00:00:09 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, April boy? Why so you kind of don't. You're not even like you never were an American. That's one problem with you. But now you're not even like you're not even Canadian. No, no, I'm totally Canadian. But you what's going on with Australia? All right? I live half the year in Canada and half the year in Australia. I fell in love with an Australian bloke. Yeah, Now do people know what you've got going on? Which part of it? You mean this enormous belly? I'm rocket right now that they know? So? So you got wed locked. Let's just be honest. I just ate so much Mexican food before I got here. It's no no, I'm pregnant. I got married and married and pregnant. How did all that play out? Where were you when you met the Australia? Okay, we're going to start there. I was on a fishing trip in Norway and just doing my usual thing. I traveled the world, I fish, and I walked outside of the farmhouse and there was this handsome, big, aussy man with bright blue eyes. And that was that. And he was a tourist too. Now he goes there every year to fish. Well, yeah, yeah, sure he's a tourist. Yeah. What were you guys fishing for Atlantic salmon? You're a fish? Small mouth bass? Of course? I have, yeah, a large mouth bass, Yes, of course I have. You know what, I don't care. I'll bet you haven't caused many, is Matt Elliott as he laughs, well looking at bass, but I don't know if many people have. It's pretty fancy, so along with the april bolk. Matt Elliott's here, Mat Elliott, Um, how many do? I just want to touch on one thing real quick? How many bass have you caught in your life? Nine hundred sixty two? You are not serious right now? You don't count? Oh my god, it's gonna work out, okay, But I've never caught one on a fly rod. Seriously, I love fly fishing. Have you ever seen a dude? Now, Matt has a genuine bass boat. Well, it doesn't have sparkles. I don't know mega sparkles. My daughter, the first thing my daughter noticed was that boat has sparkles and the whole gel coat. Every color is sparkles. Oh my god, I totally missed that. Right after Matt showed me where they, oh, handles are hands? He showed me how fat, I don't know how fast would we go? We were like, okay, it goes eight. That's fast enough to make you hang onto those handles. It was so rough. I can't believe how many boats are like Washington. Oh yeah, like yesterday we were out. It wasn't even close to today. But wait, wait, wait, wait, just a line of boats. Back to sparkles. Why does a boat have to why fat guys? Why are they flashies? Right? Yeah? Why what is up with that? I don't understand. You're not a lash you guy? I have no idea answer the sparkles question. But you have sparkles on your boat? Did you put them there? Second? You bought a second hand at it from a Matt is a now and then professional angler? Okay? Is is is that fair to say? Is that what you call it? Well? I thought, okay, I don't like. I don't want to put it that way. I don't want to put it that way. You you fish bass tournaments, but not as your main occupation and spend tens, including the boat and all the gear and everything, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, and every once in a while we win. Like you're still you're still like running at it. You're still at a deficit. Yeah, yeah, big time, big time. And so I had never gone real bass fishing. I mean, I've caught a lot of bass, but I've never going out in by real bass question, I mean out in a bass boat where no one is even thinking about trying live bait and um catching bass and letting them go. Yeah, and I did that yesterday like Matt. I did like it. I like because I was learning a lot. But Matt, so mats done, is caught. I don't know how many baths. And the guy had never eaten a bass until tonight. Yeah, oh cool, you kept Yeah, over we over killed yesterday. We kept four. We kept three dinkers and one good one that had a hook in its eye. I got some blood on the sparkles and then we just started killing. Yeah. What did you think of your small mouth sandwich? It was really good. It was good. It's it's like a lake fish. Yeah, they now because Steve has a trick to get the pin bones. Sal where he cuts a little v notch in it and just pulls on it. They come right out. Yeah. I learned it from my fishing mentor, John Gary, the late John Gary. Yeah, no remorse, No, I had some remorse. I think I was telling you. So I actually did a little guiding for salmon a long time ago, killed them, and I have no I have no problem just killing salmon, cutting gills and whacking him on the head. And yesterday watching this small mouth on the top of the pile of perch and the cooler with you know, breathing gills move in the air with no water, I was feeling kind of bad, which is which is very strange. Why don't you bleed him out? Though? You don't need to those fish? Yeah, you don't need to bleed those fish out. Some do in Japan probably disagree with you. There's always some dude somewhere who will do Yeah, that's right. Some dude somewhere eat something that we would say you don't eat. Some dude somewhere would disagree with you. Ask somebody anywhere if you can eat carp and just watch the world explode. Everybody has an opinion. And then how do you harvest them? Anyway. So, yeah, so you felt weird, but I'm over it. I think it was just I needed to get over it. I spent my whole life trying to save every beast I catch fifteen minutes at a time, like sometimes trying to pry a hook out, and he's like a surgeon getting the barbs. No, but wait, our basket. But our baths like rainbow trot. If there's too many in a lake, they start to get kind of small. Yes, you definitely can run into it, like a kind of a tragedy of the common situation where it gets overpopulated. So you're doing a favor to the fisher. It's important for people to eat them. I just never have. I've spent all this time trying to save them, and so kind of looking at them, right, you're trying to save that. You're trying to save something. Catch him again, Yes, that's it. Yeah, because it's not like you're like trying to save the world by saving baths. You want him to be there in case you want to come and catch him again, especially the dude like you, right, are they indigenous or have they been introduced? They've been introduced, so like the Columbia River it's not a non native species. But they've been in the river for a hundred years. Okay, but yeah, they're not the point he likes to raise because now they're trying to wage war on small mouth as one of many little things that they think might help salmon because getting divert the attention away from Bonneville Power, who likes to hold the water back so there's no flow, so none of the small can escape the predators, so they escape goat everything. I'm on the record on that man. Yeah. So he's a bass. He's like a bass, not even a preserve. He's a bass. He's a guy who likes to see more bass in the world. Big bass, you can cash. Okay, got it, well fed, big fat football bass. Yes. So, April Um, are you do you still guide here? Now? Wait, when you say here, do you mean in the States? Well, in this kind in the western of the industry? Yeah? No, I you know, I I started guiding when I was twenty one, and I always said I would only guide ten years, and I did my my tenth year and after that I was out. So you know, you're only gonna guide ten years because if you don't put a cap on it, you'll end up being a six year old guide, And I just don't know. Yeah, honestly, I don't know very many happy six year old guys. I mean they might say they are. There may be a few, but it's rare. So I just always knew i'd do ten years. And it got to the point where after years, when of the ten year? When was the tenth year? So I stopped guiding three years ago. Yes, so I still have a guiding operations. You can still book guide trips for me. I'm just not going to be your guide if they beg and plead. It's not that I mean, you can still take my classes. I still do a lot of teaching, but yeah, I can't. You're not out on the water with the client being cast over there, cast over there? Why are you hanging up on the brank all the time? In ten hours, I mean ten hours a day, you're sitting there being like I could be doing so many other things right now, are doing another business or hunting or fishing or I don't know. I just got to the point where I was just ready to have some me time for sure. And so what was the year? How old were you? And what was the year that you started doing it guiding. So I had been twenty one thirty four now and that was guiding steelhead not not not really. So I actually was a sturgeon guide on the Fraser. So I ran a twenty north river on the Fraser River with a different outfitter. Oh not fly poland no ship. Now I learned everything I learned on conventional gear. I mean I was fishing. Yeah, hell yeah, that's yeah. I think that if you really want to be kind of became like a known person, I've a fishing to spoon all week on my property of North trying to get a chinook for the smoker. Oh, you know, I fish gear because I still I do believe that if you really want to understand that fish behavior or species behavior, you have to fish. But not necessarily relax or he'll believe Steve like you need to be able to fish like a single hook of barbarous hook and BC. Right. But yeah, no, So I I guided for sturgeon and pacific salmon on the Fraser for someone else catching sturgeon, how one with baits. Yeah, So I'd go out first thing in the morning, depending on the time of year, if it's like the spring or fishing. You know, maybe you're fishing cooligans, or maybe you're trapping ditch eels in the ditch and hay bales or whatever it is. Right, but in the summertime, you're going on. In the fall, you're going around first thing in the morning, you're looking for seagulls in the water because they're usually on top of a big floating dead salmon. And then you go around in the morning and you gather them, throw them in the bowl at a marinae in the sun, and on the bow of your boat, let a marinate in the sun, and then they are And that's called stink bait. But I was a horrible, awful surgeon guide, horrible tragic about what measure like you didn't catch surgeon. No, no, we cause surgeon. Any monkey you can catch surgeon. But I mean, I'm proud of the work I did right well, Like we were part of party of a tagging program. We did a bunch of work. We gave back, for sure, But um, I wasn't great at figuring out the drop offs. And you know the boat. I always seemed to anchor my boat and the way of a tug boat and I don't know, I just wasn't really My stick isn't really much and I just wasn't patient enough dealing with a lot of the funk withs out there and you're drinking vodka. You can I say that on your show? Yeah, I think so. Sorry, I didn't really catch what it was. They were fun what you say that in Australia? So you pick you picked up you picked up some Australian lingo? Yeah, because it just make it their funk with But yeah, I know they get drinking on the boat. And it got to the point where I was like, look, I'm not a great surgeon guide. I'm going to focus more on winter steel head trips. But my current employer, who was honestly also a funk with um, he couldn't give me the trips I needed. So I broke off in two thousand seven, so ten years ago, and I started my own company. Yeah, and that's kind of how it went. But did I gather from what we're talking for, did that gather your mom and dad weren't fisherman? No, No, not at all. What was the you know, like, what what why were you like when when in your life were you like, hey, you know, I'm gonna try to catch a fish. Yeah, well I mean three four, yeah, But you know, I was more into the water, like I was always more about the outdoors in general. My parents were totally opposed to hunting still are. My dad will not speak to me about it. He'll leave the room disgusted by it. It is not open for discussion. But the fishing, they were able to get their heads wrapped around, and so they explained, you know, dad would take me because he was from Newfoundland. We'd go and we troll in the lakes for for trout. We'd use worms and stuff. We weren't we didn't catch that many, but we went out and then would have been when I was about seven, I saw a big dead pacific or like a chinook salmon, and it wasn't all rotted out and gross and gray and black yet he was still pretty silver and he'd obviously bumped its head or whatever it was. And my parents explained that that huge fish had to go from you know, they had to get through a river that was only maybe thirty ft wide. And so it's seven years old. I'm going, but it's only wide, Surely I can catch that fish. And that was when it was start him necked down right where and it was never the same after that, so I had an allowance. The fishing shop was next door to the mall. My friends and I went to the mall. They spent their money on that. I spent my money in the fishing shop. I stocked my plane o tackle box and just counted down to get to be sixteen, and got my driver's license and skipped school and with fishing every day and is long old. Not every day, but for the most part, for four days a week. And the deal was if I brought home straight a's nobody cared. And that went on from sixteen to today. Here we are, who How did it ever occur to you you would make the you'd make a living fishing. That's like, did you run into fishing guides? No? Well no, thankfully, because if I had, maybe I wouldn't have gone down this route. I mean, I knew that fish, that guiding for fish was definitely an option, how much like I'll try to give you like the run the quick version of it. So when I was eighteen, nights seen some fly fishers, and at this point I knew that's what I wanted to do for a living, because I wanted to be able to go fishing every day, and basically the only way you still need to eat, right, you need to pay your bills and stuff, and so from there I just was like, well, how am I going to do this? And guiding was obviously the first thing that came to mind, but there's other ways to make money in the fishing industry. So I wrote a list of all the pots to put my fingers in, and then I put together a plan to make it work, and there was Yeah, so at the time there was. I was actually a sales rep once for a real company that didn't work very long. This diuldn't go very well, but then merchandise, and then television writing, time, custom flies, teaching, guiding obviously, and then come commissionable trips, and then that was. This is all pre social media. Social media did not exist at this time. So if I, if I had known that, I would have factored in all the other aspects of influencing and you know, sponsors and stuff, But at the time that was not on the table. So it's pretty much just the basic basic ways of getting by the face, he just knew you were going to fish. Yeah, well I had to make it work, and then what happened was I was a cocktail server at night at the casino. So now you know fast forward. So basically, I'm a gear fisherman. I'm I'm sixteen, seventeen. I meet this guy when I'm seventeen. He turns into my best fishing betty. He's in the sixties. He was running into me. He's like, girl, it's dangerous out there. We should fish. I thought it was weird and creepy. My parents come out with me one day. For sure, he had to, I thought anyway, he wasn't. No. Turned out he was like my second dad. So my parents came and met him. His name was Dave Peffer. I love you, Dave, You're the ship. So he ends up taking me fishing, and for my eighteenth birthday, he and all the old guys gave me my first ever I rod and a bunch of VHS tapes and a bunch of jig tying material. So now I'm paving them. I'm getting ready to start this fly fishing thing. Come back you up a minute, Yeah, go for it. Couple things I noticed that people that fly fish refer to say gear, but guys don't say gear, Like what what what what comes to mind when you hear the word gear any sort of conventional fishing, So like spin casting, um, um yeah, center pins, but only like fly fishermen use the term gear to talk about all the kinds of ways of yes and no, like a gear fisherman will call it, you call yourself spin fisherman. What do you call yourself? Carslf a gear fish, bass fishing and if and and the way I differentiate the two you said it is fly fishing and conventional fishing ways I say it. I don't say gear fishing. Where people were fly fishing before spinning wheels came out, right, that's point it. So so why is it conventional fly fish? Is conventional gear? Yeah? Yeah, it's a good point. It helps him sell those nine Okay, so that's that's one question. But but and then you've got a tough skin growing up where you grew up, and then you go and that and that want to help being helpful with social media, But I mean, like I don't understand, like what do you what do you mean that you had a hard time with social because I feel like you kind of like, uh so I thought you kind of you kind of like built your career on social media. Well, well that depends on who you ask. Just because somebody may have learned about me in social media doesn't mean I built my career on social media. I built my career on guiding, and the social media followed as a way of marketing, right, So so you know, obviously it was able to it worked. It was the right time that it worked. But there's just a lot of hate because there weren't a lot of people doing it at that time. So people were hateful that you were using social media, or people were hateful that you were what like people that weren't weren't mad at every buddy who used social media. Well, there weren't that many people trying to sell themselves on faith. This is just Facebook. So yeah, promoter, Yeah, who does she think she is? Shameless? Self promoter didn't like that, no, because I was just trying to I was using it as a marketing means like it was. It was a new way of marketing. If I were to publish all my stuff in a magazine, it was no big deal. If I were to go ahead and put it on television, it was no big deal. If I were to go to the clubs and speak no big deal teaching whatever. But for some reason, Facebook this big unknown, which just we've just developed a lot of hatred. And at the same time, the forums are coming right, so now you got them hand in hand, and they were just straight up unkind because innovation scares people, scares everybody. And this is before Instagram and step, before everybody in the world was a famous outdoors person hashtag. And that's back when every other article in like a business magazine was like, if your company spending money on a social media manage, you're an idiot. You know. Yeah, Now companies up three or four of them. It was just different. It was just it was just like remember the first year of Facebook. I mean it was just the first year. What were you trying to get out of it? Because like if you got if all of a sudden you're full balls into social media. Was it like you were thinking, I'm going to do this to book clients. I'm gonna do this too, like create some new thing and bring a level of renwn. I just know I just wanted to bring clients. So I was the guiding company. But it became something must have become something more than that after that, because you don't guide anymore, but you still do it. Well, it has for all of us. Look what social media has become better. We'll get there. But at the time it was that if I had a guiding operation and I was the only guide, you had to know who I was if you were going to be guided by me. And so I used magazines as well and speaking in clubs and teaching and doing all the other things that we've always done. And social media didn't work. Yeah, of course it did. So the so the it was like a lot of plause and six applause and success, but it was tempered by some hate. For sure. I get was scared. It was confusing for people too, because I would waitress wmber. I told you I cocktailed all night, So I would serve at night and I would waitress from eight thirty pm to four thirty in the morning, or from ten o'clock pm to six am, and then I'd go straight to the river after COCKTAILNG so I'd had my hair done and my hair down and makeup did and like because I was a sturgeon guy, because I still fish bait. Sometimes I had bait under my nails. So the cocktail rules you have to have nice hands, if you're handling chips in the casino. So the only way to get around it was I had to put nails on. So I just had an image that was confusing to people. They just couldn't wrap it. You were like sexualizing fishing. I mean I would have been sexualizing fishing if I was running around with my tits hanging out. It wasn't like that. I mean I just looked in a way. I had makeup on. I had a look that was not the norm, and people didn't like it was up. For sure. It looked like I would have spent all night putting makeup on. But the reality is I didn't want to go home to take it off. Like but let's say you didn't work the night before, Yeah, would you then go out? Like would you then get done up or not get done up? No, I just go to the river. But people would see that and they would be like, this is like this new selling of something in the way like I want to sell it in the way I'm comfortable with, which is me smoking a pipe whatever cup creo. Yeah, it was really frustrating time for me because and then pres because you're a good looking girl and like a lot of dudes hate good looking girls. Yeah, I get it. That's some sad ship, get it. I judge, I can't help. But when I see a woman like I can't tell I either want to have sex or or I want to kill her. I think there's a lot of guys are kind of both. I mean, just like a thing that happens with dudes is like that. But they couldn't hear what I was saying. And that was the problem was all these companies that are now jumping on board, and everybody wants to have a piece of the pie. That's not meant to be a pun I'm just saying, right, so they want to have a piece. So now suddenly your image is being used, and if you don't even own a photo, graph is being sold without you know at the time, it's being sold at your permission. Your image is being used now in a way that you don't necessarily want it to be used. And so now you're in a situation where you're not being heard, but you're being seen, which is really hard for me because I have a lot to say that my podcast is the best thing I ever did, Because now suddenly, if you can't see me, you have to hear me, and I think I've got some half decent things to say. That's interesting. Yeah, so what you'll notice, And this is going to sound pretty silly, but I've actually so remember I told you I got a ten years, and I've taken a step back, my big step back. I'm done television. I'm done with all this stuff. My big step back because I'm slowly removing my face. That's the whole point of my entire career and always has been the whole plan. Look, excuse me. So some girls want the attention. When you're a cocktail server and you're from Surry, you get all the attention you need. Okay, you're pumping gas, you got attention. You're walking on the street, you get attention. You go into safe way, you get attention. Like I don't want the attention. I never wanted the attention. You get it anyway as a chick. So it just when it started coming into my career. I mean, sure, yeah, maybe it helped my career, maybe it didn't. I don't know. It wasn't my main focus. But now it's exhausting. It's just exhausting. I don't want any of it. So I'm removing my image from the industry and putting my voice in my words out there, and that for me, has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done. Like my social You'll notice it's not narcissistic. There's not a bunch of selfies and stuff, you know, it's like, it's it's experience. It's it's maybe what I'm experiencing it. Maybe my captions are through my eyes. It's I'm definitely using the experience, my words and my voice now to be heard rather than my image. And that's been a very very conscious effort for sure. Has getting married and now, yes, it's the best thing I ever did. A lot of girls get married and they're too afraid to tell people because they don't want to lose their following. I went from people wasting yeah, oh my god, you have no idea how many women out there have got significant others because they're thinking like once mugs, No, what's that like? Once mugs No, the guys, once folks fellas, No, that I'm taken. Because I think guys care. They'll be like, well, I'm not gonna follow her anymore because now I'm not gonna be able to date her. I see it all the time. It's it's hilarious. Really, that's a guy that this guy you feel that there's evidence to suggest No, No, of course, I don't think guys the girls think that way. Yeah, I know girls think that way. Okay, but I thought they were thinking that way because that's what they know. I don't know. Her perception is. Yeah, yeah, let's make sure I'm getting this right, that that they think that if if people know that I'm married, guys won't follow me because they all harbor this or want to go on my trips or anything and that, and that doesn't lead me down the path. So I will say that I can't tell you a quick story about that. Yeah, Okay. Years ago, I spent some time a significant amount of time in San Jose, California. I had a girlfriend that was doing a writing fellowship in San Jose, California. So I was living in Montana but bouncing back and forth a fair bit. And we got to be friendly with a sushi chef and his cousin, Okay, who was the waitress in the sushi restaurant. Just two of them worked there. It was a guy the dishwashing the bag, and we become social to the point where we're even going out to dinner together with the cousins. One day it comes out it was a slip up, and it comes out was that they're in fact boyfriend girlfriend and we're shocked and like why, and I don't really understand. I was afraid he wouldn't want to commit anymore. Yes see, that's what I'm talking about. If you knew that the waitress was my girlfriend and that she was taken, what would bring you in? That's that's crazy to me. How much faith we became friends before he would tell me. But that's my that's my point. How much faith or faith do you not have in your products if that's what you're relying on. I'm not that girl. I met Charles in the second I met him, I knew I was going to marry him. I put it up on my website, like guys, gals, I found in love in my life and a story. It doesn't matter, and you know why. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. My emails went from a bunch of people wasting my time to suddenly people who legit. I've got now something about a mature audience who really wants to book me for my trips and they want to use You're not gonna be on the trip. No, yeah, of course not. And that was that was the biggest eye opener for me. But yeah, getting married is one of the best things that I ever did. And it was also very you know, it was very very aware of making it clear to the world that I was taking because I don't think it should make a difference. If it makes a difference, I don't want your I don't want your business anyway. So it pulled some of the like, it pulled some of the sex isn't the right word, but it pulled some of the like sexual tension out of the air. It did for me with bookings for sure. What it did do it because they're like, hey, I'm gonna go on a trip with this gal, right, maybe really like me. Well, what it did with my host of trips, Yeah, that changed everything. So I've always had Yeah, I've always had a hard time selling host of trips and honestly, I hate them and make no money off of them and end up babysitting it's a waste of time. But when I did do the occasional host of trip, all my clients were we're divorcement because married men were not allowed to go with me, and women never wanted to spend more than X amount of dollars, and the couple's market, as much as everyone would like to think that couple's markets, like the saving grace, is just not there. What can you explain for people what you mean by a hosted trip? Yeah, so there's this thing. It's actually really cute. I get a lot of people email me and they'll be like, I want to I want to follow in your steps. I want to make money off of social media and host the trips. And I have to take a step back and be like, hey, you realize that that's not how I make my living, right, like not even a little bit. So the thing is is with the host of trips, you go on a trip and you make if you don't have charge, you make commission on the trip, right, But then you still have to pay for your flight. Maybe the company pays your flight out. So now you're making X amount of dollars per person. So it's someone saying we're gonna there's a trip you can come up and fish get a free trip and fifteen percent commission or twenty percent commission on everyone you bring. So I get eight people to come with me. You go out to markets to people. Yeah, not only did maybe one or two of those a year because I hate and it might be like, hey, we're going fishing trout and Argentina. It was a lodge. You get people all excited to come and fish with you. We're doing the guiding, but you're bringing the clients down and we'll give you a cut, a sales commission. Exactly right. That's a host of trips. How did you know that? Yeah? Yeah, and a lot of people think that they make that you can make good money that way. I don't know, it's just not my thing. Yeah, most guys probably just do it to get to exotic location. There's there's there are other ways to do it, or you can just actually like make your money doing other stuff and pay to go on a trip. So I don't know. The host the trip thing for me was kind of over, and then after I got married, it was definitely over. Nobody wanted to go with not nobody. I mean I had people, but they were all the divorce men were suddenly out, which in my life way easier because I didn't have to deal with any of that, you know, questioning what people's true incentives were, so all in all, like if you look at the whole thing, if you look at all to ask most of your career. Okay, so let's just I'm gonna take a staff here, and there's like six things you'd like, six money generating things that you do. I mean, it's added on since then with the evolution of the world we have today. But yeah, sure, say there's six pots to put your fingers in. Okay, do you feel that your fingers have gotten deeper into those pots thanks to being a woman or in spite of being a woman. Oh, that's a really good question. It depends on the pot um. That's a really good question. I reason I asked because I would think this and and uh, I would think that that that in the outdoor world. There is a certain level of excitement about a woman in the outdoor world because it's been it's like traditionally this male dominated thing. So there's sort of a like there's a bit of excitement and a quite a bit of hatred and envy. Yeah, yeah, I mean, are you talking about just a regular woman? Are you talking about a talented woman? Because it's very different. I'm just talking about the fact that you have the participation rates like, Okay, let's take hunting for instance. I know this numb. I don't know what fishing and hunting was a participation rate. Okay, So if you look at the I think that if you looked at um, people making their living in the hunting industry, I would have to guess that people making a living in the hunting industry, probably women are probably man. It's really difficult to say. No, I'm gonna say it for you. Well, let me finish. Let me because I have fully said it. Point on prime time tell I remember there's a point on prime time television and prime time drama that gays became overrepresented in prime time drama or the percentage of gays for trade in prime time d it was higher than the percentage of gays in the American population. We hit an over not that this is I'm not presenting this as a negative. Just and someone came up with this idea that we hit like an overrepresentation. Okay. Now, if you were to look our women, like our women overrepresented the hunting and fishing thing, or do they come in at hunting people in the you know, yeah, look it's yeah, it's catering to the minority is what it is, and so I feel and I have watched a little bit of this hunting thing to go down. I don't have numbers for either industry, but yeah, I think there's definitely and I think the numbers are growing. I mean, let's just talk fishing specifically, because that I can speak on for sure. The numbers have absolutely grown, for sure, but there's definitely an over um. There's definitely. I think there's a little too much catering. I think that is. I think that there's a lot of women hashta and and guys. Let's let's just keep a gender gender neutral. People who think that because they have a certain amount of people following their social media that they can throw out a hashtag it's suddenly now they're worthy of a sponsor. Like that really bothers me. I've got a real problem with that. I don't I don't understand what that means. Well, yeah, because do you even do your own social you do? How many like Instagram? Use Instagram? Yeah? I like it too. I gave up, like, well, I'm not I'm not gonna talk about that. I like Instagram. Okay, that's fair. I know, like the crowd. I got it, I got okay. So it's really frustrating for me, though, to see somebody who's been doing this for three months and there their credibility is faced on the amount of followers that they have. Does that make sense? I have a real problem with that because maybe I'm old school, but I just remember when you actually credibility and something more than that, like you had to be good, like when I was. Now, I've only been in this industry for fifteen years, but you still had to be good. You had to be good, and I still believe today you have to be good. And I get really shitty about it. I mean, the hunting thing. I'm gonna be totally honest with you. You know, I'm new to hunting. It's been like I got my first bow to or three years ago, right, like pretty new. I've had people trying to sponsor me in hunting. No way, I am not incredible. I'm not don't try. Everyone listening to this podcast who sponsors Steve, don't sponsor me. I'm not there yet. I'm serious and I'll never I'll never make a living in there saying they're looking. They're saying, like, I'm not looking for expertise. I look at her engagement, and I just I don't think it's cool. I don't think that it's right. I don't think I'm worthy of it. And I don't think that you should play. I don't think you should be a fraud. I think you should keep it authentic. I don't think that I don't think all this. Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts. So I'm gonna go with the first one. I'm gonna go first one. What you were talking about an overrepresentation of gaze or females or whatever it is. I was thinking about that. It's almost like a slingshot. What it is is a response to suppression. And I can I back up and say that like Matt does marketing, Yeah, yeah, this is Matt does marketing for a for a large successful night company. He can tell you what it's called with a lot of credibility and and there authentic brand, bench made knife company. So I was thinking about that almost like a slingshot, Like the farther you pull it back once you release it, the more reaction. It's it's almost like you know when of Newton's laws, Like you're just gonna end up with a greater response to it, because it's been suppressed for so long that it's going to take more momentum to overcome. Right. And you're saying pulling back mean the holding back of the female voice, right, So it becomes more and more unique, the more right, and then it becomes more marketable because it's more unique, right. Uh. And and that I mean, I guess that's the way I would look at that, But it's not fair. I just feel like so. So so then the other thought I had was that people are good. It depends be honestly, were talking about this earlier. We're talking about camera guys versus hunters and how it's better to take a camera guy and train him to be a hunter than to take a hunter and train him to be a camera guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's it's easier. Problem. No, no, you just ignore the keep going. So the reason I'm saying that is because you said that you have a problem with people like trying to sponsor you because for hunting. But maybe they're seeing in you an opportunity for someone that's a really good host and in that and I've had them say that, and that's cool, not all hunters, but don't sell it hosts. Don't you think George Foreman is really really really good at making fat free grill? Where do you want to draw the line of this conversation? I mean, but look at any like spokesman did O J. Simpson was, He like, I'll tell you one thing I know about. It's renting cars. But yeah, okay, fair, But you had a really good point there. I mean, what do you want me for? What do you want me for? Do you want me because I'm a good host? Do you want me because of my conservation efforts? Or do you want me because you think that my social media following is going to drive you the traffic? Yes, because they're not. They're paying for it, you know. I mean, ultimately, the people that are coming to you want you to be able to provide for them return on their investment. That's right. And I did it with fishing, and I will not do it. And so it's totally okay to take that stand. Right. It's just that not all there are so many killer, so many killers. Yeah, I forget who that guy was and said those deer hunters are just killers, and there are so many guys are just killers. Right, But that does not mean that they would make good personalities, good television show hosts, any of that, And like I'm going off on a tangent here, But the coach of the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick, he he has always said that it's easier to train football skills than it is football intelligence. So he looks for players with football intelligence and then he trains them up on the game he wants them to play. Yeah, but there's just so many talented hunters and legit female and male hunters, and legit female and male fly fishers, and I just would like to see a little more of that credibility go to them, even if it means they have half the amount of following. I just would like to see the game played a little more fair. That's honestly feel that. I honestly that's magnanimous. If you do well, That's that's where I'm at. You'll never see me sponsored by a company in in hunting, never, I give my word. You might. Someone might send me something free and I'll wear it, but you're not going to be seeing me tag it all over the place, and you're not going to be seeing some sort of signed The old relationships gonna flat ass turn it down. Yeah, because I've done it. If they come to you and say this, oh hit me with it, let's hear it. Better be good. Better be good? Uh, April, I know you're not a I'm coming at you on the voice right, Okay, I'm the guy. There's only one angle you could go on this to get me. Let's hear it. I know that you're entering this journey. Okay, great start yea um. And I think that there's a lot of young women in this country who would like to take this journey with you, and who better to walk along side by side in this journey of discovery? Then they better let me be so unbelievably audience honest to the audience that I'm green as green gets. And I don't know if I want to be that vulnerable in the public eye honestly, But yeah, did you like my pitch? I thought it was good. The only other pitch that hit me in the heart once that was pretty good was somebody said to me, we're not seeing a lot of women in the sport with the conservation um to turn like mindset that you have. It's refreshing to see it. We like to see that it is starting to happen with even hunting. We'd like to support you. And I said, that's cool, you can send me stuff. I cannot have some sort of announced relationship with you. And they said, that's totally understandable, Matt, Matt, give her a pitch, work up a pitch, you guys, I want my integrity just it's just there's no amount of money on it. I pitch. Look at him like the sweetie is so Hebbly doesn't pitch, so he gets pitched. No, that's true. I do end up getting pitched more than I pitch. So no, yeah, we come up with I'll come up with ideas generally on the on the fly. So I don't necessarily know that I would have a pitch for April Day, but but I do, But I really do. I do think actually what you said would have some merit, you know, in in that they're like that, well, there is some There's something to be said about female hunter retention, not necessarily just recruitment, but retention. I was at I was at every year at Shot they do this. The company that does Shot show is the Shooting Sports Foundation, and they have this research breakfast and I heard at that research breakfast that although like it's the big thing to say is that that females are the are the fastest growing new new like demographic entering the hunting market. But what they don't tell you is that they're also the fastest leaving. So they're not being because rights because all they're measuring is licensed buying. So what they're not telling you is that that they enter and they get no support, no help. The only person they have to go with is maybe their boyfriend or someone else that kind of got him into it, and then they just give up on it. And having someone like yourself being able to help to drive that man should provide a community for people to follow it didn't come along and offer support, could really could really give some someone a base to have confidence in theirselves as a female hunt Since I got married because I made I co worced a boatload of girlfriends and buying hunting tags. They never went back, didn't you didn't? Didn't you? Was it you? Are you telling me that you is that maybe that was brody? Somebody had never hunted at all, didn't somebody killing? She were just talking she'd never hunted before. And then in the spring, uh got a black beart turned around and got a mountain go a big horn. Yeah, she is telling Yeah, of course it was no. No, Uh, then didn't hunt anymore. Oh no, you're serious. Oh you didn't just put it on her tag gonna. I said, you're gonna do this, get you hunter safety. We're gonna put you in for all these permits and tags and whatnot. We're gonna tear it up. Yeah. But were you putting her kill on your she actually went hunting. No, I'm saying no. She spring season she killed a bear, yeah, and then she left. No, in fall station she killed the mountain go with a big horn. Yeah. But then after all, after that year, she was stop going out and it was just like she was like that was fun and just didn't feel like. I just didn't keep hunting. I didn't stick. She was in the same way, the same way that if she let's say I went to do something with her, like, let's say we went down like I used to have a girlfriend. We go down to this thing, um, we go down to these lectures by Jewish scholars about um really old Jewish law. Okay, Uh, she'd like to do that. I went along with her. We broke up. I didn't keep going to that ship. It just went because it was like something she wanted to go do my wife now, and then on our date night, I go with my wife to do yoga in a super hot room. Good for you. I've done that six times now. If God forbid somewhere to have my wife, I would knock go down and do yoga in a super hot room. But I do it because she likes to go do that with me. Yeah. So I've had a lot of not a lot, but I had girlfriends over the years. A number added up over time. Who I would be like, dude, we're going, did you fill this ship out? Get this thing, let's go. If it wasn't for lazy, I would never watch another episode of The Bachelor forever again. And then when it's something of having forbid, he's done. No more Bachelor, no more Bachelor. I don't even know you guys are talking about right now television program. Well Bachelor's um what okay, here's another thing because I want to lay off you on this ship for a little while. No, it's fine, it's really totally in BC. You have to use a barblous hook no matter what you're fishing for. Yeah, I think in Lake fishing you made No, I'm gonna say single barbelous. Yeah, you have to use the barblous hook fishing for bass. I don't know. I haven't actually done anything. This is what I'm really getting at, is this, Why don't bass guys Matt use Barblous? Yeah, Matt, I'll tell you why. If you guys don't really really care about bass. Oh you went down the road, I'm gonna sit back and eat my popca. You know what I mean. I feel like you guys like um, like, why not barblous? I think that every fisherman's motivation is ultimately somewhat selfish. Sure, because if it wasn't you just leave him alone? Right, you wouldn't fish because it's not good. I don't I don't care. I don't care if you're fishing Barblous or whatever. Right, you are putting a hookie in vicious face. And if you didn't care, if you if you literally cared completely about their survival, then you just wouldn't do it. Although, but you will have a higher survival rate if you can get the hook up actor, and I will take I'll take that back only in the fact of what we were mentioned earlier with without retention, the actual population actually can end up in a worse position. Right, But don't you think you could pop out the hook faster if it was Barbara? Yes? Yes, I agree. I also think that bass are much hardier fish species and traded. Hey have you ever tried this before? Have you ever tried I don't know if this is not since or not, but I have tried it once and it did seem to work on a on a big bass end. Where was I was Michigan? Who's the Michigan person here? Yeah? Yeah, so um you ever heard that if it's gushing blood and you yeah, I didn't. It worked it. You can see it start to clock coagulata, does it? So? Bass fisherman will keep like a canus brighter can of coke in their boat and you just pour coke down their throat and it totally. Seriously, I'm no fish. I don't know fish, doctor, but I kind of feeling of what you're seeing is I think that maybe you're remedying a you're remedying a visual symptom. Maybe, so I will say, next the chew tin and there and there some seeds they keep it pop back to your question about me caring for not caring for bass. Just two examples of this. I once had when I was guiding back when I was guiding, not for bass, for salmon and trout. I had that client. We caught a six pound leopard bow and he really wanted to hold it, and as I told him, no, I said, if you want to hold it, you can hold it overside the boat in the net. You can explain the fish, because don't like a leopard bow is a native rainbow trout in Alaska there they have these huge black spots. They're incredible there. I've never even heard of it. They're they're amazing fish. Yeah, they're they're incredible. And he caught leopard leopard rainbow trout. It's just like a super spotted rainbow. Because the life aquatic. What's the shark there after? I don't, well, the jaguar shark. That's so the huge vacist fish. But trout are notoriously although their varacious predators are notoriously fragile, the delicate fish, right, And so I told no, you cannot take and he just continued to plead, and final I said, okay, I'm gonna hand you this fish. And yes, I said gonna hand you this fish. I had the boat pushed into the bank. I said, hey, it is fish. I watch you alo onto it. I'll take a picture of you. And I gave him the fish. And what do you think happened? He looks like a bar soap. It went out of his hands and landed straight on its head in the boat. Done. I sat in the water. I sat in the water for thirty minutes, you know, the frigid water up to my arms. Fish and it would do the thing where it would kind of kick and then you let it go in and fall on inside, and I do it again. And I will do the same thing with the bass. So it's not about me not caring or not caring for baths. And I do really care about fish in general. That being said, I care about fish because I love fishing. And if my love for fishing makes me care about fish, does it really matter if I care about the fish because I care about the fish or because I love fishing, and that's what I like. Whatever it takes for me to care about the resource. And I feel the same way about hunting and conservation, and that if nobody cared about it, if nobody hunted, if nobody. If hunters really care about those animals, and if those animals didn't have people that wanted to engage with them, that appreciated them for what they were, and that were involved in that, then they wouldn't be in the condition that they were in today, and there wouldn't be financing, financing behind it or any of that. So I just I don't know if it if it matters, You're right the reason I do. Ultimately, the reason I do care about fish is because I love fishing. It's not because I just love fish. What you just said it was totally on point about like people need to know about something for them to actually care enough about it to protect it. The reason that that we don't use barbarous hook so is because they're much easier to get into the boat because you catch more. And I think that comes from the tournament culture, because you know, there's guys fishing tournaments, mostly guys with gals to fishing tournaments, and sometimes in these tournaments, especially at the high levels, of people aspire to those fish. The difference of ounces can mean the difference between a twenty dollar check and a hundred and twenty five dollar check. Yeah, Okay, that's but that brings it to a whole different reason of fishing. But that culture, I think it sort of drives that. And bass also are not as fragile, like you're you're gonna be able to release the bass and there there's a good chance for the boy. If you did that to a trout, there's no way. There's Another big factor to consider is that bass aren't are would be on the i u c N List, they'd be species of least concern. I mean there is no, uh, there is no conservation concern whatsoever on large mouth and small mouth bass. Typically you see maybe region maybe in some regions, some watersheds, but I mean in a in a national sense. They both those species are found way, way, way outside of their native ranges. Yes, they're very hardy, right, it's like a coyote that is everywhere. Yeah, so you're removing the idea that you're gonna like go and in a mess up something some systems, ecosystem. If anything, it's the opposite. Yeah. Yeah, you find the places like the Columbia River they've decided where they become exotic, deleterial. And they even said at the hearing about that we don't know if this is gonna work. We don't even know if there's going to have an impact on salmon species at all. But whatever, we're just gonna do it because they're not native. Yeah, I don't even want to go down that road. You don't want to get me started on that. Um, you don't where you from. There's no like April, you don't. You don't kill steelhead. No, well, we kill hatchery steelhead if we're unfortunate enough to have a hatchery system in place. But now where I live. So I live in northern BC on the Bulkley River, and it's illegal to pertain wild steelhead, thank god, just flat out yeah. I mean I'd like to be able to retain wild steel I wish there were to harass and hook them in a lot of places, is not. Yeah, a lot of Thompson was my goat to spot. I mean, I cut my teeth in a lot of ways in the Thompson. But it's shut down and it got low enough, or they can't even risk you killing one on accident, not even accident, no no, So yeah, I mean, and we all want to be able to retain steel head. We're not like a bunch of hippies here, like we want to retain steel head to eat them, but there's just not enough of them out there, right, Like it's a really fine line. It's a really sensitive subject. And a lot of fisheries that are open to fish, I won't fish because I don't feel like it's it's moral. I don't feel like it's right. Like you feel like they should get a reprieve. Yeah, I feel like the fisher should be shut down for sure. But BC is pretty not BC is not bad. BC is pretty good with their regulations, regulations. I feel, so explain to your guiding business that you're still involved in but don't guide. Yeah, I mean I guess, I guess technically i'd be a booking agent nowadays. Technically, yeah, I don't have staff. I don't have guides on salary or anything. I mean I did for the first year or so, I tried to have guides just you know, they'd be I'd pay them their day rate, I'd take my cut or whatever. But it just makes it's just way I guess I don't understand. Yeah, So here's so here's like, so say my day right, say my day right? For a walking wade was six hundred bucks. Right, So then what my other options were that might be what a steelhead guard makes. Say, yeah, say for walking, what's the bass guid make, But we're talking about boats. I'm talking walking person for the boat that boat only carries too oh yeah, no, so so it gets to being more expensive than that and BC with boats. But then say to say I make my six bucks, right, so you're saying like wade fishing, wade fishing, God might make six hundred bucks in a day. But now what will happen is say I've got a guy that I've got to pay my guy bucks an hour for eight hours. So it's costing me two bucks, but I'm still I'm still charting bringing out six hundred bucks. So now I'm pocketing my four d bucks. Right. So now if you have three guides out working in a day, now you're taking your fo for guys. Now you got twelve bucks a day. So that works, But then you've got to be licensed, you gotta be sure, you've got to still be dealing with the emails of my flight and my listen. It just was really time consuming. So now I'm at a stage where I'm still super involved in my in my bookings like you reach out to me and I'm going to get you set up, no question with the fishery that. So you're like a travel agent kind of sort of. Yeah, I guess technically these days I probably am because I no longer do the invoicing. I no longer do to helping with the flights. But I'm there to help you through your entire trip. But I'm I'm now working no hell no, I would never do that to myself ever, that's a total money dump. So but I work with the lodge and make sure that everybody is happy. So really the client has twenty four hour support between me and the lodge, whereas for a long time it was just me and there's just a lot of pressure because I travel right for I'm always gone. So now it's me and the lodge and and it's just easier for me to say, listen, guys, I'll just take I'll just take a cut on the client, and then if they just keep coming back, I don't even need to know about I'm always here if they need me. But yeah, I guess technically nowadays I am a booking agent. So some dude goes online, yeah, and he's like, man, The thing I really want to do is go to BC and fish Steelhead. Yeah, And he types in BC Stalhead Fishing and he's dicking around and pretty soon he sees what that would prompt him to call you. Well, a lot of people who are my people who are calling me have heard of me, and they're not finding me on Google anymore, and they think you not No. No, I think it's pretty clear nowadays, and I'm no longer God what do they call you for? April. We understand that you are from BC, and we know that you're honest and you'll tell us where we should go, and I stay true to that. So they're using you to keep from getting screwed. And then they don't care if I take because it doesn't the commission I get doesn't come out of their pocket. It doesn't there's no price difference for them. But they know I'm going to do my best to make sure that they're totally set up. And the lodge I I honestly were mostly work with one lodge on the Skina now because they take such good care. I mean, I've never had an unhappy client leave this lodge and they have no problem paying me my percent off the top because they're just happy to have this awesome clientele. So it really is a win win for every back, understand. Yeah, And it's just starting off like ground zero. And and you've developed reputation of putting them into a quality trip and if you put your your if you approve with your stamp of approval on a thing, Yeah, that's and and the other thing you need to remember is I'm there right Like I'm in northern BC. So I'm gonna come by and be like, hey, you know, hey Bob, how's it going? Has everything doing? And my best friend guides out of this lodge and the guy who owns it as one of my good buddies, Like they really are walking into a family environment like something. You need to realize that I I guided five years on the Dean River and which is a really famous driver in BC, and I basically subcontracted out the lodge. It was it was a family environment, like you came when you came, you were guided by me, but you were coming because obviously the fishery is incredible. But it was myself, my brother in law, my sister and a cook. Like it was a really small intimate operation. And I still take pride in that. Like if you come to fish with U SNBC at the lodge I work with, which is called Ski this Spay, it's still the same thing. I'm there, Brian who owns the places. They're my best friends there. It's still this real intimate venue and nobody there's no bullshit like I'll never ever ever try to take your money just to get you into lodge. Ever, if it's not your best interest, I will. I'll take you straight up, don't come. Is this lodge on the road system or it's on the river. It's on the road system on on the river. Yeah. Yeah. And then now that you are in Australia, you're still doing that. Yeah. Well I'm only in Australia in the winter. It was your old man come here with you when you're here. He comes here for a four to six weeks when I'm here for money and works there. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what's gonna happen with the baby. Things are going to change. But I bought the property. But before I met Charles, I was really I was established and had my own had my property and my dream. So I bought twenty acres on the Bulkley and it was just bare land, and my dream was to build it up from scratch and just have it be like my I just kind of wanted to live off land and and just I've got this beauty, a full riverfront property and full fish and there's a bunch of grouse on the property. And I mean it's not a huge property, but my neighbors all in like six hundred acres. I mean there's just lots of landing. You don't mean that you're gonna build a lodge, No, No, I was gonna build my little cabin out of my poplars on the on the property. I quickly learned that that was a good work. So first year before I met Charles, I lived up there in a trailer, and then I met him and I built a wall tent with we we put up a wall tent, and then the next year we're able to stay in the wall tent and was able to insulate at the wall tent. And then it came down in a nice storm, which is to be expected. That's fine. And then this last year I spent a bunch of time with with buddies, building up all four walls and a roof and making it into like a little shack and right now where I was yesterday, where I am at this time of my year, is up there right now doing all the rest of all my maintenance and just getting ready for the season. Yeah, and he'll come in. He comes in September, so he'll be in a little later. He comes in for the he comes in for the fishing, and I go in for the maintenance. Yeah. But that's cool because he doesn't mean it is, you know, the stuff in Australia. So he's got his life. I've got my fishing business. No, no, no, no, no, no. We went on a fishing trip, but he's not in the business now. Yeah, been there, done that, Steve. Come on, I want to know how you insulated the wall to Yeah, great questions. So with the floor and then I had panels. So what I did was I put in like a like a structure rights on beams and then I had to put that common bats. Do you guys call them bats? Like the foam foam inslation role you put in between huge huge slots that you just cut up. Um yeah, no, no, that those are the bats in the wall. Sorry. The card the foam, the sheets, the sheets, Yes, you put those on the floor, and then we put lamb in on top, and then we put bats ones that you don't want to touch with your hands because they, yeah, in the walls. So I had like a four foot structure all the way around of these um like a like would what's that thin wood? No, no, this stuff, yeah, like a veneer all the way around it, and then was able to inslave. But we couldn't inslate up top obviously because the wall tan was fifty So we did lose heat that way of putting a wood stove, and that was able to maintain some temperature. But now and then you know, when it came down, we obviously rebuilt and put in baths all the way along and put inslation into the roof and so now we've got it's actually warm. But it worked, It did work. We definitely were able to keep some heating, but we did these lose heat through the top of the wall tan. Yeah, it was a badass pent I wish Yeah the river again, the Bulkley, there's no fish in it. There's no fish, Yeah, there's fish. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want people flocking up there. It's busy. It's busy these days, So I literally I fished. I wake up. I fished because my spots right between there's like a launch up here and then there's a takeout point there. So the only way to get to my place, because if if you're coming in a jet boat, I can hear you, so I'm going to beat you to the river. And then if you're coming down in a in a raft, it takes you quite some time to get to our Oh yeah. So I usually go out of fish first sick in the morning, in the morning for the first after totally, and then when I do see the first drafter, I usually just very quietly disappear so that I'm not ruining their day and they still feel like they have fresh water. And then that's when I actually go back to my life. So I'm constantly fallen trees, bucking trees, splint trees, and then that's what Remember I spoke to you last time when I was here, and I was talking about all this grouse hunting I'm doing. So I spent most of my day just grouse hunting, and then come back to all my chores, pump water, do all that stuff, and then fish in the evening and then cook and do it all again the next day and you're talking just fishing for steelhead. Yeah. Yeah, Well I was there just like this last couple of weeks. I was there fishing for chinook, like I say, with spoons, and then when I go back up, um, I'll be fishing for coho. Now, Matt, have you guided? Did you ever guide bass? No? I never get it bass, just salmon. If I remember right, you got interest in ternament bass fishing. Um, because we're working in a sport good store. I got interested in tournament bass fishing and then ended up working in a sporting good store because of that. So I fell in love with fishing at a very young age, like three, kind of the same and started with warm water fish, catching bluegillo, one corn under my friend's dog, and then vividly Roman. I think any hardcore fish junkie remembers the first fish that started their obsession. I caught a fish in the rainbow trout and metolius on this overhanging undercut bank ledge. I was standing on incredible fish. I still have a picture of it to this day. This was a long time ago. We kept that fish, but uh no, then through that through the years, I ended up getting into bass fishing lot just because I like the approach. I like sort of patterning bass because their resident fish. It's sort of the same way you pattern trout as opposed to fish that my great salmon steelhead it's like to have over. Yeah, And I just think that it's interesting a fish that lives in that body of water, the way that things change for them even throughout the day. And bass can be unpredictable, they can also be predictable. But anyhow, so I I got really into bass fishing. And then one day I was down on the river fishing and my buddy brought this other guy who turns out fish terms. He's older than us. But I didn't even really I had never even thought about tournament fishing. But he started talking to me a little bit about it, and it got me interested in it, and so I started talking no because I thought it was cool. Like we had a little We decided to put a little side bet down that day, and I beat that guy. Now that I was better than him. I just caught more fish than him that day, and I just thought it was cool that you could be competitive at fishing. I never thought about fishing against somebody, and I thought about fishing against yourself and not against somebody else. And so then I started going into the sporting goods stores and talking to the guys that worked there about bass fishing. And I met the guy ended up becoming my mentor, a guy named Gary Yxley and and and he ended up he was a fishing store manager. And then when he moved from a store Fisherman's Marine, which is in the city I live, into Sportsman's Warehouse. I then he he asked me to come work for him. I was guiding in Alaska in the summers and in college at that point in time, and he said, you know, He's like, well, come work for me. You can have the summers off to guy, And that's okay. I'll come work at the sporting good store. And that's actually I met my wife Lacey. Yeah. I was gonna tell April a little bit about you meet her to get her opinion on it. The overview provided at Sports's Warehouse, oh the oh that creeper status going. I'll look up there and nexture there's no employees he caught wind of. He caught windows a new woman working at the place. But I saw, I gotta if you're gonna going to dress I'm gonna get dragged into this. I gotta tell the story. It will be a very honest representation. I promise my own version, kind mostly in my head. Okay, I was living I was living with with my friend Dylan at the time, and he'd come into he'd come into Sportsman's he used to go at all the time, like everybody would get their fishing gear. And I was working in the fishing department, and and he comes home one night and he's like, who is that? Who's the girl? Who is that redheaded girl that works at the front of the store, And like, what, I just come back from fishing in Alaska. She had just gotten a job there while I was gone, And I wasn't that familiar. But honestly, I hadn't. I don't know. I was paying a whole lot of attention. He was like, who is that right at of girl? Yeah, late, like an only girl. I can think it was Lacey, And I just hadn't really hadn't clicked before. I'm like, okay, maybe I should like check check out Lacey and so in sports and warehouse. Yeah, yeah, I've seen her before. I just hadn't. I don't know that. I was like really out crawl and looking for out of a season in Alaska, and you really that's like getting out of jail. Every time I got out of a guiding season. When I was single, I was like out of jail. Okay, I was enjoying my life as a as a bachelor man. No, but I was in college. I was like, so sports is where I was of you ever been in one? They're all the same, and they have this cat walk around the upstairs and that's where they keep all the storage. And so I like, I went up to the cat walk and I went up to like you can see over a customer service in the front desk, and I was like looking down there, laces down there. I just they're staring and I was like, I was like, lazy is like I need to go talk to lazy. And just sort of like triggered something. So it just says to me, why did you have to be where nobody else could see you? What were you doing up there? Ladies go to the front of the store. I just that was good point. I didn't even think about that. Oh yeah, no, I'm just up here because I want to see if there any new kind of candy bars, candy bars are you playing? It's over and that's over in the clothing department, I worked way over and fishing, so I would have been it wouldn't have been wre like, what are you doing out here? Okay, so you're blocked by nothing? What if she looked up? What if you looked up? Uh? Yeah, act like but I like to think that. I like to think that Lacey kind of like I thought I was cute too, So maybe she would have been like creepy guy. Did you later say to her, like when you asked her out, did you say, you know I've been up in the catwalk, I'm looking down years before I let on about that. She actually started coming back and talking. I'm I'm a total when it comes to talking to girls. She she came hard, I'm not good at it. She she came back, you need to talk to you more out very well, so she she she actually came back and started talking to me in fishing. So she's is a lot more. She's a lot braver than I am. Was she Uh So, now that she knows and the snickers is under, is she now that she knows? When she found out about that, she wasn't troubled by that it was too late at that point. No, I don't think she was troubled by that. Yeah, it was probably too late now, and I don't honestly was very innocent. It would have been cute because after you know, he's not crazy. But like, there's always a moment in the first year when we're dating you guys were like, is he crazy? Is it there? Right? And and then you're like, and then you reach that moment where you're like, now I can tell her that I really am crazy, and she won't leave me exactly, and then you both realize how crazy you are. But I think that you really are the main thing you're doing. Like, once you get to a point where you want, once you get to the point where you're you're open to the idea of settling down. I think when you're dating, all you're all you're really trying to do is suss out the craziness. If you got half a brain, that's what you're trying to do. It's like dating is saying, like, I'm trying to determine because obviously the fact that I'm here and you're here, I'm obviously I'm attracted to you, right, Like, all that sets the place now I just need to find out whether you're insane or not. I think some people miss that part and they wind up married to insane people. It does happen, It really does happen. Yeah, but I think like a reasonable approach, like a reason way to describe the process is to be like, I'm finding out how livable you are, right, you know, because I'm attracted to you like I am, because I wouldn't have said yes, I wouldn't have asked you out. So the second part is, you know, how likable are you? How I mean, how crazy you are falls under that. How likable you are, how much you can handle that person, how much you want to be away from them, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, we are totally assessing other crazy and uh and you had like you so you're saying you had like a love at first sight moment. Yeah, yeah, actually I really did honestly have like in the movies love at first sight moment. But there's still you're still always trying to be on best behavior in the first year, and you're still always wondering. You'll see something and you'd be like, is that, like is that is that a crazy tendency that he has? Or is that just is that a flaw? Can I handled that flaw? Can I handle that flaw forever? It's a flaw if he doesn't fix it because he's Charles is forty five years old. Like, let's get real, I'm not fixing the guy. So so he's eleven years older. So for me it was like, Okay, that's who he is. Am I cool with that? Yeah? Yeah, I'm cool with that. You don't call you don't call him Chuck. No, he's no, he's like, he's Charles, Yeah, Chiles. He's an ausy. So it's no hard no hard hours, Charles. And it wasn't hard for you just to give up on just to move to Australia. No, because when I met him, I always my whole plan has always been I was when to live somewhere warm in the winter, because yeah, because I I guys, well where against he's rather he's got now he's got that ausy accident. Every time he said what him is it water? I was like, oh, you're mine, all mine? But yeah, know, so what happened was I was always I was always traveling in my off season, and I only fish for winter steel Head. I mean I fished for winter steel. It when I was a crazy obsessed had to be fishing every single day of the week angler and then for so long it became work. So it just I kind of lost the passion for winter steel. And I've never lost fashion for summer steel had but winter steel it was hard. I had a really bad car accident, I've had to rebuilt foot and it just started to get really hard out in the in the cold water, in the cold weather. And so I started doing a lot of I do a lot of permit fishing and a lot of saltwater fishing. Yeah, yeah, tons of flats fishing. And so I've been spending all of my May, June July doing as much of that as possible, well May in June, some April if I could take the time off. And I started to look for places to purchase. So I was either going to buy in the Keys or in Rotan, and I found this piece of property and a guide down there. No, no, no, I've always known I was not going to guide for that long. Actually as a recreational prop I was just gonna live and disappear. That was always the plan. And so when I met Charles, it was like well, Australia just a lot longer plane ride. And then of course there's permit. No, there's tons of permit. Sure it is good for permit. We don't talk about going for permit. People don't know anything about Australian fishing. Yeah, the Indo Pacific permit, it's a little different, but they're actually a better looking fishing. Yeah. You never hear someone say I'm going to Australia for permit. Good, let's keep it that way, Let's keep it, keep it quiet. But you know, there's fantastic permit fishing in Australia. And marlin, I mean, marlin is like my big, huge obsession these days, marlin fishing. You know what, man rode, Okay, check this out. Oh I can't wait. See what do you? I was just down and I was down in down in Mexico on the Pacific coast near Cellulida, fishing with my family and we're out fishing gear conventional with bait and it was a fly guy okay, okay, but we we use bait though to get the fish up. Pathetic. He's got two eyes on the boat. Okay. They obviously went out with the cast net for like three days and caught enough. And I can't imagine how much bait they had on this boat. Guys whose job it is, they're called shovel live bait overboard. No, he's chumming while this guy flails the water and they are raining, I mean raining scoops of live bait into the water. Well, this guy just beats the water, beats the water, beats the water. Seagulls coming down to eat this bait. They're thrown out fish. You're all over the place. And eventually, of course, of course he like catches one on a fly. Wait wait wait, wait, but pull but that is like is that a Mexican thing? Because that is not how people fly fish from marlin? And I'm not saying how we do it as any better. How do you draw it up? I'm not saying it's any better. No, No, the rooster fish, Oh oh that's why. Look now, I'm not saying what we don't say, but what we do made me worse. And I'm just gonna go ahead and put it out there out because you put a plug in front of it on the on geary and then you reel it up. Eventually plaster fly down in front of it, and I guess it's worse because we spend a ton of gas trolling. It's my number one guilty, conscious conscience thing that I do is trolling from Marlin because I know because you're using gear. Yeah, you're using gear. It's not the gear. I don't mind the gear. I mind. Yeah. And so the whole point that is to create this disturbance and whitewash to make it look like you're a big school of tuna, and then your your lure or you're dragged sardie or whatever it is that we're flaming mackerel, whatever it is that you've got in the back is looking like a trailing, you know, behind fish. And then of course it comes up. Everyone freaks out, The bills up and it's all the fish is all for essent, and it's coming in, and you've got a deckie here, and then you got your captain up there, and it's just a total cluster. And so he's reeling in the right as he's about to yank the bait out of the way. You know, you go yep, yep, you communicate, he pulls it out, you cast it in, and then this fish on anyone who catches at bullshit started to get to you, not necessarily if you're honest about it. So the reality is anyone who's caught a marlin who stands there in a photo and says, this is my marlin. No, it takes four. It depends. Like when Charles and I go out on our own, is the two of us. So what we've got to got our boat, We troll in our time in our little boat. Okay, he's got the gear rod or me, whoever's on drawer, whoever's on you know, up to cast. So he's on the gear road or on the do what do we want to call on this um teaser based he's on our teaser bait. Okay, and I've got the daisy chain out So he's got the teaser here. I've got the daisy chain out here on this side. What's the daisy chain. It's like it's a series of squid. I've got it roped off and tied onto the clearing. So it comes up. Yeah, it's like it's like a it's like a shorter teaser. Sure if you will write, so neither have hooks. So the fish comes up, he reels in. This is what I love doing. But just when it's just me and Charles. He is trying to reel the teaser bait in. I'm now doing the crazy daisy chain, really really trying to get in. It's only maybe the daisy chain itself is probably only six feet and it's only put back maybe you know, eight ft, not very far. So I gotta get the daisy chain in the boat. He's got to get that in, and you know, the teaser bait in. He's gotta go yep, I gotta go yep. I gotta get my flyer on. I gotta make the cast and land it in front of the fish. It's still a team effort. It is almost always a team effort. But you're so in love with the idea. You're someone love with the idea of being able to say that it was a fly rod not necessarily that you're going like stop, You're preventing the fish from getting hooked in all these ways, so at the last minute you can get hooked on a fly like I called it, on a fly not necessarily. It's a totally different fight because I've caught him on gear. I've caught Marlon on gear. They're great, super fun. How's it's not like you're you're not like doing some standing on a rock doing like the shadow cast. There's no such that's what I'm saying. You're flopping this thing down. How's it because the reel is a little bit different. No, it depends on how you want to pitch it. I mean, if you're going around and you're promoting yourself all over the place saying, look at what I caught on a floor rod, then that's one thing. But the reality is it's just an entirely different fight. Like for me, my real just to have it, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's a really good point, and it's a really good argument. This is bullshit. Well, no, turning on how you want to look at it's it's no, it's not just bullshit. It depends on what's a lion hunter. He's a houndsman when he gets the guy, when he takes a guy out and they tree a line. Yeah, And a bow hunter is like, I'm gonna shoot in my boat. Well he doesn't like, he's like, okay, shoot the guy shoots at the boys like I killed a line with my book, you killed a lie with hounds. Yeah, but you're talking about the bodn't have anything to do with this. Yeah, but that's so for me, it's a challenge thing I cannot so the biggest marlin I could land if I was lucky on a fly rod. If I was lucky, it would be an If I was lucky, you just immediately you just you disadvantage yourself. It's just harder. So it's that the it's you're like, Okay, I'm gonna do all this ship like a conventional gear and spinning rods and this and that and live baby. Just you know what, at the last second, I am gonna I'm gonna limp dick myself and throw out a fly pole. Totally. That's exactly like because maybe you'll break off. Well, it's more than that. I don't know. It just depends on what your challenge is, like, what do you set out to do, and what's your motient. I don't know what everyone's motivate is. Mine is not to post to social media photo. It's just I have this thing in my head that it would be really cool to catch one on the fly. I just wanted. I just wanted for myself. I just want to catch it on the fly by by any means, by any means, as long as it ends up with a fly. If you wanted to know, if you wanted to have a better argument, if you wanted a better argument, because there's a better argument. Yeah, there's a better argument than what you're giving me. You do because that's you just limp picked yourself because you've got nothing. Here's the thing. A better argument would be that, all right, let's talk if a bullshit. So a better argument would be, what do you think about this? If you troll your fly behind the boat and the boat is running, so you're trolling and you hook a marlin on right, it doesn't count. But let me finish it. But if you I want to do it proper. Now you can see me and no one else can see my hands. But the quotations. If you want to properly, you have to shut the boat. You have to take the boat out of gear and then make the cast so that technically you're not trolling, and only then is accounted as a fly cop fish. That's a better argument. That is a better argument. What happens if you make how did you make a bad cast? Will it not take the fly? No? I still take the fly just because that because that would have solved it all together. You had to like put it right on the spot. Yeah. I g a International game Fish Association, nationally international. So they're like, they're saying that, uh, if you're trolling like it's not, that's not that does not on his fly. Both got to be out of gear. Now when we go out, we do take the boat out of gear because honestly, inertia well, yeah, of course it does. Check this out. Duck hunting, you got all momentum from that engine needs to cease before you can shoot. You should. I agree. That's why I'm giving the argument you're breaking the law. I'm giving you the better argument because I agree. I agree. Now, there is this thing, Steve, that you can do. It's called free casting. So sometimes you see Marlin just bake like sun baking there, just hanging out. Bring up. That's so cool. That's like my dream. I would totally be no guy that used to harpoon him like that. When he was a kid, Let's check this out. They were so they were a commercial fishing family. He's old. But when he was a kid, his mother was a pilot. His mother would go scout for swordfish, basking swordfish. Yeah, put the coordinates in a canister or you know, a bearing in a distance and coordinates and the canister and drop it out of her plane. Her father would get it and they would move up, and they had a harpooner on the bottle of the boat and they would move up in harpoon basking sword fish. Oh my goodness, that's unbelievable for commercial like commercial sale. So I would say if some dude went out and found himself a genuine bit ball in his boat, kayak, whatever the hell he's in, found himself a genuine bitball, stalked in there, stripped the flying through there and tied into a Marlin, I would be like, that's something bitch called marline fly. I'll give you that. There is no other way to discuss this. Yeah, no, it's tough one. I've only been doing it. I mean, you and I can have an argument with you about steelhead forever, and I know I'll win when it comes to steel because I've been doing it. I don't know but with Marlon though, I've only been doing it for four years, so I'm constant, and I could never land any one on the fly. I really don't know shit about it, but I know that it fascinates me. I just get busted off. Everything, everything that can go wrong goes wrong. So I'm actually I'm gonna go next week because I'm just determined before this baby comes to get a marlin to the boat or to hand, I just so badly want to get when it's just like it's a competition. I said it for myself. I'm not competitive with anyone else, and it's certainly not for any bragging rights like you can't lift the fish out to get photos or anything. Just for myself, I just want to know that. I just want to know I've done it. It kind of like here's the thing, and and and I used to think this is gonna sound horrible because and I used to look at I used to look at bass fishing a little bit like this too. That it is people taking elements of golf, which I detest, and introducing golf elements into fishing. Do explain what's your reasoning behind them? Just like um taking all the reality and the blood. Once you remove the reality and the blood, I just feel it winds up. But it is reality and blood, Like how can you remove reality and blood? That's like saying, how do you remove reality and blood? From hunting, like become a photographer. Well you can't, right, protects some of the sanctity of hunting. Right, there's people to get around because people that shoot stuff and then don't take care of it, or shoot stuff and whatever. I mean, there's like ways of um of breaking the chain, right that leads from the action, which is like it's food. These are old food acquisition technologies, okay, like ways of acquiring food. Now we've stripped out all kinds of ship and some might argue we've stripped out the necessity. Right if I don't hunt fish like I like to eat a lot of wild game. If I didn't hunt fish, I'm sure ship not gonna starve. I'd eat great. Okay, So the necessity is gone. And some people would look and say, dude, the necessity is gone. You've stripped the reality away. It's nothing now, it's just a shadow. It's just a game you play now, because the reality is gone. And I would look in and I could explain that I do feel that the reality is still there, okay, because this is a choice that I'm like, this is a choice I make about how I live and how I eat. But I'm open to the idea. So I might present that and I think that once you get but but there's other steps, like we all sort of find our own way, we all sort of recognize our own methods in life as being like kind of perfect right, and everyone else is a deviation from that. But I would look and say, like some things, when you strip more of it away, it's just you're playing golf with living golf balls. Yeah, i'll give you that with Marlon fishing. I won't give you with all fly fishing, or I'll give you that with Marlin because I know that for me when I was first getting into it and learning about it, there's a whole lot of weight what like why how does that make sense? Or how does that make sense? I don't get it. You know, there are a lot of things that didn't that still don't make sense to me. Same with the i if aithing. You know they want a fish and twenty pound later and my big thing, yeah, thirty pound, And my big thing is aren't you playing with fish longer? And that's a whole different argument, And that's a whole different guest because I'm not an id F a player. But yeah, I'll give you that with Marlin fishing. It is a game. Yeah, there's a whole lot of things. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, but I don't feel guilty about it because the marlin haven't been in my four years anyway. There's been no hurt. Marlin will tell you that. But there's been a whole lot of hurt to me, but not to the marlin. I haven't heard of Marlin yet, kicking my ass? Are you kidding me? Owned? I'm getting owned. Do you fish with twenty or thirty pound? I have fished with thirty and forty? Yeah, yeah, I've never actually hooked up on thirty. I hooked up on forty, saying to win, you gotta be down to in the if you I don't do it. I don't know, yes, but I have no interest in it. I think that's strange that they would encourage stressing fishing. I totally agree. But if you talk to and actually this is an interesting point, and I'm not again, I'm not the one to speak to you. I've got a guess lined up on my show who is an id F, a record holder, and he is like frothing at the bit to get on the show to explain his point. And he thinks he has a very valid point. I'm interested in hearing it because he's adamant that a skilled angler can land that fish on twenty pound in the same amount of time as a non skilled angler on hunter pound. Yeah, that's his that's what about a skilled angler on hundred pound? His things. It doesn't matter because you're using the drag of the water, right. Yeah, you can say, like a skilled hunter is going to kill a deer the twenty two more effectively than a real ship hunter with a two seventy. Okay, see, so it goes everyone should use. That's like a very cock eyed logic. Yeah, you can lay that out, you can you explain that to your guests. I don't know anything about guns, but I will do my best. Um. But in bass, in the bass fishing, you guys don't um the fight of the fish isn't really an issue. How so that is how you eliminate, Like you will get them in easier, the faster you get them into the boat. Typically, Yes, So you know, like if you're flipping, if you're flipping pads with a jig, you'll tie sometimes eight pound, so flip so flipping flipping lily pads, flipping as a technique where you you basically you don't even cast. You you just have line hanging out the end of your rod and you grab in between your first guide and your reel and you pull that line out and that brings the bait up out of the water and then you swing it out and then you let the line go and then it goes a little farther. It just is an easy way to pick your bait up sticking in a hole. Pick it up sticking in a hole. You know what we used to call that, used to steel head like that what like well be like chucking chucking, Okay, chucking. Yeah, like you're like chucking some of you say chucking and ducking when you had lead on the line. Yeah, you literally did check it. B So so we'll run. We'll run eight or fish and frogs over lily pads where the bass company and pull you down into a big map of grass. You'll run eighty pound braid direct to your frog and us and an eight to one retrieve reel meat like total meat stick like it just basically like like a broomstick, and as soon as they bite, you just real as fast as you can and that you basically are skipping the fish almost across the water, so they don't even have a chance to really know what hit him. They're like, just fly inside. It doesn't It does not always work like that. A lot of times they'll pull you down and you get host Anyways, there fass cage fish. They live in places around a lot of cover. They hang you up. They're not big ones are not easy to land. And I can't even argue because he's getting the fish in as fast as possible, so there's no argument they're My only argument is that the purpose of it is that you're doing it to catch as many as possible. But because it's bass, I really don't care because they're not feeling not indigenous. But it's more it's not about getting them in. You want to get them in the best way you can, and it depends on what you're using to catch those fishes. Like in like Washington, the lake was really clear, so we were having to use drop shot for the most part with very light leader and pretty light rods, which means you can't horse on them too much. You want to bring him as fast you can, but we're in open water and so a lot of times you just have to play them until you get him in the boat. If we were running eighty pound braid and they were biting, yeah, we would have just sucked him right up. But what's what's the goal that is to catch as many as possible in the tournament. The goal in a tournament is to catch the biggest five fish you can. So you throw your smallest one back put to put one, whatever is bigger than that until you have a bag of five fish that's as big as possible. I get it. You know why he was telling me the bass guys don't use tell us again why bass guys won't use live bait? I actually didn't know this. Okay, it works too good. My opinion is that bass guys don't use live bait. Yes one because if you want to know really why I think bass guys don't use live baitas because it's from a marketing perspective, and it's because there's an entire industry established around using plastic and artificial lures. That's and again the aspirational element of tournaments. Tournaments drive the culture and bass. It's the same reason they got a both that goes eighty miles an hour, and you know, like everything else is like, because the tournament anglers use these things and that drives the market, and the people sponsoring the tournament anglers are all these companies that make money by selling baits. And now we've just circled all of it back to now you understand why my head is where at. I just I just can't all of it. I just can't. It's just too much. Yeah, I hate I really hate it. It really bothers me. But I don't think that that's any different. So because that drove me to the state that I'm in where that's the way I like to fish for bass. I could use worms and eighty pound braid and catch bass, but I don't, and it's more difficult to catch them on wait on wait less san goes or whatever you might want to you and target them in that way. It's harder to do. That's no different than what you're doing fly fishing, and the biggest wanting to make it really hard. Well, I sound like the biggest hypocrite in the world because listen to the fly fisherman saying I mean basically, I just you know, calling myself out for sure, but just when you hear yourself say it, like, you know why we don't fish. I don't know. Did you ever do television? Did you television? No? No? Like like actually, like, what do you mean do tell on television? Television? Yeah? I really want you to plug stuff. And today I'm using bass. But did you did you do a show about bass fishing? Now salmon fishing? Yeah? Understand? Now why um? Why is it? Why has bass fishing? How come there's not another kind of fish? If people want to go catching, you win a hundred thousand dollars for catching it. Yeah, redfish, giant marlin, You're going way more money in a marlin. You can win a million dollars in a mark in the in a billfish tournament. Yeah. Used to like to those tournaments. Okay, that's that's the Calcutta. Yeah. So bass fishing hasn't like cornered the tournament market. The reason bass fishing is cornered the tournament market here is because bass room forty nine states. They're very accessible and everybody can fish for bass, and so it's a very relatable type of fishing. Everybody can fish bass, super approachable. That's why it is. It's like it's like a it's a blue collar fishing. It's like basketball. And soccer. Yeah, it's it's the soccer of fishing. Yeah, okay, that's right. Do you know what's funny? When I was trying to get my visa to work in the States, because there was a time when I wanted it, they wouldn't recognize me as professional angler unless I had a certain amount of like competitive winds and my belt or whatever. And I had I had explained, yeah, that with my career, that you know, my reputation doesn't based on these competitions that bass anglers have, and they could not wrap their heads around. You could have come down, you could. We could have got some some wins, some second place finishes and club tournaments eight bucks. It would have been great. But Matt, you want some person Yeah, yeah, yeah, all time. We're definitely in the in the red, but yeah, we want some money. I've gotten some checks north of a thousand dollars. It definitely doesn't cover the costs to tackle and rods and everything else for this. So tournaments there now anymore. It's like you don't even get trophies or a lot of times you don't get plaques. I would rather have a plaque than a check. It's it's a bummer to me that I don't get like a little trophy or something when we win. It's yeah, well the check just they're insignificant. Be one thing. If I was making big money, probably wouldn't care about the trophy. But the two you spend three d fifty dollars in gas and whatever else to go to tournament went two hundred and fifty bucks if you win, like, give me a plaque. When when I was in tenth grade, Uh, in tenth grade English, you had to write a paper. You had to like write a comparison contrast paper. You guys know what those are. I remember I did mine on Herman Melville maybe Melville Hawthorne. Okay, my comparison contrast paper. In my tenth grade English teacher Mr Heaton sent it into an essay contest, the Ruth V. Robinson Essay in the Humanities contest Um. Again, he asked me if he could send it in and I said no, And uh, I don't know why, but he sent it in and I got second place, first runner up, which I thought I meant one, but then someone clarified the first runner up is just the way of screwing with you, and you're like second place. First place gotta check cash. Okay, they got like five bucks. Second place got a thesaurus. And I was devastated because I went to the awards ceremony thinking that there would be money exchanging hands. Did you know when you went to the awards ceremony that you were not knew that by then I had cleared up that in fact had not one. Did you look up how many ways you could stay disappointed? Yeah? So that's my next paper, the true meaning of this. Yeah. So, like I go down there expecting to get money, but didn't get money, and got up the Soros and was seriously bummed because money is like I think there's a validating effect of money. But the reason I bring this up about like money or a trophy in this case, that's the Soros. And one of the ways that like a line I'll always remember is I'm in tenth grade, right, and I'm complaining about not getting the cash to Mr Heaton, and Mr Heaton said, um, he is off by by a wide margin, but I was complained about only having a the source He said, Okay, she got five hundred dollars, but there's ten thousand dollars worth of words in that book, which is good the value that he's undervalued and he undervalued the English language, I would say, but it was like it was a thing that happens. We're like money is validating, and I think that you're a bigger man if you're happier with the trophy than money. Depending on how much money, Depending on how much money. Yeah. So if I said, Matt, you can have a hundred grand or a trophy, yeah, no question if you. If it was if it was a thousand dollars or a trophy, I would take the thousand dollars. Most of the time. These tournaments in our bass club, well you have these plaques and every time you get it for a second or third place, you get like what the lake is? It goes on this plaque. It's got little other little placards you put onto the plaque that say like first place, ten amount of lake, you know, nineteen pounds, two pounds, and you can fill them up. But we stopped doing that, and and you win sixty bucks And it's not like life changing money. I want the little give. The money gets so little. It's about the It's really about thee The competition is what it's about. And so I'd rather have something to commemorate the fact that I placed well in the competition than the than sixty bucks, which is just a deduction from three hundred bucks that costs me to get to ten Mile Lake and fish the tournament. Yeah, okay, so it's it's just a totally different mentality. So when social media came around, just circling back to where we started on this, when social media came out, it wouldn't have been a big as big of a shock for you because you guys are already into having that sort of culture of like trying to prove yourselves and trying to showcase and trying to win, and bass fishing is still not really they're still so far behind the times social media wise. How can you guys be behind the times when you're the only ones who make money in this industry? Maybe that's why why do they either like either like the proof. It's all you care about is the number can you catch twenty two pounds or the bass and it's lake you can make. You can make millions of dollars if you're really good. There's only a few people to do. You can make millions of dollars just on tournament earnings, fishing baths you may not may or may not need. By the time you get to that point. Of course, those hugely popular athletes are if you want to call them athletes that you know, the professional bass professional bass fisherman. They are uh, generally older at that point, not always, you know, there's where you're I think I'm getting to a place now though, where the people are thinking of as older are now my age now, Like I think it's like, oh, Danny Brower and Kevin Vanda, well they're they're in their late forties and up to sixty now. But now now that a lot of times you'll see maybe like he wasn't so old after yeah, but but maybe And this may actually go back to the athleticism a bit of it at least in that you have to be in good enough shape to put up with the boat rocking in the casting all day, and that you'll notice a lot of times some of the older guys and bass fishing will start to phase out and the younger anglers will start to do better. When I say younger, I mean people are in their it's exhausting and and to do it four days straight. It's not just not just one day, but four days in a row sun just like four long days of eighteen holes in a row. We're back to the gump. But here's the thing is like, now, if with the car, if you have to walk the course, I'll give I'll give it to you. But the thing about with the social media that you're bringing up here though, is this is the bass fishing. Is the meritocracy that you were saying you wanted. What does meritocracy mean that things are handed out based on merit? That's not Yeah, that's what That's exactly my point. That's the bass fish like it would be that like a professional bass fisherman would have nothing to gain, there's no image. It's just you're not selling your ability to do That's why if he does it, he wouldn't. It wouldn't be such a shock. That was my whole point. So if he does it is not a huge shock. But in my world, in our world, it was like wait, wait, wait, what's going on? I mean you don't you don't. You're not supposed to advertise how your day is. You're supposed to keep it quiet because you don't want people to know you got fish. You don't want people to know who you're on the water, you don't want them, Yeah, you got it. So just you couldn't even like build up your actual certified credentials. You could, but it wasn't necessarily going to be well received. That's a whole another And what you would do is you would try to what you should do is try to build up your credentials as far as your skill. But then you're not supposed to try to prove it with how many fish you cats. You're still taking a bunch of people out onto the rivers all the time. It's a really interesting argument. It's just a really interesting argument. And it's one now that we have enough people to be able to have these intelligent conversations because we've kind of we've been in social media for enough years to see where we are today, and that's a whole different story. But back then, nobody knew where it was going to go. So it just this whole big what if? You know, this big what what if? Up in the air? What's going to happen to our sport? Now that it's on the internet. So do you But you don't regard yourself like do you regard yourself as a social media But a lot of so many social media personality. Tons of people think that's what I do. It's hilarious, Well, what is a social media person out? No, I'm not a social media personality, not even close. But what I find interesting is a lot of people will write my bio, people who don't fish, and they will assume that because of my social media following, which actually isn't that high, but they'll assume that I make a living off my social media and I've got to stop and go like, can you actually revise that? Because I do not make my money off social media. I use it as a platform to get the word out of what I'm doing with I don't make my living off social It's crazy. So if someone asked you, um, if you just we're sitting next to someone on a plane, They're like, what do you do for a living? I work in fly fishing? And then I say, oh, I like the fly fish. What do you mean? Awesome? Good for you? I don't like. Honestly, I'm at the point now where people would be like, what do you do for a living? Up, I'm a writer, and then I just hope to god they don't ask me what I writes out. It's too hard to explain what do you do in fly Oh? I like to fly fish all my my brother in law likes to fly fish. What do you do in fly fishing? And then try explaining to someone what your career is when it's so spread out all over the place, So you get an you get sick of the conversation, don't you know, don't you I do? It's funny to hear you say that. Um, I'd start at the exact same place. What do you say? Which is like a really cop out right, it's time, I say, eight years ago, I would have been like dead nuts, right, Like any money I made I made from ship that I wrote. That was like all of my income was like like the trading of goods. Here's my product that I wrote. You give me money for the product, flat ass outrider. But now, yeah, it's like in in small talk, which I can't stand, Like I don't like small talking with strangers. Um, yeah, like stuff like that's painful. It's just it's really painful. Kids are like your kids are in school and there you'll find out about this. Your kids are in school and there's like endless events. We're supposed to go small talk with other parents and you're having conversations to go like oh my friend was from there. I just well we live there now we live here. Oh I knew a person that lived there. Now we live here too. Um. You're like you're hurting me my ears right now, Like what do you do? And I'm like, yeah, so what's the out, Like I'm gonna start telling people I'm a stripper. It's just gonna shut it down to you know what. No one's going to say like what kind of Oh okay, and then they're gonna go back to reading the paper. I'm serious. I'm serious. It'll end it yea, yeah, because I'm over it. It's I understand. I'm all uncomfortable now totally, but it's like it's not malicious. I mean they want to engage, right, and it's just but then but then they want to hear the story and it's not like there's an investment of your time because they're never going to book with you. They're never gonna be inspired. I mean sometimes they're inspired enough, but it's rare. Yeah, I'm being a dick right now. I'm gonna like they're not doing anything wrong. Yeah, it's just like especially in an airplane, like already coming from not liking If you're already coming from not liking small talk with people, you don't know that you're not gonna wind up. You're not developing relationship. If I feel like I'm developing relationships, that makes me happy. If I'm doing a one off chat, yeah, I just I have a hard time. And then when you enter into that and then and then you gotta it's just yeah, just strains the life out of me. No, that's interesting to hear that you have the same problem. I just thought I was a bit but but but I never like, I still come across charming. I'll still smile and be like, oh, you know, I'm a writer, and then I'll usually try to change stuff, and then I'll say, what do you do? Like, I just don't mind me whatever, what do you do? Yeah, stripper, Okay, it might work. What do you tell people you do? There's a tough one too. People ask all the time. You say you work in entertainment, no produced television show. I think, oh, yeah, what are the producer do? Then then you're stuck. Yeah it's long winded answer. Yeah, yeah, I tell them, I'm I generally tell them, yeah, I got two thousand dollars do you say that? Now, I'll tell people that I work in marketing for US. Usually I say I work in marketing in the shooting sports industry, even though yeah, now that is really the primary market that we're in a hunting tactical. Those are the two primary markets for what we call the category sports cutlery or specialty knives. Sports cutloring, specialty knives. So the reason that I don't so I feel like, maybe for the same reasons, but once I started, once I start, once I start into that conversation, it requires a long train of explanation that I don't really want to go into. So I will just give them a that is the generalization. Maybe it's like, I'm what's the answer that leads to the long train. Well, so I would say, I would say, oh, well, I'm I work. I'm a marketing director at bench Made Knife Company. What's bench made knife company? Well, it's bench Made Knife Company where blah blah blah, you know, and then I usually feel like, you know, maybe they'll maybe they do, or maybe they don't care, but it's going to require me to have a conversation that leads down the road of Okay, well, tell me more about sports cutlery, or tell me more about shooting sports or oh, tactical knives. That was a cool attempt. Yeah. So if I'm invested in the conversation, I'm interested in talking to that person, then yeah, fine talking. But I generally also don't I don't know that I, especially with strangers, really enjoy talking about myself that much. So I usually will ask them questions about themselves. For me, it's it's already in a round. It's just a total mood thing. If they catch me like ten am in the airport and I've had like one or two coffees and I'm feeling pretty sprouted and I just got done on a hunting her fishing trip and they're like, so what do you do? And I'm like, buddy, you got an ear, you know? But yeah, right now, I don't want to tell any stories. What do you say? Like? What would be? Because my big thing is because then they want to know my life story? Really did your dad fish? How did you get into it? Oh? That's so interesting? Are there a lot of women in the sport? I just what's a good way without me saying I take my clothes off for a living what is a good like, help me out, guys, give me a picture. All about the picture. It's give me an excuse. What's something I can say to get out of this? To get out of it? I could say I work in marketing. You or you could say that's say I'm a I'm a professional, I'm a professional fisher. No, hell no, that's what gets me. Do No, that's never gonna end. It gets me just to just to plane get out of it. I don't work, get me out of it. I'm gonna stay at home mom. No one's gonna be like no, yeah, yeah, so yeah, so I'm not actually a mom. That sounds a good point. It's probably what kind of mood you're in, and like if you're just not if you just really don't like talking about yourself with strangers that much and you feel like it's not necessarily going to turn into something meaningful, then it doesn't matter what you say. Like you're right. You could say I'm a stay at home mom. You could say I'm a stripper, and the person might say like, oh, that's cool, Like my sister was a stripper. Tell me about tell me more about stripping. Right, The best way is to diverge the conversation, just get back at them. I think that's what's worked worked for me best is just being like, you know, you know I work in the outdoors, what do you do? Or you know? I notice you're reading this what is? And I'm actually interested in what they do. I just don't want to explain my life story. I know my life story. I'm not interested in it anymore. It's kind of cool to hear someone else's something this whole thing up. Um, I'm gonna say that. I'm it's pleasantly surprised to hear the other people don't like that kind of small talk. And what it's gonna change for me is I'm going to really make damn sure that I never now I'm going to assume there's four people at this table who don't like that kind of small talk, really gonna be very good about not telling, not making other people do what I now know is universally and not liked good. I'm never gonna say to someone what do you do for a living? I don't feel to do that now. It's just too load of a question. It's just too much, it's too much. I'm done, man, if I've ever done it for, and I don't think that I have Like damn sure, I'm not gonna now go up to someone now that I know it's gonna be so annoying for them. When I asked what they do for. We talked about this before. We're pretty good at sausing now, the hunters and fisherman. I can smell them mile away at the little events, So you know that's that's the conversation gonna go fine, and then you just get to talk about hunter. Yeah, but like I gotta go to a wedding reception, this one Jude Native fishes or Hans, I'm gonna find him. Yeah. If not, I'm not I'm gonna try real hard, nuts talck to anybody find the guy with the elk tattoo on his forearm. Yeah, I I maybe that so guiding. That's the thing that I didn't like about guiding that I decided, like early on, I don't want to be a guy because I would come back from Alaska and I would have no interest in going fishing for salmon. I didn't want to. I didn't want to even look at a salmon. And I thought, man, this is like my thing. I love fishing. I don't want to turn fishing into work, and that so I can talk about fishing with some of your hunting all day because it's not work, because it's not work. And I think, then that's a really interesting point. You just said that, because because like you, I made that mistake with fishing, and I love Mike. I'm very blessed to have my career. I'm not taking it for granted by any means, but because I do know the mistakes I made with fishing, and I know I don't want to make those mistakes with hunting. I can't tell if it's because I don't have unting as a career or if it's that I just haven't been hunting long enough. But I'm more than happy to talk about hunting the people don hunters, hunters, whomever. But it hurts me to talk about fishing. And if you really want to hurt me, pull your iPhone and start showing me photos, have your fish on your iPhone. You wind up talking to some duds showing us a deer, and it winds up being that, uh, you could have just gone on to a website. Like by the time they get done with all. This is my cousin's brother's neighbors shot this buck? Yeah? Really are we talking about? How do we even get here? Exactly? Know? So maybe that's what it is, because yeah, there's certain things I got no problem talking about, but with fishing because it is my career. Because I'm just so sick of hearing my own story, I'll talk about it anymore. But to touch on the hunting thing for a minute. Have you shot a big game family yet with a with a gun or bowl? Not successful? I've Yeah, well I went stag hunting this year with Adam green Tree and he called, what this one beautiful stag? And you know in Australia, got great stag hunting in Australia. But I guess because I wasn't comfortable with the shot. Was I mean he came in at me face on, and so you know how the ribs closed up as they face you, and I was shooting one of those like a triple what do you call the triple blade, tribe blades or three boys? Yeah, and I just it wasn't the right shot for me, so I didn't take it. My heart was going crazy and it was just have you obviously you've hunted stag before? Yeah? Well yeah, and you know how they got in New Zealand. Yeah, so you know how they roar that crazy who are hunted during the roar, I've heard it. I've never hunted the most incredibly terrifying thing that I've ever experienced in the most wonderful way. And of course you hear in the ground and you know it's like vibrating underneath you. It was amazing. But now I wasn't able to get a decent shot in, So I'm going back. When you have the restraint, you didn't just be like what the hill? Yeah no, no, no, no, um no. I wanted to be right. I wanted to be right, so it wasn't right. But maybe the snack go back next week because I was I was selling out. Is that my goal before this baby is to catch a giant Travali and a marlin and get a deer on the bow five I've got I've got a book. So next week I go to ash from my from my hunting trip and then I go on my marlin trip. So I'm I got my trips book. I don't know if I'll be successful, but I'm going to go for it. My brother's wife she huked up and killed the Mountain Go when she was six and a half months pregnant. Oh yeah, and I'm going to still be going till I'm seven and a half. I'll be going straight through until they say I can't anymore for sure. Can't you hunt anything in Australia pretty much any time a year with the Yeah, for the most part, you don't. I mean, obviously kangaroos are indigenous, but even they are open season. I have a no paw rule. I just don't eat things with pause. It's not not even an ethical thing. I just don't you kind of kangaroo as a paw. Yeah I do. Yeah, I just have no interest in hunting or eating kank I've eating kangaroo. I don't particularly fancy it. So it's not interested in the fact that they called deer and that people if I mean farmers want them dead and then they just wrought on the property. They don't even eat them half the time, or they shoot them at a helicopters. It's just it's a really great entrance into the sport. Is you know, are these feral dear because you still appreciate and love them, but it's just a different mentality over there because you feel better about killing the deer and had here doesn't suffer less knowing that he's fair. I know. And when I had you on my show, you had a super valid point. But it's just for for the population wise now. But for the population wise, it's easier just to wrap your head around a lot of that's are hunting, and the same thing with the with the pigs, like it's just yeah, you just come in cold without understanding a whole lot of like complex history and structural regulatory structure. You can come in cold and be like, Okay, so I'm not doing I can just without really looking into this hard, figure out that I'm not doing ecological damage by hunting this animal. Yeah, and I don't think you're doing a logical damage by hunting animals that are wild and bc either, for example. But there is something for me, not even for me actually, because I'm I'm good hunting in both countries. I'm quite content and I do hunt in both countries or on both continents. But like for my dad who's so opposed to hunting, it is easier for me if I am going to go down the path of having the conversation with a non hunter, which is just as painful. Oftentimes it's talking about what you do for a living. But if I am trying to explain to a non hunter why um hunting in Australia maybe isn't so bad. The fact that they can envision people hunting them about helicopters and just letting them all rotten mass piles, that really that really strikes a chord with them. They'd rather that animal be consumed. So it's just a good it's a good starting point. Like recently on my podcast started interviewing hunters as I had you on there, and I decided I had you and several other hunters and I decided to post by Adam green Tree podcast first for a reason because he's an Australian hunter. Because he could explain hunting to all my listeners who don't you, who don't hunt. He could explain hunting and always fall back on the feral animal thing, even though let's get real, like the fair are the animals don't know they're feral. But it does help the non hunter wrap their head around it a little bit better. I find like two people would say like, yeah, I believe in hunting as long as it's a feral some and some people actually do they're wrong. Well, it depends on how far you want to go into like the you know they're they're wrong. Yeah, I think if if you either believe in hunting or you don't, full stop in the story. But because there's always a conservation issue behind all hunting, like, let's get real about it. I don't know anything about the Africa stuff, but I'm just talking about in BC and in Australia, whether it's an indigenous animal or whether it's introduced, there's always conservation, um background or reasons somewhere behind that opening for the most part, somewhere in it, somewhere in there. So you feel that if you're talking to your audience and they're fly fishing people, that the fly fishing people are, you feel more comfortable, uh, introducing them to the idea of hunting by having to be that you're out killing. I thought that because I was going to interview him anyway, and I just thought that strategically I might just post that one first because he came across quite gentle and he was just I felt like he was a good starting point to introduce my listener to bow hunting and um, and I was right. I was right. The amount of feedback I got was incredible, the amount of people who said, I was actually really upset to hear that you were going to start posting about hunting. I listened to the podcast and it made perfect sense to me. I totally got it. And I think because Adam was able to fall back on explaining why a lot of ferial animals are so bad to the egan ecosystem, it did give him he probably likes those animals being there hunt him, of course he does. Yeah. No, we could take the argument as deep down as we want. You knows deep down that road as we want. But the point is for the average person who wouldn't even think to entertain picking up any sort of gun or a bow, it was just a good starting point. It gave them. It gave them a little bit different perspective. Now, of course, that same perspective is here in North America. The same conservation issues and apply here, But for some reason, just as soon as they hear feral and wasted meat and helicopter culling, for some reason, they're just more receptive to it. And for me, I don't care how I get them to listen, Like if I could just get my tache lists and just anyway. And if that's how I'm going to do it by talking about fairl animals, then hell, I'm gonna talk to fairl animals. I find that here in this country where people people will be like, um, you know, all their life they heard because where they were, where they were brought up, generally how and where they were brought up, they've heard all their life like hunt's real bad, hunting is bad. There's all these you know, inductrines. Um. When they start getting interested in hunting, they are working, they're trying so hard to find a way to justify it because they're kind of sickened. They're sickened to buy their own interest. They're like, I feel this need. I feel like I want to go do something, and I'm tapping into some deep thing that I want to go do. I just need to find a way that I can just sell it to everyone. Everyone usually wants the first thing they want to go do because they want to go on a wild pig because they're like that way, I don't need to deal with I don't need to deal with that much of trying to like figure this out, I think you have. I can fall back on this idea that the pigs shouldn't be here. So this is gonna be an easier way for me to get into this than getting into the ship. That's like really complicated and hard. Everything you just said is bang on in my experience, because you're talking to one of those people right now. I've been I've been brought up to understand the hunting is bad, it's a necessary don't worry about where your food comes from. I mean all this bullshit, right, Obviously, I don't believe in that that's why I hunt. But the thing is is that it's not about me justifying to the rest of the world. I mean, I wanted my podcast to be listened to by the rest of the world so that they could open their eyes and their ears a little bit. But for me, I'm that person you're talking about, and and it was never about justifying to other people. It was about justifying to myself because I was so confused because the animal and I did this piece on social media the other day. There's actually a picture of the stag that we called in and it's the moment where I'm on full draw. We're like fifteen yards from each other. We're literally he I'm watching him search my face with his eyes until his eyes locked into mine and then we have that moment. It's just the most incredible moment of my life. And it was one of those situations of I really don't want to shoot you, like please go away, like just don't don't give me the right shot. Don't give me the right shot. And of course he didn't, so you know, but it was a constant It's a constant battle of if I really want to kill this animal, if I really want to harvest this animal, then why do I have this crazy urge to not pull the trigger. I mean, it's a constant battle within myself. It's very confusing. And I made my first hunt to be a pig for sure. Um, I wanted to see. I was in Florida. Granted it was just that's what was in season. There were pigs, so I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but I wanted to see how I felt about having an animal die in front of me and my buddy. My buddies were going on it. I got a hunting trip with guns, and I really was not it didn't didn't thoroughly enjoy the experience. Um, but I did choose a pig. It was interesting to hear you say that, because I did choose that as my first one, but to justify to myself. And it's still a constant battle, Steve, It's still a constant battle about why when that animal does come in, why, there's a part of me it's like, oh God, I really don't know if I want this shot, but then deep down I really want the shot. It's very confusing, it's very conflicting for a new person, and I don't know if it's my own if it's my upbringing and my indoctrination that inserts that sort of uncertainty, or if it's my own sensitivity, or if it's my own uncertain Like, I don't know what it is, but there is something in me as a new hunter who's just a little bit confused by it. For sure. Then pigs want to be in the gateway drug though, man they are I think that well. I think seeing your first animal dies really it's a different experience, right, Like it was a real experience for me to watch my first animal die, and I needed to see if I could handle it. And for some reason, for some reason, the pig was a justifiable animal for me. I'm not saying it's right, but I think it's an adult onset hunter thing where you're like, you're just mature enough to have collected thoughts in that moment and to be like I do, but don't I do, but don't run away. Don't run away? Where when you're twelve and that deer runs in for the first time, it's just you know, tunnel vision. Yeah, all these people getting into hunting as adults. Man, they're dealing with like they're on a way to trip when you're like a kid who grows up around hunt. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's but it's hard. It's a very very conflicting trip. It's it's it's difficult, and that is something we're talking You asked me earlier about if somebody said, you know, I want you to take people by the hand and lead them through. And that's the sole reason why I've introduced the the Hunters on the podcast is just to have them follow with me in this crazy journey because it is conflicting coming into this as an adult. It is, for sure. You just need to get one under your belt. Yeah, it's just some money you have, you have a sense of like, I didn't grow up a hunting family either, you know, I didn't really start hunting hard until I was eighteen and my friends could. We had cars and you get around on our own and all that. But yeah, when you're young and you don't have a whole lot of maybe thoughts of your own at that point in time, and then you're just looking to have fun. You get that out of the way early. Then later on there's always there's always if you really, if you sounds like you may be sort of soft hearted when it comes to never been for fun, don't There will never not be a sense of remorse. No, And it's impossible for me to not have a sense of remorse because there's that, Yeah, do you feel bummed out when you kill a chinook um? Yeah, for a moment, I do. Yeah, No, I feel a little bummed. I mean, I kill a ton of bow hunt bow hunt a ton for gross and my first few were yeah, I don't know. It's remorse is definitely a severe appreciation, serious appreciation. I do feel a little weird though, Yeah, when I touched it and still warm, and there's a little bit of yeah, we're dudes eating chicken. McNuggets. Man, when they buy it in that nugget, they're not there's twelve or how many? How many chickens are in one McNugget? Right, But that's why I started trying to get them all blended together. Chickens one of the reasons why we started hunting. Like I was. I'm saying, the don't they don't have to cope with it. Are still warm, They don't need to cope with it, They don't need to think. I like the term severe appreciation. It's a paradox. The sense of elation outweighs the sense of remorse, but the sense of remorse is still there. Yeah, that's a good pointing in, Matt, it's kind of a it's an interesting journey, ladies and gentlemen, Matt Elliott paradox. So you got any You got any final thoughts you want to add in? I don't know. You kind of derailed me. I got off on a bunch your rants, you know, I just know you didn't. You had the one about where you grew up, which was interesting me because I didn't realize when I think a BC, I just think they're all like quaint, little cute little talents. Yeah, no, no, no, Google sory, Google sory. But yeah, no. I think the thing for me is, if I had to just clarify and summer in summary, I'd say, there's always every time I teach, I always say two things, like, there's always asterisks beside everything I say, and there's always an It depends. Everything has an't it depends. So a lot of this stuff we've spoken debated about today has been really fast paced. So I just want to make it very clear that the social media argument, I understand where there's hypocrisy in both sides. I understand where the argument can be debated on all sides. I get it. We haven't had we don't have ten hours to sit here and hash it out. But yeah, I just want to kind of summarize that there are a lot of it depends. I mean, I meant everything I said, but there are some times where it depends. Social media has been great in a lot of ways for our sports. It's been great for awareness, and it's been great for advocacy and for community and all of that. But again, it depends. Yeah, it does depend because nothing really social media is so big, but then nothing really has like what I don't know what it's done. You really stand back and look at like hunting in America or wildlife in America. Okay, public lands in America, clean air and clean water in America. I can't sit back and go like man, uh, things sucked and then social media came out, and now man ship is great. Tangible in any kind of tangible way, but as far as like as far as as far as the bounds within which we're discussing right now, in any tangible way, participation, amount of money, amount of extracurricular spending or or non essential spending that a hunter will do or a fisherman will do for conservation efforts, or how clean air and water are Like you're thinking, none of this ship, None of this ship has been improved by it. It does not matter. The real things that matter, right, but the small thing bull But the small thing like Marlin vision with rise Off, the small things that make up the broad things that would do I have found make a difference. They tell me, just real quick, just real quick, tell me the thing that you're like. That part of the world sucked and then social media fixed it. I can't do with that part of the world. I can tell you situations where we've needed awareness to be able to collect money and support to be able to fight big corporations in British Columbia and having the exposure again, whether it be radio or written articles or social media or podcast or whatever it may be. The the awareness has helped to beat out large corporations because we've been able to accumulate funding to be able to you know, have lawyers. And this keep in mind, this is coming from a guy that uses they used it. Well, that's what I'm saying. You want to speak the biggest hypocrite, That's fine, but I try not to. Um. I try to be realistic about I find your social media educational and I hope that my social media is inspirational. I just don't find either of our social media and narcissistic. I mean, I know if you go through my phone, you're not going to find a single selfie on it. I just don't do them. You know, it's not going to be an entire fee of me looking hot and smiling in the camera. And I'm certainly not fishing to get photos of looking hot and smiling in the camp. Well, if you want to be a hunting hosts, yoga pants selfies is how you do it. I'm never getting pictures of yourself exercising and be like getting ready for both season. Okay, so I gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you that's the that's the female path of success. Now, if I feel like I might look hot in my yoga pants, I might no, no, no, but hey, look here. If you're not catching the sarcasm, yeah, no, I caught the sarcasm. But I'll be gonna be honest with you. And what I'm gonna say is a big deal. It's a big deal. I have enjoyed bow hunting more than I enjoy fly fishing. That's huge for me to say that. And I love it so much that when I first got into it, I was so I loved it so much that it actually really threw me off because it was all I could think about, still all I can think about, and it really scared me that someone was going to try to take it away from me. And that was very strange to be like, well, who's going to take it away from me? And then I had to really look into myself and reflect and go, okay, this is this is your fear because of fishing, and so I just refused to let anyone take this from me. This is mine. The industry, neither industry can have it. This is mine. You know what I think you're liking about it? What do you think earlier? I thought about that, the stripping away of realities. I think that, Um, what you're liking about is it's it's it's got it. It's it's more connected to the reality. It is. It's all reality, even more connect it to that ancient food acquisition technology, even when the triggers not pulled, just getting up on that animal there, it's only reality, it is only there's no game here that It's not a game for me. It's not a game for me, because you're right, with the marlin, it's totally a game. But with this, with this hunting thing, doesn't matter, bou, whatever it is, this is not a game. No, you can't make them into a golf ball. No, no, take it really seriously, Matt, what do you think about all that? So I was going to go back to what I was saying about not liking to necessarily have conversations with people about I'll tie this in, but I actually do, like on an airplane talking to the well. So I don't like what talking about what I do for a living. But I do like talking about nives. I do like talking about bench made and I do like talking fishing, and I like talking hunting, and I especially like talking hunting with people who either a don't hunt or even be I don't agree with hunting because yes, because most of the most the time, I feel like I feel like I can champion an argument that we'll win out over somebody's argument. Again saying, I'm not saying that I'm always going to be infallible in that conversation. You're a pretty non intimidating guy too, Like the same thing with Adam. It's a softer approach. I guarantee you. I guarantee you as a nod hunter. If I sat down with you, Steve, and if I sat down with you, I would be much more inclined to listen to what you had to say because you're just a little softer in in your approach. That's the way I feel, because you are so said in your way, Steve, like you would be intimidating I think for a non hunter. And yeah, like you changed my mind about major ship every day. No, I understand that, but like you just there's just a different approach, Like he's a soft guy for the most part. I mean, but like like look at look at how look at how ready turned on. He was talking about spying on his wife from the catwalk, Like creepy, you know what I mean. But I think that I think that you're right. I think that, Um, I know. I enjoy talking to non hunters too, especially because I love going on from a software approach. I think I'm just assuming that you have a software approach. I just want people who are thoughtful about hunting and where that practice comes from, to be able to champion that conversation as often as possible with people who don't to change their mind, to have them realize that people are a part of the ecosystem and it's important for us to take upon ourselves that responsibility of being the apex predators, and it's good for it's good for the wildlife. He does have a soft approach. I've got to eat my words because I googled you before I met you, and I watched you tell some vegan guy explain your point of view on it, and you actually did a fantastic job, Like I shared it. Because I'm talking there, I'm talking to someone I don't know, and I don't know what they know. But I'm talking to friends of mine and we're like if I'm talking to friends of mine and we're like dicking around with like very fious ideas, I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about like coddling them into some kind of belief. Just like I'm not like, you need to be gentle with young Matt here. You know. It's like he knows what he knows. Yeah, but if he does something that seems funny to me, honestly, time, I think it's funny. Yeah, I had a great time fish and bass, but I still think there's a lot of stuff about bass fish and it's really strange. I will not I'm not gonna roll up on some dude. I'm not gonna pull my boat up next to a bass fish and and be like, hey, uh, here's here's what I think is weird about what you're up to over there. It's just not invited, you know. It's just a way different thing like to talk to to talk to people you are friends with and admire. It's like, you know, it's just a difference, but it's not. It's not the rhetorical approach I would use if confronted with someone who says, like, hey, man, um, I have serious reservations about hunting, and here's what they are. How would you handle some guy in the air a plane? Then, so you have to say, I don't know. If I had an hour, we could mock up a conversation, but I wouldn't handle it with him by like, it's just as different. It's just a different conversation. It's not what we're doing right now, right. No, But you don't but you don't enjoy the conversation that I would. You do enjoy the conversation, that conversation because that's not small talk. I don't like. Okay, that's all I was trying. I don't like the kind of thing like oh. And then we moved to got it, got It, got it, and I'm like, oh, yeah, because that's why you're taking out You like meaningful, you like meaningful, but you do you do like the conversation. And someone said you're reading the hunting magazine, young man. Um, I really just dislike hunting and I'm not unfamiliar with it. I grew up in a hunting family, and I came to hate hunting, right, idel Like, let me put away my work. It would love to have a long check. That's all I was wondering, got it? Okay? All right, so we're all the same page there, right, Yeah, small talk, that's cool. Right. So I'm telling someone, well, we have three kids. Not my cousin had three kids like that. I also don't want people to think that I'm like Avida. That's okay, everybody knows I'm a creep now Avidly again. Yeah, I'm not against retention bass fishing either. As long as they're smaller than fourteen inches, you should keep all of them you want. Got it? Yeah? And it tastes great. They do taste good. I aint I caught my first small mouth bass intentionally today. It was always bycatch. It took a while to get the hook set down, but then you were on them. After that. What what were you fishing to get your catching them accidentally? Like? How are you? I don't know, just here and there. I was probably just floating down some Michigan river with a spin rod way back in the day, just whatever, bites, just chucking, and all of a sudden there was a fish and I probably didn't even wouldn't even go name it, you know, But no, that was a lot of fun. But yeah, I was being too gentle with him. We've been fishing all week with like like, uh, just like subtle takes on the red fish, and um, I don't know, we just besides the selfish and the and the why who, those weren't subtle takes, but the I don't know, everything else is a little touchy feeling. And I was, you know, match the little dinky rods and the drop shot and a little bitty worm. I didn't even fish a soft plastic that small. I've always fished like stuff that's been six eight inches long and we're fishing what are those three inch Yeah? But um, yeah I was. I wasn't giving it to him. I really started real and down getting and that was getting it done. Yeah, you know, nothing better than punching a eight barbed hook right through the face of some baths with eighty pound tests. Sorry, they're just gonna pitch back like I taught you less and Mr Fish Redneck Country. That's one of the things we didn't get into this, but that this is gonna be my concluding thoughts. That was one of the things I thought was most interesting when you know, Mad and I for a long time and playing on since past bear season, we've been playing on bass fishing. This weekend, he's gonna bring up his big fancy bass boat and I've been very excited to do my bass fishing. And then we arranged, you know, were you able to come and talk to us. And if it's just a funny thing to think about, would be that um fly fishing is oftentimes, in the outside eyes oftentimes associated with like a sort of elitism and outdoor elitism, and bass fishing is sort of this like lowly right, you know what I'm saying, The stereotype, stereotype. You could there's people who have a stereotype of like that, there's like this elitest quality of of fly fishing like this like holier than quality of fly fishing. And there's in that same guy right doing what he likes to do, could also sit and he sees a bass ball and he's gonna have this right redneck he'll build you know what I mean. But it's funny because like when you look at like the if a Martian came, okay, a Martian wouldn't pick up on all this Martian would be like these there's these people who like to go out and catch these fish, and um, that means somehow means a great deal to him to catch these fish and let him go and and I'd imagine they all get along very well. Just the way it's marketed. You guys are just marketed so much different. It's differently, it's just a different world, No it is. It's just like it's just it's peep, it's there. It's fun to go catch fish. And there's different ways of doing it. There's different ways of doing it, and they're really um. If you get hung up on the differences, it's because you already know a lot about it. Yeah, you should probably just looking for something to out and outside perspective would be like this, this is gonna be my actual thought. Like you know, like in certain countries, Catholics and Protestants fight a lot. They're not fighting the devil worshipers. Like if you go like you're like, oh, you know who really gets me mad, It's a Protestant, right, it seems like it would really get me mad, would be a devil worshiper because that's like the real opposite of me. Right, You tend to kind of those like a little in like it's people have a better tendency to do a sort of in fighting. Ye, but it doesn't do it anyone any good. I mean, that's why I get upset when people hate on bake guys, because the people we should be hanging on in some situations, or let's say, the government or or you know, commercial nat or whatever trash in the habitats. And if we actually teamed up with if the fly guys would just get over themselves and team up with the bake guys, and the bake guys would get over with themselves and team up with the flag guys, we'd have a much bigger community to actually make a difference. You start a thing called the Clean Water and Lots of Fish Alliance and all and all these types of fishermen with their like idiosyncratic methodologies were joined together and fight for clean water and lots of fish. In fighting is a very dangerous thing. H there you go. Alright, Matt, you red neck especially, I love bass fishing. It's super fun. I think you have a lot of fun even in a sparkly boat. Yeah, we're catching fish off from under people's apart being in that boat's half like the fun's special out there today amongst the sparkles and stand on those decks leaning against the fancy post watching Matt up. They're working the trolling motor and you need to really work it. Man. We were getting worked over by the wakes. I mean it was a war zone out there today. It's yeah, there's a lot of recreation on that lake. Man, lievable. Need to come to Australia for us and Australian bass. Yeah, they're fantastic, highest density in the United States. The boats. Yeah, we were taking waves and these boats are built to take rough water and we were taking waves over the bow today from boat traffic. Yeah. Well we were on the trolling motor, not even under power. It's extreme small mouth bass. Are you are prepared to charter or see one thirty to get that bass boat over to Australia. I bet we could find something. What if I told you that we may have a bass boat. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. We do a lot of bass fishing, yeah, tons of bass fishing. We'll take you bass fishing, all right. Is that a native bass? Yeah, Australian bass. Yeah, it's really crazy too. Because they're in the same small rivers as bull sharks, so like you can't get out, and sometimes we catch bull sharks back when we're bass fishing. Are they more like a peacock bass and more like a like are they Are they flashy or drab? No? Pretty drab. I think they look like a large mouth bass. It's exactly what they look like. Yeah, they're incredible. What what's a big one? Look? How big is a big one? What's this in your guys system? That's yeah, she's showing like a queen. That's a trophy, trophy, trophy, trophy, trophy. I'm saying my average probably like this. Yeah, that's pretty average. Okay, pretty average. That sounds good. It's good times. I'll take you up on that, all right, let me know, all right, thank you for joining us, Thank you for having us on the show. Pulled up a picture. Yeah, he looks like he live right here quite nicely. Yeah. I thought I caught something like just like a rock bass. It's like a giant rock bass. And then we have this thing called murray cod. You ever seen a murray cod? I've heard a lot about those from Australians. Can you punch in murray cod. Yes please. You fish with them the same way as you do with bass, So you get all up with your big pop persons or whatever it is that you're fishing, and you get right in tight and I love those little things. This is those little lures you guys have, But they're like thirty dollars of pop. They're crazy. Um, that's yeah. But look at how big these things get some wal Yeah, yeah, days, John, we're gonna duck out and look at we're gonna talk on and look at someone else, someone else. Have a good night.