00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You Can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X. Okay, yanni, Uh, since you're not like the you know you're not a co host anymore, Um, because your eyes gone. What I want to do is go back to the thing we used to do when you were kind of up and comer. You can just call me a very experienced guest. Yeah, very seasoned guest. Well i'd like you to do is um do like we do where like if I have a heart attack, but here like I because around the ice. Okay, let's do that. All of a sudden, Um, the ice beneath me shattered and I vanished from sight, and the current carried me under the good ice and there was no possible way out for me. We're just like and here you are. You all of a sudden realized that, um, you need to introl the show. I gotta jump in, you gotta jump in. Carry the flag. So let's hear it, so like like, you gotta set everything up right, you gotta make listeners feel like they're here. Morning, folks. I'm glad you can join us today on Hunting and Fishing with Yanni. Steve's gone, he floated underneath the ice. That's what you're gonna call the show now, Yeah, Hunting and Fishing with Yannie, Like, yeah, Jimmy Miller came up with that years ago. He's what do they call that? A voyeur something? No warriors when you get your jolly's off of what someone else is doing. Well, what do you call when you can see into the future? Clairvoyant? Clairvoyant? Oh, I just figured with a name like that, he was some kind of marketing whiz somewhere jim Miller. Where the story we tell about Jimmy Miller which told me to be sharing many times that Jimmy Miller wants found a buck all tangled up in the twine used to bind hay bales, and he freed it and then the buck kicked his as. Yeah. So anyways, today on Hunting and Fishing with Johnnie, I'm joined by my friends Rody Henderson, Hello, Ryan Callahan, Miles and Nolty and Phil the podcast engineer Taylor he um, should we have a little moment, you know, of silence for it for Steve at least the toast. I would, I would. I would really like uh to do that kind of thing people do when um, when everybody shares a word. Oh, just go around and everybody says sharing memory or something. That would be that would be it would be great. Yeah. Yeah, Well, being is how I'm more into the logistics of things. I think we gotta figure out how we'd tell the fam and then also figure out if we're just gonna keep borrowing and stuff like he's still here, just divvy it up and take it, or divvy it up and take it. Yeah, um, I'll start uh yeah, but also generous. We fish out of the day, well at least until the bite slows down. He would want Yeah, he would want that. He'd give you the shirt off his back. I learned something. So we're here ice fishing and bows in Montana. It's uh, super sunny out, so bright and sunny out that we decided to erect a nice eskimo. What's this? What's this pop up thing called the fat fish? Yeah, just like it's like a like I don't remember the numbers. It's like you wouldn't fit this thing in a trailer part. It's a very get a double wide lot. Well, Cal and I lived in it for a few days. It was very comfortable. Tell me about that. We just came back last week. We went on a little high mountain ice fishing trip, chasing around bourbon and brick trout and whatever else we could find, and we we just put the tent up and slept in it. It's big, it's insulated head tons of room for gear cots. If you just heard Brody do a very faint um, think that it was, but Brody does. Um. Oh, that's because when you're guiding and someone it's you gotta be quiet. Oh you can't be like, oh you can. That's that's that's it. Never mind. Um go on, Yeah, I'm still on the ice. You're still under the ice? How where where do you want? I wasn't prepared for this. This is you're about done. I'm busting up through the ice. Okay, Hey, Steve, I'm real quick. You're still not biting real quick? Um. A trifecta, well, okay, there's a trifecta. Finger stories. It just came in oh oh, something about people getting their fingers chopped off all the time. Um. The inspired a guy go on Instagram. I just put it up. It'll be old now, so screw by the time you hear to scroll way ass down. Uh, you'll see a great picture. A guy to send us a picture of UM snagged his old man so hard on a bad cast with a big saltwater fly. He snagged him so hard, did he? Uh? He bust it off forty pound tip on the on the forward stroke, and it was a great picture of half his old man's face with his giant hood just an inch below his eye. I posted on Instagram at Stephen Ronella. But a trifecta good finger stories came in. Guy wrote in uh oh, that might be the fish of the day there. My father is an electrician and was wearing his gold wedding band at work. That's a good conductor. Um. You know when people like to do things about like how we won World War two, like we couldn't have won World War two without beaute Montana. Yeah, because yeah, well you stole my thing. Well, there's a version that we couldn't have won World War two without the hydro electric Damns on the Columbia because smelting aluminum um requires so much electricity, requires so much energy, that we were able to out our the crowds. Mhm. Still calling him the crowds. Huh yeah, for another generation. I might have my children's children retire the anger, you know, my kids, when my kids have kids, I'm gonna have him go to Yanni solds this party and chop into the log their anger at the Germans having fired upon their great great grandfather. And it'll be gone after and then the family um, the family animosity towards the German army, we'll be over. Uh. They shot a hole right through my dad's rain Poncho Brody scared ship out of them. I get it. I got it. And I could tell you some more horrible stories. Uh. He made me lose, betraying thought things that won the war. Oh yeah. There's an argument that our hydro electric projects along the Columbia UM I don't know where it is articulated, was like we were able to produce aircraft and at such like an astonishing rate because we had such an ample supply of electricity from hydro electric projects. I'm not telling you this is a fact. I'm telling you this the theory I heard another one Cal explained the one you were given. Well, uh, beaut was uh producing more copper than any other place in the world at that time. And and are all of our a bunch of stuff for fitting out chips and everything else, but also brass for shell casings. And I heard wiring that like the Manhattan Project, all that stuff was gold wiring. Oh wow, Um, there's a great there's a guy. Uh, Ed, there's a right if everyone to read a story about all this. Ed Dobbs has a long article about beaute in the in the metal mining and butte called pennies from hell. Um. It's a good explanation of what we're talking about anyhow. But why was I talking about that? Though? Somehow I'm figuring this power plant or the damn has to do with someone losing a finger. Oh it does. God, thing I was saying that gold is a good conductor is what I was trying to get at, because about the Manhattan Project and how they use gold wiring. So guy, his old man's an electrician, he's got his gold wedding ring on it. Work does all makes sense? Now? He got to energize wire in contact with his wedding band on one side and the ground wire on the other side. Melted the wedding band into his finger and had to have it surgically removed. Now he just has the scar ring and doesn't need to wear a wedding ring anymore. He's scarred into like marriage. Uh, scarred into marriage, scarred out of marriage. I mean you see guys do their gals tattoo the ring on similar concept? Another guy? Uh right, so north Uh, same guy? So the man, the man that did this to his finger. Okay, he gets in his head to make a jewelry box for his wife for Mother's Day using some locally sourced Russian olive from along the Yellowstone River. M hmm, that's cool. Probably some squirrels around there too, loses the whole damn finger on the router couldn't find the finger in A week later, they found it stuck to a window in the shop. WHOA last place you looked? Last place she looked? Um? Right? Oh, go ahead. Oh. I was making a bunch of foe sighting for the first light Trade show booth, and I had to drive it all down to Salt Lake City and and was on a real tight schedule, and I had to go came up a little short, so I swung by the wood shop that I was borrowing and was zipping. You know, I was basically making veneers, right, which just take the fancy looking face off aboard and cut it real thin. And then you just take that so it's not structural or anything, it's just ornamental. Um and and put my thumb right into the end of the blade on the table saw. But you still have it, still have it. But I'll tell you, um, immediate recognition of the whole situation, right Kelly might explain to people how you're fishing and why effectively. Yeah, no, I give up. You're right. That's why earlier I thought you were wrong. You didn't invent this, But I just dropped his fish as the whole explain your explain your approach, cal Then I got one letter, the last of our trifecta finger story. So the the approach is basically just using the rod and real dead um, dole out enough line and keep the line organized and out of the way, and then I just hold onto the mono filament and jake with my fingertip. Um. I'm over here just doing it like the old timers with the pole. But the reason being is like, I'm just not a good I don't have the feel that you Midwest folks do for perch. Yeah, I can see that. Uh. Here's the final one, final finger story. I like this couple. It's a couple and for Valentine's weekend, they're going wolf Fund okay and uh a little Valentine's trip. But as they're loading up the uh. As they're loading up aside by side into an enclosed trailer, the dad has the mom guiding the winch line. Oh right. At the first knockle oh, he says, happy Valentine's Day? Do you remember that one forever? Uh, Here's what I've been wanting talk about for a long time. A guy from in the U. S. Marines. This is this is like you pay. Like most of stuff we talked about, you just ignore, but don't ignore this. The guy in the marine says he's watching our show Meat Eater on Netflix, and he notices that when I am scanning my surroundings, I scan left to right, which is true. And he's not talking about through binoculars. He's just talking. He just walked up onto a little rise and he stopped you take a look around. He said that we get used to this because in our culture, not all culture like Jap In Japan, like you start at the back of what we'd call like the back of the book and read it right the wrong way. Um here right we read. We do a lot of uh, left or right. He's saying that in the Marine Corps, they are taught to scan right to left. Does it make stuff jump out? Because it makes things jump out. I've been doing it. It is not the same like because you're so used to going and just moving too fast, you go to like I just started looking out my window because I scanned the hill behind my house all the time, and I scanned it left or right, and I started doing it right left. It's a different experience, man, you experience everything differently trying to look right to left. I think it's a guy. I need to do both ways because it's different, Like your eye hits different ship going right to left. It's a good tip, hot tip. Last last story, the finger losing stories. Lad to you if people who regular listeners have been following UM lead you a lot of nipple losing stories. Uh nipple ripping? Is anybody actually lost in this guy did feeding a horse. Oh as a kid holding a bunch of hay for a horse. The horse got a gro and irritated took the nipple off. That's terrible. I'll bounce for my mom's horse. Bit right through my jeans. One time, he says he gets fans. Get everything back. It's a guy telling us about his buddy that has happened to him. But he says he gets fanom nipple syndrome now and he gets within a hundred feet of a horse and his good nipple starts to twitch. You think of that, I'm gonna close out a horse coming. I'm gonna how do you know? I'm gonna close out this round with what I think might be a bogus finger losing story. Guy. The guy says they used to always sneak into us to a swimming pool they weren't supposed to swim into, and one day they get busted, so they run out of the pool and jump the fence and his buddy loses his finger jumping the fence. Then later they go back to find it and check this out. This is I have a hard time believing this is why we might be tied up and finger losing stories because it might be that it's just entered the bullshit, he says, they go back and find a different finger. I mean, is they're like, yeah, dude, what do you do? Then? Do you be like, well, put it anyway? It's a finger. That's what I've got. Cal uh a woman sent Have you seen this box that we just got in the mail? We got a box full of a bunch of kinds of baby hand sanitizing wipes and ziplock bags that are marked one says Ryan and one says Steve. And it was at uh watcher of the show remarking on how filthy we seem to be all the time and our filthy food handling techniques, and thought that we would uh be wise to start carrying these labeled bags full of these wipes, thank you, you know, which got me thinking. I had a note for a long time to talk about a thing like we used what a lot a lot of wet wipes uh in in in place of toilet paper in addition to toilet paper backpacking, and um, I made a note to talk about this when you get a cold morning and you got a frozen one? Yeah, how much that? What I like to do is I take to have frozen one out and I actually tuck it against my skin on my shoulder up. That's the first thing I do. Then I pulled my pants down and you know, no, you gotta you gotta think ahead. Then I had that sucker and it is wet and warm. That's a hot tip, man, That's better than scanning all that left it right. I'm not not a traditional uh baby wipe you user, you know, you know it's I always get disgrunt told with extra stuff and what is extra stuff? And what's just like, yeah, but what about extra stuff on your butt? Well? Uh, Miles and nys uh. Like that last ice fishing trip, I was having a bit of what they call monkey butt your jap ass, Yeah, a lot of a lot of later like, I don't like calling it monkey butt, but um but hold on now, Well you might not be talking about two different things, but I feel like monkey chap has this to do more with like the the outer meat in the chaffing and then where your butt cheeks. But it can happen from having a poopy bottom, I think, and not to me, but I've heard from reliable people. Well, even if it's not that, I feel like the solution, though, clarify, is to get get again, talk about what the problem is exactly. Oh, just like a chap butt cheeks where they rubbed cheeks. We're talking cheeks. Yeah, yeah, because it's a friction sitch here. Spinster is fine. Yeah, yeah, I think people's spinsters have anything to do with chaps, but I think, oh, but sometimes I've had an irritated spinster from I'm sorry, how are you think the word you're looking at we're talking about hold his heroes. It's like talking to the who's the guy Colonel Clake? The way it's a tough one. I'm gonna take a shot at it. Uh, spin spinters, there's no season. I just call it one of my orfic So. We had wickedly lower temperatures, right, and um, all we know is like in Town, the one night hit thirty six below in Town. I think we had a bit of an inversion so it was warmer. But also we had a bottle of bourbon freeze up there, so that's when you know you're fishing. Yeah, the bourbon freezes, and I've never seen that happen. We woke up in the morning and the bottle was frozen solid and I did a little extra research on that, and it seems like most folks agree that, um, somewhere in that negative fourteen a negative eighteen range is what it takes to freeze a bottle of eight proof whiskey. I said bourbon first, but you know whiskey anyway. Um, So I went out to one of our ice fishing holes that we hadn't been using and just punched a hole through that and gave myself a good, good cleaning out there on the ice and really totally fine, even at you know whatever, negative four teen to eighteen to twenty, it's totally fine, like, and I didn't walk away from that being like, man, I wish I had baby wipes. Yeah, I'm with you, baby wipes spring up, but there's a disposal issue, yes, with baby wipes. And what I like is I like these single use wet ones. Granted I don't use them every time, the single use wet ones, because what I'll do is I just do like though, uh, it's just a light touch up, a light check, a quick check at the end with a wet wipe. Then I just tuck it back into its little baggy. Okay, got you? But or you can dry it out if you got time, you dry it out in the sun and you can burn it. Yeah. I don't have any babies, cal I think if you had a couple of laying around, you'd use the wet wipes. I'm gonna advocate for wet wipes beyond just just the be hole though. Like when I was when we were guiding a wilderness cab in Alaska and you didn't get to bathe very often, Like taking one of those the end of the day and just kind of hitting up the necessary areas with a quick once over really kept you going and kept you fresh enough for like however long you had to be out there. It was. It was kind of a lifesaver. You ever see the giant ones called like shower in a bag, it's an ample. It's like an ample sized wet white for doing a wipe down at night. You feel good sometimes you know, it's amazing, like you need nicely done, nice man. That's the howie Jake, uh yep, yep, y honest tell everybody about about your People have been asking like how you got kind of like equit being on the show and everything. You threw that one back too. I thought that was a big one that's a fat perch. Uh yeah, there, we haven't pulled one out of the ice. It isn't a big pregnant female. You know. They're a free cast spawner. Oh they are. I thought they did so. No nests. No, they like to go off wind points and stuff, and free cast spawn Let's try to blue bluegill being a bluegill being a nest spawner, bed spawner. Let's try to keep eggs eggs and see if we can't cure them. Have you ever done that? We fry them, but you know I've fried him and I've poached him. I have not tried curing perch eggs yet. Well it's very simple to do so it wouldn't take but minutes to try it. So Miles, you're actually being humane over there and and dispatching your fish. That is what I do. I know not everybody agrees, but I don't think you can disagree with it. I think it'd be more like whether you take the time every time. I think I think that's a better way of putting it. Uh yeah, Like, let's say a big thing grab. We talked about four, but big thing grabs you brooties on big thing nice perch a big thing, grabs you and drags you under water, has no intention of letting you go. Would you rather it drove a big spike through your head or the wait until you uh, you know, died. I'll take the spike through the head. Yeah, you've been gone a lot, mum. Can you tell people what you've been like? The project we've been working on. We've been working on project called the tentatively called the fur Hat Ice Fish Tour. Is there to keep hearing that there might be a different title, I like, there's no. I don't think who did you hear that from? Miles was involved in one of the conversations. What do you guys think about calling it? No? No No, No, it's it's just that we're kind of separating out some episodes into the tour part, coming to the local part. It's gonna be fur hat ice fishing, no questions. The ones that I worked on hat, yeah, the ones that we went on were you know, when we were traveling around that's the fur hat ice Tour. Yeah. Because I made it a point to packground not only my for beaver fur hat, but also Steve's dad's uh coon skin fur hat, and then Steve's beaver fur hat and uh a lot of the guests that we uh speared and fished with for him. We're quite excited about it. And listen, man, those hats are no jo, They're amazing. Dude, Cal warm a f cal and I I slept. I was told on Instagram that I moved farther away from being a boomer by using a F in my post the other day. Yeah. I guess that's like a real hip thing to do, anyhoy. Uh So yeah, so Miles and I Miles have been producing this content and we took a couple of videographers with us. I want to right now formally put to rest any notion of this not being the fur hat ice tour. Okay, chief creative officer speaking, um and uh yeah. We went to uh Minnesota first and we fished unnamed or speared and unnamed lake very the very very first thing with Mark Norquist. Not that it's unnamed. You just don't want to get into it. Yeah, it has a name. It has a name, but he asked us to keep it. I got you keep his spot quiet. And uh we spirit some pike and some whitefish. Uh. And then Chef Lucas Leaf Uh cooked us up some delicious whitefish cakes and uh what else some fried pike. It was really good, delicious. You know, years ago we did some white fish spearing on Whitefish Bay. Hm. You know on the record the Adaman Fitzgerald, he says how they would have made Whitefish Bay had they put fifty more What does Gordon say? Does he say fifteen more miles hinder? The searchers all say they'd have made white Fish Bay if they'd put fifteen more miles behind her? Yeah, that sounds anyways in that bay? What what what happened with your fish? Uh? And the spirit at bay? And uh? Did you guys line the bottom with anything for for visibility? No? Because it turns out that and and everywhere we have speared as had the same rule. You can't really do that. You can't lay down anything that you can't retrieve it's organic matter. That's a good rule. Because we were just kind of like younger and not didn't really think things through as much. We would sliced potatoes very thin, Yeah, and then drop sliced potatoes down the whole to where you got a nice white bed on the floor wild so you can see the fish pass over it because it was deep, murky water and you'd have those taters down there. But what's funny about it is there a current. So you guys have some dude outside the hut drill a hole and the current would vary. So some guy outside the hut would drill a hole and fired down the potato slice and you yell out like a little farther and they gotta go and drill another hole and drop tato slice and you're staring down your hole and try to see that if also when he's out on bull's eye, it's like live ammo. You know. Then you start firing in tat slices because they're they're bombing in at the right spot. But my brother Danny, he really kind of pioneered this for our group of friends. And uh but man, you'd fish all you well, you like drinking fish all day to get a handful of these fish. But man, was it fun. And then you're shandy. You had to have your name on your shane. Remember one year they had their name on the shanty. But this thing froze in like wood and it throws into a degree. You weren't getting it off, so they tried to just leave it begin being young and dumb, they tried to just leave it, and then they got a note us like get your shanny, and they came out and had to burn that son of a bit out of the ice. There was no getting it out of the ice, which is also illegal most places. So I wonder if there's like a middle ground there where you could be like, well, I put a bunch of pontoons. I fixed a bunch of pontoons to the shannon and tied it to the beach, waiting for it to float. All right, So I'm sorry, guys, No, that was a good divergence. And I've never I've never done I mean, I've done open water ocean spear fishing before, but I've never done ice spearing before. The difference being that you're throwing a spear through a hole in the ice. Yeah, it's really but it's a it's a hell of a lot of fun. I didn't know how I was gonna feel about it. You know, there's a lot of sitting and waiting, and I didn't know how that was gonna go. But man, I I don't know about you, Johnny, but I thought that was that was great. I'm gonna have like a final wrap up thought comparing general ice fishing, like what we're doing now to spe Oh no, I haven't got it. You haven't even started yet. I know I have a lot to go through. Because you want to talk about the sturgeon. Yeah, so, uh yeah, we speared there and then we went over to Lake Winning Bank explained the process. You want to get deep here. I wanted to. I want you to tell people about because you've engaged in three kinds of spearing, northern spearing, white fish spearing, sturgeon sparing. True, but the white fish and the northern sparing was through the same hole. And no, but they're not drawn to the same thing they are. Yes, we were using the same decoys. Oh, you know, we used to use the lure men. Sorry, In amongst the tator slices, we're a lot of boiled the smallest macaroni you could find boiled. And you felt like that was chilling him. You do I feel like it eating the macaroni? Yes, I bet they were taking them for a little grubs that look just like CM knows in and he's picked the macaroni that landed off target and watch him and the son's bitches to be down there eating maxi. So why were you were you spearing him because that was the only legal method of take Why weren't you fishing with macaroni? Uh? These were a species of whitefish called monominee and they have a they have a mouth that would make like the pupil of your eye look big too. But they would go down and kind of it's just like very hard to hook. Uh. And it was deep and you didn't throw the spear. It was a very heavy weighted spear with very fine needles, many needles, probably like twenty needles across. We used to make our own. We made some of her own. Uh. And it wasn't like a fan blade that you could propel that you couldn't like you know that white Some of those white fish spears have like a what's the word I'm looking for plane, like the even plane them like you could shoot off at an angle. This you would have to hold over it directly over the fish eyeball down it and just open your fingers and let it fall. And it was waited like you take a pipe and fill the pipe of lead, and out of that pipe with all these needles and drop it on them them the bottom but small little fish, but there's no way they'd come into the same lure you'd use for a northern. So you're picking up fishing taters at the same time fishing taters. It's funny you mentioned that because you're right now and then you would get a tater. You could get a tater on your thing. I'm like, I'm like a poser. Danny and and our friend Matt Rolls were they were like the guys that they pioneered it. I just would go up and visit them and and I'd go out there and you know, basically be like mooching off them, like their ship, their spot there, no how and I'd be it sounds fun right, Yeah, we wanted to do that. Like I said, when we were spearing for the pike and whitefish, were not allowed to put anything down that you couldn't retrieve, and the water was pretty clear. We were only spearing probably five six ft right um where you could really see the whole bottom, which was sweet because when the perch came in. Of course they did that when we didn't have a rod ready, and then the next day we had a rod ready, the perch didn't come in, but you could just sit there and watch them hanging out doing their thing, and you know it's nice you just watching watching the the plant life down there moving around the current. When you're just staring into a hole that where there's no bottom, it's a little bit tougher. You know, it doesn't have quite have that slow TV field because you're you're fishing northeast in such deep water slow I mean sorry, shallow where we could see the bottom very well, so we didn't need staring into a hole with no bottom. Well that comes later. That that's the sturgeon. Can you do it? Can you discuss this form in a way that it's outlined, like what the how we moved through the tour? Is that what you're asking? No, I want to outline by fish, So picture like Roman numeral one, yeah, and under that is what I'm also like fishing, so I might not miss something. But what are we on right now? We're still on pike and whitefish at the at the first stop. Okay, But but I don't want to talk about them in the same way. But well it's hard not to because we were doing the exact same thing. One would just show up or the other one. We literally changed nothing, nothing same speeds, same decoy, same whole, same everything I do it. Um. Yeah, so well, if you really want to start a step one, we went out there, we drilled a hole. We drilled, drilled, and then peeked down into that hole with the jacket over are our heads to check for clarity and for depth. And when Mark felt like we had both of those nails, and what did he like? Uh again that you know? I think he was looking at five to six ft of depth and looking for just good clarity so that we could see fish coming through and a hole in the weeds that were looking And you want, you want to have a sandy spot in the weeds that you can look at, um for visibility. Yeah, not that you couldn't clear some some plant matter out of the way once you drilled your spirit hole. But then it would, you know, muck it all up. It would take a while to settle out. So it's better just to find a hole for better visibility. I'm realizing how much I missed you just hear you explain this. Um. Oh thanks, that's nice. Um. Then we drilled I think six holes kind of like what we have here right in front of us. UM in a rough three by four ft um pattern and then connected those drilled holes by using a hand powered saw that was specifically made for um cutting ice. Is it like my ice saw? I don't know if I've seen your saw, but like a you know, solid three foot blade folding folds. Was it blue blade? Yeah? It was to have a pin that. Yeah. You know, we used two different manual now, one of them was that blue one. And the teeth the teeth very far apart on it. Yeah, yeah, it cuts surprisingly well. I was, I was shut out. I bought one for beaver trapping, but just never used it. I used the acts and stuff. So we cut a hole and here we removed I say here because later when we did some surgeons fishing, we also cut a hole and we did something different with the ice um that we cut there, but here we removed it, put screws in it and pull it out. You know, it kind of broke apart. And so uh, he just had these giant tongs, giant metal tongs that you could grab these big chunks with and yank yank them out ice tonks. Yeah, and uh it works pretty slick. And I think it's additive when I tell you little things that I think of. I think that it's uh, it's just part of the deal. And my sister in law's ranch they still have they have a pond that was made for their ranch. Is some old ass ranch. Yeah, I've walked across that. They still have a pond called the ice pond, and they still have the ice house. That's awesome next to the pond. And the pond was made for the purpose of like it would freeze, you would cut ice and drag it into the ice house for the summer. That's really still sitting there. That's amazing. Go on, Um, So we remove the ice and then we set up a dark house. Very important when you're spearing that the inside of your shelter is black dark. It's colored dark. Yeah, I mean not all of them are, but I thinking helps because what you're trying to do is limit the reflection, any sort of reflection onto that open piece of water that you've just created. So you also throw snow all around the edges so you're not letting in any you know, light coming. The only light you want is the stuff that's going through the ice outside of your shanty or pop up tent and then coming up through the hole. I just thought of something. Tell me. Uh, this guy rode in and his body had his fish finder down, and the guy was fiddling around his own hole next to him, and his body's like, sees something, you can't tell what it is. When he sees something dropping m hm, and they think it's like a fish. They can't tell what the fish is doing, like the fishes at the surface but drop down. And later the other guy realizes his phone was gone, the heat on on his flash er he'd watched. The guys were go on, I'm done. I'm I'm just gonna keep my thoughts. That's too bad. We don't believe you. I'll make a bet. No I woke. It's so annoying. Gone. Um. So there we were inside of our blacked out I sent miles were using an Eskimo I sent similar to this one. Weren't we exactly like this one? One time I was out ice fishing. I'm joking and uh, I'm trying to think. Well, oh yeah, so the decoys, the decoys are a huge part of spearing, and Mark had decoys from maybe even as a grandfather, from grandpa, and just like they hit it in a really cool old school briefcase. Yeah, the briefcase was a hundred. The briefcase was as cool as the decoys that were inside, Like a legit briefcase. Yeah, yeah, like you know how it is. It's like random briefcase laying around nobody's using. Let's put the decoys in there, and so it was handed down. I think he said that he had he had a sort of share it with his brothers, but he he was the keeper of the briefcase. Pretty funny. Yeah, I just dug a briefcase out of the dumpster there at my condo complex. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. I just didn't feel like it should have got thrown away someone else. You found Cal's story. I want everybody to know. This is something Cal thought of, not me, but it got me thinking about what he was already telling me yesterday. Go ahead, Kel, I don't know what you're going on, but I found two pairs of boots in there too, what I'm talking about, And I didn't feel like either one of one brand spanking new, the other one spanking new ditch diggers. Yeah yeah, irrigation boots. And then the other set is like a nice pair of ropers that just need a little bit of love, but the souls like leather soles and totally in good shape. So then Cal's got to go hunting around for a home. And those the ropers that you left at my house, those are the ropers I left at your house. Yes, what a mystery. I've been asking everybody, and he's like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, there's a pair of boots out there with heels on him, laces done. Nobody knew, Well, I asked, I asked your wife if if she, I was like, I don't want to leave these with you. If they just turn into something that then you have to go take the goodwill, right. But yeah, anyway, I got this neighbor who keeps like, if you want, there's a government building right next door that's got a recycling dumpster for cardboard. And this dude like just the amount of cardboard that is in the dumpster like clogs the whole dumpster with cardboard that is totally recyclable, which ticks me off. And then he's always throwing away brand new stuff. So I'm always every time it makes me not want to go to the trash is every time I go to the dumpster, I'm climbing in the damn thing, pulling stuff out, saving the world cattle. Yeah go and uh yeah. The decoy with the pike and the white fish. We had a decoy stick which had line just between like two small nails that were pounded into the stick. Line wrapped around it, so you could just length of the line down your decoy and one guy if you if your spear with two guys, one guy sits there and and uh works the decoy stick. And the decoys have fins on them that aren't there just for looks, but actually you can tweak them. They're usually like alluminum, so you can adjust them, and how how much the decoy um sort of planes out, and how wide of a circle it makes when you drop it, so you can sort of, you know, jake it fast, jake it slow, and then just let it glide. And some of them, if you bring to the top of the hole, they'll glide for I don't know, ten seconds before it quits moving. Were these guys not into the Are they not into that little real there's a real you hang from your know, some guys will do the pulley system. None of the people we were with did they go direct Rod yeah, I mean it's pretty. It's not even calling a rod is not it's a stick jiggin pole. It's just like a stick you pick up off the ground, a couple of nails pound. It looks more like Harry Potter's wand than a fish and pole. Do you guys get the impression? Though? The actual look of the decoy is a factor or is it just something about the size? I think for pike it matters, but for none of the others. My limited knowledge which is granted, very very small, but it seemed to me the pike we're going to be keyed into something because they were the only ones that we were spearing that are predatory fish. Yeah, and when they came in, some of them came in hot, you know, and like looking like they're gonna smash your decoy. I don't think we actually ever had one want to actually eat it, actually eat it. Okay, But well those guys like say, ah, this white and red decoy is not working. I'm gonna try the green and yellow one for sure. It ain't no use. It ain't no use. The red and white was actually the hot call was and is this stuff that we can look forward to on some footage, you're gonna see it, and then it's so far below the ice. Do you want to work that because you want to bring them up right, you want to bring him up into spear range. Well, the bottom was only six ft away, and I speared fish from the bottom all the way up to probably two ft below the surface. When we used to set tip ups, like if we're setting tip ups and tw water, we and this is in Michian where you can use live bait, h if you're in water, we would we would hang that suckermento six ft off the bottom, thinking that he just has better chance of seeing it from way the hell off rather than it being down high and long. You're like, you're imagine him cruising long on the bottom and seeing that black suckermento against the white ice. That was always the logic, right, Yeah. Then it might be that he's reluctant to then leave his little zone maybe, but that was a thinking I like that. Yeah, I will say I picked up one tip from my own mistake with with pike spearing, and uh, and that is when you see one coming in, because sometimes you can see him a ways away and the one of the only really what I think was really big pike that I saw coming in. I got a little too excited, spooked him and I was like bike guys pike and that things blew out. Yeah, he didn't even come to the hall spooked, like turned and blew out and coming from a ways because of electronics or because my naked eye. Because the whole salt. Right, So you got a three by four ft hole, and um, you could were your cal i sitting are sitting opposite of each other right now here in this hut. And so if we had a hole cut here underneath us, I could probably see well passed underneath your butt. Okay, especially if a fish was two or three ft below the ice and you could see the same thing underneath my butt. Did you take that saw and angle cut your edge so you get even better visibility? You know, we had a shallow ice there. Um, but in a later spearing story we do angle cut it. Yeah, that's a good trick. It's it's it's a good trick, but it's freaking creepy. When you're sitting there, it looks it looks like there's no ice. It's it's a trip. Uh yeah, so we uh jake, they will decoy around and uh. And the thing with decoys is is that you can have the one that looks like a fish, redhead, white body, chart, shrews, whatever. And then the next thing the guys like, yeah, but you know what my favorite is is this golf ball. And he's got a golf ball with an islet sticking out of it, and he ties that thing on and sits there, and after ten minutes, I'm like, I'm sorry, but let's go back to the fish with the redhead. Um. They got all kinds of stuff that they'll put down there, and it's illegal to hang a sucker down in there anymore. They changed the law in Minnesota. We just found this out that you can now we had at one point we had suckers on harnesses swimming around down there. Didn't do us any good, but we tried it. That rule has changed, did he do you remember when he said it changed in the last five years. I want to say, like like like a fourteen age sucker. No, we were fishing smaller than they were, more like four inch suckers. And when you say harness, it's like a set of hooks, right, You're not like a little handmade little chest harnesses for like seeing people with their dogs these days. No, it was not hooked. There were no hooks in that that fish at all. What purely harnessed? Can you guys explain why people would choose to spear rather like kind of as Steve earlier, but like why were why were you spearing instead of fishing? I think a lot of times it's way more productive. Well, that's my question. Why we're sitting here with gigs right now? You know, many paying fish, we'd have not many ship because they're down there staring at it. We don't have a camera down by guarante either down there staring at it. I think there are a couple of answers that question. One is a lot of people get into the historic nature of it, right. Spirit has been around for a long time. It's it's a tradition. You know, Mark, who we were experiing with, was taught by his grandfather, who was taught by who knows before him, and for him there's a sense of nostalgia and pride in continuing that tradition. So I think I think for some folks that's part of it. Um with the white fish and the pike, I don't know, man, I think we probably would have done better just standard fishing. But it's so much fun. It's so interactive and engaging because you're just looking into this hole and you can see him coming in. If you're not like me and get all excited and spooked fish, they actually come in and you can spire him. That to me was it's a different way of fishing, and I found it to be differently satisfying. And then we haven't got there yet. Yeahn he hasn't got there yet. But when you get to the sturgeon, you're not allowed to fish for them with line, So that's the only way that you can take one of those fish. Okay, briefcases out you're jigging the golf ball. You go back to the red and white fish. Um. Yeah. And then eventually, sorry Brodie, eventually I'm trying to think what the first fish was it came in. Was it a white fish or a pike? To remember. But it's tricky because you're you need to make sure you know there's other fish swimming around in these lakes that you can't spear, you know, and if he's at the bottom, you'll be like, Okay, you gotta know for sure what you're what you're throwing a spear act. There's no catching release, you know, with the old spirit giant barbs on it um. So either way, I don't I can't remember as a pike or or a white fish. But yeah, I got really lucky. I think I ended up spearing two of each and then I only missed one. I had a four out of five hit ratio over the course of two days. Yeah, big whitefish. Yeah, they're both like, uh, I don't know, it's the twenty three pounders. Maybe sounds a bitch. Really, Yeah, those are nice whitefish man, Yeah, for sure. Just so folks know, these are not Mountain whitefish. These are Great Lakes whitefish, Lake Superior whitefish, right, because they're like you call him like Lake white Wish and then people get confused. But yeah, lake whitefish. That should say Great Lakes because they're all over the damn place in Alaska. I think I think they're just Lake white Wish. Yeah, they're up here in Flathead Lake. But the ones not native. They call Lake Superior whitefish because there's both, right, there's mountain white fish and ye in those cays. So what happens Jonas, Now when you go to hawk the spear. Is it a jab? Is it like? Uh, like you're hawking it. It depends on what what your targets doing. Because if he just comes in and then he knows the dcoins just sitting there and like Miles said, they were spooky and so um, you're holding you know, you have your one prong of the spear just stuck in on the far side of the ice hole, and so when you see the fish comment, you just slowly grab it and kind of get it ready the head and the heads into the heads below the water so you don't get the refraction. Yeah, and uh yeah, if he just came in and sitting there looking at the decoy, you just slowly moved right on the top of him and you can just drop it. But we had other fish, like the white fish. Really whether or not they came to the decoy hard to say, but they're pretty much just swimming through the hole. So it's like, there he is, and you're gonna throw because you're you're almost having to lead him a little bit. So I might be right and that that that white fish doesn't give a shit about that big decoy. Absolutely, I saw nothing. I was trying to I was trying to like you saw me trying to like milk it out of your honest, but we it's hard to say. I don't think we know enough to know that. I never saw a white fish that was clearly locked into a decoy. But maybe they might have been somewhat interested here that that brought them to the general area. I don't know. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah, I have only speared for whitefish two days. So once I've got a hundred days under my belt, I'll give you a better answer. You know, I got you watching through the ice with a camera. You can lower big stuff down. Little teeny fish that have no they can't have any notion that they're gonna eat it, are still like what the hell's that? Can? They approach it like out of curiosity? They're not like zooming in. Did I come by and like what the hell is that? And then just swim off curiosity satisfied. That's something different. I mean, you know you're swimming around down there, everything looks more or less the same. You see something different, you're probably gonna check it out. I've been living in this pond for a year. I've never seen that. See. Um. The thing about the spearing, though, that. Uh, And this is true for both the sturgeon spearing and this white fishing pike, is that you really get this feeling much the same way you do when you're fishing through an eight inch hole and you look out on the expanse of a giant frozen lake and you're like, man, we're really hoping these fish swim through this twelve square feet you know, and not all that other stuff. So you're like, hundreds, why not have something down there that may attract a fish, you know? Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for any missing any like interesting details about the you know, one thing and that that was different than than what we did later was the the replacement of the ice back into the hole and then setting up all the sticks to freeze into the ice just from in there, which you know, seems super obvious, but I've never done it before, and I hadn't thought of that until we got out there and Mark started cutting brush on the way out. Yeah, where I grew up, you put your Christmas tree down in there, because then when the ice melts, and this is illegal, but then when the ice melts, depending where you are, when the ice melts, the tree falls in, and then it supposed it's great for croppies. Well, we used to. We had Christmas tree sunk and you would catch croppies in the spring off those Christmas trees. Yeah, this is a separate conversation. But the reason that became illegal is because a lot of d n R bowed just for going. This is changing the pH of the lakes in a really negative way. Everybody dunk in their Christmas trees. I'm not advocating. I'm just telling you when we were young, like in high school and whatnot. Uh, we lived divorced from any divorced from knowledge. Just people. Old people did stuff and then they told you to do it, or you just did it too, know that was what you did. Red squirrels eat the nuts off fox squirrels. It's just just what happened. It's just wait, how how things are. So it's not you. You put your tree out of the ice, damn it, and so does not do they're comie. When we were done with Mark and spearing pike and whitefish, Lucas made us some nice like I was saying saying earlier, some white fish cakes delicious. So he cooked and then formed his patty or formed his patty with raw fish. Raw fish? Huh yeah, how do you? How do he mince it hand mints? Right? No, he cooked him first and then cooked him just till they were flaking, and then made his patties and then quick fry very large chunky pieces of flesh in there. You know, it wasn't all super shredded like a crab cake. Almost. Oh yeah, very much, because I was I got a whole mass at karp and I was thinking about just running through. The highly recommend food processor works good because the bones when you food process it the bones, you're cutting the bones up enough or you don't need to worry about it. What my folks used to do with suckers is they didn't do this a lot, but they now and then do it is caught up the socker, not worry about the bones and pressure pressure can it. Yeah, pressure cooking in jars and then put the jars on the canning shelf. And then anytime you're just go and take that socker meat out and the bones would have dissolved, and then you make fish cakes with them. Got it? Because the pressure cooker just zap the bone, you're gonna have to shoot me a good fish. I mean, I can whip something up. But bomber recipe for going to have one up on the website very soon from Lucas Leaf. We got one coming. That's a tip. A hot tip on fish cakes is um just you can just cook your fish. Just bake the flame, let it cool, shred it up. It's picking bones is easier once it's cooked. Shread it up. Make a fish cake good used for leftover fish too. I got one other tip from Lucas on that that I really liked, and that was just frying batter, which was just cheese. It's put through a blender. Cheese. It's pancake mix. Crucial ease pancake mix that you still have to add egg and milk and whatever, maybe oil, whatever else goes into pancake mix. Not the stuff is just just add water. That very important to him and I tried it. It came out good. I tell you gotta have a good food processor blender for the cheese. It's because you've gotta get super fine. You gotta get just as fine as the pancake mix. Otherwise, you know, when you batter in it, you end up the big chunks come out first, and then you're just starting to work with a finer and finer mix. But yeah, tell me about tell me some more efficient delicious. We headed over to uh old Lake Winnebago, uh Milax, which means thousand Lakes, Mhma, thousand Lakes. I think, just oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, I got you now mile Ax, and uh I meant a lot of very kind Midwesterners. I mean, I learned a lot about hospitality and just politeness and um, but you're from the Midwest, I know. But growing up there, how how you can't you can't you can't. Yeah, you can't judge because yeah, you're that's your home place, and all you hear about is Southern hospitality. And I'm not gonna like really dog on Southerners. I think they're they're pretty hospitable. But I'm married into the South and I've really enjoyed the hospitality down there. But now, I mean we're living out west for two decades and then going back to Minnesota and Wisconsin blown away, Like I feel like they're people will actually invite you into their house a stranger and give you like a place to eat and sleep, like just very very nice. I just want to give a plug for the old Midwest. So yeah, we went over to Middle Axe and where the plan was to go. Whileye fishing with Mandy yer You know you're not supposed to generalize. It's bad to generalize negatively, but general shouldn't it be bad to generalize positively? I mean, no one people are gonna get less pissed about it. But your point is valid at generalized positively, I think it is. I mean, that just makes people feel good. The problem with generalizing negatively is that it makes people feel shitty. Where so we got Mandy Yerke generalizing super nice people. They're super nice people and Mandy Yorke was gonna take h take us fishing for Wally. Tell me about this individual, Mandy Yerke. Uh, Mandy is remember her actual title for the Minnesota DNR. She's like a habitat planning director. She basically works on on all all manner of habitat projects. And I think she even I mean like dumping Christmas trees in. I mean it could be. It could be like a brand new um even though it's not like what you think of while life habitat, but it's it's part of land that Minnesota and our manages. But she might work on a new campground one day, infrastructure, and then it could be you know, getting a piece of land is just gonna be used for um, grouse habitat or something. Right. That's sound about right. That good job explaining, Mandy. I hope I'm doing doing your justice here. And then on the side she is a very very busy angler, professional bass angler, and then a recreational angler of just about everything. Um. And that's just now She's got a great story. I can go on for a long time. Just very quickly. She grew up in a family that owned a fishing lodge on Devil's Lake in North Dakota, and Um, out of her whole family, she was cow. You got there an old boot, uh maybe edge of the whole something cal snagged up. Um. She had brothers and a sister. Nobody took to the hunting fishing like she did, and at a young age they knew that she liked it so much that her dad just started sending her off to other outfits to learn how to be a duck hunter or a duck hunting guy, how to be an elk hunter or an elk hunting guy, And so very early on in her childhood, she was getting shipped all over the place to basically learn any and all different kinds of hunting and fishing, but she never went the guiding route. Yeah, so after she got that dialed in, she she did some guide for a while and then I don't know really what took her out of it, but uh, like I said, now she works in Minnesota, DNR. It seems to be very happy. Ah. So, yeah, she took us out ice fishing on Malax and Milax is a giant. Oh missed him. I did too. That's weird. The school came in and I'm out of the game over here messing with my setup. Uh. It took out on milax. Relax is interesting because it's got a lot of controversy going on around their fishery. They have an excellent fishery, Like when it's when the fisher biting, which they really weren't when we were there, but when they were three days prior, they can catch trophy size. While I almost one after another, that's fair safe from my understanding. We never saw it firsthand. Yeah, we saw plenty of pictures. Maybe should be in the weeds. No, I had I had a legit um it's the tightest slot limit I've ever heard of. Three a two inch slot, right, Um, what is going on? And you can only keep one now. It obviously makes for a really good fishery, but a lot of people are bummed because not too long ago you could keep six that Yeah, okay, so tight slot for a fish that people are primarily going after for food after for the fighting. No, No, they like them because they're good in the grease. Yeah, it's so to only be able to catch one is Yeah, you know what percentage of fish that you're hauling out of the ice are hitting the slot? Well? For us zero zero it's tough to catch slot limit wall over there. And and I think that part of the reason we wanted to go there is that this isn't how they got to this place with such a tight slot and such a low harvest for recreational anglers. Is an interesting story and it's you know, Minnesota DNA are trying to keep the fishery really, really healthy, but at the same time keep a few people happy. It's a it's a they're on a tight rope over there. Yeah. At the same time, that lake it's changed for a lot of reasons. Um, it's become clearer than it used to be. And miles getting correct me here if i'm if I go straight with my knowledge and how ship works. But um, when the water is a little bit dirtier, and it used to be dirtier because of zebra muscles. No, well, but it was dirtier because it was actually uh, you know, not straight up sewage, but treated you know, human gray water going into the lake, which causes micronutrients. Stuff eats micro nutrients. The bigger stuff eats that. And while I like it cloudy, they they're like they're a low light predator. And yeah, zebra muscles cleaned it up. And the fat they said, no, you can't dump this water into these lakes anymore. Cleaned it up. Hurt the walleye fishery. But it's made for a great smallmouth fishery. It's made for a great pike fishery. Trophy muskie. It's got drum, trophy drum in there, talking like freshwater drum. Yeah. Obviously what they call sheep's head over there, call them gasper goose. In Texas, what are they call gasper goose? It's a Louisiana termine. Didn't missed on the eating on those, man, Yeah, weird texture, like flames, look like they should be so good. The first bite you're like, it's not that bad, but just like a third you ever cut the enthusiasm. Yeah, we get the rocks out. My kids got a handful. The one we got to uh this summer out of river here in Montana and they were excellent. The flesh is like eating cheese kurds. It's weeks when you bite. It's that dance dance squeaky cheese, squeak man. They I'm bummed to hear that, because I was like, boy, I am gonna come back here and target. The enthusiasm does not grow as you eat the fish. Then your little kenny eat mixed like pepsi and milk, and the first city like it's good, right, but you just couldn't you know whatever finished it. Talking to a guy who knows who's a commercial fisherman in the Midwest and harvest those. He claims that he can grade the drum filets based on color and that if you find the like the pearly white ones, he claims you can't tell the difference between those and perch. He will even sell them his perch filets. Do they have any yellow to him? Then they're really only good for the smokers. That's what this guy told me. Yeah. Interesting. I was just bummed by the like the physical makeup of that fish. You look like you're gonna get a load of meat off of that thing, low yield a lot ahead. You did a great job. We caught some walley with many Um she did most of the catching. I did watch and the very interesting that I've seen now they've done all this ice fishing is just between while I on different lakes, completely different techniques, completely different like jigging strategies. Um, Mandy's jig was see maybe you can describe this. Look at my hand in my rod tip. Yeah, the old pencil. I mean it's almost just like you're you just don't have a steady hand. You got the coffee. It's like your your hands just shaking. That's I thought you were just shaky. I thought you. I thought you're demonstrating the grip. No no, no, no, no no, just a shake. That's like, yeah, you're literally And but it was funny. Is that so we're using um hummingbird uh sonars that what you call that to eyes flasher, which it's not like a true vex lar flasher, because you're just you're watching like a graph like you would on your your regular fish finder. Um, but you can see your jake down there doing that little shake. When you're doing that to it and you don't want it. There's no that you're not lifting it an inch, two inches, six inches, there's none of that. It's just the shake. Good job, gal, go on, come over here. Um, so you're sitting, you're you're actually this is where ice fishing gets interesting. I wanna see what you guys all feel about it, because here we're not looking at a flasher. There's no camera down but would be too distracted. Yeah, okay, well there we're looking at a flasher. You're not really paying attention to the hole too much. You're pretty much just watching that graph, and all of a sudden, you're your Your bait depends on what colors you set up. Your bait's like a little squiggly blue line, and you're watching it shake around. Every now and then you lift it just to make sure that's what you're looking at. And the bottom is red, and every now and then again again a red line the size of a fat night crawler lifts up off, comes up out of the bottom, and that's what a wall I looks like. And it comes right underneath your little jiggly blue line and just kind of suspense right underneath it. At that point you start this sort of dance with that red line, your blue line with the red line, and it's you jake a little bit less. You stop, maybe for two or three seconds, and at this point you're waiting for the tug, but you might, you know, lift it up a little bit. The red line follows. Sometimes you get to take. If not, you drop it back down or the red line loses interest. And again red line is this wall I down there, loses interest, drops back down to the bottom. So you drop your bait back down and you're just trying to hold it, you know, inches from his nose. Just just eat me, eat me, eat me. And um, it seemed like I, like I said, I only caught maybe I don't know, three or four over the course of two days, maybe five. Um, it seemed like the bite I would jack jack jake, or shake, shake, shake, and I would just let it sit still. In three or four seconds into letting it said still, you'd feel a tug and you pull the walleye out, did not catch a single one in the slot. Manishing real hard for me, man real hard. Yeah. I think well, within the group, you know, we had some other people helping, and while we were manning, I were fishing, they'd be fishing off by themselves, and I think we end up catching a couple over the slot. Most of them were shy, most of them were eighteen to twenty inch type fish. Um and uh but no nothing in nothing in the slot. I mean we got him and then we got him at twenty four. Uh. And you know that's which makes sense. That's such a popular like so many people fishing. Any of those fish that are in the slot, they're coming home with people like you gotta think there's a lot of people who just avoid that lake, right, Like, well, I'm just just want to not mess with this trophy lake. And I'm not I'm not like I don't know enough to criticize. I'm not criticizing the management decision there. I'm just saying for me personally, like I view walleye as waal air for eating. That's why that's why that lake is an interesting story, right because it's not that far from the twin cities. Tons of people grew up walleye fishing there and taking tons of fish out, and the the fishery has changed, and more and more people are fishing it right, and they want to make sure that they've still got a walleye fish man so said, not being critical, No, no, I get it, I get it. But to me, it's it's not a sense of like whether or not you're being critical. It's it's that this, if you're looking it at the universe of fishing stories, that one, to me is worth checking out because of all the things, folks, all the things that different things that are having to balance. They are the different user groups, the amount of anger that exists in that community toward that slot. Yeah, people are up in arms, and well, you know it's not permanent, not necessarily. No, the fishery rebounds, oh man. But if folks could have the ability I'm saying in general, you go to these fisheries or hunt areas, if folks had the ability to look beyond what they're doing that day, the world would be a much different place. I mean, my gosh. And the other thing is funny, there is, yeah, the the walleye fishery, it's still great. It's not what it used to be. But people are piste off and they have one of the best, arguably the best small mouth fisher in the country now as a result of the changes to the water clarity there right like when when it was really turbid and the walies were kicking ass because they can outcompete everything else. Now you have much clearer fishery. Small Mouth there really really good. They're not an ice fishing fish on that lake, but in the summer they are. And pike are really really good. And they heard a number of people in the Midwest tell me that that is the best trophy muskie fishery around, hands down. Period. Like you want to get musky. It's like Green Bay or there. Just changes. It's just funny to complain about. You know. I'm so piste off about this. We have great small mouth and musky. Now I'd prefer to catch either one of those fishes, just like the pace of wildlife management is never going to meet the pace of expectations will be good. T shirt, Well, I tell you what, they have them not figured out that small mouth tastes almost as good as while I either. I brought that up to a lot of them. I'm like, why don't you guys just start frying small mouth? I mean, really, if you're gonna like put some bunch of batter and seasonings on it and then fry it, eat the small mouth. No, no, no, you know those are those are just for catching relates. I'm like, oh, well, maybe you guys will learn later. I know that on the half shell gets tire something for folks, but that's man. You cook that thing on the trigger. Indirect heat is all it is. But with the skin on, scales on, skin on small mouth. Yeah, and that fat just bubbles up through the meat and you can take that hook your fingernail into that skin and just give it a little shake and that whole slides right off. The whole chunk of meat just slides onto whoever is played. Oh my gosh. It makes a guy like me who can't play anything, well, look a real guy, all right, jump into the sturge and Johnnie. Yeah, that's pretty much what we did with Mandy, right, try to try to catch while I and trying to understand what was going on in Molex. Yeah. So we left Minnesota, came home for a bit, then we went over to with Skans and and uh yeah, first thing we did was went to Lake Winnebago for the opener of sturgeon spearing season. Miles and I had applied for sturgeon spearing permits back in I don't know, sometime in the summer October, October October maybe, And if you apply, you get one. It's not like a draw thing. Now. Lake Winnebago is part of a chain of lakes that um, the what river that's oh Man Wolf River. Well, somebody comes the fox further on down you can correct us, um and uh, the upper Upper River Lakes have a permit, uh fishery there because as well get into your we've we had a spear, deeper, dirtier water. The Upper Upper River Lakes are clear and they're shallower and so there you're much like you just see you more sturgeon. To point to make it make sense, Lake Winnebago has about a five percent success right, the upper Lakes are closer to like fifty or sixty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. It takes about seven years. Don't apply because Steve and I are starting to apply, um this year and we want to go and everybody messing us all up. Yeah, so don't apply. It's not that cool. I'm gonna make it sound cool, but it's not that cool. So, yeah, we hooked up with Jake Andrews his whole family. Uh and uh when I say his whole family then includes a bunch of cousins. Uh. They they make up for at least point five percent of sturgeon spears on Lake Winnebago. No, I'm kidding. It did seem like that though. Um. Yeah, and the and the Floyd family helped us out a whole bunch. And Uh, Jake is like the he's sort of the captain of their sturgeon spearing team, and he does a lot of the scouting, which I'll get into what that looks like, and he helps everybody get set up. Everybody else pretty much rolls in besides Buddy Brian. Bryan also is hardcore, but pretty much everybody else. I think we had seven or eight total shacks. Everybody else just rolls in for cut in day, which I'll explain a second, and then they fish for the season and then they're done. Jake's out there not year round, but once the ice comes he's thinking about surgeon, getting ready for for sturgeon spearing. Everybody just draws off his teeth. Yes, for sure. And he's very happy to be helping everybody out. He really carries that like he feels a lot of pride in anybody spearing Sturgeon from because he's put so much time and effort into it, and he feels a lot of pressure. Uh, Like the first day, he's like, as soon as someone just sees one and we can say yes, we're like we've chosen. Well, we're in a good spot. Somebody saw a surgeon. Pressure, he can relax a little bit. Um. So uh, yeah, we hook up with him. So prior to us sucking up with him, his scouting um and miles. You can tell Phil if we get if I get to too many details here, we're gonna cut this out. But a lot of a lot of people do this. They go out and they look, you're protecting his trade secrets. We there are certain things we can talk about and a few just a couple of things their trade secretar trade secrets. Yeah, so I think I think you got to start this. I'm sorry I interrupted. Yeah. Well, the first thing that they figure out is is it a shed or shad year? Yeah or not? Or not? Yeah? And well, there's a fish in there called the gizzard chad, which is a non native correct and it's at the northern end of its limits. So on a warm year they come up in there and they spawn and they do real well. Um, and they die off every year because the water just gets too cold for him right to get this massive shad die off a lot of years. If it's just too cold altogether, they just don't show up in that in that lake at all. Right, So if it is a shad year, all these shad um it tripped me up at first. I was like, well, hold on, how does a bottom feeder all of a sudden start eating on shad. Well, he's still eating on the bottom because he's just eating dead ones. So yeah, he never chased you never hear it Like we used to see those big shad die offs where I grew up, and all kinds of fish would get on the bottom and eat those things, catfish and all stuff. So if it isn't, if it is a shad here, then he's got his orbits endorsed guide head doing me a lot of good today. It's supposed to be doing me good if you're an endorsed guy. Um, So if it is a shad here they find the big beds shad and they're basically gonna spear over these shad beds because you can get a lot more protein out of a shad um. It probably takes I don't know, a hundred red worms, and a red worm is basically a chronomid larva, so I don't know. Maybe the biggest one was an inch long, maybe maybe half an inch more likely. And uh so this year it was not a shad year. So you gotta go out and find worm beds. Okay, worm beds are there there year after year, but like the the nucleus of the worm bed could change by fifty yards two hundred yards maybe fifty ft looking for density density exactly, so they got these. Jake had his own homemade contraption which basically looked like a coffee can wormometer with U with closing flaps at the bottom and uh, drill hole, drill two holes. You can you need a second hole later, drop your can down there and it's on a change. You can kind of hand the bottom with it just a little bit, and then on like the third or fourth pound, drop it in there and the old flaps are open and then you pull up the secondary chain which closes the flaps, and you basically have taken a substrate sample. This is great, man three. So what's an example of something you can't tell me? This is high level? This is like high test fishing. Yeah, but there's a lot of guys doing this, not a lot, but I think we asked and he thinks that maybe like ten ten of the surgeon spears are doing worms. And then he knows even more stuff you can't tell Yeah, and give me like like tell me pig latin. You gotta think, you gotta just think that this right here is a level that a lot of people would be like, yeah, I know of it. I don't want to deal with it, but it makes me curious about what is the thing he's doing? Absolutely pe in the hole? Did he take anything? Like yeah, yeah, we filmed so yeah, but like was the mud just crawling with those worms. We didn't actually get the film because he'd done all this this scouting beforehand, so when we filmed it, it was it was sort of like after the fact. We didn't get We didn't prove around until we got a real dense Yeah, but he'll basically run a grid pattern and then may and then draw it down on a piece of paper and then start writing numbers of per sample, you know, three worms, five worms, six worms, three worms, and then all of a sudden it gets to tent. I can't remember what his threshold of good was, but I think eight or more. And so then he'll go out from that point and sort of triangulate and be like, okay, right here, there are in these five holes around it, there are more worms per scoop than everything around it, So this must be the where the money shot is. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, it's like gold prospecting. Yeah for sure. Now other guys also will go out and and just literally sit in a shock watching a camera over a weren't better not waiting for a scusgeon scouting to go trail like running a trail camp. Yeah, but you can't. There's no like trail camp for under water, So you just sit there trail camera. Yeah. Um, And they like get onto one, like he's here, this is a zone. Well, I think again, you're looking for like consistency. No, you're not looking for one particular st an area. They like, yeah, you're like, okay, I was in this zone and I saw three today because this is a big gass lake, huge and the density of sturgeon is not very high. There's one surgeon for every four acres of lake. Yeah yeah, so let me just like put that into perspective when you're you're hoping, just put it a quarter sturgeon for acre. It was a very weird way. They're big fish or quarter one. Um. No, ship, this is great. It was very interesting, very interesting television program, I hope so so yeah, Jake had the spot picked out. Am I missing anything else? Oide of scouting? Not that we can talk about. God Man, would I like to know the secrets? Just teasing that out there? Yeah yeah, um, but he I think I think one of the things to mention is that it's not like he just goes out and samples once to go I'm good. He'll go out day after day before work and keep checking, like is his worm bed still here? Is this still the center for months? As long as he's got good ice up until opener. I'm gonna go out on a limb and he goes out in the dark man to do this, But I'm gonna go on a limb and suggest that this man is not a skier. This man does not ski, not in fun to act. This is a true outdoors he is a he is a I don't know what you call a guy that that runs a um sugar shack, a tapper, a tapper, tapper sapper. You can just throw it into the foraging bucket though, you know, Okay, so here you are, you got your worms down there, you know you're on the worms. Yeah, so you're not allowed to put a dark house spearing shanty. Now, these shanties are specifically built just for spearing sturgeon. You do not, I mean, I guess you could, but it sounded like these shanties are out for the two week sperience season and then they're back in your yard for the rest of the year by law. Yeah. Well again you could use you could go out there and jill holes and just ice fish through it. But I don't know why people must use different for that reason. But these are set up there, man, I forget the dimensions. He's got probably uh ten by six, twelve by six. I know that it was six wide. Yeah, I think I think they were all exactly same. It was right around there. They came in different shapes and they get into painting them you know, the classic one is um finishing like a in a sheet metal right riveted corners and then like a pretty plain two or three ft like spray painted or plasma cut sturgeon. And it's got to have your name and address on it. You know. There's what we saw one that looked like a Green Bay Packers helmet. We saw one that was painted as uh Pink Floyd Dark side of the Moon, so people get into it, uh that the Money's on. I feel like Money kind of ruined that album. I don't know if i'd say I go back for it. It was the radio hit um so that you can only put them out there the day before and the day before it is called cutting day because you're gonna cut in a giant hole in the ice. So we roll out there. Jake's like, I'm putting my shack right here on the money spot. You guys all make a horse shoe around me, and yeah, and I forget exactly what that was for. Maybe just the Wi Man, maybe luck, but how much maybe the way the worm bed was running. I can't remember how much of a between shacks. Yeah, what's you're spacing like? Probably fifty feet? Okay, you're not jumping, No, no, you got I mean there, you're not right on top of each other. Yeah, if someone if something happens in a nearby shack, you can hear him yelling. Could you have jumped down, swam over and popped up. That would be a great trick, would be a good way to get jab the spirit? Yeah, oh my goodness and die. Oh so yeah, we um cut in day. We all pull out there. That's not a legal thing though, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't. You can't cut in and set out till the day before. So everybody's out there on cutting day, everybody. But after the season it's okay. You said that you can hang out in your shanty after the season. You can't cut your big holes. You can't have spearing holes after the season or before. Oh okay, okay, I cut the day before the season opens is what we call cutting day. You can you can start setting up for spearing, but you can have a bole four season one season ends. I'm with you now, I understand. Um. Yeah. So it's like a mad flooded people and Jake to protect his spot. We actually didn't go out until late afternoon because people know what he looks like. Drives. He scouts. He knows they know this group, and he doesn't want He believes that the surgeon do react a little bit to activity, especially a lot of truck activity. Um. And so he wanted he liked a spot that was quiet. Like we only had a couple of other shanties outside of our group that were like within a couple hundred yards of us. There's plenty that were four or five yards away. Um. But he wanted a quiet spot. And so we waited until pretty late in the day to go and do the cut in. So we all these shanties are on um uh, their sleds basically runners. The ones we had weren't on runners. They were actually he had full suspension. But you have them on runners, you have them on wheels, you have on a full suspension. They're all people are dragging him out there in any way they can anyway they can get them out there, if you can move a shed or shanty or shack. And and a huge variance between the really really nice ones that are you know, hooked up on tongues and have a full suspension and the other ones that looked like someone just took their plastic gardenship and there's a guy low playing that actually makes the frame and the trailer that everybody builds their custom shacks on. And it's set up in such a way that you basically unhook a couple um pins and the tongue lifts up and that lets the shock fall down onto the ice um. So yeah, you kind of you mark your spot and where you want it and uh then he bust out of chainsaw and uh cut yourself a like I said, ours was probably the biggest hole because he has the biggest hole inside of his shanty and it was six by three maybe three and a half. You had to be able to jump over it, just big enough that when you go to jump over it, you're like, pay attention, dude, you don't you know, pass me the trail mix. And at the same time, you know, like you're like, where's the safety bar to hang onto as I cross this chasm? Oh, so you take a chainsaw and cut it, and like you said, you cut at an angle. It's it's funny because you think it would have to be steeper to get that effect that you were talking about where you can just see farther and there's not an edge of the edge of ice that you're looking at. But it wasn't that steep of an angle. I mean maybe I don't know fifteen degrees, and uh it's spooky because it's spooky for me because Jake cut the first two edges. I'm like, Okay, I get it. You have to hold the chainsaw opposite handed, which will work good for you being a lefty, so that you're always keeping your air intake. I don't. I don't hold us all that way up top rightow I throttle with my right hand. Okay, so it'd be opposite for you to but yeah, you hold it. I held it opposite so your air in takes up top so that and your blades always running bottom, so that because you're pushing a lot of water and you keep you want to keep your saw dry. Obviously the engine and uh so I'm cutting a second too. But to get to be able to cut and hold that the saw the proper way, I've got to be standing on the chunk that I'm cutting out of the ice for my last cut from runner. Yeah, and I think we're we're working with like eight minimum, I think up to fourteen inches of ice right in that zone. They had a really crappy year. A lot of people did not just add this in right now. Most years they have they sell about twelve thousand permits, they have ten thousand spears. This year they probably sold twelve tho permits because they have to be bought in October um and they only had five thousand spears usually five thousand shanties or no, sorry, five thousand shanties. Ten thousand spears this year or shanties. They figure about two spears per shanty. And it still seems like a lot. Yeah, it is, it is, but remember it's a huge lake, and that was because it was just not good. Yeah, so most people drag out with um trucks and the ice just wasn't of truck safety thickness, and so a lot of those people would either have to get like a TV or a side by side or a snowmobile. And if you don't have that equipment or your you know buddy doesn't have it, you're not gonna get to go out sturgeon fishing in the anthropo scene. Man, Yeah, spooky. So this chunk that you're cutting out, though, I realized it has enough buoyancy that a two pound man can stand on it and and cut the last corner and nothing's gonna happen. You're not gonna wildly coyote it down to the bottom of the lake all of a sudden. Yeah, it kind of bobs a little bit, but you're fine. Um. So once you kind keep when you got your rod on your leg like that, you keep thinking of getting hits. It really throws me off. I kind of watch everybody's I'll set it down. I'm gonna fish high in the water column. Ah. Then you take these giant UM's. Yeah, it's basically what twelve foot pole then using a fire they were They were actually like firefighting equipment poles. Yeah, with big hooks on hooks. It's got a hook and a spike. Oh that kind of yeah for poking. Yeah, kind of like holes. And so what they do because it's a big, big, gass chunk of ice, you can't just tong it and lift it out. And if you did, and by the end of a two week season, it'd be frozen solid, so you'd be caught. You'd be making you sort of have two dangers then, right, that's an open hole plus a giant chunk of ice that someone can run into and have issues with so they do what's called sinking the cake. They call that chunk of ice the cake, and they sink it. So all two or three guys are pushing down on it to get it below ice level, and then two guys get from one end and start pushing it underneath the ice. And then once that gets going, then the guys that we're pushing down all come to that end, and everybody pushes as hard as they can and try to get that one chunk of ice as far away from the whole as possible, just in case if you have a sturgeon that's near the surface, you don't want him to be coming towards your zone, your hole and then see that big chunk of ice and then cause him to veer away. I gotta avoid that. Yeah, so you're trying to get it away from you. Um, then you pull the trailer over the top of the hole, drop it down, shovel snow all around the edges again, get the light out, and you basically open a big hatch in the middle and there you are. So you're basically sitting on ap plywood floor that's carpeted real nice, and uh, you just got a hole in the ice that looks like you're not sitting on any ice because of the angle you cut in the ice. Um. Now we were bearing in like fifteen sixteen ft of water, which on a clear year you can see all the way to the bottom. But this year you can only see about twelve ft. So bottom feeders are gonna be on the bottom. How are you gonna see them in that depth? Taters, well start because you gotta be able to retrieve them if they If it's if it would have been just a little more clear, we all would have had down crosses made out of um vinyl uh soft material like ten inch soft it. They basically just make an X and then drop that thing down in the hole that's attached to the string so you can later retrieve it. And so you're looking at a X, and even if it's kind of murky, if you get a big white X down there, it would give you some reference. And then if you saw a giant black shadow go over it, you would throw at the shadow. Too murky for that. So instead we're running can risk and the same fish camera that everybody has. You basically run down hit on mine. You don't think so well? My rod was up and now it's yeah, could have been you guys are distracting. Um. So yeah, you run a you run a camera basically between your feet, if you're sitting in the middle of the hole, you run a camera straight between your feet, straight down and then it's maybe eighteen inches off the bottom and just pointed straight out in front of you. So you're looking at depending on the water clarity, you're looking at a cone that might be go out to six ft. For us, it was so dense that we were figured we were looking maybe three to four ft. That's all you could see is a cone that went out to three three or four ft in front of your camera. And you're supposed to spear the fish off of what you're seeing on the camera. Very very difficult. So Jake had a camera down between his feet, and then between the two cameras we had a decoy. They just hung from the ceiling. There was no jigging this one. It just was stagnant there static not doing anything. Um. Sturgeon decoys were even crazier than the pike and the whitefish decoys. We went up into a gal's uh attic who's been spearing for I don't know, seventy years bowling pins, uh Bart Simpson dolls, orange Um, traffic cones, things that did look like fish. Calendars were very popular for decades that like when it would come up to be during super being station, you couldn't find a calendar in any kitchens store, thrift store, nothing. Everybody want to drop down a calendar. The latest thing that's very popular is the white coffee mug. And then gotta choose if you wanted to coffee mug suspended or actually sitting in the muck at the bottom. So again, people go people go nuts on their decoys. Is doing a good job? Is It's like, you know, like in theory you're supposed to go on vacation and come back all like reinvigorated for work. It's like that's what happened to Yanni. Oh for sure, I felt it, just tearing it a new one on we haven't been gotten to the white fish and with Pat Durkin another I don't want to burn it all up right now? Um, so yeah, we picked a well we're still on cutting day cameras. No you're not. You're on the coffee mugs and whatnot. Yeah, well I'm telling you about the decoys they're using. But the camera deal. I think most people are just looking at their little six inch ten inch screen that's attached their camera. Right. Well, Jake's an electrician, pretty handy with that sort of ship, so he's got too big screens, yeah, two inches. So we're sat We sat across from each other, so my screen was directly behind his head and his screen was behind my head. So instead of staring kind of down at it with your net getting store and looking at a tenant screen, you can kind of chat with the guy at the same time you're looking on the screen behind his head, and they're thinking, man, this guy never breaks his gaze when he's talking to me, totally um, And that takes place of staring into the hole. Now, there is a chance that you could have one comes suspended through at ten ft or even six ft, and it has happened. We heard plenty of stories where the fish came through like his back rubbing the top of the ice, and like, you had to take this because our spears actually hung off of a they just had I think one side. He had an actual hook that was just barely it was bent open, so it just still had a little bit of a lip to hold the islet of the spear. Mine actually was just a just like a deck screw that was just at the right angle and that little lip of the deck screw was enough to hang it onto. Because we also heard some stories where people had the giant sitting there looking at their decoy and they couldn't get their spear off of their hook and then the fish ran swam off. You know, so you gotta be ready. It's gonna happen fast. Um. So yeah, you're sort of percent of time you're watching your screen one percent of time, and short glances you're just looking down. It was interesting too, is what Jake made clear to tell me about was that don't expect to see in this murky water. Don't expect to see a six ft sturgeon when he's down there at eight ten ft, it's gonna look like a football. But you're just seeing like the main part of the mass, and you just know that there's you know, there's three ft on either side of it or two ft on either side of the football. You know, you're just seeing the main mass because that's what's coming through. That's what your your eye can pick up. Um. So yeah, the heads of the spears, the spears are heavy. They they've come up with regulations because people were getting a little bit crazy. They're like, imagine like ad teen broad head for a turkey, which is like two big razor blades, like four intros to diameter. But they took that idea and took it to sturge and spearings. So they had these like two ft cross criss crossed, and so it's just like you're covering more service area. When you throw the spear right, you have a better chance to get a tie in him. Ours were I believe the limit was sixteen or eighteen. I think it was. Ours were a couple of inches shy of that. We probably had eight times we were working with um. The spearhead detaches from the handle, uh, so that you can fight the fish, you know, more easily because it again, you're not it's not like you just speared a five or ten pound pike. You not gotta fish that might be fifties sixty upwards, too close to two pounds you gotta Yeah, he's attached to a rope, So the rope's tied into the shanty. There might have been twenty feet of slack line. I think, you know between where it's tied off and where the in the spearhead. Um, and the times too are serious. They have um oh, what's a little toggle called flips out like a barb. Yeah, but it's like a harpoon. Yeah, I think it's in line and then when there's any back tension, it's out. It's out. And we saw a couple of them gets speared and it's like literally one time through a minimum of four inches of flesh and it's not coming That fish ain't coming off of their Plus the sturgeon is it's a that skin is like shark skin, so scale it. Yeah, it's not coming off of there. Um. So yeah, fast forward to opening morning. Uh, you get there maybe six thirty. You can't start spear until seven Surgeon spearing goes some seven am till one every single day. Everybody's inside a house. Yeah, well you can't have your spears inside the house. It always open like your your trap doors are open. Your spears have to be outside the house until seven am and then at one pm the spears had to go out while you're closing everything down. Once the hole is closed, the spears can come back in. You know. Um, you used to be able to spear twenty four hours a day, shine a spotlight down in there. Yeah, and they they that actually, um proved to be a little too effective. Um. They used to have these party tents like forty ft across. They would cut giant holes and the whole thing would be lined with dudes and spears, just eating, drinking and waiting for a sturgeon to come across. I mean a thing that you could swim across, you know, and just a giant ass tent. And um, they'd run them all night long, big big light in there. Ship sounds like a good time. Um. But uh yeah, so for me opening day, so yeah, basically it's seven, it's like, okay, spears in and then start watching the camera. Um. And I think it like the group started seeing some around nine. We might have had someone missed one at nine, and it wasn't long after maybe ten eleven. Am. Um, Jake's like he caught a fish on his flasher, so he was running a flasher just to be like, maybe it might give us a second heads up that a fish is coming here. But he's like, um, looks like a small fish. Looks like a small fish. And then all of a sudden, you know, he sees it on his screen. He's like, no, no no, what's there. Surge and Sturgeon like get ready, you know. So we all jump up and I'm looking at my screen. I can see so in my screen, I can see a decoy and then his camera behind it, and he's seeing the decoy in my camera in his screen, and it looks like the fish has come up and is basically angled and right at the decoy, and so I see that I kind of placed my spear like parallel with the line of the decoy going down. I look up again. He's still there. And at the same time Jake and I we weren't counting or anything. It just happened both of us throw spears, and uh, I think that we corralled him because I look back up of the screen and I just see the tail swimming straight away from I mean, I can't explain. It means like the decoy was there. I knew where the fish was on the right side of the decoy. Both of us had spears on the right side, and it was either that. We also heard stories that, um, their head is so bony and you can deflate, so there's a chance we could have reflected the head, especially because he was right out of decoy, because I probably wasn't the heads eighteen inches long, and so I might have not been back far enough. But do you remember when remember in Guyana and we had that big catfish, that big banana catfish, and I cocked back with my bow and a fish arrow on there h and shot and everybody, oh, you missed, you missed, too missed. But it ricocheted off his head. A fish arrow out of a bow, no water, You aim for the head, not aim. I held it up to his head. I don't remember that a fish arrow, right, So there you go. It could happen, yea. And probably what five minutes after that, we had one swim under our shack and did a similar moment. And it's it's difficult to describe how hard it is to triangulate your position because I didn't have the big screen TVs. We just had a little ten inch Markham's. And I'm looking down at that going okay, that's what the screen says, there's the decoy should be here, and just hucking that thing and praying, and I thought I thought I nailed that first one. I was so excited because there was a bunch of tention on that line, and it was coming up kind of wiggling back and forth, like oh I got him, I got him, Bran, I got him. And what I had done was drilled three times through that soft it and it was just buried in that muck and started coming up and like I'm like, oh man, I got him. No, not even close. You can get one dislike him at home depot. It took me a good half an hour to dig those barbs out of that freaking soft it. Like I had to take the whole thing out of the shack and it took forever. So out of your out of your party. Yep. What was the hall too? Which is really really good because that weekend and I think that not weekend three days. We finished Saturday, Sunday, Monday speared and I think the whole leg produced around a hundred right, Yeah, I'd have to go back and look, I've been reading the reports as they come out daily through the whole season, so my my memories muddy to be, but I'm pretty sure it's right around a hundred and three days and that's five thousand spears and we got to fish. I think the Jake's homework pays off and we missed I mean I missed two. Yeah, you guys, we definitely had We definitely had some other opportunities in the group. Having not been there, I'm sitting there being like I would have gotten them all here somewhere. Something didn't imagine how good you would have done something. Something to mention is that the camera use is pretty controversial because of what we're explaining. Right you're basically chucking it into the darkness hoping to get a time in there. You don't know sometimes you know what's happening down there if you're hurting them at all. The DNR has surveyed the public like two or three times about it, and it's every time it's been a third are cool with it, a third don't give a ship, and a third, uh, don't aren't into it. So they're like, until right now, it's like kind of a social problem because there's just people sort of you know, fighting about whether they should be using or not. He's like, until it becomes a biological problem and it becomes too efficient, Like it's not our problem, what's your personal take on it? Can here you are king of the king of the universe. Um, even with the cameraman. It is hard. Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna let it roll. Um. He spreads people out too, because listen, there were there's like the other side of the lake because of currents um and you know, less allergy bloom or whatever. There was plenty of people that we talk to that speared surgeon in eight feet of super clear water and they could see the bottom. So you could choose to go and do that. But Jake's series like, yeah, that's fine, you're gonna see the fish. But over there, I think that there's ten percent of the fish over there then where we were fishing more water. Yes, now it spreads people out. Did you bring me a container of the caviar? Yes, how we haven't handed it over to me. Oh you, I didn't bring you a personal little uh steve container. I brought home one court and it is in the office refrigerator, and Miles and I are planning on having basically an office little parties everybody can get in. There's so much that if you want to take some of home, you will be able to hou. We'll have some crackers. Yeah, you want to keep it simple. Are you got you got your ivory spoons? No, oh, I used to have a caviar spoon, man, when I was working on my first book. I had occasion when I was working on my first book to get a caviar spoon. But we want to be we had so much whitefish can vy are like great, like you know lake whitefish caviar. We're eating it on cool ranchedritos. I mean we couldn't get through it all. Man. It was a weird like salsa. Yeah, it was just like like a too many eggs. Man. Did you you make your your tasting spoon out of you know, something highly illegal? No, I didn't do that. I wish I would. Um, I can't remember how. But as part of the book, I can't remember why. But I did order a couple of caviar spoons. Not legal ones though, like you know, like abalone shell, ivory, mother of pearl and stuff. Yeah. Did you get robbed over there? Your bait get robbed? You? I still got half of it. I'm gonna let it roll. Yeah, it was a lot more to it, man, But you, like I said, phenomenal bit of hole like great job, good interesting day. Yeah, there's anything we need to wrap it up on. I mean we could the cultural part was awesome. Yeah, we do. You need to throw a shout out to Mary Lucia talking about the big you know, she's the decoy car. Remember the rhythmics kind of the videos. I don't remember the video well, like yeah, like Anie Lennox would be doing everything, but then that dude wold always be in the background. I feel like that's Miles, Like Yanni's like any Lennox and Miles is like that dude in the rhythmics. It was always being like in the background. Oh, I was listening to Train in Vain the other day. Is that season closed based on quota or just a date? Does it just stay open? And if you're looking at when does the Sturgeon season end, it ends in one of two ways. Okay, let me hit that. Uh, how so the season is two weeks? Yeah, let's say conditions are perfect and just people are just killing him NonStop. Is that a possibility? Yes, it does happen. Again, I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think we heard of seasons that were closed in four or five days. Oh, That's what I'm trying to ask. So they so the season doesn't necessarily run its course, it has every year for the past five years because the water clarity has been pretty bad the last five years, but before that they had consistent good years and the seasons were closing, you know, as soon as DNA would set a quote limit saying based on population, it is feasible for us to take this many without hurting the spawning. And it's male female quotas both, and the female quota is the one they're really looking at. When so many females are speared, it's over got you, got you. But the last four years it's run its course two weeks, sixteen days, sixteen days a sixteen day season. Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes it three weekends probably. So when you uh, they have way in and checking stations all over the lake, not on the lake, but these uh bars, they call them supper clubs. Um. We went to Jim and Linda's and right out there in Pipe, Wisconsin, and uh crowd gathers there every day right around one pm, because usually people wait all about one if they have a fish to go and go and check it in, and uh there's a pretty big crowd gathered there. You weigh it and then the dnr um cuts it open. Check see if it's a male or a female. They then scan it. They're looking for tags. If it's if the fish is tag if they can get some data off of it, um, and then that's it. I mean, I think they you give them some of your personal information and uh, you're ready to go, and it's It was fascinating to me because sturgeon spawn and I think it's generally a six year cycle. Okay, so a female will take six years, males are shorter. Female takes six years in between spawning runs. And they'll run up river to do that UM. But they'll they'll cut it open and just by looking at the color texture the eggs, they'll call it an F one, F two, F three, F four all the way up to six, depending on how developed those eggs are. And the F six everybody wants, right, those are the really really that's the best caviar um. But they had one fish that they had tagged. It was like one of the biggest ones. They were tagged up river when she had spawned and she was she she came in at like two pounds or something, and then the next year she got speared and she had shed like sixty pounds weight. Same fish same link, just between those cycles of spawning, how long it takes for those eggs developing, how much mass they have. Are most of these guys, I get the caviar by most of these guys, they're grilling it, frying it, cubing it up, and putting cocktail sauce on it. Man, I feel like a lot of people did not respect the meat of that fish enough. We heard a lot of people saying, oh, it's not very good. I thought it was fantastic. Everywhere we it's it's a fish that they love as much commerce conservation that's been done around it. They loved, kind of hate it because it's not like when you look at it, it's not the most appealing looking thing. It's kind of covered in a slimy mud. You know. The first thing everybody says, you guys, do sin as you get at home is pressure wash it, you know, before you start you know, fileting it or whatever. Um. So that was a little bit interesting because we didn't really find anybody that was like, oh, I can't wait to put some you know, hopefully I'll get some free from sturgeon meat from my freezer. But it was sturgeon meat, and I mean habitat destruction. But it was like commercial harvested knocked them down so bad. Yeah, but that was about all about the eggs there after. Yeah, Now we did get lucky and went over to our friend Chester and Ike and Fenton Floyd's parents house, and there they invited us over for dinner. And we said, you know, dinner sounds great, and since I could spired a sturgeon, it would be awesome if we could try some sturgeon. We really want to try some sturgeon meat. And um, a few a few people have said, oh, you guys are going over the Floyd's for dinner, lucky you you know, is it Peggy? Peggy real good cook? You know we're taking okay, well, you know yeah, typical Midwest mom, you know, don't probably throw it out and be some good cooking. Well we roll in there and she's prepared six courses that would go toe to toe with any of the six courses that I could prepare, like just solid. She had smoked some and then turned it into a dip. She had I don't know what she did with the meat, probably posted or something and turned some into fish cakes. Um. She did her plain fried piece over a little salad with a little vinaigrette. It was just like her name. Um, she's happily married. Um. But she did that one specifically, She's said. As for me, I just I don't know. She might be wondering. She did specifically so that, you, um, so that we could just taste the flesh. You know, it wasn't covered up with sauces in this, that and anything else. You know, I'm really gonna taste for it. Um what else was there? Oh, I gotta make curvefish curry more. You know, we've had it a couple of times over the years, and for some reason, I just don't do it at home. But she made fish curry, serve it over rice, real plain and simple and just awesome. So and then a a sturgeon schnitzel really with asparagus and hollandaise, Oh, buddies, like a double red carpet gold line man. Incredible And every one of those preparations. That fish was really very Uh you know, Steaky's go down to that supper club place and through a little sampler so people stop being dumbasses about their sturgeon meat. Well, I mean it's one of those things. And we talked about this all the time, right, It's how you take care of your game, is what it's gonna taste like. And a lot of the tradition there is you get your fish and you paraded her round the ice to every bar, like, look what I got. Yeah, it's cold out. It's probably still not the best way to handle your fish. Yeah, but when you get some beautiful blue fin tune, I doubt they No, they tend to probably get it on. Do you want to get that thing iced up real quick and away from the guts? Uh quick story she didn't turn into hot dish or cast role. That's the next day. I gotta I know a guy that, uh you know they're close relative the paddlefish. Um, I know guy, it caught a paddlefish and he was it was a giant and he wanted to get it officially weighed, and he wrapped it up in a uh what he gotta sleep He was camping, so you gotta sleep bag, dunked in the river, wrapped the paddlefish up. I heard this through the tax nevers. Tax nevers telling me a guy, a guy caught a paddlefish, wrapped it up in a wet sleeping bag. Drives to the hour to him because he wants it mounted, but he doesn't need the body, and he's gonna wait on it. But the textures doesn't need the body because they just use a fire glass form. He takes that paddlefish down to the river and the same river that came out of it takes down the river. Let's go on. It swims off, no ship. That's awesome driving around, driving around a guy's trucking a wet sleeping bad. I met you, the surgeon. Even with a couple of spear holes in their tail, they could probably go to a couple of bars and hang on a fish pole, for it's basically like a big buck pole. But they haven't met these bars for the surgeon and hang out there for a few hours, and he could probably release those things and they probably swim off too. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying it to contradict your observation. You have to take it care of it because, like JT. Van's aunt says, man, when you catch a fish and you treat it right towards the meal, you're sort of like setting there's like a spiritual quality to it. Yeah, you're setting a thing into motion, you know, that you haven't touched the fish. You gill it, you wash it. It's like you're you're, you're you're putting it on a path, a path of respect. Yeah, and you're you're conceiving of that fish as food from the get go, not just something to be proud of it and show off to your buddies while you get drunk. Which nothing. No, I'm not dogging that practice in any way. I've done that many many times. But with these fish, to me, it seemed like the culture, and who knows, will change, but the culture really was more about being excited about the catch more than being excited about the consumption. And I was skeptical. I mean, I don't know where you were, Yohnnie, but I've heard so many people were like, you can't eat them. I mean, we do talk about Biggin's. Everybody else got had any rods in their hands? Miles, Yeah, great. I know we didn't cover all of the fur head Ice tour adventures will be more in the future. You brought me some caviart will not necessarily me, but you brought some caviart that I'm gonna be able to partake of. Um. Good to have you back. Sure, you'll miss more of our shows. Thanks everybody. That song you were singing earlier, changes that saw a dog run by change uh fill the engineer. I assuming you enjoyed yourself. You didn't really say much. I'm just soaking it in. I don't have much to add, but I don't want to try some sturgeon though. Good job Phil, Thanks way to bring her home all right, Thanks everybody, see him se