Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 569: The Musky Wars

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Ep. 569: The Musky Wars · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the Meeater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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  Speaker 1: to the other thing and you'll be subscribed to both
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  Speaker 1: and you'll get all of our podcast videos there. Going forward,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: they will not be where they used to live. Go
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to the new place. Thank you. Like turn a machine on, Phil,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: We're on, We'll start the show. Yeah, I was all
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: fired up, Yoanni just put one of those little magnifying
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: lenses in his in his thing. Yeah, because you lose
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: because your pins get blurry.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, having two pins, well I still have
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: two pins about seeing four.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna want to take it right back out.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Here's what you're gonna want to do. I went down
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: that whole path.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: Okay, and this is in the peep site.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So when you're when you start getting old man vision, okay,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and you need reading glasses, your pin when you're shooting archer,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: your pin and gets blurry and so you know it
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: starts to affect your accuracy. So then you get go
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: down and get one of them little what they called.
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a claire no, yeah, go clarify whatever helps.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you put it in and you can get
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: different magnifications, right, and you look and you're like, it's
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: like the heavens have opened and there's your pin and
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: all that's glory.
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: And this is my experience to a t.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, and you think this is the greatest thing in
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the world. I'm gonna start just you know, Robin Hood
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and all my arrows. Then it's gonna happen. You're gonna
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: wind up in Hawaii, right, it's gonna be getting dark. Okay.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: You're looking in that thick vegetation, and here comes a
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: black hog.
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: I think I was there for this.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: You're gonna pull back and you're not, and you're not
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: even gonna be able to see the hog. The hog
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: will cease to exist, and you'd be like, what happened?
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And you let down and you look in areas and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: then you draw back. How does he keep doing that?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And you let don look, he's still there and you
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: draw back. That's what's gonna happen to you, my friend.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Joy Today by Muskie Fisherman Guide author someone who's devoted
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: his life to muskie history, Larry Ramsell Ramsell, Ramsell, What
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: do you like? Larry Ramsel Ramsell fresh out of Wisconsin.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: We recently we had a number of episodes recently where
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: we brought up controversies surrounding the muscle Lunge. How do
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you like to say it?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: That's proper Okay, we call him Muskies, of course, but
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: proper name is muscle.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: N A lot of controversies around Muskies. Oh boy, people
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: being like I caught the real world record, but they
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: won't accept it. And we kept saying, and I said,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a we should find a certified real
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: musky expert. A number of people wrote in saying, if
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you're going to talk to the real musky expert, the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: man at the end of the line.
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: Let's hope that's a turner phrase.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It'd be lair I just made that up. It's good.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It'd be Larry Ramsell right that down.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I may. I may not know what questions you're going
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: to ask, but I'll know the answer to at least
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: ninety five percent of them.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Here's one, I bet you know the answer to this.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: How'd you wind up getting into muskies? How'd you get like?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: How'd you become a muskie fanatic? You know? And are
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you part of the muskie community?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, I am. I'm lean it up to my ears.
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  Speaker 2: My dad started with the neighbor, caught a nice fish
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: and then opened the door.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And where we went at what age?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I was probably seven or eight when he started
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: catching him, but I caught my first legal one when
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I was thirteen and been at it for three years.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Wow. You guys probably ate them back then, huh?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I ate every one of them.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you like an apocryphal family story and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: you can tell me if you've ever heard of this? Okay,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: perhaps apocryphal family story. My maternal grandfather was a musky fishermen.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I heard that on your podcast.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he likes to talk about They would harness rigged
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: chipmunk yep and put it on a board out in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the pond, and then you paddle the shore and pull
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the chipmunk off the board with your ride and then
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: let it swim around out there. Is that a true
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: musky fishing technique of days gone by?
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Possibly? Okay, But you can substitute squirrels, cats, cats, anything.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So you've heard these stories?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, have you witnessed some of these stories?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: No? Not that one?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, So I can't tell Like, okay, I'm gonna keep
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: telling that story. Where'd you grow up?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Illinois and we faced always in Wisconsin,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Hayward area, okay, started when knee high grasshopper and still
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: at it. Live three miles outside of town and go
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: to Canada to catch muskies.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: You don't fish Wisconsin much, not much.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I faced one half a day last week, but I
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: faced three weeks here in Canada. That's where the big
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: ones are.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Got it? If you had to define the musky community,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: what would you say? It is? Like? Why is the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: muskie community different than other fishing communities.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Well, they're a very dedicated lot and they're all very
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: conservation oriented, wanting to preserve the species. Got it the
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: way the sport has increased in the last fifty years.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Had there not been catch and release come into vogue,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: there wouldn't be any left, do you think so? Absolutely,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: guarantee they had to fry them all. They would have
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: fried them all, you think. So. It takes some five
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: to six years before they spawn, and they're not very
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: productive at that raid, and then they'll live to twenty
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: to thirty years old, and it takes a long plime
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: to for them to get there, and they're too valuable
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: to catch just once. There's legions of stories of the
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: same fish being called multiple times due to catch and release,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: which takes the pressure off the fishery and shows that
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: catch and release does work if they're properly handled.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Well, was the last time you ate one?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's been quite a while. I can't even remember
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: the taste, but I will tell you they were good.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: What was the favorite preparation back then?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: My dad liked to skin them and then have Mom
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: bake them in a whole piece In fact, I had
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: my wife do on one time I left the head
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: on that she put an apple in the mouth the
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: whole seriously. Yeah, yeah, I've got a picture. It's pretty
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  Speaker 2: cool looking.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: How well he been married?
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  Speaker 2: Which time?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, the first time?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: The first time was ten years, the second time was seventeen,
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  Speaker 2: the third time was I don't know three or four?
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  Speaker 1: What do you think those were all too much fishing?
• 7:47
  Speaker 6: Probably just give it a cumulative number then just say
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: forty one.
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  Speaker 2: I've been living with the gal I live with now
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: for fifteen years, but we're not married, So that whole
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: scene's working out better than.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Has fishing torn you apart in your relationships.
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  Speaker 2: I think there was a lot more to it than
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: just fishing. Yeah, I probably spent money. I didn't have
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: to spend chasing fish, but yeah, I got you shut out.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I should say, musky is the only thing I fished for?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Well, at what point were you just all muskies all
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the time?
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Right off the bat?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean when I was a kid and try
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: to catch a walleye off the dock, you know, for
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: something to do, but when it was time to get
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: in the boat, it was musky road only.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, how many states.
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  Speaker 2: You fish muskies in twenty two states and two provinces
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  Speaker 2: of Canada.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, how many states are they from?
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  Speaker 2: Right now? There's thirty eight states that have muskies or
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: tiger muskies. No, no, no, no, I mean.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Where is the fish native to and where all has
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: it been spread to.
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  Speaker 2: The upper Midwest Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York,
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  Speaker 2: the Ohio River system through down into Kentucky. There's muskies
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: in Tennessee. They did at one time range as far
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: as northern Alabama native, but they're not there anymore, Okay.
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  Speaker 2: And then you know, people started catching them and there's
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  Speaker 2: such pressure got on the fisheries that the dn R
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  Speaker 2: for inst in Wisconsin had to build two of the
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: world's finest musky hatchers just to keep up with the
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  Speaker 2: harvest of one hundred thousand muskies a year. And they
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  Speaker 2: just couldn't keep up with it. So that's why catch
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  Speaker 2: and release and you called it two point oh, it's
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: been two point oh since the late seventies'.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Oh that's when the musky that's when catch and release
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  Speaker 1: took hold so way before other fisheries.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what happened early on I analyzed it in reverse.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: They did it wrong. As people got into catch and release,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: they let the little ones go and kept the big ones. Well,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: it should be just the opposite. And that's why now
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: the trophy waters. Like, for instance, in Ontario, when I
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: first started fishing there, the size it was twenty eight
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: inches a day, two fish per day.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Where was that again?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: In what in Ontario?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Okay MEI limit again?
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Pardon me? In Ontario it was twenty eight inches to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a day.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, minimum size twenty eight inches, right, I got you.
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  Speaker 2: Then after some studies were done and they found out
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: that there was two different strains of fish, and we'll
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: get into that probably a little bit too. But uh,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: there are lakes that grow big fish and lakes that
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: never grow big fish. So Ontario picked out their trophy lakes,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: the ones that had the potential to grow big fish,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: and put a fifty four inch size limit on them.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Quite a change from the hell a jump, yeah, quite
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: a change from twenty I.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Remember everybody's worked up when when I was a kid
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and they moved northern from twenty one to twenty four,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you just thought they'd you.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's you know, my dad never
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: released the musky's life. In fact, he netted one ones
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: that I released. It's because he wanted it back in
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the boat. He wanted to eat it. That was just
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's that was the mode that he grew
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: up fish and muskies in. And uh huh, I couldn't
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: convince him to catch and release was a good idea.
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: So what's the difference between like a big fish lake
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: and a small fish lake? Is it forage or uh?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: That's part of it, But the biggest thing is genetics.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, and yeah, you think so.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, But let me also clarify that I don't know
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: if I buy that, Larry, there are two different fish. Okay,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Doctor Lebaux tries to say there's two different species. The
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: most the fishery world isn't buying that, but yet they
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: kind of buy it when they went to a fifty
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: four in size limit for the trophy lakes. Well, the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: lakes here's here's how it works. The lakes that's always
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: had muskies but never had pike are called alapatrick. Those
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: populations spawn once and have no competition from pikes, so
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: they don't grow. Big waters like the Saint Lawrence River
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: and the Georgian Bay and you know Lake here On
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: like Saint Clair, those waters have always had pike in them.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: That's called sympatrick. So those fish have the potential to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: grow big, and they've evolved a different strategy for spawning.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: They spawn in deeper water then the muskies. In the
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: muskies only lakes and they spawn twice. That's because they
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: broadcast their eggs. They don't guard them. They don't like
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: a northern pike. When they spawn, their eggs will stick
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: to weeds, keep them out of the muck in the
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: bottom of the lake. The muskies they just dump their
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: spawning then where it goes, that's where it goes. So
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: that's why their reproductive percentage is very, very small, and
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: that's why the stocking where there's any kind of pressure
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: at all is necessary to keep the fishers going, even
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: if it's a native like let alone, one that started
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: out of being a stock lake. So it's just a
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: matter of the fish that evolved with pike evolved to
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: do things different and grow bigger. For instance, most of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: the early studies that are done on eggs in muskies
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: were anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: fifty thousand with a big mature female. Big using the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: term loosely, But what we found was that the bigger
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: fish in the simpatric waters like Eagle Lake or Georgian
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Bay or sing Launch River, they spawn twice, and they
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: can have up to eight hundred and fifty thousand eggs,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: and they have to spawn twice because they can only
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: mature fifty percent of the eggs in the first go around.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And then then they dumped that, and then a week
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: to ten days two weeks later, the rest of the
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: eggs mature and they spawn a second time. And the
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: second spawn is equally as important as the first spawn.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Now, this is sorry to interrupt it. Twice annually or
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: twice in a lifetime, twice in the spring, okay, so
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: twice every spring, okay now, And they spawned till they
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: get right up to the end when they went. You know,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: if they're thirty years old, they're still spawning a lot
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: of people think that as they get old, their eggs aren't.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: You know, they don't spawn anymore. The eggs are any good,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: they're not viable. But that's not true. They do very
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: well right up till they die.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So what I want to get into the whole record
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: book question. But I want to lay out a little
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: more biology for biology for people. First, how could someone
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: when you said that, someone argues it's two species, I mean,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: how could that possibly be true?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Well, they're sion, I mean, but they're not.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Like are they saying they're genetically separate and wouldn't be
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: able to reproduce.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. Back in the mid nineteen hundreds,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: biologists tentatively agree or agree to agree that there were
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: three subspecies of muskies. There was one musky, but three
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: subspecies yep. So they went with that for a long time.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: And then when it was discovered that we had alipatric
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: fish and sympatric populations that were totally different and grew
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: differently and spawned different then they change their thinking. When
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: doctor LeBeau did his doctoral thesis which I worked with
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: for the whole summer of nineteen eighty six on Eagle
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Lake and Wabblagoon Lake in northwestern Ontario, his hypothesis was
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: that there are two distinct species of muskies, one being
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the smaller strain or the smaller population the olive patrick fish,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: and the big ones being the sympatric populations. The big
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: water fish.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yep. So when you're when guys are when moskie guys
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: are saying that some lake has some strain, what are
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: they talking about? The probably the strain.
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: But are the fisheries producing these world class hatcheries that
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: you're talking about, Rather, are they producing a particular strain
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: of muskie.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: They have just graduated to that now they're they're They're
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: big thing today is genetic preservation. This lake is genetically
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: different than this lake, then you don't mix them up.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: For over one hundred years, Wisconsin raised fishing in their hatcheries,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: stocked them wherever. In fact, in the early days they
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: put them on a train then every whistle stop if
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: you wanted some muskies for your lake, and meet them
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: with your horse and buggy, load them on your wagon,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: and away you go, and nobody knows where they went.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: So that's why there's no way today that they can
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: define which lakes were native musky lakes except the ones
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that are connected to the river systems.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, So they kind of lost track of the fish
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: for a while.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Well, they didn't even try to keep track. It was
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three before the wisconsinina Or even started keeping
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: stocking records, So everything that happened from nineteen hundred to
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three nobody knows. Of course, everybody's long gone now,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: so there's no records anywhere what was done. And they
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: did that up until two thousand and six. We started
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: a battle with the DNR about we wanted a bigger
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: strain of fish. We wanted the Mississippi River strain, which
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: grow big, and they grow big fast. For instance, they
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: have been documented to grow up to fifty four inches
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: and thirty eight pounds in ten years. The Mississippi fish,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the Mississippi River strain, and these came out of Leech
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Lake in Minnesota, which is connected to the Mississippi River.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: So that's you know.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: When you say we wisconsinights.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were trying to get the DNR to quit
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: getting muskies from wherever the hell they wanted to get
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: them and mix them all up and stock them because
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: they didn't grow and we proved that when we started
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: the fight. They hired a geneticist from the University of Wisconsin.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And what they had done is over fifty years they
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: had created a lake it's called Bone Lake in western Wisconsin.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It was not a native musky lake. So for fifty
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: years they mixed whatever in there, and when we made
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: an issue of it, the geneticists said that they probably
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: have done is created a Hatchy strain of fish. In
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: other words, they'd take the eggs from there, raise them
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: in a hatter, and put them back in there, plus
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: stock from wherever they were getting their eggs from. And
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: he proved that that's exactly what they did, so he
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: shut them off from ever using that lake again. For
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Riggs got it. So if you go to the Spooner
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Hatchy Spooner, Wisconsin, they've got an area where you walk
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: into and you look down into the hattery floor and
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: around the windows. They've got pictures. In one of the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: pictures they show them taking eggs from a twenty eight incher.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: The genetics has said that's fine because you need to
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: have diversity. But what you don't know, particularly when you've
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: been mixing stocks for over one hundred years, is where
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: they came from. What are the genetics? Do they have
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the capability to grow big? Which they didn't, And so
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: that's why we were wanting to change. Because the anglers
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: want fish to grow fast and grow big, and because
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: they grow fast they're very aggressive and they hit lures
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a lot easier than fish that are, you know, fifteen
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: twenty years old, and they're this big.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: But are you guys Are these guys chasing? Are they
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: just chasing because they want big fish? Or are they
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: chasing some thing? Like when you go back in the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: historic record, you go back to the late eighteen hundreds,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: you go back to the early nineteen hundreds, is there
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: something to suggest that back then there was a bunch
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of giant muskies running around.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: No, but every time a giant musky was caught, it
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: made big news, okay, And so that's that's what musky
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: fishermen fed on. And there's you know, there's different stages.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: The newcomers they're happy to catch a thirty incher just
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: to say they caught a musky. But as you progress
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: in the sport, as you learn more, you learn how
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: to fish better. You go to lakes that have bigger
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: fish naturally, always wanting to catch more and more.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: And more bigger, bigger, big.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: And that's what I'm struggling.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: To phrase a question I'm trying to ask you, be Uh,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: is it musky conservation or is it just wanting big muskies,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and no matter how you get them.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: It's combination.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing. There are some lakes that will
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: never produce a fish over thirty five pounds. More than
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: likely it's an alapatrick lake, although I've got an example
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: of the sympatric lake that's in that position. But so,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: for instance, I used to tell people in my seminars,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: if you're lake record where you're fishing is thirty five pounds,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: guess what, You're never going to catch a world record
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: there because it doesn't exist that strain of fish, that
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: genetic pool doesn't have the potential to get big.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with the work of
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: what's Kaufman's first name, Carl Kevin montif and oh Matt Coffin,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Well they do. They work on mule deer, they work
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: on ungulates. No, I'm not from well, I don't know
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that this is applicable. But they've gone in a totally
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: different thing, not even apples and oranges. It's farther apart
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: than apples and oranges, maybe maybe far apart. Musquie's and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: mule deer m words. So they share ms. But here's
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the thing. They go into all these areas, like in
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: their research, they go into these areas where it's like, oh,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it's genetics, genetics, genetics. Okay, these deer don't have the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: right genetics. They're never going to grow big, they don't
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: have the right genetics. You can take those deer and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the areas that have the no good genetics and you
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: move them to a new place. Guess what one genetics.
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: It was?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Uh, well yeah, but not just food for you. It
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: was food for your mother. Meaning when a when a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: when a deer hits the ground, his his fate is
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: sealed when he hits the ground, Like you could tell
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: a lot about his potential antler growth already because it
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was like what was his in uterow nutrition? Like right,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: But I'm not getting into that with fish. I'm just
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: saying like all this this, and I don't know if
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: this is even applicable in fish, but all this idea
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: of like certain areas and certain counties having genetics is
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: is uh, it could be such a much more complex picture.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely absolutely that it's.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: That it's all these all these hidden factors and that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: you could take those fish and move them to the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: lake that has good genetics and somehow monitor them and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: make it that they can't intermingle, and all of a
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: sudden you might realize that it wasn't genetics, it was
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: whatever the hell.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Especially one example of the sympatrick population that I have
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: on mind, I've got some friends that fish there religiously,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: and they're very good fishermen, and they've caught over a
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: nine hundred fish, but they've never caught a fifty incher,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: even though over there the population of fish that you
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: would think has the potential grow big. But they're in
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: a lake with pike. But there's so few spawning areas
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: for the pike that the musks can control them quite easily.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: And so it's a what we call a trout lake.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: It's a deep clear and they feed mostly on trout
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: and probably small pike. But they just haven't evolved a
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: need to get any bigger because the pike don't get big.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, they catch a nice one veran's while, but
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: most of them are you know, hammer handles. So that's
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: a sympatric situation that if they were put someplace else,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: like a bigger water, if they were moved to the
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Saint Lawrence River or Georgian Bay, they probably would continue
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: to get bigger. They would have that potential, but because
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: of the situation of where they're at, the forage, the
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: cold water, the not having the need to get bigger. Yeah,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: they just have stopped at about almost fifty in there.
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: They're keeping in line with their surroundings and ecosystem needs
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: versus being in a bigger ecosystem. They could grow all
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: they want and never outpace that ecosystem.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Right right, So.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Your girlfriend now, is she like to fish moskies?
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: No bluegills with a barber worms?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I'll go with her, Man steer your girlfriend, Larry? Where
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: right now are the real big ones?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Who's going to catch the next record? Or is it
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: too late? They'll never catch a new record?
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Well, lack Sul has the potential. What's that since that's
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: what started this whole thing, me getting me involved Here
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: at Laxul is where that's seventy to suppose it's seventy
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: two pounder came from seventy two to two is what
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: they call it officially. But that lake and you probably
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: didn't know this is catch an immediate release only. Can't
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: keep anything there?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, what tells where this lake is?
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: It's in northwestern Ontario, Okay, or northern Ontario. It's it's
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: getting towards the northern part of the Musky Range.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And is it is it a Is it a big
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: river chain, big reservoir, Oh, big reserv damned damned river system. Yep.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And it's got some studs in it, It's got somes,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: got some big face. Now, there's never been weighed that
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: I'm aware of of any over sixty pounds, but there's
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: been a lot of sixty inch class fish, long, long face.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: In fact, I guided a friend of mine's son to
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: a fifty seven incher there. So they get they get long,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: they just don't get seventy pounds.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, uh, what do you think is the max
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: they can get? Like I'm talking like gill Netted found
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: dead on the beach whatever.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: All right, there's never been one hung on a scale
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: that weighed more than the world records, the former world records.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: But I'm of the belief ninety five percent that most
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: of them are bogus. Can I read this to you? This?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: This kind of covers a ton of stuff. This is
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: written by Gord Pygor, who used to be the fisher's
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: managers for the Lake of the Woods Area, Kenora, Ontario.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And he's on my Modern Day Muskie World Record Committee,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: and he talks about in here doctor John Castleman, who
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: your friend Patrick Dirkin wrote about in the thing he did.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And doctor Casman is also on my committee, and he's
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: acknowledged as the foremost musky scientist on the planet. Got it, Okay,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: if we could reduce the handling mortality of big muskies
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: by only four percent, we would increase the musky population
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: by a stagging, earring seventy percent. Think about think about that,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: I am. He'll explain a little more.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Oh he better.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Crossman and Castleman, Crossman was Castleman's teacher, were also able
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: to show that the benefits of returning large muskies unharmed
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: to the water resulted in an increase in the mean
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: length of the fish, which was precisely the news that
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: muskie anglers wanted to hear. But the Klethrum study, that's
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: this bone here. This is what they use now to
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: age how old a musky is. Yep, they used to
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: use scales, but after age ten the edges were off
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: and they weren't accurate.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: So that's why they went to this The calculated mortality
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: rates musculine's mortality rates and compared them to the muscular
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: mascimum age to see if the age of the trophy
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: fish had changed over time, and they found that the
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: maximum age of muskies may be in decreasing. In fact,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: they believe that the maximum may age of the fish
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: may have decreased by two years from twenty three to
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: twenty one years of age during the study period. Now,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: the difference of a couple of years may not sound significant,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: but remember that the fish spawn throughout their lives. The
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: biggest musky lay of the lay more eggs in the
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: smaller fish, and that the mammoth muscle engineerly always result
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: from the very largest year classes. When we viewed in
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: this context, Caslin Crossman concluded that we would need a
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: seventy percent increase in annual recruitment to ensure the same
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: number of free fish reached their maximum age and thus
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: maximum trophy size. Follow that. M Okay, now, let me
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: read your mind. I'll bet you're wondering if ninety nine
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: percent of the muskies are being released, which is about
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: what it runs you read my mind, at least ninety
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: five percent. Yeah, how could the age of the oldest
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: trophy sized fish be decreasing. Good question, right, Two likely reasons.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: The ranks of the musky fraternity are swelling at the
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: same time that our knowledge base is better than ever before.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: There are quite simply more of us musky anglers. We're
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: better skilled, better equipped, and we're catching more fish. And
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: while we're putting them back. Catch and release only works
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: if the fish survive, which means proper handling, and that's
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: the big thing today. Or to put it, put it
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: the way my good friend and legendary musky angler Dick
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Pearson excuse me, puts it like this. Take a look
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: at any social media site these days, and you know
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: that the the what he means. Got to give Dick
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: credit to for walking the walk talk. He wrote The
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Amazing Muskies on the Shield, one of the most comprehensive
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: how to books on musky fishing. But if you recall
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: the front cover, it doesn't feature an angler holding am musky,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: as you would suspect, but rather a beautiful eke of
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: the woods sunset. I know because I took the photo
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: and gave it to Dick. He has caught more big
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: muskies than almost any angler on the planet, and yet
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: almost every time I call him for a photo to
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: illustrate a feature on which I am working, and have
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: interviewed him, he tells me he doesn't have any Gord
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: writes for infishermen and he's on the Unfisherman TV show.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: He keeps his fish in the water at all times
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: and handles them exactly like what they are, the proverbial
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: geese that lay the golden eggs. And if we all
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: did the same thing this fall for the rest or
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: for the rest of our musky fishing careers, and in
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: the process reduced the handling mortality of the oldest and
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: biggest fish by just four percent, we would initiate the
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: same effect as if we had increased the annual recruitment
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: of muskies by a staggering seventy percent. In other words,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: the recruitment is poor. Yep. And if there's nothing he
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: left to say, spawn is really poor. Let's give Castlemen
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and Crossman the last word on the subject. The largest
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: trophy musculine in the population are usually the oldest individuals.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: The largest year classes produce the greatest number of old individuals. Hence,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: extremely large year classes are required to produce the largest
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: oldest trophy musculench. If catch and release methods can be
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: improved to reduce mortality, they would have the same effect
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: as increasing recruitment and would help maintain year class strength, longevity, size,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: and number of trophy fish in the population. We don't
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: need any more information, studies, nothing, It's already figured out
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: by folks who've done the legwork. CPR is all fine
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: and dandy, but more fish caught equals more dead fish,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: especially in the open deep water scenarios and with more
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: ill equipped anglers. Just out for the ego shots.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: So what are ego shots?
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Ego holding the fish picture?
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just for the no, real good not to hurt
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: those fish.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Pardon me?
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: You know I got a real good way not to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: hurt the fish.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: How's that?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Don't catch it, don't cat That's true.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: That's the best way, which I've done a lot of.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: But then, yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: So do you think do you think that you're at
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: how much has your fishing effectiveness changed over the years.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I can't even calculate it. When I first started fishing,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: it's a long time ago. Boys, sixty eight years how
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: old are you right now? We had a wooden rowboat,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: no depth finder, no electric motor, no big motor to
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: run around like a crazy man they do today and
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: cast to the shoreline. That's how That's how we caught
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: our fish. That's what we knew. We were fishing Floyd's,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: which made shoreline fishing a little more productive. Open the big,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: open clearwater lakes. You found the shoreline, you catch three
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: hundred northerns in a week. You won't catch a muskies.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Been there, done that too.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Explain all that again. Now you grew up casting the shoreline, right,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and why would that not be effective? Now?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Well, what's it's still effective on Floyd's type reservoirs where
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of wood and hiding places.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: What's the word you use?
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: The flowage?
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Floydge okay, like the river's dammed up and they call
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: them Floyd's in Wisconsin. Reservoirs are the more.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Commons is nodding knowingly over here because he uses the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: term flowids.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: That's what that means. That's his favorite lakes to Floyd is.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we were just talking about one of them Floyidges.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: So it's a reservoir, right, there's a flowage, same difference, gotcha.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So reasonally called them floyd just because, as you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: starting the eighteen hundreds eighteen eighties, they started logging the
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: whole state of Wisconsin, yep, and what was left was
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: a mess. And a lot of that debris is in
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: the in the watersheds. And when they put a dam
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: in and made a floyage, that's what it looked like,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: flowed full of stuff. So oh okay, that's why they.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Call him that debrisot right. Gotcha.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: In fact, where it was almost impossible to run over
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: a motorboat wide open up a fairly new floidge, you're
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: just risking death.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I see. So back now that I understand that casting
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the shoreline when you were young, right, that's just how
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: you went out and fished. You went out and went along.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I know the strategy you're talking about, right, go on
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the edge, cast up towards the shore line again again again.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Again, and you know, if you could find an offshore
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: structure and the way we did it in those days
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: with a rock and a piece of rope, no depth
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: finders again, then you had a secret honey hole. Then
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: as depth finders came on the scene, he was able
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: to read the lake bottom without dropping your rope and
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: your rock down. And so all of that increases your knowledge.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Did you guys used to use the rock and rope strategy.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Started early on? Yeah, or in the Floyd's that I
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: was fishing. It was fairly shallow, so you could hit
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the ore in most places and feel
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: around down there, right. But then in the river channels
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: you couldn't touch anything.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: But the maximum depth is like fifteen feet except for
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: a hole by the dam that's thirty three feet deep.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: But the average depth of the whole lake is seven
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: feet okay, so you know, then from that you graduated
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: the bigger waters. We went to Canada to catch big muskies.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: We used our lake. The first trip up there, we
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: used our lake shore casting and we caught three hundred
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: northerns and no muskies. So we learned and get the
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: hell away from shore and get out on the rock
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: reefs and the deep weed beds and so forth.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: And that's the way all musky fishermen progressed. They learn
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit of time. If the ones that are
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: have a little money and are smart to hire a
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: guide and cut their learning curve in half, and then
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: you know, has more more new equipment comes out. The
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: big thing now is forward facing sone arts. It's going
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: to kill the musky populations if it's not controlled. It's
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: just it's too easy to sharpshoot them.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And it becomes explain that.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: I've got a friend that kind of helped pioneer it
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: in Minnesota, run his boat sixty miles a day and
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: make thirty five casts, and every cast was at a
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: fish that you could see on the screen.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Yep. And you're talking about like live scope.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, live scope for forward facing snarts a difference.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: So do you have one of those setups?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I do not, And I here's the thing. I'm madey
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: two years old. I've got two bad shoulders that one
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: needs replaced because of casting, because of casting. So you
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: would think something like that would intrigue me very much.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I don't want anything to do with it because it's
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: not musky fishing.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Well, let me do a little devil's advocating.
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: Okay, I love it though, Okay, go ahead, thank you,
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: you're welcome.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Let me do a little devil's advocating. Don't you do
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you feel that.
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: On behalf of those who don't like hard work.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: No, I don't.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I don't have one of these contraptions. Now, if you
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: look down across from you, and down that way you
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: can see some real advocates.
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: They're really outing them.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Yea, you see some real cheating.
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: We don't use musky fishing.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: They're used properly. I don't have a problem with it.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm more asking you to philosophize about the flow
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of technology. Don't you feel that you could have said
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the same thing about anything, monofilament?
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: I mean like your death finder and your your You're
• 37:46
  Speaker 6: I'm still using a rope in a rock, by god?
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so how are you? Don't you feel? And I'm
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: not trying to take you to task. I'm just like
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: asking you to think about it, because you obviously thought
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: about this a great deal. Uh, you and your life,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: as you laid it out, you have welcomed with open
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: arms all form of technological innovation to a point. Okay,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: why is this the one that's going to break something?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Here's here's what's gonna happen. It's gonna if if too
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: many new people get into the game and they're not ethical,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: and they run around the lake and spotfish and cast
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: him and catch him. There's one bass guy that did
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: a film. He caught three over fifty inches and a
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: half a day because he was using electronics.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Right, He's like, I see what the big deal is?
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Right, So, but he had no concern in fact that
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: you know what he was actually doing.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: But he wasn't throwing him out a stringer.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: And the thing of it is, we don't know if
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: he knew how to handle him. He's a bash fishermen.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: They hold him by the lip. Right, try holding the
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: musky by the lip. You have a sore thumb, and
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: see what happens You get to the throwing up through
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: your thumb. So it's making experts out of rookies, Yeah,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: almost instantly, And that's wrong.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: They say the same thing about turkey decoys.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: The.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Motion decoys, same thing.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: But you know the the that's a hot topic, isn't it.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: The Yeah, the thing of it is is that, yes,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: you can control to an extent with size limits and
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: bag limits. But since the muskie world is already ninety
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: nine percent catch and release anyway, all we're doing is
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: going to handle a hell of a lot more fish
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: with a lot of new people that don't know how
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: to handle them, which, as I just read, their mortality
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: is the ultimate goal to eliminate it. So how do
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: you educate one hundred thousand new musky fishermen to handle
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: of fifty inch or properly in the first place is
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: first time it flaps its jaws that we're going to
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: drop it in the bottom of the boat and it's
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: going to flop around and tip tackle box over and
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: whatever fish.
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: Is the proper way to handle a muskie?
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Well, the best way is like was mentioned here about
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: dick Pearsons, leave them in the water boat side. There's
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: floating rulers that you can get to lay alongside and
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: see how long they are. Nobody agrees with weighing them.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: If they're not a record class fish or your person
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: seems like.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: The last one, you'd wind away because those are the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: big ones of the big breeding females right right.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: It's like in Florida where you cannot get a grip
• 40:29
  Speaker 6: and green with the tarpin cannot unless you buy a
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: tag and you want to kill it.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Then it's legal. Groups you can, Oh, it's against the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: law to take a grip with a tarpin. Yeah, so
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: getting in the water with them and taking pictures.
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: But you gotta you have to have the intent. You
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: have to purchase the tag and have the intent to
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: weigh it for a record, and then everybody's okay. So
• 40:53
  Speaker 6: that's tarpin conservation.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Which means it's almost a totally limiting handling mortality.
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: Unless I want to just buy a tag and bank
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: of fish, right.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: And how money they're gonna kill doing that? Not that many?
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Well do you do? You routinely see uh, poor handling
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: methods among newer muskie fishermen, and then good handling methods
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: among older muskie fishermen.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Some older musky fishermen that don't catch a lot of
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: muskies do not handle them either.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: They don't get the practice.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: I mean there are there are not an easy fish
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: to handle. Yeah, particularly when you're talking to thirty five
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: thirty forty forty five fifty pounds. That was a forty
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: forty pounder right there.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: That's a forty that I'm gonna just hold this up.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Some people can see that you're gonna shred your thumb.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, what you have to consider there is is
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: even though they're sharp and long, there's a lot of
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: meat on the on the base of the teeth. So
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: you're not going to see that much when you see
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the fish, but maybe that much. Yeah, you'll see and
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: that'll go through your finger. In fact, a friend of
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: mine running fifty six inches tooths all the way through
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: his thumb out through the thumbnail. These teeth are razor
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: sharp on one side and they're dull on the other side,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: and that's for a purpose. That's when they grab a
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: bait fish. The sharp helps penetrate quickly, but the round
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: sides keep it from ripping and making the holes bigger
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: and bigger, and the forage can get away.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: When we were in high school, we were having bbygun wars,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: and this dude named Tristan out the slabs at Cedar Creek,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: he caught a baby that went through his finger and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: out the fingernail. That's excruciating pain.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I can imagine.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: Back to like though, if you are Larry gonna catch
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: a musky and you do want to get a picture
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: with it, you gotta make sure you keep it in
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: the net, like with the face up. A lot of
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: the times muskies will get in the net and thrash too,
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: so those hooks will get caught on the higher side
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: of the net and kind of hang the fish up
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: higher seat. That's a very common thing. You gotta make
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: sure you get that hook off keep the fish's head
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: in the water.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Right. A lot of the musk nets, if today, have
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a real deep bag and like a ranger boat's fairly
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: high shot but not ridiculous. But these deep bag nets
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: can keep the fish down in the water with the
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: with the rim of the net on the gun of
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: the boat.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: You guys using barbleous No.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: But there's a lot of guys that are saying that's
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: what should be used.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Do you use live bait there's I used.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: To, I don't, I don't anymore. But if you use
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: what we call quickset rigs, I have no problem with it.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: But problem so far I've seen is some of the
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: guides are not using quickset rigs to set quick There's
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: a destroying the whole thought process of what do you
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: want the musk You do is grab your sucker. There's
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: two trouble hooks on the sucker, and you said immediately
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: and you should hook the fish just like if they
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: grab one of these lures there, yep.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: Whereas the harness rig they kind of have a little
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: thing that or a hook that you can put through
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: the nose of the sucker.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Goes through the nostrils to hold it on the on
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: the rig.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: But I gf a forens. If you use a sucker
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: for muskies, you won't accept it though. Yeah, if just
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the legal method in Wisconsin, which it is in all
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: of Wisconsin, IGFA wouldn't accept it if you called a
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: seventy five pounder. That's just their rules.
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: They don't want people to use live bait.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: They don't want light bait.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Here's a question about the IGFA. Uh, you're familiar with
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: the Boone and Crocket Club. Yes, okay, Boone and Crockett
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Club has different categories, so as you'll find. Oftentimes the
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: biggest specimen known to man was not killed by a hunter. Okay,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the biggest big horn, right, the world record, the biggest
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: big horn ever recorded was found dead. The biggest black
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: bear found dead. I think the biggest white tail found dead. Right.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: It's just kind of weird that it always winds up
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: being that the really big ones are found dead. Is
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the IGFA interested in and how big do they get?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Are they only looking at fish that conformed to their
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: own little.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Rous pretty much? It IJFA started in nineteen thirty nine.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: It was pretty much a rich man's game at that point.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Big offshore yachts and you know money people.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like Billfish and all that got.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: It right, and they were totally salt water until nineteen
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: seventy nine. I started the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: World record program in the early seventies, and Field and
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Stream at that time was the other record keeper in
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: fresh water, and they got upset with us, and they
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: tried to get us to cease and desist and whatever,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: claiming that those records were theirs. And our attorney told
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: them to go fly a kite. Those records belonged to
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: the people who caught the fish, and they're in the
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: public domain. We can use them if we want to,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: and we did, and then they backed off, So they
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: eventually turned their freshwater program were to IGFA. Until that time,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: IJFA had no use for fresh water whatsoever. So somewhere
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: along the late seventies we decided to try to merge
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: the two programs IJFA in the Hall of Fame. So
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I flew to Fort Lauderdale, where they were headquartered at
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: the time, and we had a meeting with Elwood Ka Harry,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: who was the president at the time, and they.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Got that big it's a big marlin out front, right, Yeah,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: a big silver.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: I don't remember if they did it in the Fort Lauderdale.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: They probably did Fort Daney a beach where they're at now,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Rondini Beach. But anyway, it was going to work out
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: where there'd just be one record keeping program. Well, the
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: one stipulation that the Hall of Fame wanted is they
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: wanted the IGFA to allow them to print the records
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: in their publications, and IJFA wouldn't allow it until after
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: they'd published it. Well, that didn't set well with the
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: founder and the director of the Hall of Fame. So
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: he he was smart when he turned over the record
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: He made copies of everything. So he just reconstituted the
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: program and back again, back again. We came with two programs.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Hell uh, I was a representative for IJFA for sixteen years,
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: and when the Musky War started, I got crossways with
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: the worst Musky War the world records. The Musky Wars
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: started ninety two, and what.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: You have to explain that?
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: But when you're ready, okay, let's let's jump horses hair
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: for a second. Let's go back to the seventy two
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: pounders and work backwards. Okay, that seems to be a logical,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: logical way to do it.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I want to hear about the musky war.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: We'll get to that.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to get there.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a big thing. Oh, by the way,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Musky's Canada they even put release that's the name of
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: their magazine, Release Journal, the Release Journal. Yeah, that's how
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: gung ho Musky fishermenar for catching.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Right, man, those guys wud probably have to ship fit
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: if you went spear fish and muskies.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Since you've brought up again the release thing, I want
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: to know what makes the fish so fragile that this
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: improper handling can cause such high mortality.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Most musky fishermen net them and then you people do
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: not to handle them. Well, bring them in the boat.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: They're strong, and the fish are flopping all over the
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: bottom of the boat beating himself all the hell. So
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: then they get them unhooked. If they ever get them unhooked,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: then the muskie jumps out of the net and he's
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: flopping around the bottom of the boat and trying to
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: bite somebody on the leg. Anyway, the fish pretty much
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: beat himself up. So if you release them in the water,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: obviously the only thing you're gonna have to do is
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: reach down with the flyers back the hooks outlay a
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: measuring stick alongside them to get an idea.
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: I mean, well, isn't there an idea here? And it
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: goes the same for like big pike too, but a
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: muskie and a pike or ambus predators.
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: They're not the first cousins.
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: They're not designed to go on these big, long marathon runs.
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: They're like a mountain lion.
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: Dive bomb out of the tree, fight real hard for
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: hopefully a very limited amount of time sprinters versus marathon runners,
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: so that they're not going to be able to deal
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: with this big build up of lactic acid, so it
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: takes them way longer to recover, and during that recovery
• 49:26
  Speaker 6: period they're susceptible to predation as well, or in the
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: case of your older fish, they may just not be
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: able to recover from it.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they are terrific speed demons for short distance. They
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: can go sixty miles an hour for a short burst.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: That's why all the major fins are at the back
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: of the fish. When they wind up, they wind up
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: into an S shape and it's just like shooting a
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: bow out of an arrow.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: How fast.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Can they hit sixty miles an hour for a short distance? Oh, kid,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: if you're in a twenty foot boat, they can go
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: from one end of that boat to the editor of
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: the boat before you can blink. That's how fast they are.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: But they can't keep it up. In other words, if
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: you if I've got a friend that likes to play
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: them before we land them, we always have getting on
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: his case saying you're gonna get in the snag and
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: lose the fish, just so you hurry up and get
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: it till we can get it and let it go.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: Because if you if you play them for a half
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: like you're just there's stories in the older if there's
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: stories in the old days of an hour fight or
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: a half hour fight or forty five minute fight. If
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: anybody takes more than five minutes to land the fish,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: unless it's a really big one, they're messing around with it,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: or they don't have have enough equipment to handle the fish,
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: and they shouldn't be fishing for him in the first place.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: Now, you'll hear when somebody hooks a muskie, you know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: oftentimes keep rerailing, keep reeling, keep reeling. You know a
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: lot of guides, you know you can get the fish
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: of the boat.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because if you keep realing, you're keeping tension on
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: the fish. The minute you give them a split suck
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: and of slack, they're gone.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: A lot of the times they eat that bait so hard, Yeah,
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: that they just have they're clamped on the bait. You
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: never really got a hook set in there.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: When I was working on the track instead of Eagle
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: Lake in eighty six, we would put them in the
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: tank of anesthetic and put them to sleep so that
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: we could put a transmitter in them so we could
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: pump their stomach to see what they've been eating. We
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: had one big fish, it was probably a thirty five
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: pound fish, and we put a mouth spreader. You know
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: what the mouth spreader is. Put a mouth spreader in
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: the fish to hold it over till we could put
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: the tube in to flush the stomach. The fish is
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: dead asleep, just squashed that mouth spreader completely closed, just
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: that fast, and it's a sleep. That's the power they
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: got in those jaws. So a lot of times they'll
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: grab that bait. They might be hooked or you think
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: hook for three four, five minutes, and all of a
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: sudden they look at you and they opened the mouth
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: or they shake their head and poof. They never had
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: a hook in.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: Them that bait, particularly that bulldog right there. If you
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: look at that bait, there's teeth marks on it. That
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: fish that I caught on that bait did not have
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: a single hook on it. As soon as it hit
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: the net, opened its mouth lure Chester, Yeah, as soon
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: as it hit the net and opened his mouth.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: In the fall, particularly when I used to do a
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: lot of sucker fishing, they would grab the sucker and
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: my dad would always raise them up to see how
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: big you are, because we didn't want to catch a
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: small one. And a lot of times as they get
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: up to where you can see him, they let it go.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: But if you drop it back down, they'll come right
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: back and hit it again.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Because he never got hooked.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: He never got hooked, but he never got stung either.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: And he's hungry. He once had he once said, sucker,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: but he ain't gonna let you get a look at him.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: We've had him drop it and pick it up three two, three,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: four times. And sometimes you get them, and sometimes you don't.
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: Tell us about this seventy two pounder. The start of
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: the muskue wars Well.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Actually this didn't start the Muskue Wars, but it's reignited
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: them a little bit.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Are these these? Are these?
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Is this the crew you told you about the manifesto?
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: I've got the manifesto right here?
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: How'd you get it?
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Who do you think you're dealing with?
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about that.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right here, I'll tell you how I got it.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Observer number five sent it to me. Oh, after several
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: months on the internet talking about it. They didn't know
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: anything about it was on the internet. They found out
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: and he sent me this.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: But he said, I think he sent it to me.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he sent it to you. And then after he
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: after I found out about it and put more about
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: it on the internet, then he sent me a copy
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: and then I called him the next day. We talked
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: for forty minutes and okay.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Can we refresh people's memory? We were what started this
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: whole thing of Larry being here was showed up. We
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: got it showed in the mail. Yeah, and you know whatever.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: No that I was like, go through mail on my
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: desk and there's this big thing called the Musky Manifesto,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and it's photographs, documentation, all kinds of stuff and basically
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it's a story about how some guys got boned by
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: the ig F A. They caught a giant. Everybody knows
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: it was a giant, it was a world record, and
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: they got the fish got thrown out on a stupid technicality.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: That's what they claim.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but I don't think i'm being I'm.
• 54:37
  Speaker 6: Not that that's really the meat of the deal.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the meat of the deal. That's what
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: hard started this whole conversation, and I started talking about
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: my understanding of the muskie community and how they're touchy fellers.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: There's a picture.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: That's the picture I know.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: When it appeared on the internet on a post that
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: I have started, somebody sent it in with the heads
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: cut off.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Of the This is what started this conversation is this
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: guy saying that they had a seventy two pounder. Everybody
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: knows it's a seventy two pounder, but they weighed on
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: a boat and IGFA threw it out because you can't
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: weigh fish on boats.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: Now, that's not the only rule that they both broke
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: for IJFA tell me more the case, the scale must
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: be recertified after weighing. They said they had it checked,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: but they didn't tell me how they had it checked
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: after after and it was weighing light actually, which means
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: a fish weighed seventy three pounds.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he talked, He said that in the manifesto. Turns
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: out it's even bigger.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: The Lynx measurement must be done on an IGFA bumpboard
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: other words, of a measuring board on a flat surface.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: They didn't have that, so they couldn't comply with that rule.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: You had to have a picture of the rod reel
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: and scale and photo of the f show on the
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: scale showing the weight. Didn't have that. In fact, the
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: guy who wrote the manifesto was one of the five
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: the three cousins and two uncles okay, dads of the cousins,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: And supposedly after the guy stood on the seat of
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: the boat and lifted the fish up high enough for
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: the scale to register, only two of the five guys
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: could see the scale reading. This guy that worked the
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: manifesto did not see it. So he's he's hanging his
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: hat on it. That's the biggest musk he ever caught.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: But he he didn't even see it. Weighed himself as
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: far as the.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Measurement, Oh did you do some phone calls, Larry, pardon
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you did some phone calls about this?
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, track anything big you do? Yeah, the final fly
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: on the ointment and IJFA told me personally that had
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: not been weighed in the boat, that there were several
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: other things that they would have pursued before they would
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: ever recognize it linked measurement. As I told you, it
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: has to be done on their bump board. Here's how
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: they did it, on the inside of the gunwale of the boat,
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: about halfway between the gunnell and the floor. It was
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: a fifty inch ruler stuck to the boat.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, I've been in those boats.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: I got one of my own.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: It took all five of them to hold the fish
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: against that tape and then they had a three foot
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: bump measurement that they measured the other the distance past
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: that tape were one of the guys marked the spot
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: and then they measured and they thought it was six
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: and a half inches. Well, IJFA would never accept that
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: the world came to an end. So I understand that
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: he wants his uncle to be a world record holder,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: but it's never going to happen, and it couldn't have
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: happened in those circumstances. And here's the kicker, because lack
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: SUL is total catching, immediate release, keyword immediate. And the
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: conservation officers, I think are a little bit leaning to
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: let you take a picture, hu quick one. But had
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: the seal came by, well they were monking around like this,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: they would have gotten a fine immediately, you think. So, yeah,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: no question about it.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So that rules out having a new world record in
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: lock school, that's what you said it's going to come
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: out of.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: But I know I said it had the potential.
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: I have ga out the window. When you look at
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: that picture, what do you see?
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: Is it like even in the right class of Compare.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Those two pictures.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: I ain't Larry's jealous.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Just fish make you jealous, Larry, that one don't because
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: I caught it.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see what you're saying here, So I'm supposed to.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at these two fish pretty close and just.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Going by the Yeah, but you see they look like
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: they're pretty close to the same side.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Because they're both being held up by two people standing
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: side by side. Yeah, you I would superficially be like, yeah,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: those are in the ballpark. Rough these same size fishes.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, my fish was fifty seven and a quarter inches,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: which is slightly longer, and they claimed for their fish,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: we weighed on a certified scale, State certified scale. It
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: weighed fifty four pounds four and a half ounces.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: So do I see twenty pounds of blubber on that fish?
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: The other fish doesn't have exactly twenty pounds is a
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: pile of blobbers.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: And on my thread on muskie first that ran for
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: over three months, in fact, it's still up. There was
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: not a single person that said it weighed sixty pounds,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: let alone seventy, including Dick Pearson that was referenced to
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: a well ago when we were talking. It just is
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: it's not there. It's not there. And in the manifest
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: a manifesto there's eleven more pictures besides that one, and
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: there's several pictures of it in the guy's laps, and
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: none of the pictures except one doesn't even have a
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: little bit of belly. So there's just no way that
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: fish we eight eighteen pounds more than my fish.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Way, Yeah, you if it had a socker in it.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a couple, it would have had more
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: than a It would have had had a ten pound
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: whitefish or something in it to.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: Get weight party some lead weights.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Most people, it sounds like most people out there fishing,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: And maybe I'm wrong about this. I like to fish
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: as much as a lot of fellows in this room,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: but that you wouldn't be prepared to officially have a
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: record fish in your boat.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: And obviously they weren't. Yeah, and it's a shame and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: one of the things.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: When you go fishing, are you prepared?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, carry my certified scale right in the boat.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: You can't weigh in the boat.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: Well, we can pull right up the shore and get out.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: That's not immediate release.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: But fish and black soul either, Amos Saint Lawrence River. Oh,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: here's the thing. There might be a way you could
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: do it on locked soil if they relax that rule
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: a little bit and they're working on it.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could imagine if.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: You pulled the boat to shore, if you had a cradle.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: You know what a cradle is, instead of a dip nut.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: You put the fish in the cradle, You ease the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: boat to shore. Somebody gets out of the boat, lifts
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: the scale, lifts the cradle up and hooks it to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: the scale. You should be able to get it above
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: the water. If you're on solid.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: Grounds, well it's obviously feasibooks. I mean they're doing it on.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: They'll do it on like great white sharks are an
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: e s a species, and they'll get weights off great
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: whites and cradles. I mean, there's a way to do
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: it right if you got the right expertise.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: So that's the only way that they could have come
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: even close to complying with ISJFA rules if they'd been prepared.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: And what I've been trying to beat into people's mind
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: is if you have any idea that you want to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: catch the world record muskie, or if you're fishing where
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: the potential exists, whichever place that's got muskies it's not there,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: then you should have a copy of the rules, whether
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: it's IGFA, whether it's a Fishing Hall of Fame, or
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: whether it's a modern day muskie world record program that
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: I've started, and have the equipment that you need to
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: follow those rules. And here's the kicker that you might like,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: since you're a meat eater, is for my program, it
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: has to be a dead fish. They have to keep
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: the fish. Why is that Because here's the thing, and
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: if you read my book, you'll find what happened in
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: the past history is a different wet sand put in fish.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: Coke bottles full of sand in fish to addway, oh.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Because you want to get a look inside there.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: My program is we have to have a representative at
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: the time the fish is opened, and we have to
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: check the summit contents. We'll check it for water, we'll
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: check it for bait, fish, we'll check it for sand
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: and rocks.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Fish.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Fine, yeah, if they weren't stuffed in there by the angler,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: that's a that's gonna be a tough call if it
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: ever happens. But depending on the size of the forage,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: you should be able to tell whether the musky grabbed
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: the fish or whether it didn't.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Something fish is going on.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: So you like that cow and people fitticizes some for saying,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: you know, we have to kill the fish, but that's
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: one fish out of zillion.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how often is that gonna happen?
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: The last big musky?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: Educate your anglers and say you're gonna kill this fish
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: because you're positive it's a new record.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: Well right, and if you're smart, you got to scale
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: on the boat to find out before you kill it.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've got.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: What you're saying. So this should be like a once
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: in a once in a generation activity, right.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've got some pictures here of I won't
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: take them out, but uh, there's been a couple of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: really big fish caught out of the Saint Lawrence River
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: in the last couple of years, and they had scales
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: on the boat, They had lots of witnesses. Yes, they
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: weigh on the boat, but they weren't going for a
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: record anyway, so they just wondered how big it was.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: It was almost sixty pounds.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: What I'm getting worried about here is I want to
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: make sure we talk that you explain what the muskie
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: wars were. But when you when you call a person
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: up when you're investigating a fish, well, how many fish
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: have you investigated in your career?
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Quite a few?
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: I mean have you do? You have you made your
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: living writing and fishing and guiding.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: Pretty not not completely, but a good portion of it.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: So yet yet points you've had a day job.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what line of words.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: For instance, our modern day muski modern day muskie world
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: record is fifty eight pounds. That's the modern record. Okay,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: it was Cotton, Michigan, who was putt in a frazer
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: that was in the bell Air chain, the Torch River chain.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: Oh yep, okay, and uh you took it to a
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: tax germist. One of our committee members went to the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: tax deermists, remeasured to fish, rewighed the fish, and then
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: was stayed in the fraser for four four months, and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: they shipped it to Minnesota to have a replica, made
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: a mold for a replica, and so I made a
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: rainments to be there when they got the fish they
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: thawed to fish out. I was there when it was opened.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: I reweighed first to make sure it weighs close to
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: what it was claimed to be in It was actually
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: over because it absorbed a little bit of the water
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: from thawing overnight. But so then I weighed the fish again.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: It was okay. And then when they opened the stomach
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: it had. All it had was a skeleton of a
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: thirteen inch small mouth. They had almost completely gone and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: obsousally no weight there.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: He had a keeper small mouth and.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: At two and a third pounds of eggs is all
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: it had in it. So it had just started getting eggs.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Got it for the fall, and this was in October,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: so it was it was not starting real early, probably
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: into December before they really start building up eggs. Do
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: it through the winner, and.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: You got to personally handle the world.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: Record, the modern day record.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Uh, how many fish have you investigated?
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, not a lot, because there's not been a lot
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: of records caught. But I've investigated other fish then, you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: just just a modern day record.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: But when you invested, like I would say, you investigated
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: this fish, the Musky Manifest.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: My investigation the world records took up the whole book.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: That's that's all just world records right there, And that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: whole thing is about the past world records.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: A compendion of musky angling history, muscle lunge, World Records,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the History, the Truth, the Truth eighteen seventy seventy, two
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: thousand and six.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: Right, But you've investigated far more fish than that, because
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: you obviously debunked a few along the way.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Right, But he puts them in there, don't you.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're in all. Yeah.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Dot Adversary and that books.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: Available on Amazon, by the way, and also Kindle if
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: you just want to get it on your iPod, got it?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Does it get adversarial?
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: It can bet it didn't because I've not.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: With this kid. Were you guys getting We've got along fine.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: We had a nice conversation. I understood where he was
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: coming from. He was thrilled to death for his uncle
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: to catch the fish. Yep, and they all thought they
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: had a world record. But from what I understand is
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: what I was told, not from this kid, but from
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: the resort people or people associated with the resort people.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: The scale they used was a twenty dollars Amazon scale.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Can't be real repeatable. That's what you need for a
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: good scale. It's got to be repeatable. So who knows.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Maybe because he jumped up on the seat and tried
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: to get the fish up, it took him two lifts
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: to get a tail off the ground or off the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: floor of the boat, and so it had to be
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: You know, you're standing there with all that weight supposedly
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: seventy two pounds. I mean he lifted weights a little bit,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: but try it sometime. It's not easy to lift forty pounds.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: It'll oone seventy. So whether the scale jiggled or whether
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: the boat rocked, who knows what. Nobody believes it weighed
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: seventy two pounds. If they want to believe it. That's fine.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: More power to them that. If that's what they want,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: that to be their family goal, go for it. But
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not buying it.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: I ain't going in the butt.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: I probably won't do any more revisions, getting too old.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about what the why was the muskie?
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Why did the Muskie War start the year I finished
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: high school? And is there a correlation?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: I never thought about that? Okay? In nineteen ninety.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: One, Oh sorry, I finished ninety three.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: John Delloff, who's a amateur historian in my hometown or
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: where I live now, Hayward.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Was called a muskie historian or historian pretty much.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: He's a historian, but heavy into musky.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Well, he decided that he was going to investigate it,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: and so he used his amateur photo analysis to try
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: to debunk Arthur Lawton's sixty nine pounds fifteen ounce muskie
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: from the Saint Lee Trevor six sixty nine to fifteen
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: from say One Trevor, nineteen fifty seven. The thing of
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: it is, it could have all stopped right there, had
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: if I had had my head on straight, or if
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: anybody else would have thought about it. The pictures that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: he used to analyze. Okay, there is no way to
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: prove that the scales that Field and Stream are, the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: pictures that Field and Stream published were the actual pictures
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: of the fish. Igfa's reason for setting the record aside,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: and they never did do a complete disqualification. It's still
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: instead aside status. But at that time in fifty seven,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Field Stream did not require a photograph even but IGFA did,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: so they weren't sure that the pictures that they had
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: were the right face, so they put it in set
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: aside status until another picture could be found. Well, I'd
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: found it and produced it and had a meeting with
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: him in two thousand and seven, but they still rejected it.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: But that was all boloney because when the World Record
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Musky Alliance challenged Cal Johnson's nineteen fifty seven or nineteen
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: forty nine sixty seven pounder, lost my chain of thought.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: You were talking about you were talking about the amateur historian.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're off of him for a minute. Yep, the WRIM,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: which is a world record Musky Alliance. They were trying
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: to prove which world record muskies were indeed legitimate.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Yeap, which these guys actually had it right.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: And so they had a professional photograph interest. Now analyze
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: the photographs as the same thing they did for spraysfish,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: which was sixty nine to eleven, the one that Latin
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: beat and when they denied the Wrimes protest and also
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: Louis Spray's protests for the hull. Anyway, IJFA said that
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: they decided that you can't prove the weight of a
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: fish from a two dimensional photograph, which I agree with.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: But what you can prove from photogrammetry is, for instance,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: in the case of the Johnson fish, it was actually
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: twenty five percent smaller than what they claimed by photo
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: analysis of both the fresh fish and the mount after
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: it was mounted. If you'll overlay the outline of both
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: the mounted fish and the fresh fish is the same
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: thing they did with sprayfish. One is way shorter than
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: the other one ten inches in Spray's case, maybe more
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: than that and seven and a half in Johnson's fish.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: And if you come to Hayward, I'll buy you you
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: can buy me a beer. I'll take you to the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: mox and Bar and show you Johnson's Mountain. I'll show
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: you exactly how they did it. I've had quite a
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: few beers over that fire.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: At what bar?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Mox and bar hanging the mox and bar in the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: glass case? Still there now, still there now?
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: And uh and what's it say underneath it?
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: Well, Cal Johnson's world record muskie because they didn't want
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: to claim world record musky because supposedly Spray's face beat it.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: But Spray's face was a lie anyway, So anyway, that's
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: that's that.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: It was a lie or a mistake.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: It was a lie. Lily the liar I call him.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 5: Does he have a history of line.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: It started in nineteen thirty nine, because he's still alive.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Everything was pretty kosher up till nineteen thirty nine. Lake
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: of the Woods in nineteen twenty nine, nineteen thirty one,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two produced world record muskies. The biggest one
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: of all of them was fifty eight pounds and four ounces.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: That was nineteen thirty two.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: And this is like the heyday, right heyday of.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Lake of the Woods. But it's still to this day
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: never produced a sixty pound fish. So in nineteen thirty nine,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: there was a gentleman named Percy have in Detroit, Michigan,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: making lures and wanting to become a big deal. So
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: he supposedly caught a world record.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: He wants to play the game.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: And that was in June. Well, in July, Lewis Spray
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: came up with one just a little bit bigger, and
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: so he had the world record. But before the year
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: was out, a guy who had never fished muskus before
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: and borrowed a rod and reel, skipped work and went
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: fishing with his buddies on Eagle Lake. By noon the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: first day had a sixty pound, eight ounce legitimate fish. Legit, legit.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: In fact, John delle office has not challenged that fish
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: to this day. Oh anyway, that was nineteen thirty nine. Well,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: Spray wasn't happy about having the record for just a
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: short period of time. And I think the reason that
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: he did it in the first place was coming out
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: of the depression, the war's getting ready to go crazy,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: and tourism was at a low ebb and he owned
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: a tavern. So what better way to get business than
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: a world record muskie. Yeah, but yeah, when he got
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: the first one, he put it on Ice s Indey's bar,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: had everybody write in a book what they guessed that
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: it weighed before they ever told it. And excuse me, anybody,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: how much it weighed, and then in nineteen forty he
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: decided to do it again, but Haybard already beat him
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: with a bigger one in nineteen forty, So this is
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: two years in row Har's got a world record and
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: two years in a row. Sprays thought he had a
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: world record, but he was already beat before it was caught.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: But yet he still claimed on his even on his
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: tombstone today he relies, this remains of Lewis right, three
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: world record muskies in his day. So he had the Hayward,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Wisconsin graveyard.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: Is that a picture in your book?
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: I don't have a picture of the tombstone, but it's
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: in Chester's going to get one. It's in a book.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: So it was all said and done. That's what he
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: wanted on there, right, not like loving father right right.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: So three times and that was that was his supposed
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: second world record, but it wasn't. And then that same
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: year another eagle, a fish big fish was caught sixty
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: one pounds nine ounces, but it had already been beaten twice.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: So there was six record potential fish caught in two years,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: and four of them by the two guys with two each.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: So things went quiet for a while Louis moved out
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: of Hayward, he sold his tavern. He moved to Rice
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: Lake and bought another tavern. Kind of got out of
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: the muskie game. And nineteen forty seven of sixty four
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: and a half pound fish was caught in Vadas County, Wisconsin,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: and of course right away the rumors start and the game.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: Orden said he had a pen fattening it up, and
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: you know the usual.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: Rumors, throwing kittens in a little baby pool.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: That off.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: He was trying to disprove every big musky that was caught,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: except those were caught in Hayward, with the exception of
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: the eagle leg fish, and I don't know why he
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: skipped those two. So anyway, he tried to discredit the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: hands for fishing, and he never did dispute the fact
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: that it was fifty eight inches long. But when the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: picture was taken of hands or hole in the fish,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: he had already gutted the fish and taken twelve pounds
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: of spawn out of it, so it looked like it,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: you know, a tube that was fifty eight inches long,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: and it couldn't possibly weighed sixty four a half pounds,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: But he had certified scale, he had all the affiday
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: it's necessary and everything. So it kind of died down. Then.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you something. I signed up for a
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: turk you derby one time and Elroy Wisconsin at the bar,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and I got it my turkey and brought it down
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: there and everybody had a big laugh about how I
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: got it. The next day we stopped back down there
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: and we come in. They're still in there.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: He got it, he got it?
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: What did go by?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 7: Way?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: What kind of idiot.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: Cost yourself there? Did you?
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: So?
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: Anyway? Nineteen forty nine, Cal Johnson caught a supposed sixty
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: seven and a half pounder. Nice, I'd like you to
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: do a little photo analysis, if you would. There's three
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: pictures of his supposed sixty seven and a half pounder
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: and one picture of a forty four pounder and they
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: don't look much different.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: And well, bottom right is a real stut.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 6: We think before we would start this, don't you think
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 6: we would say, mister Ranella, we'd like you to perform
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: a photo analysis for the group. But before you do that,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 6: could you please tell us your background, Like how are
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: you qualified to judge these photos?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Uh?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: Just eyeballing?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: I have caught a tiger musky. Wow, and many, many,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: many twenty four twenty two inch northerns. Yeah, and uh,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: these are all whoppers.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Well one of the things that was.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: But I gotta say this in all seriousness, I'm not,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: as you know, not a seasoned muskie fisherman. I mean,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: maybe you can help explain it, but come on, how
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: much can you What can you tell from any of
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: these photos?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Not a lot actually, unless they unless they're done professionally
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: by a photograph intrist. But the thing that struck me
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: was I bought this magazine at a flea market and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: it was written Cal Johnson article written the year before
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: he got his record out of same lake where he
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: supposedly got his record, and that that's the picture right there.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: And strangely, and a year later he catches a fish
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: that looks a lot like that fish. He claims it
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: to weigh sixty seven and a half pounds and claims
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: a new world record and won an automobile. What so,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: this may be totally legitimate, This may be you know,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: it may not be that fish. It may be that fish.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't really care. But here's how
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: wax record keeping was even then nineteen forty nine. This
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: is a letter from Field and Stream, who were the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: world record keepers at the time.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Now at that point in time was Field and Stream.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: Field and Stream, because they've sold off the rights of
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: that name and all kinds. Yeah, they were, they were,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: So it was affiliate with the magazine back then, right, Yeah.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: So letter to Cal Johnson. We recently received a clipping
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: covering your sixty seven and a half pound musculin's catch.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: Congratulations on a fine catch and setting a new world record.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: We'd like very much to have an entry from you
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: in our annual fishing contest, and an entry blank is
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: enclosed herewith for that program they actually chased the record, okay.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: Also in the case of the world records, if possible,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: If possible, we would like to have an affidavit attesting
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: to the accuracy of the scales on which the fish
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: was weighed. To this day, there's never been any proof
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: the scales were certified, and it was weighed on two
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: different scales, as well as two or three additional witnesses
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: to the weighing and measuring. This is not because we
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: have any doubt as to the weight, but merely serves
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: as a protection to both ourselves and to the angler.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: If you have one or two good pictures to spare,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: we would appreciate receiving those also. That's how lacks World
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: Records certification was in those days. Yep.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: So when you go into looking at a fish, when
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: you go into investigating a fish, are you hoping? And
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: you gotta be honest? Okay, I'm trying. I want to
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: tap into your deepest, most honest thought.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: I'm ready for you.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: Are you hoping it's a phony? Or are you hoping
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: it's a new world record.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked that question. When I wrote the
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: first edition on the Compendium nineteen eighty one, I did
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: everything I could to prove that the records were legitimate.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: I did not go looking for any negatives got it.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: If one would have popped up, I uld have jumped
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: all over it. But my goal was to record history.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: That was it, and so I was trying to find
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: every bit of information I could that would substantiate the fish.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: That was in nineteen eighty one. Nineteen ninety seven, I
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: did an update, kind of screwed it up a little bit,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: but I was back on the track of these fish
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: were bogus and then I did this third edition in
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, and uh, that's a very very
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: hard read volume one, because it gets so much into
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: depth and of how we determined this, and how we
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: determine that, and what have you. But UH, when when
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: dell Off first made his proposals to get Lawton's fish disqualified,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: I was working a lot of hours as traveling, I
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: was moving from one town to another, and so I
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: didn't really scrutinize it like I should have, And I
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: regret that ever since. In fact, it keeps me awake nights.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: But because you wish what would have happened.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: I wish I would have looked at it closer, because
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: as you will see if you read this, I've spent
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: probably a fifth of that book debunking his protest, his.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: His like he wasn't being fair.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: Right, and he proved that out on his own self.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: By Uh, when the Wrima protested the sprayfish, the sixty
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: nine to eleven fish that replaced the sixty nineteen fifteen blottonfish,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: he I was at that time. I was on the
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: hall board, I was the world record advisor, and WA
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: made the protest. It was a ninety some page this
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: big black notebook here of all the things that they found,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: louis a no good son.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Of a bitch and a ninety page takedown.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: They would not allow me to sit in on the
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: meeting to review this protest, even though I'm the world
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: record advisor for the Hall and I built that program
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: from scratch. So I asked John Dellof, who at the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: time was the director of the Hall of Fame, for
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: the president president of the Board. I says, why can't
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: I sit in on this meeting? He says, because that's
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: the way I want it, because he knew if I
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: was there he couldn't control the narrative.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: In fact, he allowed me fifteen minutes to make a
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: presentation of the board and that was it. And they
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: had blow ups of the affidavits as big as that
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: plane picture behind you there as well. One of the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: board members asked me, he says, how can you contest
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: these affai Davids, I said, ask that gentleman there, because
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Lawton had five legitimate affidavids to the weight of his fish.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: And when Detlof did his protest and they disqualified it,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: four of those witnesses came forward and re signed another
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: alpha David the fish was legitimate, and he found three
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: new witnesses. Three new witnesses found two of them made affidavids,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: and one of them was the next door neighbor to Lawtons,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: and he verified Detloff made up his own Affidavid for
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: the kid to sign, so he didn't really understand what
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: he was signing. But what he did say in there
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: was that on subsequent weekends that Lawton's brought home one
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: weekend nine big fish, the biggest one was forty nine pounds,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: and the next week ends when he got the sixty
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: nine to fifteen, and he was witnessed to both of them,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: where Deloff was trying to say that because the photographs
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: that appeared in Field and Stream were of the forty
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: nine pounder, that that's the one Lawton was claiming to
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: be the sixty nine pounder yep.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: Then IGFA, after the wim protests, said that you can't
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: tell from a two dimensional photograph the weight of a
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: fish you but Mike come back to them was but
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: you can tell if it was phonied up enough, because
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: the photographmetry proves that it was twenty five percent smaller
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: than it actually claimed to be and plus you got
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: the witnesses, the weight witness and he said the president,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: the current president of the IJFA, said that IGFA recognizes
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: all tackle records by scale weight only period. Well, we
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: had what ten alfi, David's or so of Lawton's fish,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: and they won't reinstate it. I want to know why
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: they won't answer me. But if if it's by witnessed
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: weight on a certified scale, which it.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: Was, what's the argument.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: They won't tell me. They won't talk to me. They'll
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: talk The other guys will talk to me. The record
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: keeper now will talk to me, but the president won't
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: talk to me. I've sent him two letters and he's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: not answered either one of them.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: So you've lost I've lost friendships over this time.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: Well absolutely, I told him you're a hypocrite. IJFA is hypocritical.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: You first set Lawton aside because of the photograph, but
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: that wasn't it at all, because when it comes to
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: Johnson's fish, it can't go by photographs, so we're gonna
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: go by scale weight, certified Scalewaight. Well, Lawton had all that,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: so he said, have never been disqualified in the first place.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I've lost a lot of friends I lost.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: You know, the guy that did the protest, the current
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: director of the Hall of Fame was my best friend
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: at the time, and that went by the wayside. In fact,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: we were supposed to go to Texas duck hunt and
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: he had to cancel the trips so we could stay
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: there and help build their bullshit case against the WWME protests.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: So when was that?
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: That was in two thousand and six.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen guys come to blows over muskies?
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, there's a lot of
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: bad blood in the muskie world, but there's a lot
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: of good blood and musky world too, I mean the
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: serious I know all the top names in the game.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: Fished with a lot of them, friends with a lot
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: of them. My personal guide on the Saint Lawrence River
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: is probably the best on the planet. I'm piassed a
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: little bit, but he's caught over fifty to fifty pounders.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: You know, Wow, there's nobody in history, I mean very
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: few muskerfish and I ever catch a thirty pounder, let
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: alone a fifty pound He's caught two fifty eight and
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: a half pounders. His clients have called him, but he
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: was the guide to mean, in my mind that fish
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: that I showed you that I called it was his fish.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: He was He put us on the fish. I just
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: reeled it in.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: But what do you think about like a what do
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: you think about a world, a subset of fishing, hunting,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: subset whatever that gets to where everything, you know, it
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: just winds up being that every picture is is like,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: how what an idiot someone is? They did that wrong.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: They caught a big one, but they were lucky. They
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: didn't deserve it. They must have been lying.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: That's jealousy at most of it. Yeah, there's a lot
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: of that goes on. But you know, the guys that
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: are consistent, they're respected. They're respected most of them. I mean,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: there's there's always some screwballs that make fun or deny anything, yep,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: But for the most part, like this fish, let's say
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: I did weigh seventy two pounds. If it had been
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: properly documented, we would be celebrating it. The one thing
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: that blew me away and I kind of got that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: explained to me when I talked to Observing number five
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: that anybody in the musky world that I know, if
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: they catch the world record, they're gonna be screaming from
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: the rooftops. Yeah, I mean, and some guys would be
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: looking for sponsorships and whatever and free taxidermy the whole
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: nine yards. But not a peep out of these guys.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: And so I put a challenge on the post that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: I made a muskie first and not a peep. And
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: I thought the guy that published the picture without the
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: heads was one of the group. Well it turns out
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: that when I talked to observing number five, he said
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: that it's obviously one of our our inner circle, but
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: we don't know who it was. It wasn't one of
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: the five. So that's that's one thing that had thrown me,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: is why we weren't hearing from him back, like, well,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: show you a picture and won't tell you nothing else.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: And you know, I emailed this guy private email a
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: couple of times and never got any response because he
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: wasn't burt of the group. He didn't know anything.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Was there a time when you how bad did you
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: want to be a world record holder?
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: Since nineteen fifty seven you were hoping for that to happen.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I mean that have you given up or you think
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: you still got a chance.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: I still got a shot But here's the thing. You've
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: got a fish where they are. And I always tell people,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: if you want to catch a big musky, you've got
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: to go where big muskies live.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: And if you don't, your odds are zero. And that's
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: that's one of the things about you know, we promote
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: catch and release for everybody of water because all of
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: them can be hurt with too much pressure and too
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: much harvests, as I've proven, I think based on mortality,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: and the more newros, newcomers that come to the game
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: and don't not handle these fish, it's gonna get worse.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: So we need to start a bigger education program on
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: how to handle these fish. But you know, experience tops everything.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: You've got to handle a few of them to learn
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: how to handle them. So it's a double edged sword.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: But if we get too many at one thrust in
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: the game and they don't want to handle them, they're
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: gonna kill everything to catch and we'll be back to
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: the mid nineteen fifties and one hundred thousand fish go
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: to the grave every tear.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: You know what this guy's actual name is, Musky Chat,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Musky Chet. This guy's coming hot on your hot on
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: your heels.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: Dude, welcome. In fact, I've been trying to find somebody
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: to take over for me because I'm not gonna live forever.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: There we go, I'll be the next musky.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: You got a spare room?
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately no, but I need somebody to move in for
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: a while. The problem I've got And I was talking
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: to Krint Carimat at lunch today, I said, if you
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: were to saw the top of my head off, got
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: you a bunch of little musky swim around.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: If it wasn't muskies, what would have what do you
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: think it would have been? Because you know what, oh
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: you already I.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: Was a big time duck hunter for a long time. Yeah, yeah, do.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: You feel like he got a little bit of a
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: do you got? Do you feel like you got like
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: some like a O C D or like uh or
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: like like do you feel that if it was for muskies,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: you would have been into something that you can count,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: probably something that you could qualify.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We met a guy he passed away recently that
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: was an antler collector. Okay, right, And if God had
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: never put antlers on deer, that's some bit would been
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: collecting something. I don't know what it would have been.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: It would have been petrified rocks. It would have been
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: like something he.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: Was born to collect to collect.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: It's just like a freak chance sort of that he
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: got onto antlers.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: I've got all kinds of collections, Musky pins, musky buttons,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: musky patches, musky bottles, musky wineglasses, musky beer cans, you
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: name it, musky, I got it.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: It's just do you feel like, are you glad about it?
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: Are you ever afraid you'd someday be like, God, damn it?
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: Really muskies, no whole life.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: No, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn't go
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: back and start something different. I'm happy with where I've
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: been and still going.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 6: So how do you feel about the fate of the fishery.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: I'm worried about the new handling explosion, new anglers, and
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: I'm worried about Ford facing sonar. If the guys use
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: it ethically, I got no problem with it.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 6: What's an ethical way versus a not ethical way?
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: Okay? Muskies, Big Muskies spend a lot of time in
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: deep water bear trauma.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: Is that same with the same with northerns.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big, the big, Northern, small, Northern stay shallow yep
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: So if in the summertime, when the water surface temperature
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: seventy five, seventy eight, even eighty degrees and you're pulling
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: a fish out of forty feet of water that's probably
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: sixty eight degrees down there, you're gonna kill it fish
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: pretty much. That's where the ethics come in.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're gonna use this technology. They're gonna handle
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: more fish, They're gonna be catching more fish in their
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: own places. They're gonna be maybe not so educated on
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: how to deal with them once they do catch them.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: And it's just each fish is gonna be more exposed
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: to more higher likelihood of getting handled.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: Hearing this, Yeah, so I've got this is like I said,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: this topic is opening up a can of worms. There
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: are some spot faced sonars there. There's absolutely no doubt
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: that it helps you catch fish.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, there's that badfish. Guides are loving it.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's not propies are.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: Going to put the first one to suffer the things that.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: Oh that this has to be very self governing, which
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: is very hard to do. Exactly if people are just
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 4: catching fish and not handling correctly, Yeah, that's a problem. However,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: there are arguments to be had how forward facing sonar
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: can educate you if learned how to use it property
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: Like if you are fishing, for example, on a break
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: line right that is in ten feet of water, but
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: it's close to forty feet of water, and you can't
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 4: see down in some deep weeds or something where muskies
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: could be, you know, being caught, and you're casting this
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 4: break line. The water temperature is pushing eighty degrees and
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden you see a muskie shoot up
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 4: out of that forty feet of water into the ten
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 4: feet of water and you catch them. That's probably not
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: a good thing, but you just learned something there with
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: live sonar that would be really hard to learn if
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 4: you didn't have it.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, I'm very simpathetic to what you're saying
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: right now, is that, uh, it educates, and all this technology,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: not all that much of the technology educates. We used
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: to like at our area where we are in southeast Alaska.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: If you to I'm not kidding. If you'd come to
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: me ten years ago, not even ten years ago, eight
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: years ago, seven years ago, you'd come to me, I
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: would have said, for some weird reason, we don't have
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: link cod where we're at. I would have said that
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: up until a very like definable moment. I would have
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: said that until I got my hands on navionics. Once
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: I got my hands on navionics, I'm like, oh shit,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: was linkoind all over place? I just never knew. I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: never understood the contours. We used to fish off marine
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: charts with like like handfuls of uh fathom readings on
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: marine charts, paper marine charts. Once I knew, like, oh
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: my god, this's like that down there, and there's specific
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: ridgelines and specific pinnacle tops and like that one doesn't,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: this one does, that one doesn't. It's hugely educational. I've
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: learned so much about Lincott I'll tell you an art thing.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: We've cleaned a lot of Lincott off a lot of hilltops.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: It's like they go, you know, so the the new,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: the all the knowledge and information is great, it's beautiful,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: but you can hurt of fisher. Well, we never scratched
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: those fish. We never ever scratched those fish, but you could.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: I know where they're at now.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: The first thing to like coming into ethics as far
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: as you're hunting, when you fly into do go hunting
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: in Alaska, Canada, you can't hunt the same day, right, correct,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: that's that's ethics. That's the same thing. I look at
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: the forward fishing Somar. If you're going to run.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: I would argue ethics would be that you could, but
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: choose not to.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the law is the law.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Well, the law is the law.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: The law is but it's the law for a reason.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're getting a little bit chicken under the egg here,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: but yeah, you're right. Yeah, we we codify ethics, like
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: we have laws that are meant to like lay down
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: ethical understandings, right, Like we don't murder is not illegal
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: because you know, you create a lot of like yeah,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: you create a lot of paperwork and big messes. It's
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: like illegal because they've ethically decided that fracture side is bad. Yeah,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: you're right. Like a lot of a lot of law
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: springs from ethics. A lot of method to take law
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: and Baglin's and all that also spring from how would
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: you put it resource management.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: There's one Canadian bologists been on the forums that where
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: he is. He's in Manitoba. They have a none overrule
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: red river big and catfit. Ye, well, you can keep
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: them up to a certain size, but you can't keep
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: any over that size because it's your breeders, and that's
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: what he'd like to see happened to muskies, which would
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: eliminate any possible future rural record obviously.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: But yeah, but you see what he's got a point
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: that's pretty common in fisheries, right.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, there's a lot of slot limits to maintain
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: enough fish in the fishery to keep it going. So
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: you control by side limits of controlled by by bag limits. Uh,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: one of the lakes and Hayward there, they just went
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: to a five bag panfish limit this year of any
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: species of panfish. Five can't keep more than five because
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: they were slaughtered them. They can't. They can't take that
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: kind of pressure.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: They couldn't settle on something like a little more compromin
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: five five. Yeah, I said, how about.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not a pan fisherman, so I don't care.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 6: But you're like, I got this barrel scaler I'm real
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 6: fond of and it doesn't start spinning until there's thirty
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 6: fishing muzz.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Well, sell the bucket scaler. Now what lake was that?
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: It's most lake Okay, it's east of Hayward twenty five miles.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 4: If you find the panfish sometimes you find the muskies.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 5: Though Chester.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 3: Do you have aspirations of being a world record holder?
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 4: Uh? I mean if I got got a big fish, like,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 4: for instance, Cal and I. One time we're out on
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: a lake recent a couple of years ago around here,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: we caught a giant fish. We were not prepared. Do
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: I really care that I would? You know? Could you know?
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 4: It probably wasn't. I don't think could.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 5: I think it was, though, but go ahead?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: Could have like a state record. I don't necessarily think it.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: I care about having my name number one, but it'd
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: just be nice to kind of know when my heart
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 4: how big that fish was, you know. So like next
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 4: time I I'm out in Wisconsin, you know, on a
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: big fish water, I will I will be equipped with
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: the right tools to actually know how big that fish is.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, if someone said to me, would you like a
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: state record fish? I would say emphatically yes.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: Yes, right, yeah, I mean they.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: Said why, I'd be like, I'm not sure, but I
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: know that I do.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 5: Fish is great.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: It's just a normal progression of mine. You want more
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: and more and more better, better, better, bigger, bigger, bigger.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's pretty fun. I was talking to a friend
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 6: of mine yesterday and he was talking about how like
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 6: trophy l hunts are bad for recruitment. I was like, well,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 6: why is that. He's like, have you ever ever run
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 6: into some dude who paid twenty five thousand dollars to
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: go on this super exclusive, big time el hunt and
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 6: was like, and by the way, my six year old
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 6: kid's going to be with us, He's going to be
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 6: screwing everything up. And I was like, no, I guess
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 6: I haven't.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: Unless I'm that following saying.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 6: He's like, he's like big time hunts don't propagate hunting
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 6: because it's like he's like that the group of folks,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 6: they're not bringing the kids along.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I'm with you. Yeah, I'm with you. I
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: don't know that entirely, but I should get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: I could see something like that happened to me and
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: being right away in my head being like, I'm not
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: bringing all my freaking kids.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 4: Right, I'm the how much time.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: Are we at?
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: We're at time to wrap it out?
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 4: I wanted to talk go ahead, hit worry about fishing
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: more actually fishing muskies.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah, give him the big one.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: There's there's one that I know the answer to this,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 4: and I know what you're going to say, But the
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 4: fish of a ten thousand casts, you know, that's what
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 4: everyone calls the muskie. Yeah, we could talk about fishing.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: For Have you calculated it out? How many casts?
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: That's not quite that many.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 4: I mean that would be one cast every minute for
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 4: roughly seven days straight.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: And that was born a fact. Then in the mid
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds, when they were killing one hundred thousand muskies
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: a year, it probably took that many. But today, if
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: you take more than a thousand casts, you're in the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: wrong spot. You're not doing something right. In fact, if.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 6: You had to catch a big musky, are you throwing
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 6: baits or you're using a live.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: Bait throwing baits almost exclusively just.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 6: Because you're covering water.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: Covering water, and you're going to get in front of
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: a big fish if you're on big fish water. For instance,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: when I first started going out yeast, we fished five
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: days in July. We were there for five days. We
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: catch twenty four fish, three of us yeah, and six
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: of those would be fifty inches. Go back in August
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: for another five days freezer fillers and catch forty in
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: five days, and six of them over fifty inches hotter water,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: the fish are more active, metabolism is high, and they're
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: going crazy, and they're stupid fish. It's not quite that
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: good now because we've beat the hell out of them
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: for twenty eight years, so in fact more than that.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: But they're getting they're getting a little educated, harder to
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: catch up. But we're still Last year was not a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: normal year. But on a normal year, three of us
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: in the two weeks we should catch six or eight
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: fifty inch fish or bigger, up to fifty seven fifty eight.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: My buddy who was nine weeks in a coma with COVID,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: got out of COVID, got a little bit healthy that
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: when the Canadian border was closed with got a word
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: they were going to open it up. At midnight on
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: the night of opening, we were sitting at the border
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: station in New York ready to go. And two days later,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: three days later, Saturday Sundays, two days later, you got
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: a fifty eight and a half incher with a fourteen
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: inch head. Imagine there's a fourteen inch fourteen and a
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: half inch head. It's just incredible. It's incredible.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: What are you?
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 5: Two last questions for me, how many musky baits?
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: Do you have, Well, I don't have as many as
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: I used to have, but I've probably still got several hundred.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 5: It seems like musky guys like their base.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing that drives me crazy being an author.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: These guys that are the nutcases would rather spend one
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars on their seven hundred musky lure than to
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: spend thirty five bucks for a book that explains the
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: history of their part. It makes me crazy.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 5: Another question, what boat you fishing out of?
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: Ranger?
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Normally nice?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: You know when you're talking about the fish of ten
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: thousand casts and you calculate it out, how long you
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: have to do that? Yeah? Kind of One of the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: highlights of my dad's life is a guy wrote an
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: article about his still hunting method, and you put down
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: how many steps and how long he waits, and my
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: dad wrote a letter to the editor saying that he'd
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: still be forty yards from his truck at the end.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 5: Of the day or something.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: Highlight of his life got to publish.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 4: That is hilarious.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, none of the couple hundred lures that you have
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 6: larry a couple hundred baits that you have. If you
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 6: had to be like you can only take five across
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 6: the border to Canada.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 5: What would those five be?
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: Four of the five would be bucktails in one surface bait.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: I got a question for you. You think Chester is an
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: idiot for using those lures.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: Those are two of the deadlish lures on the planet.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: Good for Chester, job?
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this thing is catching so many giant fish. The
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: only problem I got with this bait is if you're
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: not properly tooled up. The fish swallow these things practically
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: and they'll get hooked back deep in the gills.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: They want to eat that thing, Their lips hit it
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: and they think it's real.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: So you got to have a tool. It's called a
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: hook pick. It'll reach in there and like if they
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: get hook over the gill raker, you can actually lift
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: that hook up, push it backwards a little bit, lift
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: it up and pull it out without ripping the gill
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: out of the fish.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: How much money got sunk into this lure?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 5: Chester? That lure?
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 4: I want to say, I can't quite remember. I'd say
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 4: that's this.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: This is a Suey was developed in the thirties by
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: a guy named Frank Suey. He caught a musky day
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: for thirty days out of Pelican Lake. The lake owners
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: had a petition to the governor to get him banned
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: from fishing.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 8: And back in the day when you'd write the governor,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 8: they wanted him to stop because he's going to clean
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 8: the lake out.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you kept every one of them that was
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: in a key. What years did your grandfather fish man?
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: So he died, Get bear with me minute. He died
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: in around eighty four, at eighty.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, help me out here.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: He was not much so by when I was born,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, he was not that active.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: So I would say fifties and sixties. He's a big muscard.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: That's everybody kept him and a one hundred thousand a
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: year died and d n R tried like hell to
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: make enough babies just replace them, and fishing was tough
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: enough day.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was from a farm and what is now Naperville, Illinois.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: She'd never guess you could be from a farm there.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: It was orchards and stuff. He was from a farm there.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: And when on when they went on vacations, they would
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: go up into Wisconsin to fish muskiees like that was
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: what he did.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, Wisconsin was the muskie mecca of North America
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: for a long time, actually formal muskie fish. He started
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: on the Saint Lawrence River in eighteen eighties in both
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: Quebec and Ontario, New York, and then it graduated inland
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: to Chautauqua Lake, New York, which small body water produces
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of fish thousands, but they stocked a hell
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: of it. They stuck like thirteen thousand a year there.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 5: Two.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: Yep. You want to know something that chaps my ass,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: Larry in Wisconsin?
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: What But.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: In Wisconsin they've been trying to push to get pike
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: spearing through the ice, and you know who blocks it,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: the musky community. The muskie community feels like an American
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: angler can't distinguish between the northern and a muskie. So
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: the minu, you let them spear pike through the ice,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: they're gonna start killing muskies. Friend of mine pointing out
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: out you can count on people to tell one kind
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: of duck from another. You can count on them to
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: tell whether a spike antler is three inches or three
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: and a quarter inches. You can count on them to
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: I could go on no, no, no, which I can't
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: count on them to tell a muskie from a pike.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's possible.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Would you support did you stand strong with pike spears?
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: I to stand against any spirit? What about surgeon spir
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: Now I understand him. Like in Michigan you can steal
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: spear muskies in Michigan you can't. Only one a year
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: now used to be carte blanche, but now it's only
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: one a year.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: But you don't like any through the ice spearing.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: I don't like any through the ice catching either. Fact.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: To give you an example where I where I fish
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: to wrap it up? Where I fish on the Saint
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: Lawrence River.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: Huh.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: Until this year, the season for muskies didn't close until
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: March thirty. First, well from sometimes mid December at least
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: late December to the end of March. It's froze up.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: Not a big deal, but you could actually fish for
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: them legitimately with rod and reel until the end of March,
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: which means you're catching an egg laden fom. But the
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: reason that they're cutting it back to December nineteenth will
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: be the date next year is because in the last
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: few years have been killing so many really big muskies
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: through the ice ice fishing.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, like, are you ever calling through the ice.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: No, I only tried once. I'm not an ice fisherman.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 4: Last year it stayed Lake State open, so guys were
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 4: fishing open water into.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: This opened up early this year.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: Too.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 4: One last question, how big are you on the following
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 4: moon phases and musky fishing?
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: You know, I kept track of that for years, and
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: I tried to be faithful to them, and I found
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: I catched just as many in between simler periods as
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: I did on them, So I just quit worrying about it. Now.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: My guide he's religious about we're getting close to a period,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: we're going to be on a good spot, and sometimes
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: it paid off and sometimes don't. Sometimes we catch big
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: fishings nowhere near a period, so he can believe if
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: he wants. I don't believe.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 4: And what we're talking about there is like moon rise
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 4: as soon as the moon's coming out, moon set or
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 4: moon moon overhead are like.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: My opinion is that because people believe that that's when
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: they're fishing. They're not off periods, they're not off onny
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: out there on the off hours, but when it's moon
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: up time or moonset and time, they're out there.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like we're getting them on shar troops. What
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: you been using for a long time?
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: Black bucktail with a silver spinner blade, that was they're
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: probably up until say nineteen seventy. There's probably more musk
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: he's caught on that one color combination bucktail then all
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: the other musky baites put together there. That's just because
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: that's whatever Foddy was throwing.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: H guess what I got know one for you? Do
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: you get excited about catching a tiger muskie? You know?
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: I for years said I'll killing mount the first tiger
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: musky ever catch. It took me quite a few years,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: and I caught it out of a place. I didn't
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: ever dream to catch a tiger musky. But it's on
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: my wall. But I love tigers, in fact, almost more
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: than muskies. No way, I love tigers.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: Did you fry it up? Yeah?
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: But I've caught bigger one sincing and put them.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: Back all right, Larry, thanks for coming on, man, I
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: love it. People buy your book.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't care if they do. They don't. They
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: don't want to know what's going on.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 6: It's called look a gift horse in the mouth.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: If you want to know what's going on, If you
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: want to know everything you want everyone to know about
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: past world record muskies. Larry, Why why is an asterisk
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: in the title?
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: Where's the that's not an asterisk. That's an explanation of
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: the word compendium.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, And then you go to where go down below.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: And explains what a compendium is?
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 5: Okay?
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: So a Compendium of Musky Angling History Revised, Updated and expanded,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: third edition, Volume one, Muscle Lunge World Records, the History
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: the truth.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: There's the keyword right there.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: Circa nineteen eighteen seventy seventy, two thousand and six. A compendium,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: If you want what the hell that means? A compendium
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: gathers together and presents, in a concise or outlined form,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: all the essential facts and details of a subject. Bingle
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: by Larry Ramsell.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 6: You may want to get volume two. There's a real
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 6: important quote here at the back. You know, on the
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 6: back of books how they put quotes from other authors
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 6: or historians are scientific journals and stuff. This one at
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 6: the bottom says, who's that buy me my best work?
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 9: Yeah, Larry, I'm gonna put an asterisk next to this,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 9: and you're gonna there's gonna be two asterisks next to
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 9: your name and you're gonna go down to that second
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 9: asterisk and it's gonna say a man obsessed pretty much.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Larry Ramsey, that's great.
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man pretty much.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: Heavy girlfriend, give me a ring. Next memorial, Man, we're
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: gonna mop up on spawning bluegills. Okay, I know about
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: a hot bobber bite that we just hit it pretty good.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: She has bowed with muskies. I had to do most
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: of the.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: Work, all right, Larry, thanks for coming on. Good luck
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: with your continued good luck with your book. And if
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: I catch a world record muskie while you're still on Earth,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep my mouth.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: Shut or call me before you speak.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Larry.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 5: Next word.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 7: I love fishing loures. I love to cast them while
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 7: I'm drinking a course for while on the rocks, I'm
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 7: drinking adures. Clever, little mechanic, cold words of odd. I
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 7: love fishing lures.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: Got a hot tackle.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: Box of them, with't want any fewer. I bet I'm
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: a better.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 6: Fisher man than you are.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 7: When I'm at this morning good store, I love loading.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: Up my car.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 7: Some are striped summer pall and dotted big treble hook.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 7: Sometimes your line gets noted. Some dive deep, some skinter
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 7: on top of the water.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: Look at that big bass. I'm glad that I caught her.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 7: Some are monkeys, Some are articulated, some are simple, some
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 7: are complicated. Some of them spin, some of them rattle.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 10: All kinds of exotic cops as your voting paddle.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 7: I love fishing, lose.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 3: Without them in my life.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: I would be poor.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 7: Some are so effective I think I could catch fishing
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 7: a sewer. Lots of well designed little hats.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 11: Oh love fishing. LuSE something of joining that professional bass
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 11: fishing tour. Some hundred year old lax, others are newer.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 11: I love the way.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: They dive in.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 7: Some are completed, others are spotted. You think I'm missing
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 7: a lure, I've probably got it. Some going back and
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 7: forth like a tea or totter.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 6: My dog brings me good luck.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: I'm glad I brought her.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 7: Some are pretty light, others ardwaighted. I want to keep
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 7: casting fishing mores on upbeited fish arlurking in the shadows.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 10: Gotta lure the mount before my mind gets at Oh.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 7: I love fishing.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: Loes