00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh, you went to the Amazon for peacocks. My grandpa goes there for pete jack bass dollar fishing Champague Cravate High Mountain. That's right, your fly cannot be foul. It's inexcusable, dude. That would be like the world's most psychedelic tarpet. Good morning, degenerate angler is welcome to BND. Here with your hot ice fishing tip of the week. Always clear your ice tiptop guide with your fat, frozen fingers or teeth. I'm Joe Surmelli A Miles Nulty, and that is terrible advice. Do not repeat, do not listen to Joe. I have snapped a lot of rod or at least I've stepped at least a couple of rod tips trying to do that before I, like, I finally came to what should have been a previously obvious realization. Right and and and wait for this, because it's almost as brilliant as yours. I'm dying. Come on. So, even in even in when when it's very cold, the temperature of liquid water remains above freezing. And if you're fishing open water, you always have access to that, right, so you can just you just dunk your ice choked rod tip in the water for a minute or two and maybe moving around. In my experience, that usually clears the ice right off, or at least, at the very least, it softens it up enough that you can get it off without snapping off your brittle frozen graphite. That's my tip for those of you out there, you ever, just stick the whole tip in your mouth and like exhale so your hot breath melts it. I don't like to stick really cold chunks a graphite in my mouth either, so I don't think I've ever done that. I'm sure that works. I'm sure that one is another way of doing it. I don't doubt it. Well, no, it does, it does. But you know what I do more often, Um, I just opt right out of fishing when it's so cold. I know I'm gonna have to be dealing with that ship every two minutes. To clarify though, right, it doesn't bother me when ice fishing, because that's just part of the game. Yeah, well, but well I I do, though, But it's like a short little rod. It's like right there. You don't have to like, you know, it's not an effort, right, But um, open water fishing below freezing these days, I'm good, Like I I stopped that a long time ago for the most part, and you can judge me for that. By all means, I'm okay with that, you know I am. I'm currently judging you as always, but like it's not so much a judgment thing, man, it's like I don't I don't have that some of us, a lot of us, I'd say, don't have that luxury, right if if I didn't, if I didn't ever go open water fishing when it was below freezing, I'd get to fish like two months a year, like the it's a weird winner this year, but mostly winner goes out. Usually winner just goes on forever out here. So you know that said I was saying, I'd judge you, but I have a threshold, Like there's a line, there's a line of of where the physical discomfort outweighs my desire to fish. So like I have a particular it's not a hard fast number like on the Mercury, but there there's a level of discomfort with the conditions where like, unless I'm in a heated check, I'm probably good, but it is not freezing. Like I fish when it's sure right now. I I figlu on that for me, it depends. I I've ice fish some brutal conditions where without the shack there was just no way you could even do it. And it was mostly because of wind, right, Like the wind chill was so terrible. But if I had my preference, I enjoy ice fishing much more outside of the shack. Oh, yeah, you know that, it's con Yeah, I don't know. I just like the mobility. You go drill a hole over here, you try that, you throw the throw the pigskin around, you know, with your boys. But now that I think about it, the last time I broke my no fly fishing below freezing policy was actually with you, and I recall the high that day being in the mid teens. Um but you were still pretty gung ho about it. I remember, correct. The disappearing chicken day. Yeah, God, our our chicken lunch mysteriously disappeared. And we don't we don't have time to get into the whole thing. But just like the shortest version, we bought fried chicken. We lought it in the truck, we bought it. We walked out of the story that we fished. We came back for lunch. The chicken was gone. And to this day we have no idea where there was nobody else out there but us. It was gone. Chicken was gone. Anyway, I'm working on a script for like you know, Cold Case Files on that they haven't bought it yet. But my chicken, man, we can still smell the chicken in the truck. Was of the delicious chicken was still in the truck. I can't figure that one out. And yeah, it was cold that day. It was definitely very very cold that day. But it was like it was one of those deals where it was a it was a go now or don't go at all because you were just in town for a short little window and that was the day we had. And and like to be clear, at that time, we didn't know each other as well, so there was a little bit of that bravado thing going on. We were both like, well, I handled, you can like you can handle, let's go. I can go. I can fish fine. You know. There was some posturing for sure, and I'm not going to be the guy that that pulls out of a fishing trip in Montana because it's too cold, But I'm also not going to complain too loud when it's miserable out, and and someone else says, hey, it's cold out, why don't want we head to the bar? Because I'm probably thinking the same thing. I just don't want to be the one to say it, you know, though, I'll I'll tell you what. Between the warm water in that spring creek were fishing keeping the guides from icing too bad, and that that quote dry cold you guys have out there for as cold as as as as the mercury was, it really wasn't that intolerable of a day. I remember being pretty comfortable actually, the whole dry cold. I mean, I know you put the dry cold in air quotes, but it's not just like Chamber of Commerce fiction. That's that is a real thing. And and I don't I can't fully explain it, but it's true. It's less cold without the humidity. It really is. And uh, And I don't do as much as I used to, but I used to, like winter fishing used to be some of my favorite I've had a river river fishing in addition to ice fishing. Just some fantastic days, like all the fish are kegged up in the in the deep holes, and if they're on the feed. It can be stupid. And that said, I've definitely also had winter fishing days where the highlight happened at the bar after when like you you pull the plug and you're you're warm finally and you're having a beer and you look at your buttery you're like, dude, we should have done this three hours ago. This is way better than what we're doing. Or another option is you you have that convo the night before when you're still debating tomorrow's conditions. You know, like I don't know, man, like I want to get out of the house, but it looks like total brutal shit. And like you land on lunch and afternoon at the bar and just cut the fishing part right out. I've done that too. It's like, wow, we'll just take that part out and just sleep later and go right to the bar. So it works either way. Sometimes there's the middle ground right where you meet at the river or the access wherever you gonna the side on and you're like starting to gear up, and then you just look at each other and go like should we should we go to a bar? Too many times? Too many times that's happened, but uh it is right now. The end of February, which which in my opinion, is the worst fishing month of the year. I just agree. I just don't like February, man, And I can almost taste the glory of March. I realized early March is still technically February, but but Marches when it changes right, Marches when it gets good. We're not there yet, no, not still in the February parts. So for this episode, it's our last hurrah of trying to just deal with the winner, and we're gonna kick it off with a nice fishing report, which seems appropriate. We are we haven't had a report in a while. Um, I will say, based on the amount of Lincoln aviators I saw parked up at Lake of Patcong, North Jersey, a few weekends ago, I think it's safe to assume most of you have seen the Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercial where he uses his rig like a shanty. I hope so oh have I ever? The first time I saw that commercial when that came out, we were in Minnesota filming the fur Hat Ice Tour and we saw it while we were watching a football game one evening and mocking and making fun of that commercial just became the running joke among the crew for the rest of that ship. That was just what we did because it's it's worthy. Well, well, my friend jokes on you, because it turns out McConaughey is actually in ice fishing. Like that whole commercial was his idea and it was all based off his own personal hardwater philosophy. Even more shocking than that, he agreed to do an ice fishing report for us. That kind of explains the whole commercial sort of. Anyway. Alright, alright, alright, planter, that dark, silky meshes, she creeps, takes her time. Like me, I cannot be rushed, add even her a sprung tip up hundred yards from the shore. You know you see my ice fishing commercial. Oh you haven't watch all right anyways, all the money I made from that, I used a fun drum, sorrycles for underprivileged children in Guam and Austin. And now that I see a fishing report, baby, You know, fishing reports rely on the concepts it's back in time, which are relevant human constructs. We are just energetic waves, her rippling through matter in an ever expanding universe. We're all dead and have yet to be born. I've already caught the fifty pound lake trout that's currently swimming in Canadian Shield Lake where I live in a luxury HIRTA. Are you on the light right? That's right your here. Okay, here's some ice fishing advice. Drive your eighty thousand dollars fishing shantage to a private high mountain lake eight one single tip up with one single waxworm on the four old travel hook. Walk back to your navigator, slowly doodle in a note pad, look through your binos at the precise moment the flag trips, and casually stroll over to it, knowing that that fish is already caught, that that fish is already for leg that that fish is already non eating. Baby. See, that's a real secret ice fishing. People. You know cash with hooks or lines. You catch fish with your mind. I want you to understand that you can fish anywhere, any time. I am I fishing to hate you right now. That's the sound between my ears, baby, Also to Haiti, So that's that sound to Haiti. I I just hope that that Lincoln, like I hope that commercial did well enough that Lincoln lets him make a sequel where where he actually is. Maybe ice fishing from Tahiti. I think that would go well. I would watch that. I still wouldn't buy an aviator, but I might I might keep cable if they did that, I might watch that. I wouldn't buy one either though. If somebody like gave me a free navigator, should take that. I think it's just about any free cars. Yeah, well, you know, good point. I take a free ki or right now if somebody wanted to give it to me anyway. I look. I am very grateful to uh to Matthew for coming on our show. Um, but I'm not actually sure I want to fish with McConaughey. I used to think that would be cool to fish with him, Like I thought it would be like a real trip, right. But then I don't know if you saw this, but I saw him do a guest spot on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives and he was a complete wet blanket like the dude. Yeah the dude said like four words and just looked totally disengaged the whole time. Where did that come from? Thanks for using dark maid consistency not to that was it? That was like, I know we montage that, but that was pretty much all he said in a few quick seconds on the show. So imagine him at the bar right. If Delicious Enchiladas and Guy Fietti couldn't fire him up, I doubt me and my stories could either. So I've I've lost that dream. I've let it go. Oh man, He's like a guide's worst nightmare plan. You cannot get cited about anything that said, though I don't think you should. You should sell yourself short on that one. Dude. You you don't have Guy Fieri's hair, but I like to I think you, I think you might have better stories. I actually I would give you the leg up in that one. Uh nice segue. Thank you for that. Good Stories leads us right into our next segment. This week, our very own Miles Nulte is going to suggest a book. Hey is going to suggest a book that sounds completely up his alley, lots of science e stuff, science stuff like you when you guys write in and say, what's with all the science stuff? This is here? Here we go. It's time for freaking philistines, where we tell you about books that don't suck and try to convince you that scrolling feeds and skimming comment threads is not a substitute for actual reading. What's it's a guy who doesn't care about books or interesting films and things, but using this week's book satisfies almost everything I look for in a philistines pick. It's literary without being too pretentious, complex but still approachable, and fun. Under the radar but not hard to find. The one drawback it's a it's pretty late on actual fishing. Rods and reels only make an appearance in the first essay, which amounts to exactly twenty six pages. But even though the following two forty one pages drift away from the specific pursuit of angling, they're still clearly written by one of us, an angler, someone constantly immersed in the quest to better understand the intricacies of life below the surface. Wild Thoughts from Wild Places is a collection of essays that gets lumped into the genre of science writing, which is kind of unfortunate. To some. Science writing connotes boring, lifeless pros, a bunch of words that squeeze all the fun from going outside and turn it into homework. This book is not that. The author, David Qualman, describes what he does as is working in that great gray zone between newspaper reporting and fiction. Engaged every day and trying to make facts, not just talk but yodel. Quaman doesn't just make those facts yodel. He assembles them into banging songs, celebrating nuances and complexities of the natural world, from fluid dynamics and tumbling rivers, to population genetics and urban pigeons, to the properties of snow and how it binds together. Quaman's research on all these topics is sound. He digs into the history, reads the primary research, interviews, and embeds himself with the people doing that research whenever possible, and make sure he actually understands what he's talking about. But that's not what makes me love this book. Quaman tells you the stories that make you care. For example, in the essay Vortex, he tells a story about kayaking a high water river near his house with friends. They've made it through most of the technical white water and are just kind of cruise into the takeout. When this happens. We paddled downstream toward evening, toward our parked hondas with yakama racks and our towels and street clothes, toward late dinners and wives and children. The water was still steep and heavy, but not quite so riveting as above, and now along hereabouts there was perhaps um a slight lapse of attention for yours, truly, probably I had started thinking about certain vexatious issues of ecological politics, or maybe about barbecued chicken. Sandy and Mike and Derek took a sensible line just right of center, and I must have stared vacantly at their backs while I straight to the left. A flat rock big as a driveway slab had been engulfed beneath the high water, which set up a ravenous hole just behind it. I fell into this thing. It swallowed me like I was Jonah. Instantly I was upside down. The water wamped me and snatched me from all directions. I had one breath of air, asked in as i'd gone over, and good for fifteen or twenty seconds. That, to my best recollection, is when I began wondering seriously about the subject of fluid dynamics. Now, fluid dynamics, for those of you listening who are like me and don't already know it turns out to be one of the most complicated branches of physics. And it's not the sort of subject that I would engage in for fun, or at least that's what I used to think. Turns out, someone like myself, who has spent thousands of hours of my life staring at moving water and trying to decipher what a particular currency or swirl might do to say, a drifting fishing line or a raft loaded with people in gear, has thought a great deal about fluid dynamics. But until Qualman contextualized it for me in the form of a story, I didn't know how much I cared. And once I realized that I cared, I was more than willing to follow along with him as he traced the study of waters, moved it back to Leonardo da Vinci and explained how understanding the ways that liquid passes through space not only informs our perspectives on rivers and oceans, but how our own blood circulates through our bodies. Anyone who's read scientific journals knows that the stripped of fleshy narratives, all the personal motives that compel researchers to invest their short lives in the topics they study are intentionally omitted from the conclusions they publish. This gives published research the detached relevancy of objective tone. But it also smothers the context that makes us care about these things in the first place. Objectivity, Qualman once told me, is a false god. False or not, it is the deity to which modern science nods. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but I am saying that it leaves science in need of good pr people writers like Qualmon. I'll leave you with one last passage that is at least partially fishing related. I can remember the first trout I ever caught as an adult, and precisely with the poor little fish represented to me at that moment. It represented a dinner and be a new beginning, with a new sense of self in a new place. The matter of dinner was important, since I was a genuinely hungry young man living out of my road were revokeswagon bus with a meager supply of groceries. But the matter of selfhood and place, the matter of reinventing identity, was paramount. My hands trembled wildly as I took that fish off the hook. A rainbow all of seven or eight inches long, caught on a black nat pattern size twelve, tied cheaply of poor materials. Somewhere in the Orient and picked up by me at Hurd's when I had passed through South Dakota. I killed the little trout before it could slip through my fingers and heartbreakingly disappear. Montana was the only place on Earth, as I thought of it, farthest in miles and spirit from Oxford University, yet where you could still get by with the English language, and the sun didn't disappear below the horizon for days in a row during wintertime, and the prevailing notion of a fish dinner was not ludifisque. I had literally never set foot within the boundaries of the state. I had no friends there, no friends of friends, no contacts of any sort, which was fine. I looked at a map and I saw jagged blue lines denoting mountain rivers. All I knew was that in Montana there would be more trout. Trout were the indicator species for the place and life I was seeking. Do you actually know that writer man, since he's a Bozeman guy, I don't. I wish I did. I have interviewed him. I've seen him speak a few times, but I would be lying if I said I know him. I'm just totally a fan in like I've actually run into him on the streets, just like out walking his dog and tried not to be there. I was like, Mr Koman, I love you so much. I think you're amazing, you know, just trying to play gool be like, hey, how's it going, David Um. But he's he's just one of those people that I respect immensely. And I've followed his career, like, he left Outside magazine quite a long time ago, and then he wrote a bunch of different books on on interesting topics, and then he became a staff writer at National Geographic and he's he's he's still doing a bunch of interesting books. I gotta say, though, none of his other work even mentions fishing at all, and I know just from the some of the conversations we have that he's not really into fishing. But I still think his work is worth reading. Uh And if you have the time, if you're into it, I think you should read it. Um. I think he's one of the best science writers alive, and probably high up in the conversation of all time science writers. He just he takes super deep research and he makes it both accessible and interesting and approachable to a general audience. So that's my that's my plug for Qualman right there. I don't mean to laugh, but that what you just said, how you how you cap that? That just sounds so familiar, Okay, because I'm pretty sure that's what you try and do most weeks. In our competitive journalism segment, it's time for fish news. Fish news. That escalated quickly, all right. Before we get started here with news, I do have one very quick shout out. It's rare that I don't I feel like anymore, but this one, this is almost gonna be like FM radio style, like a zapp shout out to listener. Uh, Mark Fenton, and this is a this is a self serving shout out, but I don't I don't really care. I got a nice note from him that he and the boys in the Weldon department at New Jersey's famed Viking Yachts tune in every Friday and really enjoy the show. And I just wanted to say thanks. And also, if you fellas have like a I don't know, like a spare for console just sitting around, we are actively looking for a bent boat. And I told Mark every time I drive by the Viking facility, the Viking compound. I said to myself, yeup, never gonna own a boat from there. But listen, boys, talk to the boss. This would be an incredible opportunity for Viking yachts. And if not, if not, I'll just take a Viking hat so I can tell people I own a Viking. Okay, so ship exactly. We'll just take it all around the high season. So that's my shout out. Thank you for listening, boys, We do appreciate it. Uh. And we've got a lot of news to get through here again this week, so um, let's get going here. Reminded this is a competition. Miles and I are unaware genuinely this week, unaware of what the other guys bringing to the table. And then when it's all said and done, our audio engineer, the David Blaine of Audio Engineering Phil will declare a news winner. And I believe you you have the floor. You open us up this week and he does close up magic. It's really impressive. Does he really filled us close up magic? Damn it? All right? This is uh, this is actually start. I've been following for quite some time, but there's been a recent development, so I think it's time to catch everybody up. This one focuses on the province of Alberta. It's a little, little little context here. Provinces function in similar ways to states in the US in the sense that they are smaller regional governments under the umbrella of a larger federal system. You don't need like a whole Canadian Civics lesson for this to make sense. You just need to understand that Alberta is a province in Canada and has some independent jurisdiction over the management of its resources. Okay, So, southwestern Alberta is particularly well loved by hunters, anglers, and outdoors people. It's it's where you'll find some of the more famous areas of the Canadian Rockies, like bamf and Jasper. Just like the rocky south of the border, this mountainous region and adjacent foothills and prairies create spectacular fish and game habitat. From an angling perspective, we're talking about rivers like the Boat with a Living Stone, the North and South Saskatchewan, the Old Man, and like tons and tons of others. In addition to its wilderness and natural beauty, Alberta is also known for abundant energy resources, though these days you usually hear about oil, specifically the Alberta Tar Sands and the Keystone Pipeline. Modern industry in southwest Alberta was originally built on coal. The Blackfoot name for this area roughly translates to place of the black rocks, right like coal scenes. One of the first major towns there, Lethridge, used to be called Coal Banks. Between eighteen seventy five and nineteen seventy five, that were over two thousand coal mining projects in the area, but the following year brought a shift in Alberta's relationship to coal mining. In nineteen seventy six, the provincial government unveiled a new coal policy that read, no development will be permitted unless the government is satisfied that it may proceed without irreparable harm to the environment. Details the balls are are kind of complicated, but but basically, the government looked at the wilderness resources they had and decided, under significant pressure from citizens who liked to hunt, fish and enjoy unspoiled places, to enact strict protections over the mountainous wilderness regions, and then like some lesser protections for the eastern prairies. It just so happens that the high value metallurgical coal is located in the mountains, and that choice coal is primarily used to make steel, not generate power. The flat land deposits are lower quality and have mostly been used to generate electricity for Alberta. But Alberta recently pledged to phase out coal fired electricity by twenty which has left that coal even even less valuable than it already. So now fast forward. In twenty nineteen, the United Conservative Party won the majority of the provincial election, and soon after, records show that the Coal Association of Canada began lobbying hard to amend the ninety six coal policy. In May of the government very quietly rescinded that forty four year old policy without any public comment or input. Alright, so practically this meant, yeah, over thirty seven million acres of previously protected land would now allow lease sales for open pit mines. Right, we're talking about this type of mind. It's it's also some sometimes not as strip mining or mountaintop removal mining, and it has kind of a poor track record when it comes to environmental impact, especially when it comes to water and fish and fisheries. Right, you can just look at the other side of the Continental Divide in British Columbia, where the same coal deposits are being actively mined on that west side of the Canadian Rockies. Selenium, a coal mining byproduct, is messing up the famous and exceptional watershed, the Elk River and its tributaries. The negative effects of selenium on ecosystems are are very well documented in places like West Virginia and California, where the chemical completely decimated fish populations and aquatic ecosystems. So, long story short, this type of mining is bad news for people who like to fish. The thing is not everybody values fish and fishing to the same extent that that I do or that you do. Right, many folks in the province welcomed the policy shift, hoping that a new mind would bring a much needed economic boost. The pandemic has hit lots of economies on the chin, but Alberta's in particular. There are two primary economic drivers. Tourism and oil both bottomed out. We all, we all know how travels going right now? Uh. And then also, at one point last year oil was trading in negative figures. So the province is scrambling to find ways to get money coming in again. But then some other Albertans have been shall we say, less enthusiastic about this policy change, which spurred quote unprecedented civil protests according to a local paper. And we're not just talking about like conservationists and anglers and hippie types. The hunting and ranching communities have also rallied against this change. Even the popular Lethage based country singer Core Blund publicly condemned the whole thing. Opposition pressure grew steadily throughout and in December of last year, the Alberta government issued a very very public statement canceling eleven of the cold leases they had opened up, which was a really nice pr move, and and they made a point of noting in all their press releases that they made this decision in response to public outcry. There's just one problem. The eleven leases they canceled made up about acres, so less than half of one per cent of the area they opened up when they initially rescinded the coal policy. So you know, yeah, it made good press. I wouldn't call it meaningful, and it didn't succeed in quelling the general unrest from local opposition. One of the primary groups leading that opposition is the Alberta Chapter of back country Hunters and Anglers who are co signatories of a lawsuit that seeks to fully reinstate the previously held environmental protections and claims that the current government violated the law when they made the lunal lateral change. The final decision on that lawsuit is still pending, but in the wake of last month's trial, the Alberta government put out another very public announcement claiming that they had heard the opposition loud and clear and were reinstating the nineteen seventies coal policy. Now that all sounds well and good again, the devil's in details here. During the nine months that the coal policy was undone Australian mining companies were granted six new leases, meaning that just over one point two million acres of land along the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies is now open to call my mining. Though the Alberta government did reinstate their pre existing policy, they did not rescind the leases that they had granted in that nine month period. Wait a minute, exactly, I'm trying to I'm trying to like compute all that. So like they took away the protections for nine months and during those nine months they were giving out leases. Yeah, yeah, I got people, what's happening. It's like, hey, we're gonna go back to the way it was. But the people we said yes to when before that, they can still do their thing right. And so, from all the coverage I read on this issue, which is a lot, it seems like the government of Alberta is prioritizing the desires the coal lobby and Australian coal companies over their fish, wildlife, and you know, most importantly, their citizens, while trying their damnedest to play damage control when talking to the press. The reinstatement the coal policy was a step in the right direction. I'm giving them credit there, but the fisheries in this part of Canada, they're they're still in trouble right, They're still in jeopardy from what's been enacted. I want to kind of close up by by encouraging all of our listeners north of the border, especially those in Alberta, to read up on this situation and pay attention, like do your own homework, don't just take my word for it. If you're so inclined, contact the appropriate MPs and also consider joining the Alberta Chapter of b h A, because they're the ones who are working really really hard to represent the interests of everyone who likes to fish and hunt and play outside in the mountains of southwestern Alberta, and they're the ones who are helping to bring this lawsuit forward. So I would talk to those folks because they're doing they're doing really good work. And this one, this this really does threaten some great fisheries. So just to clarify one thing, so they rescinded that that decision, so like they're the government is essentially saying, we'll take it back to how it was when the protections were in place, but what like moving forward, So like going forward, we won't sell any more leases. But these these Astorian dudes are already in for now. For now the Altralia, Yes, the the leases that they gave out in those nine months are standing, and roads are being built. Test drilling is going on in places where it didn't happen before and those are moving ahead also right now, that original policy is back in place, but the government is crafting a new policy and no one knows what that's going to be yet, So there's a lot that's still up in the air with how how this is gonna play out moving forward, and and look I get it, like there there is there's some real there's some real issues economically going on in that area. But everything I read and I didn't have time to cover all this because it's a really deep dive, but it's a it's a very short sighted move, and it doesn't look like these coal resources are actually going to bring as much money into the local economy as is being promised, and not for very long. Yeah, it's a super detailed story and I'm not as fluent in all the details as you are, but that's sort of of my takeaway is that, um, you know, it is a very short term gain. And then I don't know, man, history kind of shows that if you don't fully backpedal and like make the whole thing go away, Like once you let a little bit in your you tend to be on the track to have it keep going that way. Especially if they get their economic they're there the money flow and yeah, exactly, they get the boost. It's gonna be very hard to go back without that being gone. So I'm sure we'll we'll have follow up on that one down the road, because that's what I hope I get to follow up at some point and say like, hey, the laws dead succeeded and the whole thing is dead. We'll see where it goes. Yeah, well, speaking of dead dead stuff, Um, my first story this week is not it's not a whole lot more uplift. And you know me, like I go if it involves Dion Sanders or fishing with Derrito's, I'm automatically in. But I'm I'm gonna end at the Spencer Gifts. I can't start there. I gotta go to Hudson News. And I don't think any person living in the US has has missed the coverage of the polar vortex that plummeted much of the country into a deep freeze. You lived it. We kind of skated it a little bit out here in Jerors. But it was cold. You've got the cold it's been. It was cold there for a while. Yeah, it's real cold. It was extremely cold. But um, you know, our poor friends in Texas we're suffering through this from ongoing power outages, lack of potable water and so on, and um, you know the thing is, while these brutal tempts and weather have have made people in a huge part of the country suffer if you look at it from a fishing perspective, meaning how much does this period of extreme cold matter to anglers? It's it's not going to affect you know, many places long run, but Texas is one exception to that, particularly along the coast. Now, I've spent a lot of time fishing down on the Texas coast. It's one of my favorite places. But yeah, it's it's awesome. But you have to bear in mind, though, is that what makes it so great is the coastwide network of these shallow bays and estuaries that grow arguably the biggest sea trout in the US. And they've got red fish and all kinds of other stuff. But Texas is big trout country. And what happens is when these ten dropped so drastically so quickly, the fish in these shallow systems, they don't have time to make a big move like offshore into the Gulf, and and the result is, you know, can be massive fish kills and and tech. The Texas coast is sadly seeing some of that now. Um Texas Parks and Wildlife has already gotten reports of some level of fish kill in in five of the major bass systems. Uh, they're seeing loads of dead sea trout, redfish, among other things, washed up on the beaches. And um, huge rescue effort on sea turtles down there too because they're endangered. So they have all these stunned stunn turtles. And UM, I'll tell you what, man, I got a lot of buddies down there, and a few of them reached out just prior to that freeze, and they were like, dude, pray for us. And they're saying that because while there's a lot of chatter wrapped up in the news about how this polar vortex deal is an effective global warming, right, it is fair to say that this kind of deep freeze in in South Texas is not unprecedented, like it has happened before. Uh, most notably in three Night nine and and one of my buddies that fish down there with Darren Jones, he remembers the eighty three freeze vividly, which created one of the worst fish kills in US history, and according to him, it ultimately took like four years for the whole trout fishery to really start recovering from that. Um. Now, he had told me ahead of this freeze, certain areas on the coast at least, they had done things like shut down barge traffic in the Inner Coastal Waterway to give fish some kind of deep water refuge to hide out in, and then Texas Parks and Wildlife closed all saltwater fishing on This was Monday February fifteen through Tuesday February And they did this so that anglers and it's it's like hard to believe that people would even think this way what they do. They did it so that anglers wouldn't swarm these deep water holding areas and pound these fish that were barely hanging on, like you get into a situation. Yeah, that was part of it. I mean, part of it is so that, you know, just give the fish a break during this freeze, but hands down, another motivation is like it's like, yo, we know all the trout are going to be right here because of this freeze. So part of that shutdown was to stop people from going to these holes where these in this shallow system where people know these fish are going to congregate, and just beating the ship out of them, right, It's like shooting fish in a barrel. So that's that is part of the motivation there, and you would think, right that all Texas anglers would just rally behind that. But then I ended up finding this story out a Corpus Christie about all these peer anglers that were hurrying out right before the freeze to like get their last licks in, and they were saying that, you know, they can't wait for this closure to lift so they can get right back out there. And what's gonna be interesting is sort of how the Texas angling community at large accepts what many are speculating could be some pretty drastic regulation changes because of this freeze. A matter of fact, our colleague Maggie Hudlow recently covered what's going on in Texas for the meat Eator dot com and the story titled Texas freeze kills thousands of fish along Golf Coast, and she did a really great job and in that piece she actually quote a few captains and and what these guys are saying is, listen, even though this fishing band will be lifted by now, I'm pretty sure it already is. Um, it might be smart to like not even go ripping around the bays in our boats at all for a while, you know, just to give the fish a chance to get over that trauma. You know, don't stress them more than they've already been. And per Maggie's story, there there's some talk, I don't know how serious, of dropping the trout limit to zero and banning all tournaments for the rest of the year. And yeah, and one, so one final note on this right um, it's being hinted at that while this recent freeze is definitely hurting fish and wildlife populations along the South Texas coast, a lot of officials are anticipating that this won't be quite as bad as eighty three and eighty nine, especially with you know, temps have already come back up. Um. And I also read that the cooling of the bays this time it happened a little bit more slowly and in those past cold snaps. So I mean, I'm I'm I'm hoping for the best, but we gotta wait it out. And as a recreational guy, I think I know you too. If it was a no kill season, I'd fully embrace that. It would make sense to me, Like yo, if not killing trout the rest of this season helps this population, I'm in. But you know, getting back to the economy, you do have to Remember, people go to Texas for trout, and there are lodges up and down that entire coast that have already been hurt by COVID and now this, so it's a massive double whammy. And to be clear, nobody has made a call on regulations yet, it's just being speculated and talked about that that could be an option, depending on like sort of the final assessment of how hard this freeze hurt the base system down there. That's a tough one, man. I mean, there are a lot of people who make their living off of being able to guide for harvesting those trout, Like that's that's what their their clients are there to do, you know, And and and I feel for those folks, I really do. And and but you also have to balance the long term health of the fishery and understand that the hammering on them right now might mean you don't get to catch them or have a sustainable fishery in the long term. Yeah. And what's what what I think is even tougher is even if you if you take the kill regulations out, like let's just let's just say that, you know, either nothing changes or you know, they put the kill regulations in um. You know, the freezers like this have happened in Florida where we saw you know, piles and piles of dead snook and stuff. Um. The big difference even if you're you're not going down there to keep trout, you're just going to catch and release and catch the trophy trout down there. If the population gets hurt, now it's making that very difficult. That's gonna hurt business too. And unlike Florida, there's really not a ton of plan B in Texas. Like you're going there to fish skinny water bay systems for trout and reds. If those two things aren't an option, most guys don't have the boats or aren't in the right area to just be like, well we'll zip off and catch snapper or whatever is right, Like that's what you go there for. There's there's not a lot of plan B. So regardless of the regulations, even if this is just knocked back the trout fishing for a year, that sucks. And that's a tough situation for the people that make their money doing it. It is and and I do genuinely feel for friends of mine who make their living guiding in there and fishing down there, and yeah are I'll say our hearts go out, certainly not thoughts and prayers, but our hearts go out to everybody down there, who's who's there. There is no winning in this, there's no good answer. It's all shitty. It's all just gonna take time to assess, you know, So we'll see where we land. I'm gonna run with that. I'm gonna take your your dead fish angle. I'm gonna parlay that into into what I'm gonna talk about it for this the second story. I'm gonna dip into the nearly bottomless pool of invasive species stories out of Florida. Who from this. It's just like there might be a new one, but I don't really think so. But anyway, I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An arapaima was recently found washed up dead on the banks of the Closa Hatchie River. Arapaima are Amazonian fish that can grow up to ten ft long and over four hundred pounds. I found conflicting information that some people say they're the largest freshwater fish. Some people say they're among the largest freshwater fish. Million just figured that out. Either way, they're enormous. They're just cute, and either way, it costs a lot less to fly to to Florida than it does to the Amazon the catch them. So Yeah, And and to your point, dude, they're they're kind of they're kind of the newest exotic destination sport. Fish anglers only really started targeting them for sport what like five years ago. Yeah, and now I'm like, Oh, you went to the Amazon for peacocks, You're not going down there for a pima? Yeah, Lane, my grandpa goes there for peacock bass. Yeah. I'm mean, all of a sudden, literally just within the last few years, everybody I know now has dreams of going to Guiana one day and site fishing these three pound monsters. Just a few years ago, no one even knew they existed. Anyway, if you want to know more about all that, I personally recommended the short films Jungle Fish. You can can get it for free on the YouTube's go check it out. Anyway, cool as these fish are and as much as I want fish form, that's not what we're talking about here. Because they're not supposed to be swimming around in Florida rivers. You can imagine the amount of damage that they might do if they invaded an ecosyst where they don't belong first, how big and voracious as they are. But a Cape Cora resident recently stumbled on a five and a half foot long specimen washed up dead on the banks to Clusa Hatchie. And you know, for some that's concerning, right, because the question is is where did it come from? Most likely this is a case of someone dumping an unwanted pet, and that pet continued to grow. But the ord of Fish and Wildlife Commission they did a risk assessment because they saw lots of people dump invasive stuff all over Florida and they have these as as tank fish, right, so all of Miami, like that's all all, that's that's where it all came from. Yeah, and and fwc's hip to that. So they did a risk assessment like a decade ago, which concluded that Florida waters are too cold to support aripima. So that's why this is such a big deal. FWC came out ten years ago, was like they can't live here, don't worry. And then this big, giant, mature one washed up dead. And there there's some folks saying like, well, with the general warming trends in the past ten years. Maybe maybe it's happening right, And and that's why this story popped up in a bunch of different sources like you'd heard about it, I had heard about it, and and I gotta say, someone were just just the worst clickbait headlines. And I don't want to get too far off, but the worst one I saw was citizens of Florida, meet your new river monster overlords like she thanks Orlando Weekly. Those guys deserve pulletzer. And the angle that almost all those stories took was that, like, what if this was a wild fish and what if they were reproducing? And man, I gotta say, like, I don't buy it. I don't think that's what happened. I think I think this fish was released, it grew up and died. It's still something that people like, you know, don't dump the fish. We all know that, blah blah blah blah. But there's one angle of this story that no one seems to me talking about. And that's what I want to talk about. If you look at the photos of the dead fish, you can clearly see a hook in its lower jaw. Oh really, someone's got a story to tell, right, exactly. No one talked about it. But if you look, go look at the photos. There is a hook, a busted off fishing hook in the lower jaw of that fish. Someone hooked and fought an Arab pima in the Caloosa Hatchie. Dude, imagine that. Oh dude, you just like m Night Shamalan this whole newspiece and just took us in a totally different direction, the new angle. We we want the exclude to say, if you come to us first, exactly exactly you want stickers, We got them. Imagine how shocked that angler was because you know this, I know er pimer jumpers. So there's a good chance that whoever hooked that fish saw it. Yeah, and they and they probably took a tarpin. I was gonna say, and they saw it and thought it was a tarpin, because I have to imagine, right like if that happened to you or me, I'd be telling the world like you're gonna tell me I'm crazy, But I jumped our pima today down by Cape Carl. Okay, dude, I okay, maybe thought it was darping, but that would be like the world's most psychedelic tarpin right, think about they've got all those red accents and crazy colors all over their scales. I don't know how you could use that for a tarpin Like that thing jumps and and either either that person was just way too high and they're like, no, man, I couldn't have just seen what I thought I just saw, or they had no idea what they were looking at. I don't know what it was, but I just wish whoever had told that fish would come forward and tell their story, because that's the person I want to hear from on this. I would love it. I would love it. I don't know, but I'm going with the ladder. Somebody hooked it and either it didn't jump, or they didn't see it, or just had absolutely no idea what they were looking at. But anybody who thinks that's a wild fish? Wild meaning what it swam on up from the Amazon, like went out the mouth of the Amazon. No no, no, like like like wild isn't they're naturally reproducing, They're not not native not wild isn't. Got there a thone like someone dumped them in and and they are successfully reproducing. I don't buy it. You can't know, you can't you can't necessarily rule it out, but until somebody else catches another one or nets another one, like you have to go with that. It's one of the air breathers. They don't hide very well, exactly. They have to come to the surface to breathe, so you see them exactly. But I am very very intrigued by the hook. I imagine, and I imagine in a tank like like like like a Tony Montana's kind of how you know what I'm saying, Like somebody's gonna have a big ass tank or that thing was in there for a very very long time growing in the canal. Way, oh man, anyway, okay, um, how about this, So if you were to be that guy to land that fish, you would establish some serious dominance, you would. It would be dominance established and fishing. Right, So we we talked some serious shop. Now I gotta have a little fun, and I'm gonna make the assumption that everyone listening right now, no matter how humble you are, Okay, all of you enjoy establishing your dominance on the water from time to time, right Like you might not. You might not gloat about it, right, but on those days when you're just like putting on a clinic and crushing your boys. You love it, and no matter how you react, you can go full asshole mode, or you can do the like I'm gonna stop fishing and get you dialed, you know what I mean? Like, bro let me you know what I'm saying. Like that's like the nice kind of the ultimate form of dominance. Like hold on, let me slide your indicator up a little bit and just watch what I'm doing here. Okay, that doesn't matter. You're loving it, right. So this this is a little story that comes from New York's Times Herald Record, and it's about twenty four year old Hayden Carnell, who recently fished the annual King of the Ice tournament on White Lake. Now, mind you, hundreds of people fished this tournament, right, So the tournament started at six am. In the first fifteen minutes before the sun even comes up. Uh, Carnell sticks at eight point two pound walleye, and he and his buds are using flashlights to land it because it is still completely dark. So let's pause there and now pretend you and your buddies have just arrived to compete for the King of the Ice title. Okay, and as you're dragging your sled out in the morning dark. Little do you know, Carnell is walking his walleye to weigh in, right, and he was the first to weigh a fish, and as he noted in the story, was doing so while the vast majority of other anglers were just starting to set up. Okay, so now furthermore, furthermore, Carnell and his buddies, as I understand the story, they plan to go ice fishing that day, but only decided that morning to enter the tournament. So they got up and they were like, hey, we should enter this, and swung by the local fire station at five am that morning to register. And by six fifteen Carnell had caught the winning fish. Hundreds of anglers yet this this wally dominated the event, and he was crowned the thirty six annual King of the Ice. And like that, that is a lance V power move flexing right there? Okay, now further still, still further, furthermore, Again, Carnell and his friends apparently they fish a lot of open water tournaments, but they were all canceled this year due to COVID, So this was the first ice tournament ever. And he says, and he says, um, I think we'll be back. We're hooked. Yeah, you think. And there's this great photo in the piece of Carnell holding up this walleye um behind hundreds of crop eas and perch and trout that were also weighed in and like his walle I could have have eaten pretty much any of them. So I was just tickled by this whole thing. Like that is the ultimately flex and dominance establishment right there. Good on your kid. What I wish, though, is that because you're never gonna top that, I wish you'd just done a mic dropping been like s and I now retire as the king, and we'll never fish another ice tournament again, because within an hour I proved by dominance like you're never gonna get there again. Just just drop that mic and walk away, dude, we're waiting in and pack your ship with your boys and go home and drink. Just leave. I think I think, I think I've I think I got this ice tournament. Things just too easy. I think I'm gonna stick to open a lot our tournaments. You guys can have that. Good for him. I don't think anybody's ever entered a fishing tournament where they didn't see it going down that way, you know what I mean, So we had we had to close with a little fun Hayden, good for you. Um, we'll see one of these pieces Phil had the most fun with or was most gripped by this week. And as soon as we're down hearing from him, we're gonna get a tackle hack that will also help you establish more dominance in the tarp and scene from none other than Mr Dave Mangum. This has been one of the closest weeks so far, but they don't pay me unless I pick a winner, so I'm gonna go with Miles Salty. Congratulations. That last ice fishing story kind of reminded me of the story of this podcast. Stephen Rinella came up to you guys and said, hey, you guys want to start a podcast, and you said, what's a podcast? And now two out of two moms surveyed said it's the best podcast they've ever heard. So congratulations. It's all downhill from here. I'm getting hats coming from inside the city Hi the Flood. Today on Tackle Hacks, we are joined by Dave Mangham, world renowned uh Tarpin Guide. Among the guys all sorts of things. You do many many things. Um and uh, suffice to say, Dave's got some experience on the water, and I'm sure that you could provide us with some excellent tips on on fighting what's arguably one of the nastiest, biggest, meanest insure fish out there that people tend to screw up a lot. But you're also well connected to the fly world, do a lot of fly designing the dragon tail than too light and when so many of us are so thankful for that, in particular because you know, if we have to tie a game changer anymore. I don't know what the tip is, but you're gonna actually take us to maybe the off season a little bit to the vice for your tackle hack instead of on the water. Yeah, you know the tip or tackle hack that I'm I'm gonna tell you about is it actually has to do with tarp and flies, So it would be kind of the tarp and season one in the summer. But the tackle hack that I'm going to tell you about how's to do with like a bunny fly. So like a rabbit tail or bunny fly is probably the most commonly used fly for for tarping and a lot of times, guys tie in a mono loop, and that mono loop is called a snarzel. That's the old school name of it. To keep that money from I've never heard that before. That's what that's called. That mono loop is called a snarl Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, because in the beginning they didn't use mono loops. They used the center piece of a feather too instead of the mono, right, so that's yeah, they call it a snarvil, but you know, tying it flat on the hook, so it doesn't you know, it just kind of as a loop back. There is one of the ways, and one of the other ways is to drive it through the center of the rabbit strip. Right. Well that's a really good way, in an improved way, but there's a better way to do it even than that. So even if you drive it through the center of the you know, you poke a hole in the rabbit strip, your rabbit can still slip down the lower side of that piece of mono. So you tie an over hand not in your mono. So first you put some uh you know, right on your hook. Then you tie in one end of your snarsl and I like to burn the end of that off, so it makes a little nubs. So did you ever come off with a quaterizer? Okay, then your overhand knots already in this uh this piece of monto loop right, So then you tie your rabbit on, kind of check out your spacing, poke all through the rabbit and stick the other end of the monto. So the so the mono with the knot is sitting underneath the rabbit and that guy that rabbit tail actually sits down on the knot. Then you lash down the other piece that you poked through the rabbit. So anyway, this just accomplishes the rabbit. It keeps it from ever being will slip down the bottom side of that motto um and you're it's almost impossible to foul that fly. So a foul fly is a completely useless fly. So when it lands are in front of the tarp and if it's spelled, it's So that's that's my tackle tip for the debt. That's a solid one. Man, Like, you only get one shot at those fish. Yeah, and if you if you tie like, I understand that completely, and I think that definitely has I mean, I know some guys that put that loop in there even for bigger trout flies with bunny tails and things like that. So if you if you tie a long rabbit tail in anything, pike flies, pike bunnies, I always put a loop in a pike bunny. Yeah, but but make sure to put a nod in it. Very simple tip, but that goes a long way, especially, like you say, with a tarp in any fish where like the first shot is what counts. That's right. You fly cannot be foul. It's inexcusable. I'm gonna do that. I'm definitely stealing that one for sure. Thank you. I wish over time flies for a spring tarp and trip right now, if only. Frankly, I wish you had a reason to stockpile flies for any trip right now, salt or fresh. And it's not that I don't have trips on the horizon, but I uh like I tied a shipload of flies last winner, you know, like when my kids weren't home every day for months on stuff back in the before times, before the germs um, and then I didn't I didn't really go anywhere in so I kind of have plenty. It's kind of like a little leg up didn't lose very many, no I did not know. You know, I sadly, but it's true. I have been been a slacker when it comes to fly time for the past few winners, because that used to be. That used to be one of my winner rituals, especially when I was guiding, like I had to, I had to restock those boxes. And for years I actually had a weekly fly time night from like December through May, where a bunch of of friends we would all get together. We'd sit around my buddy Robs dining room table, and we drink a lot of beer and we bullshit and we tie flies. It was kind of like a poker night, right. That was why I described to It's like a poker, except no one loses. It's got the same feel. But but no one comes up being like, oh god, I can't pay rent this this month. Like we all we all definitely woke up most days is for work the next day with a hangover, but no one was broke and hungover came out. Yeah, at the very least you came out. You had you had a few more flies than you had the night before, and you had a good time. So I was like that, you know, man, so many people have told me I should start a tying night locally and not I'm not even talking about just the friends thing. Like you know how a lot of people do this at breweries and stuff now like they and I've thought about it, and I could I could pull it off, or well, I should say I can pull it off once we can all go to a bar again without restrictions. Not so much, um, But I think they're super cool. And but the handful of times I've actually participated in one of those, I tie very few bugs. I just drink and shoot the ship. Because tying, for me, it's like more of a quiet, unwinding activity at home, you know what I mean, Like the kids are in bed, and like I'm gonna send quietly with the beer and knock out a few bugs. Um. Whereas if I'm going to a bar, I just want to hang out, Like I don't. I don't want to have a task while I'm there. I want to hang out. But I do see the appeal of these things. I think that I get that. It's definitely it's not the most productive time, like when you're by yourself and focus, you do more. But what it does for me is it motivates me to sit down and to actually tie flies every week, which is which is where I struggle, which is what I have not been doing for the last couple of years. So I mean, I think I think it's more question whatever it is that gets you spinning bugs, whether whether you know you're like surrounded by drunkards at some dudes table, or or your hiding a closet from your kids, either whatever you gotta do to make yourself sit down at the vice. And Joe is now going to give us a behind the scenes take on a on a relatively new fly pattern that we should all consider getting motivated to tie before it gets warm. It's time for this week's end of the line. Well it's not loud enough. Everything is bigger in Texas, at least that's what they say, though it doesn't apply at all to the lunch money streamer. To put it in Texas barbecue terms, if a double deceiver was a whole brisket and a regular deceiver was a brisket sandwich, the lunch money would be a single burnt end, just one. But unless you're a vegetarian or something who's passing up a single smoky, charred, delicious burn end, nobody this tiny Minner was designed by full time commercial tire Matt Bennett of fly Geek Custom Flies, who lives just outside of Austin Now, whereas many great streamer patterns have been developed around Fame, trout and muskie fisheries further north, The Lunch Money was born on the bass rivers of Texas hill Country. But see here's the thing. These aren't forgiving rivers like you'll find in other parts of the country where you can get away with, say, chucking a big loud bug and ripping it back until you piss off fish. Many of Bennett's home waters, like the Lano River, run ultra ultra clear, making delicate presentations the key to success, and a couple that with the that most of the forage fish and those hill country rivers top out of three inches, and you can see why the big meat is best reserved for the smoke house around these parts. Several years ago, Unqua picked up the Lunch Money and I ended up getting my hands on a whole box of them in shad pattern shortly after they debuted. The design is pretty simple. Small dumbbell eyes provide some dropwaight and the hook rides point up like a clouds or minnow. The short tail and collar are made of rabbit strip, the head is laser dub and tucked into the middle of all of that are four rubber legs. Now looking at it, you might say, well, why didn't I think of that? Well, because you didn't. Matt Bennett did, and he's a better fly designer than you. And while it may look simple, it's also pretty genius because Bennett compacted all those elements on a little size six hook. In fact, the whole package together is about the size of a quarter in your palm. And if you tie, you know that's not easy because you have to be strict and sparse with your materials if you want that little nugget to wiggle just right. And man does the lunch money dance. When I first got those lunch moneies, that was kind of me about him, But I did thankfully stick a few in my streamer boxes. I was really thankful a couple of months later on one of the crystal clear branches of the Shenandoah in West Virginia, because my normal cadre of smally streamers were getting half hearted chases and it was driving me insane. Okay, and I finally scaled back my leader and put on one of them tiny white lunch moneies, and those small jaws ate it every time. And then not long after that, during a brown trout mission in the driftless region of Iowa, I went looking for quote the one on the big meat only to pound water for zero eats in two days, and there was one exactly one of those lunch moneys in my box, and just for the sake of changing it up, I tied it on and I caught six browns to nineteen inches in an hour. For me, the lunch money is not necessarily replacing old standbys, but it's proven it's worth time and time again with finicky or wary fish, and that is, after all, what Bennett designed it for. Even making it ride hook up has a purpose because you can let this fly drop and flutter with less risk of the point snagging the bottom when it touches down. I'm rarely without some lunch moneies these days, and it's fair to say this pattern has definitely generated some buzz across multiple fisheries. But what I also see is people tying lunch moneies on bigger hooks. They often scale them up, which it's all well and good, But in my opinion, it's those size six morsel proportions that make the lunch money so damned lethal. Like you wouldn't ask Mini Cooper to build your car on a Yukon frame, was you like you couldn't fit a Doberman size teacup Yorky in your Fendi bag. So trust me on this. Whether you tie or buy some lunch moneies, let the little things be little, because sometimes the little things will get bigger. Ship done. Well, that's just about firms up our depths of the winter episode. If you are cleaning out the freezer ahead of spring, you just sifted through the backstory on the worst and perhaps only ice fishing commercial ever filmed, probably the last two. A book by a guy who writes so well that I can forgive him for quitting fishing, A tip on how to keep your tail wagging in the face of hungry tarpin, and a fly that a class bully might beat you up and steal. Thanks again to Matthew McConaughey for coming on. And hey, if you need Matthew McConaughey for something like a recording, we suggest you look up at Para Denoia on Instagram as always, hit us up and let us know how you're surviving the cruelest months. Send us some bar nominations, sale bin items, maybe use winner as an excuse to dig through year old photo albums and find awkward fishing picks for us to make fun of. Send all of that stuff to Bent at the meat eater dot com. Use the hashtags generate Angler and Bent podcast. If you're wasting some time on social media, either because you're in a pop up sitting over a slow bite, or because you're stuck at home not fishing because it's cold. Yeah, and we'll talk to you again in March, when the weather will still probably suck and you won't start catching fish until the last few days right before a