00:00:01 Speaker 1: Rocking, the blue blockers, the Orange bill volunteers cap the whole deal a fishing gear shortage. Not a single rattle trap or fibrats anywhere to be seen. The coronavirus is hands down the best thing that ever happened to stripe a surf fishing ever. I mean, I ain't smiled this much since Deep Throw was in Theontis. White deck boots are welcome. You will still get served the cheese cards when you walk in, sweating and leaking snot after a day on the ice. Good morning, degenerate angler is welcome to Bent, where we invite fishermen from all walks of life, all skill levels, and all factions to unite. I'm Joe Surmelie and I'm Miles Nulty. And the way I described this for those of you lucky enough to remember such an awesome thing, this is like an like an eighth grade mix tape about fishing, uh, fishing and whatever the hell else we feel like talking about. But Joe, I really don't think that anyone makes mix tapes anymore. I think I think the kids call them playlists. Now, No they don't. That's a shame. I don't even know if you can buy blank tapes anymore, though, I do remember that my last mix tape had White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane followed by a bunch of no effects tracks. You have to I know you're a music guy. What was on your last mix tape? Dude? I don't, if I'm being honest, I don't remember the music that was on it. It was probably no effects or something around there. But what I do remember is I had this tape called Forbidden Spanish. That was how I learned bad words in Spanish, and I would include little snippets of that in between the songs that I recorded onto the mix tapes that I would then give the girls, hoping they would laugh and that that, you know, them being amused would make them like me. Did it work? Not really? No, Okay, I feel that pain. I did the similar thing with Jerky Boys clips. Anyway, enough about that. Look, to be upfront with you guys, our plan was definitely not to launch this podcast in the middle of a global pandemic. Yet here we are, and so you understand exactly where we are. Miles is actually in Montana, and I'm on the other side of the country, east side, right outside of Philadelphia, and man, it's it's been a roller coaster with the covids for a while. There. I was in COVID hell and and and Miles had clean living, and now there's there was the COVID's there, and now we're supposedly doing good and now I don't know, everybody just has the COVID. So we'll we'll just we'll just go with it. But you know what, um, despite pandemics, we're pressing on and we're we're giving this thing a go. Yeah, and you know what, forever, everyone out there, I think you're probably gonna agree with me when when everything feels so shitty as it does right now, the the real only responses just to go fishing. So that's what we're trying to do. I never really stopped fishing, though. It just was weird there for a few months, with like who you're allowed to fish with and who you can't. Can you leave the house? Can you not? But we we do have a regional fishing report for you guys this week. That's that's something we're gonna be doing weekly. Uh. It's weird though, because we're gonna play a report for you guys that's actually a few months old and I do understand that an old fishing report isn't really that useful, but you guys have to hear this. And this came in over the Bent phone, which is just similar to the bat phone, and our answering machine actually does use a tape because we don't have the budget for for digital. But this one's coming in from Stryper's surf fishing legend, Bob the garbage Man Britan and on a new Ski, who has been a fixture in the Jersey surf scene since long before I was born. Okay, he he's an absolute legend. He only uses chunks of man haden, which we call bunker, and vehemently opposes the use of artificial lures in the surf. And I'll just say, this is going to take you back to when quarantine was like really bad. But sometimes you have to examine where you've been to understand where you are. I think that's I think that's an inspirational meme that I saw my inspirational meme app anyway, kicking it back a few months to the height of quarantine with Bob g who will inspire you. Hello out there and Radio Wind. This is strip a chunkin egs. But Bob the cobbage Man Britana Nona Newski. As per usual, I'm calling him my weekly East Coast strip of fishing report from the pay phone on the corner of Baltic and MLK here in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That don't worry. I poured hot coffee over the receiver to disinfect it before dialing out. You gotta be smarting times like these, you know what I'm saying. Anyway, are gonna be real honest with you. As far as I'm concerned, the coronavirus is hands down the best thing that ever happened to stripe a surf fishing ever. I mean, I ain't smiled this much since Deep Throw was in theaters. For the first time in my life. I could tell somebody to get the away from me and then add quote by order of law soul. But let me tell you I've been chumping spots. I ain't fished since eight seven eight eight because I don't have to worry about it. Momo snagging my line with this pencil. Daughter. You know what I'm saying. It's a mook free environment right now. There's nobody out asking me stupid questions like hey, Bob. Ain't you worried about the coronavirus because you smoke so much? Anyways, listen kidding the side. For your safety, you need to stay at home, be smart, and if it's any consolation, you ain't missing much. Okay, but I absolutely did not mow down three plus pound bass and only a two hours soaked on the beach right in front of the old Trump Plaza the other day. For those of you desperate to get back on the bulkhead over there clam Creek. Don't rush. I only call one stud and about twenty five low forties and a five hour soaked there the other night. It's slow. Stay home, you know the coroner's water is going to get rid. For the rest of the stripe of coast, it's pretty much the same story. My old friend Jimmy the Gooch on the south shore of Long Island has been quarantine a fire island with for two weeks and his advising friends and family to please worry about secure and bread, eggs and milk, before being concerned about where to get fresh bunk of the chunk, though he has informed me he has plenty and he's selling one bunk of for thirteen dollars and two for twenty six, not that you needed. He ain't catching nothing, oh sh keeping a straight face. He's murdering them fifty sliding through the suns like they're on a goddamn convey about. He's grugged. So that's it for this week. Once again, I can't stress enough that the overriding messages stay of come for a year maybe two better safe. That's sorry, you're dumb. This that was. That was pretty weird, man. I've definitely never heard Bob that optimistic. That was. Hearing Bob that happy is creepier than walking into my local grocery store and having everybody's faces covered up in cloth like that is just straight up creepy. He was. He was a beacon of light in dark times, man, I mean, true legend. That dude is someone I mean, I've been I've spent my whole life trying to emulate his his feet in the striper surf, I mean weird, weird as it is, and and having talked to Bob in the past, that was weird. It is. It makes a strange kind of sense because everything felt so turned upside down for so long, and when when the ship flips upside down and we go into the twilight zone. You know, the garbage man becomes the optimist, I guess, but you do have to keep in mind, though, that reports a few weeks old, right, So as things are seemingly getting better around here, I'm sure Bob's miserable as shit again, which which sort of puts the world right, because that's how how how we've all always known old Bob about here as uh, a miserable dude. And it does feel good to have this optimistic vibe in the air among the people, if you will. At the same time, man, you read the paper and read read the news online, and it's hard to know if you should be optimistic. I don't really know if we're quite out of the woods yet. Um. And thinking along those lines, I think that takes us very nicely into the weekly word. Webster's Dictionary defines fish as well. Bob is warding off the coronavirus by pouring gas station coffee on everything he touches. I just don't think Dr Fouch you would endorse that, as you know, like a valid preventative measure. I think we're all just gonna have to wait for the vaccine. But what about the next major outbreak. Well, here at BENT, we consider ourselves public servants. We give you essential information kind of like you know, the CDC, only with even less funding. And since knowledge is power, or you need to understand the word zooosis, zoo knows this is a disease that can jump from animals to humans. And you guessed it, good old novel Coronavirus is zoonotic. See what I did there, Joe, I converted the noun form zoosis into the adjective form zoonotic. You're a real smart feller. We English speakers stole this term from ancient Greek, in which the prefix zoo means animal and the suffix nosos means disease. Since supposedly they tell us this is a phishing podcast, supposedly supposedly, the obvious question we should answer here is do fish carries zoonotic diseases? And the short answer for that is no, but but also kind of yes. Hang on, let me explain Evolutionarily, we as humans are a long way from fish, so the viruses that affect them are they're not likely to jump over and make the make the cross into humanity. The machinery is just different. The next coronavirus is not going to rise out of the local fishing hole, even some of the nasty backwaters in Jersey where you pull over and fish show cold blooded. But having said all that, fish can carry bacteria, not diseases, but bacteria that will jump all over humans, nasty stuff like Streptococcus in a, which can be present in both fresh and marine fish species and cause all kinds of unpleasantness if if it gets in an open wound. That's where you get all those stories about fishermen contracting fleshing bacteria from fish or hooks or wherever. But really, from what I can tell anyway, the instances of that are pretty rare, and they usually only seem to happen in Florida, like all the other crazy stuff. So bottom line, fishing will very likely not be the cause of the next global pandemic. And now you all know what zooses means, so you're welcome. Actually, though, man, I have some friends out here on the East Coast that have gotten some pretty weird infections and shipped from getting poked with fish bines and also from from uh injuries suffered from from cuts while clamming clambing injuries clambing injuries if you can believe that, that's a real thing, man. But if you think about it, Jersey is just basically Florida with the correct climate to make Christmas Day feel festive and accurate. So it makes sense of the same weird ship they have we kind of have. And dude, I've said that to so many Floridians like, oh, man, sucks, you don't have Christmas and uh, put my foot right in my mouth. So anyway, speaking of putting foots in mouths, let's do smooth moves. Why. This is the part of the show where we call up fishing guides or charter boat captains or outfitters, somebody who makes their living taking other people fishing, and we asked them to tell us about the most obnoxious, annoying, or ridiculous things that they have. Clients, do we know that some of you out there fish with guides at least from time to time, and if you pay attention to our Smooth Moves segment, then you will absolutely know the best way to get under every guide's skin. Today, we're talking with our good buddy Mike Schultz from Michigan, who is a longtime fishing guide extraordinary done, all kinds of different species, just about everything you can catch in Michigan. He's guided for, including Great Lakes Steelhead. He's gonna tell us a little bit about that, Mike. How's it going? But doing great? Brother? Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. So uh so what do you got for us today for for the smooth move? Well, you know when I was getting steel Head was you know, early two thousands through two thousand eight is around there, and you know it was like before everyone's rocking sling packs and these tight packs and things were well thought out. So a lot of people, you know, would have those vests that they bought in the eighties and nineties and they just load these things was up. You'd have every size shot, every swivel, three way, extras, reels in the back, you know, just in singing vest like like you could you could just rock them and and lose weight instantly. And uh you know, you get these guys and they booked their one Steelhead trip with a guy to year and they they climb in the boat with all their gear and they have the vast time with the nippers and then not tools and the floating and the scent and everything that those guys draw, and then they'd immediately take it off and just throw it on the seat, on the back of their seat. So then all day they're just hanging on it. You know, it's like, dude, come on, man. So back then when I was working on the PM, I had, uh, you know, I was a young bucklo man on the totem Pol. But I got the little sign made by the local guy that said no vest, little plastic sign and I'd stick that, stuck that on my boat. When they get in the boat, they'd see that and you know instantly, what's what's boat. It's like, dude, that thing get eggs with you know that you bought at the craft store and glued down to the hoop bro. I love Schultzy man. He's a he's the best. And listen, you guys are gonna hear a lot more from him down the line, because every time we talked to Mike, he tells another story after the story that we were trying to get and we're like, stop telling the story because we have to push records so that we can record this story too too. So get ready for more Mike. We've compiled a bunch of Mike Uh. Anyway, these days, I'll tell you what, man, if I'm being completely honest, whenever I fish with a guide, my attitude is now like, oh great, I don't I don't actually have to bring shit. It's a luxury like this. This dude is a guide for a reason. He'll have what I need. So while I used to kind of be that guy that felt like I had to be impressive by bringing my whole garage worth of tackle, now I'm like, oh, terrific guide, don't have to think about tackle. Yeah, And if the guy doesn't have all the ship you need, that's a shitty guide exactly. And fish with that person again. And having been a guide yourself, you must have dealt with overpackers, oh yeah, all the time. And you knew it was gonna be a bad day when the guys showed up and he's got sixteen different dry bags full of crap, and he's like fourteen rods, and you know you're all you're gonna do is break rods, and they're gonna be your rods again, broken, not not his. And your boat is gonna be so heavy that you're plowing down the river all day and you can never get like even or up on step. It's the moral here is seriously, don't bring all the stuff if you're going fishing, use the guide stuff. Yeah, because people don't realize, especially on a drift boat. Right, anything you bring you're not gonna use is just ship in the way. All this any boat, Yeah, there's not that much room. So it's just it's just stuff that is that is in the way. So um good good lesson told Cholza style, there as only a public service announcement right there. Or if you really just want to start off the day by pisting off your guide, bring a ton of ship. Yeah, there you go, there you go. Anyway, Look, now that we've exposed you guys to the to the real truth that everyone on the river is in fact making fun of your forty pound LLL bean vest pockets, we may as well. We may as well just keep right on educating you, moving on to fin clips, where we tell you everything you never thought you wanted to know about a fish that you may or probably may not have heard of. This week, we're talking about American shed. Don't confuse American shed with all the other shed in this country. We got Alabama shead skip jack shed, hickory shed, ale wives, blue back herring, and while all those fish share the same genus, American shed are actually more closely related to species found in Europe than their cousins here in America. See American shed are in nadromus, meaning they spend their adult lives in the ocean and then return to shwater to spawn. Like salmon, they're also native all the way up and down the Atlantic Coast. So, like our beloved Pilgrims, some shad ancestors bailed out of Europe a very very long time ago across the Atlantic Ocean and started annual spring parties in the rivers of the New World. Shad have been called the fish that fed the nation's founders because many of those aforementioned Pilgrims and the colonies that followed them all survived on shad. Of course, the native tribes who lived along the Atlantic coast were all over the shad game long before the Europeans got here. Evidence of ancient fish traps has been found from Newfoundland all the way down to Florida. Historical records also indicate that some tribes went to war over the best shad grounds. Adults had generally go three to eight pounds, and while I've never tried one myself, I hear they're good eating. They can be boiled, broiled, fried, grilled, smoked, or pickled. I've also heard they've fallen out of favor in the modern diet because they're bony, and we've all turned into massive sissies when it comes eating around fishbones. The other thing I heard is that shad row is a delicacy for those who know what's up. Well, you don't know what's up, and I'm offended. You're you're You're offended. I'm offended because you how do you take the lead on American shad man. That's first of all, I know your ass has never caught one. And second, the greatest goddamn American shad river in the country is my home water right up the street. I live for shad and I miss it talking. You're talking to Delaware right now. Yep, yep, yep. It's the last major undamned river on the East coast, giving what many here called Jersey tarpin. You didn't know they were called Jersey tarpin. That that that didn't make your little segment, that it gives them unobstructed access to spawn man and I look, they are people who get all like my river. Yeah, there's other good shad rivers too, no doubt. But usually you only tie in real strong like up to that first damn. That's usually how it goes. No man, I I have heard from you, but also from lots of other people. I've heard they're they're a lot of fun. Yeah, it's it's a it's a light tackle game. It's a killer light tackle game, six pound tests, light rod. You know, you need the right tackle to let them do their thing. But it's tons of fun. Um. And you've also missed the part about how without American chat, everyone listening to this might not be American. How's that because because in the winter seventeen seventy eight, Washington's army was starving to death at Camp and Valley Forge, which is not far from where I am right now, And there was a false spring that February, one of those weird deals where it got too warm too soon, and as I've read it, it tricked the fish into running early that year. And um, they came right up to Delaware and then hooked a hard left in the Scuoko River at Philly and that took them right to Old George's feet in camp, and that saved the army and provided an enough salted fish to eat later. Um. And without that, it's very possible the Revolutionary War could not have continued on. So what I'm saying is, next time you're getting a bucket of KFC, thank you, Shad, because you could be eating tea and crumpets or bangers and mash or some other British shit. Oh British cuisine. Don't forget the spotted dick. Alicious, so delicious. All right, all right, I'm I'm sufficiently shamed. You've shamed me, and uh, I know, man, I need to get over there and and actually catch a shed talk about As with all things COVID, we'll just push it off to spring. It's gonna be great by then. Man. You know, come on out, you can eat all the world, Shad, you want, all the road you want to because that that part of your spirit was bullshit too. By the way, nobody here in shad Land covets the row except for five culinary weirdo food bloggers. It's not it's not the bones, it's the fact that they taste like you're chugging a mug a bunk of oil. As Bob the garbage Man would say, I have tried it. To be fair, I've tried it, and yes, once was enough. It's just man, it's greasy. It's greasy anyway. Anyway, I do believe it's time for fish news. That escalated quickly. All right, this is fish news, where we uh well give you fishy news about fishy things. The fun of it, however, is that Miles and I don't know what the other one is bringing to the table. Okay, like we have no we have no preconceived idea of what his news stories will be and mine will be. Um. So there's like some competition in our news segment here because you know, Dan, well, at some point we're gonna find the same stuff. So we're trying to It's it's a game. It's a game, is what it is. It's a game. And I brought backups just in case you scoop me on one of the stories I wanted to I wanted to have. I have. I have a backup, but I will be pissed if you if you jump all over all my good wife, I only brought too so this might be uh. The news segment according to Miles, who knows I'm lazier than you are anyway, Uh, this first one here you have kids. This might be the greatest news story I've heard in a very long time. It's it's just like, oh, it's it's so me. And this is coming from Forbes Okay. An offshore sports book has decided to post odds on the migratory patterns of nine GEO tag great White sharks, providing a summer diversion for sports fan and wagering aficionados who may or may not have an affinity for sustainable fishing. My bookie dot com is offering a variety of odds. The sports book will utilize the tracking technology used by a Search, a nonprofit organization that has the most well known and widely used tracking tool available. It provides a detailed tracking history of individual sharks travel patterns that people can monitor in real time for free via an online app. Gamblers will be able to wage your on ament of odds and props pertaining to the specific migration patterns of individual Great white sharks. Is a great quote. Ready, I have no illusions of grandeur that we are going to make millions of dollars off of this. It's a fun thing and hopefully it catches on, said David Strauss of my Bookie, after being tagged with the trackers sharks ping on O Search when they come to the surface. Based on these pings, my bookie will offer gamblers a variety of ways to place bets, such as how far a shark will travel between pings, whether a shark will enter a certain body of water, and what date a shark will ping next. Now, for great whites that ping less frequently, wagers will be able to be placed on if it will resurface by a certain date, and what countries waters the shark will be in when it resurfaces. Statistics will be updated in real time, allowing users to closely monitor their bets. Oh my god, I thought NASCAR was boring. Here's the thing, though, right dude. I read this and I was like, holy shit, this is my calling. I was I was born for this, because there's no way that my bookie realizes how easily this can be rigged. So I'm shouting out now to any of you tony soprano types out there. I got this. I've got this alright. I already ran the numbers on O Search Okay, you just look at Cabin nine three pound mails looking good this year. Payed off Long Island June fourth place your bets July thirteenth, quarter mile south of Block Island. Jimmy and the boys be out there on the stucts with a couple of sides of beef, about four hundred buckets of golds blood cement mixed of worth the bunkle oil, and a couple of people we need to get rid of anyway, Cab, it's gonna surface right there, easy money. Oh my god. You know, they just legalized sports betting in Montana, like it literally right before COVID hit they passed that bill and all the bookies where everybody was so excited, and then the first season of legal betting in Montana just as soon as it started, it was over. And I wonder if I could get this going. He might. We might actually have to cut this out of the podcast. You may not actually hear this, because I think we need to talk on the side on the arm. We'll, we'll, we'll have a side conversation on this one. Oh dude, that was good. That was good. I don't know if it's better than he did not scoot me, did not scoot me. I thought you were going to Lucky bastard is going to get the chance to fulfill what I'm calling a childhood fantasy, oh boy, and go fishing with Bill Dance. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is holding a raffle right now, and one of the grand prizes that they got is a day on the water with the man himself rocking the blue blockers. The Orange Bill volunteers cap the whole deal. So from from now until August six, Raffle tickets are on sale at the t w r A website. You can purchase as many as you want. You do not need to be a Tennessee resident to win, and all the money that they raise is gonna fund habitat restoration, so that that's good. But even better, the winner gets six hours on the water with Bill, either fisher fishing for croppy or catfish on the Mississippi River or at what they're calling an undisclosed Tennessee lake for large mouth, which I can only hope is the same lake we've all seen him fall into countless times over the years. I was gonna say, otherwise known as the lake where he films all of his shows exactly. I saw this not to cut in, but you left out the part where they were like based on Bill's schedule, so like whenever he can fit you in whatever is happening around then is when you get to go. But you get to go, it doesn't better. I would, I would open up my calendar for a day with Bill Dance. Well, I would do that. Listen, I I've I've interviewed all these guys at some point in my career. Hank Hank Parker flip palette. You know Bill Dance, and he is the sweetest, kindest, most gracious man in the entire world. That it's it's it almost like hurts my heart to take like a little shot at Bill. But I'm but I'm thinking about that right. As sweet as he is, you get six hours on the water with Bill Dance, which is gonna be six hours of him not being able to hear you, and every time you say something, I'm just going, huh, huh, huh, what's that. I met met Bill once and he was he was very very very very very nice, way nicer than most people who are famous in the fishing industry. I would, I would totally even even as like someone who works in the industry, I would still totally do this. I'm I'm not gonna lie. I'm definitely gonna be in this raffle. It's the last time I spoke with him, and he doesn't know me from Adam, right, he you know. But he ended the call with like, hey, buddy, you know, next time you come down here, let us know, we'll go have a steak and now go out fishing. And I was recording the call for a piece, so I took just that chunk out and ran it on social media. It was titled like Bill Dance invites me fishing, And the first comment from another fishing industry person was, like, dude, he says that to everybody he hangs up with, dumbass, Like he doesn't want to go fishing with you, fish with you? You want to fish with him? Win the raffle. Oh my god, that's funny. I'm glad. I'm glad that one made the fold. I'm glad you got that because I eyeballed it for a hot second. Um, you know. And Bill Dances certainly old school, one of the oldest school sort of fishing uh icons around and and my next piece here ties into that although we've been laughing a lot, and this one, you know, it's a it's a little bit more bummery, but important nonetheless. So at this point, it's no secret that the COVID pandemic has taken its toll on the outdoor industry. And while guides and captains and tackle shops in much of the tree are at this point operational and trying to get back on their feet, unfortunately too many businesses just weren't able to recover, and mom and pop tackle shops were hit particularly hard. Now we all know that those old school shops that had everything you needed to fish local and nothing you didn't, we're kind of already on their way out prior to COVID anyway, but the closing of Ranky Brothers Tackle in Milwaukee due to the pandemic takes more than just another mom and pop operation out of the game. Ranky Brothers wasn't a traditional tackle shop. They actually specialized in lore and fly components for all the garage tinkerers that wanted to make everything from musky bucktails to walleye rigs to custom jakeheads and pipe flies to their exact specifications, and behind the counter were dozens of trees chocked full of minutia, you know, like for the guy who just wanted two specific treble hooks or just a few loose inline spinner post and Ranky Brothers was a staple in South Milwaukee for seventy years, and while owner Bob he tried online sales awhile back it was just too hard to compete with the major online component and material websites. And of course, now with foot traffic down and hours cut back due to COVID, this neighborhood's shop simply can't operate profitably, forcing Bob to retire early this fall. Now this saddens me personally because while it will be hard enough for our kids to experience a true old timeing mom and pop tackle shop, stories like Ranky Brothers that existed solely for the angler that gets more satisfaction out of catching a fish on something he made with his own two hands, may flat out no longer exist. Have you ever been in a shop like that? Man? Oh, yes I have, and and I'll say right now that long before I ever got into the fly fishing thing and building my own flies, as I was totally the kid who was building my own inline spinners and spinner bad, some weird posts and and and my dad was even way more into it than me. His whole goal was to make the strangest lure that he could possibly a man and see if something would bite it. It It was. It was really one of his favorite things to do in the world. Um, so yeah, we hung out in those shops all the time. I was like one of our things that we did together. The closest that I had here was Brielle Baiton Tackle at the Jersey Shore, which does still exist. And while they didn't have a lot of lower making stuff, they had this huge rod building section. And I mean, I've made a few rods. They were all terrible, But every time I was in there, it was just so inspiring. You know, like you're not really thinking about building a rod, you don't need one, and then you just happened to be in there for something else and you start walking around looking at all the decals and threads and blanks, and it just like gets this creativity welled up in you. And I remember when the first Cabela's ever opened out here, and I went out there. Of course, like the first time you walk into a Cabela's it's like, holy sh it, this is great. So I wanted to buy like fifty panther Martin's and I had them in my cart, and then I ended up in the lower component s aisle and saw the bag of blades and the bag of posts, and instantly it was like, I'm not buying any of the Now. I make my own inline spinners, and I still have some of those spinners here today. But that I've never had a store like that that just basically sold the pieces. And I found that really sad. I never we never had one that just did that. It was, but we had one that had a really good section that. It was Grizzly Bills Bait and Tackle that later became Grizzly Bob's Bait and Tackle UH in the middle of nowhere in northern Wisconsin, and and they had everything from Camos suspenders to lure building bits and pieces to UH to anything else in between. I mean, it was. It was a fantastic shop. It probably closed down, yeah, twenty five years ago, but I loved that place well. To me, it's it's similar to like hardware stories. I still have a few around here where you can walk in and talk to old gusts and he'll get two screws out of the plastic tray for you. You know, but they're getting harder to find. You know. You get a home and quota, but you have to buy a dozen, and you have to involve walkie talkies and five people before someone can even tell you which I all the screws are in. You know what, And what's terrible about this story that you just told me is that, from what I'm about to report on, if if they could have held on for just a couple of months longer, they might have been all right. Because nationwide, tackle shops are reporting a fishing gear shortage. Really, tackle shops all over the country right now are barren of fishing gear, completely sold out. And most of these are are the big box stores, the ones that are still holding on and popular. But the same things happen in some of the smaller stores. Uh. In fact, just yesterday, Sam Longer and the fishing editor that we work with, texted me a photo from Sportsman's Warehouse and it was like eerily similar to looking at grocery store shelves a couple of months ago, bearing picked clean. I'm talking not a single rattle trap or vibrats anywhere to be seen. I don't think it's weird, man Like. I've known that this has been happening throughout the country from talking to people, but I only stepped into a big box tackle shop for the first time since before the pandemic, like a week ago, and lures plenty of them, I mean totally stocked on lures out here, softbait's, hard baits, whatever you needed. Hooks were hit fairly hard, but the noticeable one was line. I mean they were They were literally three spools of line in the entire aisle and all that was left. The only options I had were sixty five pound braid high Viz Orange, fifty pound braid high his Yellow, or thirty pound lead core trolling line, and I was like, none of these will suit my small mouth needs. You know, I have heard from a lot of people that smaller mom and pop shops are faring much much better through this, and I think that's probably because they order smaller quantities. You know, they need twenty rattle traps, not two, um. But unfortunately, I just don't have any good mom and pops left around here to go to, or that's what I would do, So and and out here. The only mom and pops we have are like purely fly shops. If you want to get me conventional tackle, you have to go to the big box stores, and they are it's the opposite. They're they're out of fishing gear here. The lures are gone, the hooks are gone, but they still have line. So I don't know what's going on. Like I've heard it's a supply chain issue, but apparently that doesn't make any sense. But I'm sort of torn on this, Like I'm of two minds because if there's one minor bright spot that I can point to in in this whole pandemic fiasco, everybody's out of work and they don't know what they're gonna do with their time. Thing, it seems like a lot more people are fishing, and I mean across the country. It seems like the numbers of fishing fishing participation are up. And I know, I know our rivers, like my local rivers are so packed with people right now, like doesn't matter the day of the week, doesn't matter the time. They are slammed with people way more than I've ever seen before. You know, it's mellowed out for me here, Uh, it's it's normal summer summer crowds on the local rivers right here now. But during the height of all this in in April and early May, when people were even more out of work and more locked down, oh my god, it was a zoo. It was an absolute zoo. Yeah. And and again this just speaks the different types of places we live, because you know, everybody by you who was fishing there in the spring lived there and wasn't working. And now we are just inundated with tourists who are trying to get away from their their own private COVID hells, and they're coming here and and and they're all fishing, which is again I'm torn because I really don't like seeing my local spots that crowded and getting hit that hard. It bums me out a little bit, But I am really happy to see more people fishing, like that's one of the things that we we really pride ourselves on and what we do. We try and get more and more people to get outside, go fishing, go hun and get out in the woods. So I'm you know, on a selfish level, it annoys me, but on a broader level, like if I can get out of my not in my backyard protectionist mentality. I'm happy about it. Um. And you know what, since we're we're kind of on the subject of more people fishing in my home state, there's this guy who just recently moved out here to Montana, like a year ago. Uh, some of you guys may have heard of him. His name is like a Janus or Janice Janice Poodles. I don't know, it's some weird Latvian thing. I don't know. He's gonna tell us about a certain living fossil or I guess, in this case, swimming fossil and his first time going fishing or technically snagging for paddlefish. In this week's Yanni's Desk, Hey folks, welcome to Yanni's Desk. Today the sheriff you about how the new world record spoon bill was snagged down in Oklahoma at a Keystone Lake. This fish is snagged by a fello by the name of James Lukarton. It is massive. To see pictures of it, go to the meat eater dot com read Spencer new Harst article about it. You gotta know a little bit about spoon bill to appreciate this. It's a prehistoric fish. It's been on the planet in its same form for roughly twenty million years, so they know what they're doing. They know how to survive. It's a filter feeder, so this fish doesn't chase other fish down and eat them. They don't eat nightcrawlers. They eat zo plankton microscopic beings. To find these suckers, they use that paddle that's coming off top of their head and kind of almost looks like a swordfish. Earlier, they thought that they would dig around in the muck with that thing, kind of like a storefish does, and then eat whatever came out of there. But actually it's got electoral receptors all over it. There are so fine tuned they can not only detect the zoo plankton, but they can detect the movement of a zoo plankton's appendages. So not just as zoe plank and swimming around, but it's little legs and arms kicking around or whatever they call him on his zoa plankton, and that's how it finds its food. And he comes up in the water calm, and just like a whale, he opens his mouth or she does. The water goes through there. They filters the zoa plankton out and the water goes out of the gills. Really cool fish. I recently got to do some spoon bill snagging, or be a part of it. My brother in law drew a harvest tag on the Upper Missouri River here in Montana. So we went up there right at the end of the season around mid June. Gave it our best shot. Didn't really know what we were doing, but between talking to some folks we got it done. He ended up catching right around a twenty pounder. Now, since they're not eating bait, you can't catch him like you normally would. Can't throw a woolly bugger adham. He doesn't care about a leach. You can't throw a rappele at him. He doesn't care about a little baby perch. So you gotta snag him. And how you do that is he used a pretty uh stout rod um that can cast far and that has a lot of backbones. If you do hook into these fish, which you know, going from to as you'll see later, almost a hundred and fifty pounds, you gotta use heavy line. I think we were using eighty pound braid. We were using bait cast again, I say we my brother in law was I didn't have the tag. But you have a weight actually at the bottom of your line, and then you have a size seven or eight odd treble hook anywhere from eight inches to three ft above that weight, and again there's no bait on it. You cast it out there. The weight brings you down to the bottom and you yank, pull up your slack and yank, and basically as you're pulling the hook through the water column, eventually your line will come across the back of a spoon bill and uh, when you yank, you'll pull that trouble hook into the fish. You know, it sounds a little barbaric, but that's the only way you're gonna catch them. Research shows that snagging them and releasing them doesn't hurt them. You know, they have little flesh wound as we'd like to say, and uh, they go about their business. That's how you catch them. So back to Oklahoma, this guy, James and his wife were out on their first day ever spoon bill fish and they took a guided trip. They just wanted to go snag a couple sub fifty pounders for eating. That's what they were looking for. They got a lot more than they were looking for. His wife starts off with an eighty eight pounder, which is also a giant spoonbill, and releases it, and then James is up. He snags into one. He's reeling it in. They see how long it is. They think it's about the same length as a wife's it is, and then when it gets close to the boat, it rolls sideways and they see the girth on it. This is my favorite part in the little video that his wife was taken. When that fish roll sideways, he says, God damn, and she says, what's your language? I thought that was great in the heat of the moment, she's she's keeping him proper. Takes him another minute or so to get that thing and get a loop of rope around the fishes tail, and they land it. They take some quick measurement and they think it's gonna be near the world record, and so they take it back in to meet a Oklahoma Fisheries official and uh. The guy weighs it and it turns out to be a hundred and forty six pounds eleven ounces. It is a giant fish. It is almost as wide as it is long. It was just a little bit wider. It would be a circle of a fish. Incredible. It's a good job, James. I recommend you hang up your spoonbill snagging hat, move on to something else, go break another record. I think you're done here. Good work. Thank you, Janice for the extreme paddling. But hey, moving from one flyover state to another, let's take a trip to Iowa, and not for the fishing this time, but for the drinking. We're tapping the keg for the first ever installment of what might be our favorite segment and hopefully yours. This is that's my bar, best god damn bartender from tim buck to to Portland, Maine, the Portland argument, for that matter. So what's the goal of that's my bar? Easy? Slowly but surely compile a list of the best damn watering holes for fishermen, not just in this country, okay, but across the entire globe. That's that's the end goal. Okay. And uh, Miles and I certainly have our favorites. What's your what's your favorite? Man? That's like, that's a really hard question. It's like asking me to pick a favorite child. Well, favorite child's easy. Uh, favorite species might as well as me to pick a favorite fish species. But uh, you know, for me, the one I'm gonna call out is the Sip and Dip in Great Falls, Montana. That is Montana's absolute best tiki bar. It's got to be the only tiki but that's definitely the only bar. But it's actually it's it's such a fantastic bar, man, you gotta go there. Uh. It's above this old hotel. It's really grimy. It's got like the the coconut weave mats on the wall, and that is where the famous piano Pat has been belting out her beautiful raspy tunes under her hair helmet for literally fifty six years. She's been there forever. She's amazing. Anybody who like seriously she you can look her up online. Piano Pat, Sipp and Dip, Gray Falls. You won't be sorry. And then behind Piano Pat, behind the bar, there these windows into the pool and they hire men and women to put on merman and mermaid costumes and swim around behind the bar. It's I don't know if i'd call it actually a fishing bar, but it is pretty close to the Missouri River and I have been there after fishing. So I'm calling out the Sip and dip. Well, shit, I can't top that, but I know my new life goal. We have to record from there at some point and have piano pat on. But I bet she do it. You just like you stole my thunder Mind's Lame mcbree's Crosstown Tavern and Starlight p A like Big, I can walk in there with my waiters on Big. You just crushed me. They got good fried mushrooms though. Anyway, Look, here's the thing, right, we need you guys to step up clearly based on just our two examples. We need your help because Miles and I don't know all these bars. So this is your chance to wrap your local dive or your favorite cantina when you travel, or maybe just the most memorable fishing bar that you've ever been to. These are the places where it's okay to walk in in a T shirt covered in tune of blood. White deck boots are welcome. You will still get served the cheese cards when you walk in sweating and leaking, snot after a day on the ice. So for our first installment, we're taking a jaunt to the Midwest today to the Driftless region of Iowa, which is an awesome place to fish, and it's very it's very near and dear to my heart in fact, and today is nomination comes from j Aldrich, who writes The Naughty Pine Tavern in Dorchester, Iowa, is only fifty yards or so from Waterloo Creek in the beautiful driftless area. It's a small bar with tons of old pin ups and you will often find the regular old timers having a few beers and telling stories from their glory days. We always try to stop there for a beer whenever we're in town. When I was younger, my old man was waiting there for my buddy and I to get done fishing. He was only there for about an hour or so, and the locals showed him such a good time that my buddy and I had to guide my dad back to the car so he didn't fall in parentheses again. And then and then we had to drive him back to the hotel. I have actually fished Waterloo Creek, and I am I am just very disappointed that my my people's out there did not take me here, because I already know I would love the Naughty Pine Tavern. You know why, because I looked it up. I was trying to do a little research Um, there's no social media page for the Naughty Pine, there are no year reviews, there's no menu online. Okay. All I could find was a phone number which tells me this is exactly this is the joint you go to when you're asked. Doesn't want to be found for a little while, you know what I mean? Just picturing like a beige rotary phone mounted on the wall next to the bar that never rings. It's dusty, you can, I can just it's caked in dust. But yeah, like that's I'm going there. I'm and I'll bet you the food is delicious. Just I just have a hunch, you know, Yell previews aside, I do wish there was one Yell preview though. I wish there was just like one Yell preview that just said four stars had to be carried out like that. That's a bar I would definitely frequent if I were in Iowa. So help us out. Keep sending these to us. We need more of these. The next time I am any place, I hope to have a whole list of great bars that I might be able to go to. Yeah, Killer Killer, first nomination from j These low key joints are exactly what we want, and you can email your nominations to us at bent at the meat eater dot com to nominate your favorite corner dive bar full of dusty skin mounts and perhaps featuring an old bathtub like trough in the men's room instead of urinals, which and that is a that is a mark of a truly great fishing bar. Oh Man, I have a new life, gold Joe. I hope to one day be in a band called Dusty skin Mounts. We are just about out of time this week, which brings us to the end of the line are aptly name closing segment about what bates lords or flies you need to be throwing basically on any criteria that we want. Could be something me and Miles have been slaying on eate lea. Could be a hot new lore that intrigues us. Might be some ancient ship we found in the garage and totally forgot about. So while Miles is out hunting down band members for his new gig and Dusty skin Mounts strong chance many of those Dusty skin mounts you see in bars, lodges, and fish camps were caught on one of his favorite vintage retrobates, the bass arena. Well, that's not loud enough. Bur Is it a crank bait, a service plug, a jerk bait, a glide bait. I don't know, and I don't really care, because as far as I'm concerned, the bass arena occupies a category all by itself. The original bass arena was patented in nineteen fifteen by James Olds. Olds immediately sold that patent to the South Bend Debate and Tackle Company, who went on to manufacture bass arenas for almost seventy years. The bait was so popular and so effective it spawned a whole genre of plugs, from tiny little trout ay nos the signed to be cast with fly rods, to midsize surfery nos for inshore fishing, to stout muskerinos for muskie and big pipe. None of these offshoots have ever really caught on, and you know what, they didn't really have to the design of the original was so brilliant it worked on just about every shallow water predator. With any bait fish invitation, it's all about the wobble, and the bass arena wobble is like nothing else. It's not even really a wobble. It's more like a high speed dart and glide with a few random hip thrusts here and there. Anglers like to compare a lure action to dancing, and if modern cranks are Miley Cyrus, the bass arena is James Brown. You never really know which direction it's gonna go when it gets up and does its thing. The bass arena was part of the first wave of industrial lure innovation in the United States. It was patented the same year as the first lip crank bait, the creek chip, But the arena has no lamp. It's a cylindrical, solid wood lure with a sharp taper to the tail and a scooped out face that scoop sits right below the surfaces of water when the baits arrest, so that when you start retrieving it, it digs down into the water and forces the bait under. The sharp rear taper creates the erratic darting, wiggling, and gliding that seduced irritable and hungry fish for more than a century. I'm not giving you some nostalgic bs about vintage tackle. I am not now, nor have I ever been, one of those guys who collects old lures in their original packaging to arrange its soft angles and curio cabinets. Lures are meant to be fished, and if I'm gonna tie one on, it better get bit. My uncles have been fishing the lakes of northern Wisconsin together for more years than I can count to this day. Every single time they go out together, one or both of them is guaranteed to tie on a bass raino. Why a couple of reasons. First, at this point in their lives, neither one of my uncles has any time or patients for finesse fishing. They want a fan cast around for a couple of hours, get that hit of adrenaline from a hard bite on a quick retrieve, and then head home in time to catch the first pitch of the Cubs game with a Miller high life. The solid cedar body and aerodynamic shape lets them cast bass arena's long distances with little effort and burn them back searching large areas for aggressive fish. Second, my uncles are generalists. They're not so much interested in specific fish. They're after willing fish, bass pike, walle muskie. Men don't care as long as you get bit once in a while. The bass arenos generic bait, fish look and timeless strike triggers means that just about anything hungry enough or angry enough will take a whack at it, and the three troubles dangling off the belly give them a good chance of putting at least one fish in the net, even if they're not really paying attention. Third, they have confidence. These guys have been consistently hooking up on these lures since Carter was in office, maybe earlier, I don't actually know. One time, my uncle Jim was fishing a favorite areno, the frog color, and he hooked a hammer handle pike. When he went to grab that fish from the net, it's surged and my uncle wound up with two barbs in the meat of his hand. At the er later that day, the doc asked if he could keep the plug and add it to their collection of lures removed from fisherman. My uncle said, hell, no, that's a damn good lure. I'm not giving that away. The following season he caught his personal best muskie on that exact bait. He still has the scar in his hand, the musky on his wall, and the bass serina in his tackle box. Sadly, no one makes this bait anymore. Lur Jensen acquired the patent two but discontinued them a few years ago. The good news is that you can still find plenty of used ones online for cheap. Don't be afraid to buy one that looks like it's been chewed up for time or two. Those scars, they're just proof a good mojo. All right, that's it for this inaugural episode of Meat Eaters, first dedicated fishing podcast. Let's have a drink. Miles, we got, we got, we got through it man. Please, Oh Joe, pour me an extra finger for three. Uh well, Joe and I get drunk. Please let us know what you liked, what you hated, what we messed up, and just generally, how you doing. Send an email to bent that b e n T at the meat eater dot com. Also, why are you there? Give us some stars, leave us a review, and best of all, if you like this show, tell two friends about it, then they'll tell two friends and so on. It's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Remember that I never got that I never got, So I gotta say, we need a closer for this, Joe, and it just pisces me off. It's like a pet peeve in the fishing industry, of the fishing community when people end conversations or emails or anything with tight lines. Tight lines. So I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm never gonna spin off any of these shows with tight lines because it just irks me. Instead, i'm gonna say, simply just go fishing, and uh, I'll keep the rods band while I'm doing it.