'd put a new fish finder
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: on it, or or I changed it oil in the boat.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: So that's when they started, you know, hey, you want
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: to work here a couple of hours a week or whatever. Yes, Sure.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So I just kind of dabbled myself into the mix
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of this fishing industry, like with talking to these charter guys,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: are talking to the guys at the boat shop, and
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: an opportunity came about to run a tournament. A the
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: people who ran this boat shops tournament um just they
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: just didn't want to continue it anymore. They said, we're
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: not doing it. And the boat shops like, look, we
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: don't want our tournament to go by the wayside. Do
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: you want to run it for us? This year was
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: a tournament called so it was called the Vix Sports
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Center open Um. It was run Vick Sports Centers, the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: boat shop that I worked for, and they just had
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: an annual tournament just to have fun. With families. You know,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: they'd give away prizes. If you bought a boat from
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: them and you won, you would get prizes. If you
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: had your family on board, you would win extra extra prizes.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So it's just like a for fun thing, not big money. No,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: not big money, you know, a couple of grand whatever. However,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: many tournaments around US are all based on entry fees.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: So if you have fifty boats, you're gonna win a
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: lot more money that if you have ten. It's just
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: the way it goes. So UM all based on entry fees.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So I ran this tournament, had no clue what I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: was doing. I knew we had to put fish on
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the scales and at the end of the day tallied up.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, we had a white grease board. We're writing
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the names on there with the weights, and we just
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: we just bought thirty pizzas or something that day. We
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: just had a little you know fun in the parking lot.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: You know. It was just a grass roots go there,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: catch fish and see who one type thing. But that
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: was my first actual like tournament experience as as a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: tournament director. UM I fished a few tournaments myself. We
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: did okay, but you know, we currently fished for just
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the Lake Erie. Walleye Trail was not mine, it was
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: it was a circuit that we always fished caming up.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: It was the biggest, you know series on Lake Erie.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: But there was only four events at the beginning of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the year, and I would fish that with a partner
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we did, okay, we I think
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the highest I ever finished was like a third or
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: fourth place. But but my first tournament directing experience was
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: this fixed sports center open got it? What was the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: name of the tournament that the that the infamous occurrence
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: happened done? So, So that's the lake Erie while Eye Trail.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: It's what I currently so I I could back up
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a little bit. So I fished the lake Erie while
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I Trailed with a partner for several years and then
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: the guys running that event just had had enough. It's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: it's a lot, you know, so whenever your family dynamic
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: changes a little bit, they just they said, we're we're
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: done with it. And they were looking for a tournament director.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: So this is a tournament I think someone owns so
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: it is at that point in time, it was owned
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: by a club, so our club had to say so
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and they put it on. So funding was you know,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: probably I would imagine because a bunch of guys throw
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: some money in there to get a trailer and some equipment.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: So it was probably not just one person that shelled
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: out all this cash. It was a handful of guys
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: in the tournament directors or whoever owns a tournament is
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: putting some money in their pocket. Yeah, so our tournament
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: is like a fifteen percent so um, our tournaments are
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: three hundred bucks tournament turned that tournament's cut is about
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: forty five dollars. Now that's all expenses, and then you know, home,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: what's three bucks? Entry? Entry feast pays three d bucks yep, yep,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And the tournament pulls forty five bucks out and the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: rest of its prize money correct. And then obviously you
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: have some sponsorship bonuses and things like that. But everybody
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: thinks you do make money as a tournament director. You
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: do make money, but you're not getting rich by any means.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: You're covering the costs. You know, I have like a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch of helpers that help out every day.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: You know, you've got a gas to just get to
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: where you're going. All of the things that you provide.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: There's awards in there. Um awards are expensive now, they
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: just keep going up and up and up. But all
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: of these expenses come out of that forty five bucks too,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, you may walk
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: away with five bucks or something in your pocket. That's
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: all you're gonna make off tournament, the tournament itself, tournament
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: day itself, you're not making money off of. Where you
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: can make money is if you get a sponsorship or
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: a company that wants you to promote their business. That's
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: where the tournament can make money. But the actual like
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: cut off of the tournament is very minimal. But as
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the director owner of the tournament, you could sell a
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: sponsorship package and have all the signage be Bill's boat,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Marina or whatever. The of course, yeah, yeah, that's that's
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: where as a business you can make money in the
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: tournament world. It's not the cut off of the entry
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: fees because that's that's small. On a full field, you're
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: talking like three grand, you know, on a sixty boat field,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you're talking about three grand and you've got to cover
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of expenses that day. What what's the most
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: you ever made fish and walleye, what's the biggest purse
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: you ever landed. I personally, I think we finished fourth
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: place in a in a national tournament. I think we
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: brought home Maybecks, me and me and my partner, so
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: we split it up. It was probably about twelve fifty apiece. Um,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I personally have never done great. You know,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: if you can't beat them, be the tournament director. I
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: guess because the cheaters, what are the cheaters first names? Do?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I have to say? Chase and Jake? Chase and Jake.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: I don't even I don't even like saying it. It's
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: like taboo Chase and Jake. Uh. You heard as the
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: days went on following the story, like the amount of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: money they had won kind of seemed to get to
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: a point where I was thinking, really, but you already
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: knew that, right, Like you were at least aware of
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: them winning all this money. You know what they had, Yeah,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: they had, Like you heard, they had won hundreds of dollars.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: They won hundreds of thousands of dollars fishing walleye so
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: on Lake Erie. So the walleye, the Wallyye tournament game
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: has changed over the course, I would say even the
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: last like five years, maybe seven. But but there's several
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: big derby's that we run now um on Lake Erie
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: that you can make some serious cash. So, like, so
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I have a tournament right now running. It's called the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: It's called the Walleye Fall Abrawl, and I'm personally our
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: tournament is given away five irony. Yeah, the that's on
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, we're giving away five hundred and twelve
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: or fifteen thousand dollars in cash and prizes to people.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: And it's a thirty five dollar entry. So like the
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: game has changed within the last few years to just
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: be this mega Well it's thirty five dollar entry, right,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: So what happened? You go ahead, where's the money come from?
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Like sponsorships, um, and stuff like that? Right? So Blaster
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: the Blaster Company, for you know, they make like oils
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and degreasers and and and so they they've you know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: titled this and grabbed ahold of this Fall Fall Brawl
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: and the money's there. Ranger Boats Vick Sports Center they're
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: putting up the first and second place are both boats
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: that are over north of a hundred thousand dollars. So
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: you you, as anglers, anybody can join up for thirty
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: five bucks. That's amazing. That that's all the commitment to
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: extended from a cash perspective, well to throw your hat.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: And some people don't even fish. I mean they sign up,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: you know, their wives, and on the off chance that
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: they do come fishing and catch that fish, you know,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you you have the opportunity of a lifetime. And it
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: happened last year. You know a guy in in you know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: just his you know, small little john boat right out
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: of harbor of Cleveland. You could probably throw in a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: rock to where his boat was. You know, he won
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: a brand new hunter and dollar ranger boat that you know.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Another guy that finished because of what happened, because he
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: just he looked into some toad, just the big one man,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: that's this big fish, Just one big fish, just one
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: big fish. And uh a guy off shore last year
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: it was either like fifty five or sixty five grand
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: that he won for fifth place or six place. I
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: can't remember off the top of my head. But that's
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the cool thing about these Derby's is anybody could do it.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: You could show up on a weekend vacation if you're enter,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: if you enter into the tournament, you catch one, it's
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: it could potentially be life changing for somebody. But there's
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: also like pro style anglers doing these things are no
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: So there are, of course there are anybody who fishes
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: while I you know, and and they're gonna be around
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: eight Lake Erie. They're probably gonna enter, so you do
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: have the big name pros. But I can honestly tell
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: you that those guys haven't won. There's been some people
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: that have cashed the checks and uh a couple of
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: years ago a pretty well known charter guy one um
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: and this spring another charter guy one that's just you know,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: you up your odds. The more you play the lottery,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: the more chances you have to win the lottery. But
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: but the the average Joe's just the average guy that
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: goes out and wins one of these things. I think
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: it's just cool. It's the best story there is. And
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: they just the guy that won last year, his kid
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: posted something on Snapchat and the photo just went all
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: around our area is you know, here's the Fall Brawl winner,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: and it was it ended up winning, and it was
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: just cool as hell because it's just this fish laying
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: in the bottom of this tin can boat. And his
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: kid called it right off the rip, you know, and
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: they would have won a what they would have won
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty thousand dollar, hundred twenty thousand dollar
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Ranger four Virado. I mean, I don't know what the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: guy was in, but I know it was a small
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: aluminum boat, so, you know, huge upgrade. And this this
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: is just this fall Brow is just the big fish,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: just the big fish, not the tournament where these guys
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: ended up. So, but the interesting thing about those two
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: guys is they weren't like they stuck to these smaller
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: like regional tournaments and not like the national tour, which
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: kind of struck me as pretty telling about their like,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Oh that's yeah, man, because they're gonna get way more
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: attention focused on him in a big national walleye tournaments.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean. This is probably a million
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: dudes just fish small tournaments. Yeah, do you think Chester
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: is bad because he fishes? Saying that, I'm saying it
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: seems like like like it was a point that was
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: made about these guys that they never chose to like
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: even though they're doing so well and they never made
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the leap to like the resume would have led one
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to believe that they would have chosen to be which
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: you take on that, Jason, So there's a few differences
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: the national level tour um here, the National Walleye Tour,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: you fish with somebody on your boat that is not
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: your partner. You get what's called a co angler. So you,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: as a co angler would sign up, Hey, there's there's
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: a walleye tour coming to Bozeman, Montana. I'm going to
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: sign up as a code on the off chance you
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: get to fish with some of these great guys that
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you hear, you know, like the Keith Cabias or you know,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Corey Sprangle. You're like, hey, it's basically an educational charter.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: You heard of those guys Chester, those are the big names. Yeah,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I've done it myself because it's you want
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: to fish with these guys and you get randomly paired
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: up with somebody on the national tour here. So I
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: don't know that you would have the dynamic to jump
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: in that tournament and be able to do well. Now.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I know they fished in the National Walleye Tour when
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: it would come to Lake Erie, but they wouldn't travel
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to go do these events. And then the other national
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: tournament that you have is the Master's Walleye Circuit, and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: again they wouldn't travel to those, but they would fish
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: it when it would come two hours lake Erie in
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: the waters. What's his name is again? I'm not gonna
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: forget again. Jake and Chase. You'd be bummed if one
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: of their names is Dave, because you like the name Dave.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Chase and Jake. When did you how long? How long
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: have you been hanging? I mean, when did you first
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: meet Chase and Jake? So I met at them through
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the boat shop just just fish. I mean you would
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: you would fish against these guys. You would talk to
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: them at you know, weigh ends, and I would say
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I met him probably I don't know, five, five or
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: six years ago, maybe just fishing against them, and um,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't alway. I didn't always know them
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: as partners. You know, you could fish with other people.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: But but over the past couple of years they that
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: they were the team, right, And uh, I would work,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I work at the shops. So these guys
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: would fish. They had they had ranger boats. I would
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: work on their boats. I would help them out with this,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: you wrench on their boats. Yeah, yeah, I mean these
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: guys were in and amongst the crew. They would fish
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: my my series. Um, they were always at the shop
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: getting stuff done and they would get you know, new
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: boats every year. So I was in there either helping
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: rig rig asking questions, answering questions, you know, being a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: part of you know, I would say these guys and
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and there, you know, journey through this thing. And they're
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: not always fishing my tournaments, they're fishing other tournaments. But
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean I've known them for for several years,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: five six years. I've never fished with him, never went
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: in a boat with him, never went in a boat
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: with them. Did you when did they become uh known
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: as winners? Basically since I knew them, they were always
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So We've had several different series on Lake Erie that
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: would either you know, put on a few events or
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: they've they've kind of come and gone, they've run their course.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: But but they've always won, you know, or been the
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: leaders amongst the leaders or the place winners. So you know,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: to say that they were just like just this random
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: you know, showed up and started winning thing that you know,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't be the case. They've always kind of been
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: in the mix. So my theory on it is is,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you know, they probably are good anglers. I've never been
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: in the boat with them, but you've got to be
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: able to go and catch some fish to be in
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: these tournaments. And who knows, you know, when it changed
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: to kind of what it transpired out to be now.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: But I mean they've they've always been fisherman. You know.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Do you think they were interested in in cash or recognition? Yes, so,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: like it definitely is a recognition thing, um, because if
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you followed them on social media, it's always you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: they started their own YouTube channel and they came up
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: with with a little nickname and they started their little
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: fishing group, Cranking Hogs. Yeah, so if you knew him,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: like going back six years, like how long did it
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: take for the rumors to like start swirling around? They've
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: always been around so fun fact, the first tournament that
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: I ran, the people that did not want to do
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the tournament quit the tournament because of one of these guys.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Straight up. So this this guy was was fishing on
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: an inland lake and they have a a rule that
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: you have to be on the wall off the water
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: before like seven o'clock the day prior. So you lost me.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: So so to practice fishing for these events, let's say,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: it was on a Saturday or Sunday the day before that.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: You cannot be on the water past seven p i. So,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: so they disqualified him. And because he was scouting too late.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: So there's obviously different stories. But like the story that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: he told me was he was just there. He was
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: with like a young guy or whatever, and they were
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: taking photos and they were just on the water. Their
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: boat was not on the trailer. But they said, listen,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: you're on the water. It's past seven o'clock. We're going
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: to disqualify you. But there was always you know, that
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: that smoke in the air that that you know, he
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: was winning too much. He was cranking hogs for the
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: next day. So those guys this is before my time,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: we're obviously looking at him, or at least they were
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: there right. Um. So the boat shop that I worked
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: for was like, listen, man, you know, this is one
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: of our guys. He's running one of our boats, and
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: we want, you know, we don't want this tournament to
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: go by the wayside because of you know, this guy.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: That's why I started, you know, running the tournaments. That
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: one of the guys fishing after fishing after hours on
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: a scout day or being on the water after hours
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: on a scout day caused someone to abandon the tournament.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: That's like a pretty thinly held conviction. Well so, so
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: it just caused a stink, right the group, the group
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: that was running these tournaments was like, because he started
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: all this drama, you know I'm gonna you know, I
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: got disqualified. This is bs and blah blah blah. You know,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: he raised the stink and they're they're like, you know what, men,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: we we just won't. We won't do the tournament for you.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: God got it just like because it was it was
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: as you laid out earlier. It's a passion pursuit for
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the director. It's not a giant money maker. And they're like,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: this isn't even fun. Screw it was that. That's exactly it,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: because I can tell you that that had this man,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: we I could just just so much. But they don't
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: want the drama. You know who would if you're doing
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: this for fun. You're you're putting in all this work.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: If you were making a hundred grand or something, okay,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: you might deal with some headaches, but you're not like
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: you're literally like pissing off your wife or taking a
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: day away from your kids to make a couple of
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: hundred bucks, you know, and it's just not worth it.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: And this club in particular, I believe they're a hundred
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: percent club. They do it for the fun of the game.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: So they're like, we're not making anything off this. So
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, of the of the of the entrance fee
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: goes to prize money. You got it. You got it.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: And and and these people were just like, look, we
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to deal with this, and if you're going
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: to cause a stink, we just won't hold the tournament.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: You know, We're just not gonna do it. So so
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: I ran the tournament, and uh I ran the tournament.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I want to say maybe maybe sixteen or seventeen,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you know, So that's how you inherited the tournament. That's
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: how I inherited the tournament. And uh, fun funny thing
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: is he he won that tournament that I ran in
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: and so this was this was he both of them
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: or one. So so this this tournament was you could
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: not it was more than a one angler or or
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: a part in the tournament. So there was a couple
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: of people on the boat and these two guys were
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: not partnered up at the time. Um, and it, man,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I tell you it, just it piste people off. Was
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: it the one? Was it the one with the stocking
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: charge or not? Well, you gotta be more. Uh it
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: was it the dude in the video? Jake? No, No,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: that's all so developing a theory? Can I can I
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: jump ahead? Yeah? The chance? Is there a chance? Jake
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: was shocked to see those metal balls. It was shocked
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: to see the lead weights in the fish. So I'm
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: gonna get too far ahead of myself. No, no, but
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: but that's that's some meat and potatoes. And I haven't
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I haven't publicly said this to anybody, and I'm gonna.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it, and this will be the only
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: time I mentioned their names. Fair deal. So when I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: said I'm gonna inspect these fish, and I grabbed the
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: bag and I had it and I'm kneeling down, Jake said,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: where's Chase? And he felt alone? And I knew it,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and I knew it. I knew it in my gut
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: that something was wrong. I knew he felt alone. Mm
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: hmmmm mmmm. Make of that what you may, dude, that's
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a bummer. Yeah. Um, So you're trained at police work,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: to you man, so you pay attention to ship. I
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: just is that just talk to people all the time,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: and they're probably telling you half bullshit, you know what
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: I mean. I mean yeah, but everybody you talk to
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: people all the time, that's half bullshit too. It's just
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: it's just that's just the way it is. When you,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: like going back to that first tournament when you said
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: like a lot of people were pissed, is they're like
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: like overall like within that angling community, like is it
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: a tight knit group of people? Like yeah? And I
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: mean so there are people that literally quit fishing tournaments
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: because they're like, we can't win. That's how they felt,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: you know. And um and and I'm and I'm the
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: type of guy that like, I'm not gonna discriminate on
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you because you're winning, right. I don't know that there's
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: any type of like dishonesty going on. And I can't say, hey, man,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: you're too good for the game, because if you are
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: that good, that's bad for tournament fishing. Uh. If I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: block you, and if and if you're if you're you're
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: doing something and I don't have any proof that's bad.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Also because I'm just basically just acting willy nilly, So
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I try to always treat them fairly like I I
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: and in my own buddies, we'll tell me to a fault.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I gave them the benefit of the doubt because I
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: had no actual evidence that they were doing anything wrong.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: You probably no better, mean, but there must be six
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: ways to cheat, right or whatever? Like early on, was
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: there a they must be doing X, Like they're they're
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: catching fish elsewhere and hiding them somewhere, they're putting them
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: in alive. Well, and I don't know, like you know,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, like what was the sort of idea that
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: people had in the rumor mill? You name it? Yeah,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: all of it. And and I've heard, oh, they must
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: be meeting somebody. And then you know, it's not uncommon
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: to catch big fish in Lake Erie, but it's tough
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to do at this port on this day and catch
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: five of them, right, Most of these guys will go
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: out and they'll catch two or three or you know,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: or they'll catch five good ones. But you but you
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: hear this, We need the kicker, right, you need that
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: like ten pounder or whatever. That kind of will put
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: you away from the pack, because if you catch five
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: fish on Lake Erie, they're all going to weigh decent, decently,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: you know, close to one another, but you need those kickers.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: So it's like were they getting fish from somebody else
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: or were they you know, tampering with the fish or
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: were they catching the fish throughout the week and then
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: keeping them and then you know, get them out of
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: a cooler and way in them. I mean, there's just
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: like so many different ways on Lake Erie to do
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: dishonest things. Catch you know, too many rods in the water.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: You know who knows you know, So there's always this
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: element of of basically an honor system. But we would
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: combat that, and all of these tournaments generally use like
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: polygraph testing and lie detector testing. Now you're entering into
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: area that I'm very very interested in. I heard before
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: we get to the polygraph, before we get to the polygraph,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: like I've never been to one of these tournaments or
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: away and is there like standard x Y, I see
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: procedures that the directors are the people who are working
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: the tournament due to like inspect the fish or like
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter if it was a bass tournament or
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: a wallet whatever, like, because there things that are always
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: looking for so for right off the rip, the first
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: thing that you do when you show up in the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: morning is you drive through a line and we inspect
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: the boats. We inspect your live well. Um sometimes it
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: just depends kind of where we're at time wise, will
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: inspect hatches or coolers, um, but places where you could
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: potentially put a fish, we will inspect that day of well,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: give you a check in. Nobody gets a pass. Um. Again,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: it's it's how backed up it is on how fast
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: that goes. There's always people complaining about my boat got
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: tossed and this guy's boat got looked at type thing. Um.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: But but you just you try and work within the system.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: And I personally think randomized checks are good because you know, Steve,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: your mot your your boat might get you know, passed
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: by or checked and then your boat might get completely
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: looked at in the coolers and the hatches and where
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, So that's the first thing we do.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: The second thing we do is everybody leaves at the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: same time and I call you out. So boat number one,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: you guys are good to go. They have a boat board,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: so I know that everybody's leaving at the same time.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: So they're all fishing within the same hours. So you
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: can't show up at five am, get your boat checked
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: in and then sneak away and go fish and have
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: extra time. So everybody leaves and returns, we check them
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: in as they leave and check them uh and as
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: they return. Obviously that's for safety too. And how many
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: miles might they be? How many miles might they cover
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: in that span of time between check in, between checking
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: out and checking in on the earie could be a lot. Yeah,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: So so these guys, it's obviously it has to do
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: with the prize money. But but also these guys just
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: don't care if they if I told them that there
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: was a good bite going eighty miles away, if they
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: had enough gas, they would go there. I don't care
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: if they would be negative money at the end net
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: negative money to go and do it. They would do
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: it to win. So the point being on the distances,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: you're doing what you can, but who knows what the
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: hell people are doing right for those hours right, And
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: that goes back to the is it for the money
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: or the notoriety thing? That's when it's you're going to win.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: So they'll do whatever it takes to win and fish
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: wherever they need to fish to win. The two how
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: long ago did the um the two anglers Chase and Jake.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: How long ago do they become like associates where they're
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: actually fishing together. It's either been like two or three
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: years or three or four years. I mean it's not
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's more recent history than it is, just a
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: long time history. Had they each individ udually developed a
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: reputation on their own, I would no. I would say no, Um,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the one guy did, stemming back from the very first
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: tournament that I ever worked. You know what worked, worked
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: and took over because he's been around UM. Like you know,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know about the other guy until, you know,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: a couple of years back when they became partners. So
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: maybe explain quickly how this tournament works. Like you had
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: X amount of boats, they go out for the day,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: they bring back X amount of fish. You weigh um,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: just so people get a sense of like what happened,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: you know, so in our world, we we weighed five fish, um,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: and we we were leaving from Cleveland. This is our
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: championship event. You register, anybody can register, but the teams
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: that fish with us for the season are fishing for
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: team of your points. And this is just this is
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the championship. It all leads down to this basically. So
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: we leave out of Cleveland. I think we're at about
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: seven am to three. We have an eight hour window
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: they bring back their five best fish. And I always
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: say this boat per boat, per boat, So your team,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: you can catch as many fish as you want, but
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: we want you to bring back your five best and
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I don't I notice you don't care if they're dead
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: or alive. So on Lake Erie, UM, first off, while
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: are difficult to keep alive, especially when they're coming out
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: of deep water, and then especially in the summertime, it's
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: just near and possible. And then you throw in the
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: factor of these thirty forty fifty mile runs and two
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: or three ft waves, and it's just they're they're just
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: getting the crap beat out of them. So additionally to that,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the division has all tournaments on Lake Erie are harvest tournaments,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: so the guys keep them or we donate them. UM,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: so they cannot be released because they want them out
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: of there because just the numbers are really high. The
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: numbers are high, but also they've probably seen in the
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: past the fish not be able to make it. They're
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: just beat up, you know, so you bring back your
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: best five to the scales, we check you back in.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: You get in line and you weigh your best five fish.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: You come up there. If you have a big fish,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: will weigh that first, and then you put all five
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: of your fish up there, and then the team. It's
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: strictly by weight. It's not length, it's it's weight. And
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: if we have a tiebreaker, it's done by your big fish. Um.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: So then the you know, the teams stack up where
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: they may well. I think this tournament we may have
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: had eighty boats. So what's a what's a winning weight for?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that varies, but what's like an average
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: like good weight that you guys are bringing in on
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: this particular day. So, like you said, it number one.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: It varies by location, but also varies by time of
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: the year. So a winning wait for this tournament, it
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: was really tough fishing, um I was. I was thinking
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the high twenty eight pounds. I always get
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: generally pretty close. I'll say, take it'll take thirty three pounds,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: or it may take forty pounds, or you might say
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: in a couple of years, especially in the springtime, it
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: might take forty five pounds to win, um five nine pounders. Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: So one of my my tournament partner last year last
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: year weighed in a forty pound bag in here on
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: and I don't he was almost not not he didn't
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: even get a plaque, but he made a check for
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: forty pounds. And a couple of years back, like sixteen,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I waited with a partner back to back days forty
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: two pound bags. We weighed eighty four pounds for the
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: two days and we finished fourth. It's it's nuts. What
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: is Let's just take the let's just take the day
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: of the tournament. We're focused on what was the what
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: was the spread? So on those days when everybody's bringing in,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: let's say it's a day where forty one wins is
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: second placed, uh forty pounds fourteen ounces. Yeah. So it's
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: when the days that guys do good, generally a lot
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: of guys will do well. And then when the days
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: that guys do bad, a lot of guys will do bad.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: But you'll still see the people that get into them
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: have pretty consistent weights. So you may have five or
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: ten guys within like five pounds, give or take a
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: pound or two here or there, but you're not going
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: to see one guy that comes in with thirty eight
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: pounds and then the rest of the field has twenty five.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: It's just that that's an extreme outlier. Could happen, sure,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: but generally these guys are good and and there's sixty
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: of them, right, so you're not gonna have one person
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: that's just reinvented the wheel for the most are got it?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: What on the what on this day was what were people?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: What were the bags coming in at? So the last
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: place that we paid down to was tenth place. They
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: were at like sixteen point eight nine. And how much
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: how much cash is tenth place? I don't know, maybe
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: maybe five eight hundred bucks? And then how much cash
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: was first place that day? Eight thousand that's good day
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: of fishing plus a boat. Right, so there was no
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: not a not a boat, not a boat, eight thousand,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: just a check for eight thousand bucks. There's a lot
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: of efficient So there was a lot of contingencies on this.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Again it was our last event, but but eight grand
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: was the tournament payout for first place. All right, Here,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: here's the thing I need to that I've tried to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: explain to people. They weren't a contender to win the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: day they were in contender to win the series. Correct,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: explain that. So for the year, we have several sponsors
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: that pay out what's what we call the Team of
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: the Year. So Anglers will accumulate points throughout the course
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: of the season, and we take your best four tournaments
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: plus the championship and gives you the Team of the
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: year the top dogs and um, they were in contention
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: for that. They were in first place leading up to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: this event for Team of the Year. And that's is
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: that a good chunk of change? That's ten grand, So
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that's the bonus this Now we're starting to talk about
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: how you're making money in this because eight grand for
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: the tournament, ten grand for the Team of the year,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: and then we have several other contingencies that we're all
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: going to boil down to this. Would it have been
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: possible to walk away with would it have been possible
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: to walk away with eight teen that day? They had
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: they won? Not? I mean theoretically, could someone cap off
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: a win for the day and there's eight and then
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: also had achieved Team of the Year and then they
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: get an additional ten. So I had like seven teams
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: and this all plays in a factor and how this
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: all transpired. But I had seven teams or eight teams
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: that were within points to be able to win the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: championship for the team, and then actually obviously they would
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: have been contenders to win the tournament as well. So
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: the championships weighted heavier, so it's three points as opposed
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: to the general season, which is too. So I had
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: my top seven teams that these guys, had they done
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: well enough, they would have probably one team of the year,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: depending on how the other teams finished. So I had
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: all that mathematics worked out, and I had it all
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: written down, and and that kind of factors into how
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: you know, But I guess what a mask is. You
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: could potentially win both those purses. Oh yeah, absolutely. I
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: didn't know if there's anything to exclude you from winning
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: the ten and the eight. No, And most of these
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: guys that are in the in the mix are good
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: enough to win both. That's you know. They they're consistent
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: throughout the year, and they're generally going to be consistent
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: in the championship too. So now in the back of
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: your head is like, like that has a pretty big
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: impact on your year. Yeah, to walk with that kind
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: of cash next time someone yells a you bought fishing
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: too much. Be like, look at this. M hmm. These guys,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: these guys that do this, they make money. But they
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I say this all the time. They're pulling into the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: parking lot with two grand worth of equipment. You know,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: it's like there's no there's no shortage of money. And
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: these guys are not you know, super wealthy businessmen. They're
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: not all lawyers, they're not all doctors or something. These
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: are your salt to the earth carpenters. You know, you're
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: you're paving crews, your concrete workers, your police officers, your firemen.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: You know, there's businessmen mixed in here. There's real estate,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: property owners. But these are all aspects of life. So
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: these guys devote their life to this. They care about
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: this stuff, they love doing it. And it's not it's
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: not all about the money. But to walk away with
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: the eight thousand or ten thousand dollar check makes a
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: little bit, you know, more worth it to them. But
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's not just strictly based on that money. When
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I first the first clip I saw from the day
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: it was it was a thirty minute long long clip
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: that's almost filming, and you were and you were waiting.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of guys are getting weighed. As a tournament director,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: I think you mentioned this to me on the phone.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: As a tournament director, in order to enhance the drama,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: you might schedule out the weights in order to get
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: these these top contenders waded towards the end. Is that accurate? Yeah?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: So what I did was that I took took all
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: those teams that were in the running for Team of
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the Year, and I made a sheet for my way guy,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: my my guy that checks in the fish, and I said, hey,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: if these guys have a good bag, keep him aside.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: If these guys have a really good bag, keep him aside.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: If these guys have a decent bag, keep him aside.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Because I wanted the build up to be at the end.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: So if your Team of the Year and you walk up,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you know, your third guy on the stage, and you
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: put up a good number, it's just it is what
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: it is, right, Okay, they got you know all right
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: there in there in the lead, but there's no build
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: up there just out of curiosity, how many people are
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: hanging around for this like this particular like team championship
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: way in thing, and there was probably I don't know,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: you don't gather from the first video I saw Europe MCN.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: But everybody's standing back a little ways and it's not
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: until she is the fan that you go like, oh,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people. Yeah, well, these guys all
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: kind of hang back. They hang by their trucks or
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: you know, doing whatever, eating hot dogs, hanging out. But
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: you gotta understand, if there's eight boats two anglers per boat,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: there's hundred sixty you know anglers there, and then you
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: know they may have their wives or kids or just
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: some random fishermen they are coming back for the day
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: they want to hang out, you know. So you start
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: to accumulate a decent crowd towards the end of this thing,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, we try, we try to keep that.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: It was never like that before. But you know, so
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: we cook, you know, food, and I got my dad
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: out there slinging food on the grill just because I
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: want the people to stay. It's important for not only
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: the fishermen, but then you get things like sponsors, and
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: that's how your circuit gets bigger as being to updraw
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: the crowd. So you know, that's that's important to us.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: When they came up with their bag. It seems that
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: like in the crowd, you can you're already hearing a murmuring,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: there's guy says, let me see those fish, right, or
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: I hear guys say I caught fish that looked a lot,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: or caught fish looked just like that in reference to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: the weight. So when when they came up and your
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: m seeing the event, they're bringing their fish up, did
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you know something's going on? So I didn't know in
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: a sense of did you know that there was something
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: going on? But but I'll back up a little bit.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: So I was paying very close attention to the fish
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: in general because I'm trying to make it exciting for
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: the live feed and for the anglers. So the second
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: place team that was running for Team of the Year,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: they put up a fifth place number. So I knew
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: that these guys that were in first place going into
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: this event needed to be within five spots of them
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: in order to capture the Team of your title based
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: off points. So when I saw them put up a
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: fifth place number, I'm like, Okay, they need to be
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: tenth place or above and they're gonna win. So you
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: actually hear me say it, I'm like, you need sixteen
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: point eight nine pounds. I think that was the number
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: off the top of my head, in order to capture
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: the Team of the Year. So when they're putting these
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: fish from the bag to our way basket, I'm like, okay,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: I'm doing some quick math. I'm like, all right, four pounds.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Four pounds, Okay, like they got Probably that's that that
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: real consistent. You're doing that base off just off the
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: scale or off looking at so that that was the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: number they needed was roughly seventeen pounds that day, roughly
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: seventeen pounds to take home the Team of the Year title.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: And how long did they know that that's what it
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: was going to be. They did not know that, so
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: so you didn't announce it and in an hour went by.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: So this is part of this is part of like
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: the perfect storm, right, And I've heard I'm not out there,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: I wasn't one of the guys, but I've heard it was,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: you know, hey, how did you guys do today? You know,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: And and nobody would tell them, nobody said a word
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: to like how much or how good their day was.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: So when they got in and I and I told them,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, I want you guys to weigh last.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: I kept them there. One of my guys got them
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: off the boat and kept them in a tank and
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: waited to the end to weigh their fish. So they
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: had no clue how the day was going to transpire,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: no clue, so, you know, just just knowing that and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: knowing how this all worked out, it was it was
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: just like the perfect storm that if in fact they
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: put all those weights in the fish, right, because technically
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: nobody's been proven guilty of anything here, if they did that,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: they did it based off of what they thought they
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: needed for the day, and they thought they somehow we're watching.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: I thought they could somehow watch what was going on
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: and be like, we need sixteen ounces. So it's that's
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: true normally because I put on a live feed and
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: guys can watch and ultimately it takes a long time
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: to get through all of the anglers. But in this
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: perfect storm situation, I wanted them to weigh last because
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: of the drama of the event. So when they got
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: from their boat, I put him in the tank and
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: to keep their fish, you know, healthier or wet, and
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: they couldn't change it. It was from that second my
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: guy went and grabbed him off the boat and brought
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: him over the tank. It was locked in that. Those
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: are the fish that they were weighing. They had no
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: access to them, they had no access to them. Well,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: they kept, they kept, They had the fish the whole time.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: They were in possession of them. But they were there.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: They couldn't There was nothing that could be changed with them,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: their visible. The problem for them was everybody did shitty,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: so they overcompensated a little bit. You got so everybody.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: So the fishing was tough. Okay, the days leading up
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: to it, we had some northeast winds. Guys weren't able
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: to pre fish and that's essentially practice. So nobody really
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: knew how it was going to pan out. But but
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it sucked for a lot of different boats and the closest,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the best boat of the day was twenty eight pounds
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: in some change, whatever it was. They beat them by
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: almost five six pounds. That's a lot. Yeah, an extra
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: extra did they not need? Did they not need the lead?
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: So they would not have won the tournament. They would
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: have if if you take out the extras that were
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: in the fish and just wade the fish, they probably
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: would have been somewhere in pound ballpark. I would guess
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: and would have had Angler the Year and would have
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: had Angler of the Year. And with their bag way,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: I believe thirty three point nine one. So is there right,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: You're like, well, so, so yeah, I was. As I
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: was saying that, when they're in the tank and they're
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: putting the fish from the bag to the basket, I'm
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: doing quick math in my head and I'm saying, okay,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: five fish times four or five pounds, you're gonna be
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: in twenty or twenty pound ball. And you're making that
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: guess knowing what having looked at you know what basically
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: what a fish is gonna weigh. So I I do
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: a pretty good job. It's my It is my job.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: When you're coming up and I look at my computer
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: screen and I see that the big fish number is
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: that like seven point eight, and you got a big
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: tail hanging out of that basket, it's my job to say, oh,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: here we go. You know, we got one, you know,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: looking for the big fish of the day, eight point two,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: We got a new leader. If I'm not doing that,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: if I'm not doing that, then then our tournament is
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: just the same old turn that everybody else is having.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: So I owe it to these guys to just be
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, as exciting as possible your ass off in
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the videos. I'm I'm trying, you know, because it's you
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: do a good job. It's awesome. Like these guys are
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: not only fishing my events, but they're my friends. So
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: the question everybody always asked me is like, oh, well
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: aren't you doesn't it suck you're not fishing anymore. I
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: get to be a part of the championship bag every time.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: So those dudes are high five in each other, they're
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: high five in me. They're grabbing ahold of me, giving
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: me a hug. I mean, it's it's awesome, you know,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: And uh, that's part of it too, So I really
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: want to do a good job at that. Are they
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: weighing the fish one at a time? No, So we
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: weigh in the big fish first, that's one at a time,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: and then they add the other to make your five
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: fish basket, and then we ate weigh all five. So
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: any so, so Chase and Jake step up. One of
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: them stufs up whatever hill and he's gonna put his
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: biggest fish on the scale and you see the read out.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Did you think that fish does a weigh that I've
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: ben look at these fish all my life. So people
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: people say when they watch the live feed that that
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: they can't tell. But the wind was just sucked right
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: from my sales man because it was seven nine oh.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: And there's just zero chance that it was seven nine
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: oh because you've been looking at too many fish. You know,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: eight pound fish are are those fish on lake area that?
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: And they're just a solid, healthy lake erie fish. Now,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: the class of fish that were coming in was the
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: stock five pounders that are on lake area right now.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: You can go out there and if you want to
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: make some some walleye gumbo, you're you're gonna catch. Yeah,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: the perfect fish to do that with. These were not
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: those eight pounders. And to weigh seven nine oh, you
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: can tell. You can tell by the tail, you could
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: tell by the head, and it just wasn't there man.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: So I I just the wind was just sucked right
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: from my soul at that time. And I'm what do
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: I do? You know, what do I do? So they
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: put the big fish into the basket and weigh them
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: all and I'm just like thirty three and some change
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: would have almost thirty four pounds. I'm like, no way,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: And what was the what was the second place at
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: that point in time in some change that's ro off
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: and and they're the similar class of fish or like
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: these fish look like those foot fish, but they're somehow
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: you know, seven pounds eight pounds heavier than everybody else. Right,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: we know they're like going for the team of the year.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Where were they? How are they standing for the individual
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: tournament top dog? They Yeah, they would have won. They
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: would have won by six pounds. They would have for
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: for that particular they would have won the tournament and
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: the Team of the year and walked with eighteen okay
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: without not without the way I'm trying to figure out
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: if they were if they got real greedy and they're
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: trying to get both purses. So they did, Yeah, that
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: that was what happened, But they would have been if
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: the fish that they weighed were unaltered, they would have
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: been in the money. And they also would have one
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: Team of the year because they would have been above
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: sixteen point. But they wouldn't have won the individual. But
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: they you know, keep in mind, no one knows. Maybe
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: you know that that um the first time they did this. Yeah,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: so you know what I'm saying, like because in my
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: head I'm like, oh, if they just wouldn't have done it.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: But I'm like, well, if they wouldn't have done it,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: they might have never even been in that situation anyways,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: because it might have been habitual, right, unless it was
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: just like yeah, he had to be like was it
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the first time? Did you get caught? The first time?
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: I mean the fact that like, not only were there
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: there's big lead weights, but they're like, oh that's not enough,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: I gotta shove some blaze. And the one that the
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: one that got me was the pair of pliers. So
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: so let's back up to back up to the moment. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: I want to get to all this stuff. But you
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: haven't touched one of the fish yet. No, okay, So
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: he lays it up and you're like, you're like the ky,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: that's not right. They lay them all up. That's not right. Uh,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: this all happened very fast. What was so? So give
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: me a play by play. What was the next thing
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: you did? He all five around the scale and you're like,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: no way. So yeah, I just I tried to play
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: it off like it was all good, and I said, hey,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: get some photos. I want you to hang tight because
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: I wanted to look at him. I know, I knew
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: in my gut that just something was wrong and I
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: had to do something, Like I've I'm just in my mind,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing all the all the anglers throughout the whole
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: course of the you know this year and last year,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: you know that you gotta you gotta protest them, you
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: gotta do this, you gotta check those fish, you gotta
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: you know, you gotta do something about this because I'm
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I'm literally losing anglers because they continue to win and
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: guys are just like, I'm done with it. What was
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: the crowd reaction? They were pissed, and it was it
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: was like silent. It was when you have a team
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: that puts up a good number and not one single
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: person in the crowd is happy for him. Exception, I
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: think it was like my buddy's mom there. She was
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: like she's like and he's like, he's like, we're not
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: room for those guys, you know, but but like nobody's happy.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: You know that there's a problem, and and and it
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: all falls back on me because everybody wants me to
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: do something about it. It's not it's not an easy
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: spot to be in, man, No, Like that's tough. This
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: whole year and again, so they were disqualified from an
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: event um last year, the Fall Brawl. I now run it.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I did not run it last year. So they were
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: disqualified via the results of this polygraph. And this has
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with when they got disqualified for the
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: late night fishing, nothing to do with it. So there's
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: these incidents, right, But I have no first hand knowledge
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: as to what took place. And again, you know, could
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I say I don't want you to fish? That's what
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: everybody wants me to say. But I'm treating these guys
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: as equals because I have no actual knowledge that anything
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: was wrong. I I hear this story. Hey you were
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: disqualified from that event, but why did did you not
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: wear your life jacket? Or did you you know, alter
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: the fish like to to ultimate ends of the spectrum.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: You can't get that piece of knowledge. No, is there
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: a standard set of questions that are asked in those
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: polygraphs or I think it all depends on, you know,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: the the actual tournament and then the examiner, and then
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: you know, there's there's could have been did you drink beer?
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: Of course? Right? Did you ask did you have three
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: rods out? And then realize you add to me rods
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: out and pull a rod in or whatever. Right, So
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: so that and that's my point, Like, should being disqualified
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: from an event be a life sentence, you know, because
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know what they did. And I've always maintained
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: this with whoever I talked to, Like, if you did
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: something wrong, that's okay. Everybody will do something wrong at
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: some point in time in their life. But if you
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: cheat people out of money, screw you like I like
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: I I and I always say, I'll treat this as
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: if it was my money, but it's not my money,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: it's your money. So if you're treating or cheating people
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: out of money, I have a huge issue with that.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: I don't want you any part of our events. And
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and I could never say that that is actually what
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: took place. So I so I allow these guys to
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: fish Like my own buddies. I could look show you
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: text threads where like my buddies are like, you gotta
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: get these dudes out of here. This is bullshit, and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, just shut up. I don't have anything
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: to exclude them with, and it wouldn't be right for
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: me to do that. I mean, I felt that, you know,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: and I defended these guys because I had no proof
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: that they did anything wrong, and I'm not going to
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: treat somebody differently because they're doing well. You know. Is
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: there a reason you rely on polygraphs for this kind
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: of stuff rather than something like a random fish inspection,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: like every every bag that comes up, I'm gonna say
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: one of these fish and kind of feel around and
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: see if anything sketchy. So that would give you one
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: verification that somebody didn't cheat in that way on that fish.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: So first of all, your way five, so you got
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: a one in you know, chance of catching somebody if
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: they didn't alter one fish. And then there's so many
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: different ways that somebody could do something dishonest at a tournament.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Altering the fish, in my opinion, would be like the
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: last one. The first one would be calling your buddy
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: and saying, hey man, they're biting over here, get over here,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: and then you just catch good fish. The next one
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: would be probably using too many rods to catch those fish.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: You know. But I would guess if anybody was doing
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: anything wrong on the event, it wouldn't be loading the fish.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: That's a good explanation because i've i've I hadn't thought
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: of that. I kept been like, well, it seems like
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: none of this would be an issue if they didn't
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: use magnets or some sort of metal detector of some sort.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just like it's such a uh you
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: can't control all these other things. It's the it's the
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: most like antiquated way to cheating event would be to
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: load of fish. But also at the same time, it's
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: one of those where that's a question on every every
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: test did you alter the fish in anyway? And if
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: you're passing those tests, you have to believe that they
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: were doing things honestly, and we have you know, it's
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the good old boys system with I'm not on your
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: boat with you, but you have these tests and you would,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: you know, verify the results based on them. So you
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: just assume that they're, you know, doing what their job is,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: you know, Okay, uh, you tell them to go hang
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: their fish up for some pictures. Known what happens. They
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: take a few photos and you start hearing the crowd grumbling,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and that's when it's like, uh, I'd like
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: to see those fish. Let me see those fish. We
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: had the same fish as those that didn't weigh that
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: whatever I'm paraphrasing, but no, you're you're quoting. That's exactly
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: what these guys are saying, you know. I mean, so
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I say, listen, I want to I want to check
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: those fish, you know, And he's like, oh, this is bullshit.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: This has got to stop. Are you serious? And I'm like, yeah,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: I want to check the fish. So I get only
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: one of them is there? Yeah? The other guys he
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: headed to the truck the minute you said I'm gonna
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: check those fish. Yeah, because he was doing photos. He
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: was doing photos and then you know, he bounced, um,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: which should be unusual to bounce in that moment. So
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: the weird thing is with these guys. Yeah, so you look,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: just look at human behavior, right, if you just want something,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: you're proud of it, like you want to be there,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: you want to be part of that moment, because that's
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: mostly what these guys fish for. You know, you don't.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: You don't go out there and put up a first
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: place bag and not even weigh your fish or be
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: up on stage, like who who does that? But that
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: was that's how this went down. And you're not even
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: a part of being on the stage. You just one
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: team of the year. You just won first place in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: the tournament and you weren't even on the stage, Like
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: what do you have to do? Know, I mean, so
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: to take the human behavior elements so that you have that.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: And I say, I want to look at these fish,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: and he's just like he's pissed. He's pissed at me,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: like I didn't protests. I didn't see that he's protesting
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: the decision, the angle, yeah, the anglers. Like he's pissed
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: at me, like are you kidding me? You know, because
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: these guys are always giving me an as sache, like
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: this has got to stop. And I'm like, ah, I
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: want to look at him, you know, and I'm not.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say that I did anything to
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: be like a hero, but I was very uncomfortable. I
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: didn't want to do this. And and if I'm wrong,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: I am the asshole, you know, if I'm if I'm
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: looking at these fish, and and if I slice that
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: fish open and I'm wrong the whole I probably don't
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: have a tournament anymore, you know, especially if you did
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: just the one person right exactly. And and so that's
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. I'm all always trying to not treat
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: these people differently than than the rest of the guys.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: So I said, I want to look at them. So
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: the first fish I get out and I just looked
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: to see the condition of the fish. Is it alive?
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: Does it look like we call it, you know, zombies?
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: Do they look like a corpse? Because walleyes have color,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: you know, nice green color. You can sometimes if they're
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: on ice, you could see the spots where the ice
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: cubes were sitting. I mean, I'm looking at the fish
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: to see what the condition is and it and it
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: and it looked kind of like a zombie, you know.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: It just it looked like a beat up walleye. So
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: I put that fish in the basket and I pull
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: out the second fish out of the bag and the
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: same thing. I'm just like, man, no color looks looks dead.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: You know, the eyes the tail fish developed ammonia. When
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: they're in the live well, their fins get red and
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: you could tell, you know, when they're in a live
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: one they come out of the livel you can see
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: that red redness on their gills, on their tail. So
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at this and I take my hands and
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: I actually like I squeeze the fish because you know,
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: I wanted to just feel if it was firm, like
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: when a fish is on ice or it's or it's fresh,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: it kind of has like a firmness to it actually,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: Like so when you eat fish, you like to do
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: it out of cold water because they're not mushy or
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: if you freeze, like people fish for croppy and they
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: say they get mushy if you put them on ice.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: So I just want to feel the fish. And I
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: feel this like hard like ball in the belly of
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: this fish, and I'm like, oh my god, Oh my god.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: I knew. I knew. Was it was it subtle? No, No,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: it just wasn't like a crawdad walleyes are not eating
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: like baby turtles or something, you know. I just I
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: knew immediately what had what was going on. I just
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: knew it because you match that up with the weight
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: of the fish not being consistent with the actual size
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: of the fish. So it didn't it didn't meet the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: eyeball test. So then I I touched this thing, and
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god. So I didn't have a knife.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: Here's where your leatherman comes in. The leatherman did not
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: come from within the fish. The leatherman I've heard, okay,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: I've heard people say multiple people talk about the players,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: but I never saw players come out of the fish.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: So I didn't know what people are talking about. Yeah,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: so that's just one of those that's one of those
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: Internet stories because you see the picture of the fish.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: So so my buddy gets me this leatherman and he
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: hands me this thing and it's got to bust it
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: off tip. It's like the most garbage knife that you
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: could even imagine. And and you see on the video,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: I swiped this fish like with some pretty serious aggression
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: because I was pissed. I knew, you know, I did
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: not go searching in the fish for something. I knew
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: that there was something in there or that I needed
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: to get out. So I swiped this fish open, and
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: I grabbed I grabbed the weight, and I you know,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: obviously this is where the internet caught fire. Raw emotion
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: from like my soul comes out because everything that anybody
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: had ever said about these guys has now just became
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: public knowledge and a hundred percent fact. There was no polygraph.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: There was no he said, she said, there was no.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: Oh he was on the water later, Oh he met
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: up with a different person, or oh, he texted and
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: and or he bought a fish from a charter captain,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: you name it. I've heard all the stories, right, there
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: was no stories. There was weights that I'm yanking out
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: of the fish. And that's you know, and that's when
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: you hear we got weights and fish. Get the fuck
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: out of here. Because I I hated what I just
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: what I just found out is these guys duped me.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: You know, they were they were pulling it over on me.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: And this is my event and I was the one fooled.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: And since I allowed it, I allowed some impropriety in
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: my event. And it's sickened me, you know, because I
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: care about these dudes, and I've I've said this, but
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: like these anglers, they are my dare my boys there.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: You know. They brought me through. So last year I
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: had cancer, Okay, I didn't tell anybody. These dudes found out.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: They made a charity event in my honor. Um we
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: raised funds. I was financially stable. We raised funds for
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: somebody else and we continue that now year after year.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: They cut my grass, they brought me food, they showed
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: up at my house. I love these dudes, and and
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: these guys took away all those moments, you know, standing
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: on stage with your kids and sharing that first place.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: Anybody who's ever taken second place should have taken first.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: Anybody who's ever taken third should have been second. Anybody
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: who was out of the money should have had a
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: couple of bucks. They pour their life and soul into
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: these events and and and to take not the money
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: that time that you can never get back, because there
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: there's that element you don't know. And all of these
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: dudes brought me out of the worst time of my
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: life and got me through it. And I care about
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: this stuff more than you could even imagine, just because
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: of the people who are involved. It's not about making
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a couple of hundred bucks on a weekend. It's not
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: about a sponsorship. It's about the dudes that care about
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: the sport and care about me. And I want to
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: provide the best tournament on lake Erie because it's they
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: deserve it. These guys deserve it, and lake Erie deserves it.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: And that's that's what that boiling up, that's what came
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: out because you almost at them. Yeah, it was that
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: like an umpire throwing you out of the game. I
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: thought you your instinct was to give him a haymaker
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: and then instead to the umpire. Sean felt it was
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: just umpire from the start. Yeah, but I mean it
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: might be a beautiful hybrid of the two. I'm not sure.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: I think that it's an umpire uh more than a haymaker.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: I never, I never. Yeah, I played baseball for for
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: a long time, so that's what came out. Uh. You know,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: I may or may not have been ejected from a
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: few games. So you're like, now the tables have turned. Yea, yeah,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: so like these dudes, these do I just they're they're gone.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted everybody, everybody to know that they're gone. You know,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: it's just in case nobody saw what happened. Like they
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: weren't subtle about it. It wasn't like they slipped a
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: few split shots in there. These are like giant the
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: wights and twelve to twelve ounce and in eight out
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: in eight ounce weights is a lot. Yeah, it's a
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: lot in that fish, in that fishing, in those strategies.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: Is there a reason to have those weights? No, not
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: that heavy. So we would we would typically use two
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: ounce sometimes even three ounce weights to essentially we call
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: it snap waiting to get your baits deep um, but
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: but no, we there would be no reason to have
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: a twelve ounce weight on the boat even. I mean
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: some guys will fish with down riggers. But then you're talking,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: you know, pound weights. What what was up with the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: what was up with the fish filets they had stuffed
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: in there. I think the theory that I think is
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: that was padding. I think it was just simple. I
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: think it was padding, yeah, to like to to help
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: the look of a lead ball in the stomach. Yeah,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: it was like the wadding on a musket ball. Were
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: the like was it just inside the body cavity or
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: in the stomach like or did it just you cut
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: it open? So yeah, I mean I'm not like a
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: surgeon or anything, Like, I'm just wondering how they jammed
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. Yeah, I would imagine. So I haven't
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: personally done it, but like I know guys have tried,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: and they're like, I don't. We don't even know how
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: you could do this. It's hard to stuff a weight
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: down the throat. So, um, you know, I have no idea. Honestly,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: it's like I want to be so far away from
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: the situation, but guys have, like they've tried, Like, we
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: don't even know how they could do it in the
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: in the video, the what gives it almost like a
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: um like a level of emotion on part of the
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Greek tragedy is the way that Jake hangs his head
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: and silently stands there absorbing a massive amount of abuse.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: What uh? When did that end? I don't think it
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: ended until they It still hasn't ended. To take a
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: look at social media. But when did it be that
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: he How did it come to be that he left
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: that circle of like someone's gonna beat his ass? Yeah,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: So there was a guy there that that took control
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: of the situation. He's a he's a county sheriff and
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: he he said, you know, we gotta we gotta treat
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: this thing as if it's a crime. So he kind
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: of pulled him off to the side, made him hang
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: there until some local law enforcement showed up, and and
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: you know, they were still badgering them verbally. But that's
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: the image of them sitting on the side of the curb. Yeah,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: I think, So, So what what criminal charges will come
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: out of this wanton wanton waste? Right? Probably for the
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: fish filets would be like one of many. So what
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: they've been charged with was unlawful possession of like wild
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: game something of that nature or something like that. Well,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: what was the unlawful possession? I think like the fish filets.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: So you can't some lakes like Lake Ontario salmon fishing
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: at least at the water. Yeah. So so that may
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: have been part of that because they they've also obscured
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: the identity of the fish. Maybe it I believe it's
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: still had the skin attached. So there's just so many
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: rules and regulations and that the division knows by heart
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: that I obviously don't. So they were charged with some
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: kind of uh possession of those fish filets or doing
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: whatever I did with the fish flace. And then mostly
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: all the other charges were theft related charges um, and
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: uh anything serious Yeah, I mean grand theft over over
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: a thousand bucks, you know, felony level. Um. They both
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: of them were charged with the same thing, I believe,
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: and uh, it's in the court system now. I think
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: they actually had they had court recently. So did they
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: seize their equipment and boat and trucks and all that stuff?
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: They seized the boat, I know that. Um. I don't
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: know if there was any equipment on the boat. UM,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: I don't believe a truck was sees just the boat
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: and maybe whatever equipment was on it, and there was
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: a court date. This isn't gonna come to a jury trial, right,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: It's their right to do that. But you know that's there,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: that's their their call. Anytime you get a jury trial,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: it's because somebody wants one. You know, what a how
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: are they doing? Nobody knows so honestly, I have asked
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of people that know them. So the owner
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: of the boat shop a very good friend of mine.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: He obviously sold this guy a dozen boats over the years,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: knows him and uh, you know, considered him a friend.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, are they okay? Because like, honestly,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: I don't to take the beating that they took online.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: It's just tough. I mean, do they deserve some beating, sure,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: but I don't want to see anybody like hurt themselves
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: and and and you know, private life, family life suffer
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: because they've made a mistake. It's just one of those
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: things you just don't want to see if if if
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: one of the guys like did something or hurt themselves. Man,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's I don't care what you did,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: what mistakes you made that affects a whole lot of
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: other people, and I don't want to see that. So
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: I did hear that, you know, there's at least one
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: of the two guys is struggling a little bit um
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: keeping keeping the sanity amongst all the beating, you know,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: and then one of the guys, you know, maybe I
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: hear kind of just whatever. So I don't know that
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: to be true. It's just I put feelers out. Did
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: they issue any kind of public apology or anything like that. Nope, No, No,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that you ever will hear
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: anything from him. Um, I don't know that they've talked
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: to any law enforcement. I don't know if they talked
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: to anybody except for whatever attorneys they got. And you
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: probably will never hear from him again. I don't know.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that you'll at some point reach out
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: to him. I will never reach out to him, um,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: like morally, like I want to, but I just won't
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: do it because I don't want that to be misconstrued
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: that I was like trying to harass them. Like let's
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: say they don't answer the phone and I and I
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: keep calling, I don't I just won't. I just won't
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: do it. You know, as long as they're doing okay,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: or somebody that knows them says they're doing okay, that's
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: that's fine. Is your What does this mean for your tournament? Now?
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: I mean you you're gonna forge ahead. You gotta rebrand it.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: Do you expect to be hundreds and hundreds of anglers
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: at the next one? Like no one at the next one.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: So I think that we're going to be stronger than
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: we ever were. Two reasons, because some of the guys
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: that did not fish will fish now. I've had people
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: from other states reach out to me. Mostly everybody has
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: said that, like, we're proud of what you did. Thank
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: you for catching people and keeping it honest, because I've
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: always branded my tournament with transparency and just honestly, like
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: if I screw up, if I screw up something on
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: the roster, you hate me and I didn't get you
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: on there, it's my fault, man, I will fix it.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: And and but but I've said I I will not
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: stand for somebody stealing from you guys. You know anything
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: else we can work through no matter what. And and
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people like that, A lot of people
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: appreciate that, like, I just truly want to do it
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: for the right things, and I think it's I think
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be stronger than ever. You know, I've had
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: nothing but positive feedback. Has have more solid accusations emerged,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: like as anyone talked about past winds, you know where
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: they're like, well, now that it's a big deal, let
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: me tell you what I saw him do one time
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: or yes again. Though it's all just like strictly hearsay,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: so you hear all of the stuff about you know,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: I've got text messages, Oh you know this guy tried to,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: you know, ask me if I had any big fish,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: And that's just all. That's just noise really. But what
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: it does do is it makes all of the anglers
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: think about times where they had some questions because number one,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not at every tournament. I don't run every tournament,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: and number two, I have other things to think about.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: So if somebody comes up with a fish that might
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: not look great, it might just be part of the mix.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: You know, if you wait in second and put up
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: thirty three pounds, I didn't know that it was an
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: outlier until the very end, when you put up thirty
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: three pounds. Now those fish are gone, right. But what
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: I mentioned about the perfect storm is I had them
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: wait last, not because I thought they were doing anything wrong,
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: but because I wanted the drama to be there for
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: the event. And when they wait last, and it was
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: such an outlier. Now you have all the people saying no, no,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: so you know they're bringing to my attention at this
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: time or that time or whatever. It's all there's no
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: real way to go back and see what happened. But
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: but yeah, everything these guys have ever won is now
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: drawn into question. Do you do you anticipate this having
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: any kind of large scale effect on fishing tournaments as
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: a whole, like around the country or so? I think
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: a couple of things. Yes. Number one, I think it's
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: a deterrent in general because nobody, no, no, if you
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: were a dude that's got away. We got an idea
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: for how to win a tournament, that's not gonna happen.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: Nobody in their right mind wants to become a Halloween costume.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's I mean, you could you
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: the beating these dudes took in our continued. I mean,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: you don't know how badly I wanted to post all
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: the photos and stuff people sending me Halloween costumes, and
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just like this is just priceless stuff.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: But I can't, you know, I just got to maintain
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: my my you know, stability here. It it's just nobody
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: wants that to happen, you know. See in the back
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm trying to think of how to
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: turn this into a musical. And fishing. I love tournament fishing.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: It's fun. It's a group of people. Like you're saying,
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: you learn a lot. You're forced to get outside your
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: comfort zone and figure fish out when you may not
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: normally do that. But yeah, it's it's hard when you
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: know you time all this money to fish and wildlife
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: and people like these guys pull stuff like that. You know.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: It's just so here's the thing, right, we all grew up,
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: we played sports and we were competitive in some fashion.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: Well now, and I say I say this all the time.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: We're old, we're fat. You can't go play baseball or
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: football because you're gonna you have to go to work
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: on Monday, right, So imagine finding that that niche. Some
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: people it's competitive shooting, some people do acts, throwing, whatever,
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. Some people play cornhole, I mean, you
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: name it. People find competition as they transition through life. Well,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: for us, it's fishing and and that adrenaline rush at
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the morning. Guys got their music playing
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: national anthems, rolling, you know, and then you send them
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: and you know, you've got a thirty forty mile trip
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: and you're going sixty in this boat. It's just the
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: adrenaline's pumping, man, So you're jacked up. And then factor
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: that in with you just had a kid. You took
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: that day away from your kid, right, no matter what,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: whether it's him babylin or possibly saying dada for the
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: first time, or maybe maybe it's something else. You know,
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: throughout the course of their life, you're taking that away
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: from your kid too. So these guys are investing not
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: only time and money, but then life experiences because they
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: want that competitive thing back in their life. You need it.
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: People are addicted to a lot of things, right, Some
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: it's alcohol and whatever and bad stuff. Like we're a
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: we're adrenaline junkies, right, You're you're addicted to going out
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: in the outdoors and hunting and getting out of your
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: comfort level and eating. You know, all this game that
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: you find out there, that's what you're addicted to. You know,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: you might be addicted to waterfowl and you know it
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: sounds me like you're passionate about it. Everybody has that. Well,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: for these guys, it's fishing and and this is how
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: we do it, you know, this is how we spend
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: our time. Yeah, no, I Seth and I did uh
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: the Montana Wall Eye circuit this year, and I get
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: that adrenaline rush. It was, it was so funny. We
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, we don't do it for the money, you know,
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: and most guys don't do it for the money at
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: all because there's just not that much money. Why why
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: were you on that day that one day bugging me
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: about if I had any big fish? Get out of here.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: The last guy I would call if I was looking
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: for a big wallet. By the way, we're we're donating
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: all the We didn't win much, but we're donating all
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: back to like kid life jackets and whatnot. So a
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: lot of my guys do that. In the last event, Um,
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: we helped a young man is Is he's struggling with
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: with leukemia and uh, a lot of our anglers called
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: me privately and said, send my money to the family
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: or you know donors. I don't know the number, but
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: I bet you this year alone, we've probably given about
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: ten grand to just local people. Um that needed some assistance. Um.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: It's just it's what it's all about, you know. It's
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: it's nobody's trying, nobody wants any recognition, nobody's trying to
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: be a hero. Chasing Jake sent a lot of that
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: money off to those people. Uh, No, I don't think so,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: but I can't, you know, I don't know that to
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: be true. You think if Seth and I showed up
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: at your tournament next year and we pre fish for
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: a few days, we'd get our butts kicked because we've
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: never fished on Mike here before. So I think that
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: two things would happened. Seat. I think that you would
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: have a blast and and anything that you needed we would.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: We would assist you with, including a boat if you
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: wouldn't want to drag one across the country. And then
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: you would get your ass smeared by these guys. These
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: these guys, these guys are good. Dude. That sounds like
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: a challenge that you shouldn't turn down. No, I'm I
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: don't doubt it, but I would to the big water Chester.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: I love it. I mean I'm a little bit accustomed
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: to the you know, being from Wisconsin, great lakes stuff,
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: but never fished Eerie. So I'll say this, and I
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: didn't know you were from Wisconsin. But so we call
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: them cheese heads. You guys are fishing fools, and in
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: the cheese heads always come down and do good. And
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: there's different times of the year where if you want
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: a jig and cast at him, you'll do just fine. Uh.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: John Hoyer just won the National Walleted Tour Championship casting
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: up in the weeds, and Uh, it's just you gotta
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: know your niche and get after it and make it
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: work for you. He's that representative of the sport. That's
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: just great, dude, nice to anybody that i've personally, you know,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: anybody has nothing but nice things to say about him.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: And and he called, you know, he reached out after this,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: and he goes, you did a good job. So those
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: guys were fishing, Uh, the USA Predator Series, they were
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: they were acrossed, uh, overseas somewhere Nova Scotia. Maybe they
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: mailed me back a tackle boxing you know, I said, like,
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: we got weights and fish and him and Max Wilson
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: and uh and um and uh Ryan Buddy and uh
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: who's the last guy? They sent me back this tackle box, man,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: and I'm just dying from their from their their Predator
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: series over you know, because that's when it took place.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: They were they were getting ready to be over there.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: So emailed me that back that tackle box and I
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: put it up on my wall. Jason Fisher, thanks for
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: coming on, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Although I thought
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: it was fake. I thought I was getting catfished, not Wally.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: So that's real. This is the This is gonna be
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: the definitive. I think we'll call the episode we Got
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: Weights and Fish the definitive oral history. Yeah, thank you though, Yeah,
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: that's great and I really appreciate you doing it. Let's
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: let's make a side bed here. If you if you
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: come up and finish, what do you want to got
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: top five or you want to place in the money
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: for for your tournament? What's how far down does the
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: money go tent So it depends, So we pay out
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: fifteen percent of the pool. So you know, if there
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: was a hundred guys, we would pay fifteen. Man, we're
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: still learning a whole lot. So I would say being
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: in the money, be happy. All right, there's a hundred boats.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: You gotta be eighty five of them by my record.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: How many days you're gonna let me pre fish? I
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: got a place to say, I got a boat you
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: could use. I got everything you need. Man. The one
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: thing I don't want if we do go down is
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: too much help. Does that make sense? Perfect? We won't
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: help you at all, like a boat maybe because who
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: knows we might not even have our boat next year.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: That they that we got um. But other than that,
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, I don't want people to
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: be like, oh they he showed up and they told
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: him where to go and how did how to do it? Um?
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: He hadn't been around a while because they said, if
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: you can't beat him, be the tournament director. So me
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: telling you stuff? That's good point, um Chester stop him
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: and han man fish damn tournament. I think I think
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: it would be an awesome time. Man, it would be
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: It would be cool. You know, we don't have to
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: we don't have to side bet on anything. But I
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: think I'm not good at I'm not hunters there you go.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: I'll make you a side bet any montemony you want,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: and my bet is going to be that I'll bet
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: just to just to make it fun. I'll bet against
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: you being in the middle mark, So I'll bet the
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: hunter Boats. You're your fifty or less. You're saying, okay,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: Hunterbucks says, Hunterbucks says, I'll be above fifty. Okay, make
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: a whole shipload of bets. That's what my dad quit smoking.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: I can't make so many bets. You'd be like, I
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: can't lose. I can't afford to lose the bet that
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: just gonna have a big old pocket full of sinkers.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: We'd love to come down. We got you set up.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: If you need something, we're here for you. Guys gotta
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: go fish this tournament. Man, all right, I kind of
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: want to go. I don't want to fish it. When
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: you guys really need to come down, honestly, is in
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: the springtime or the fall, when the fish are just giant.
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: To to go and catch fish, it's fun, you can
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: have a great trip doing it. But the chase that
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: Lake Erie giant is what people come to to Earie four.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: That's that's what you want to do. Go tournament, Yester, Okay,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: that sounds like a blast tournament. By see if I
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: can beat that fish that I got last spring out there. No,
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: just imagine, man, this is the longest end of a
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: meat Eater podcast. All my craft. I wish all my
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: craft hosting and trying to just I wish I had
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: my phone. I'd be like, throw your cards on the
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: table right now. You know, Phil, turn the machine off.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: Jesse is gonna show this ball. I picture Jason fish.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a nice fish. I remember my first
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: walleye and music s