00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. Okay, this is a special UM love episode. It's like the love boat from We're in Southeast Alaska at our at our family, uh fish shack with a whole bunch of people, a lot of people are familiar with and uh Seth has tell everybody Seth's got big news. Went against my Um went against my suggestion. No, I didn't to do it at the waterfall. No, you had a couple of suggestions, one of them being at the lake and woman being at the waterfall. Tell what happened? Um, I proposed to Kelsey and I said, yeah, so the wild he com pulls the wildlife artist Kelsey Johnson. Is that fair? Wildlife artists just artists, artists, painter Um, Yeah, Western artists. Your Instagram things so they can look at yourself. U K underscore ray artworks, but Ray is spelled weird r. They do no one to know that if you've been listen, if you've been running around your whole life telling people K Ray they're not finding Yeah, there's a demographic of people out there that have been looking for me this whole time, and they think it's r a y. Yeah right, but now that's tell everybody again. Um, k underscore Ray r a e artworks with its western wildlife. Very yeah, very beautiful stuff. And you have a you have a piece that you're donating to our we haven't launched yet, but are auction house of Oddities. Do oil painting of a big horn ram kind of portrait style that'll be in there. You should go check out her work and buy something. Anyways, you said yes, cried ugly cried? What three years? It was three years? What I told Seth to do? What we kicked around a handful of things. He wasn't gonna stick the ring. Explain that ring again. Um, it's a white buffalo, which is like a people aren't familiar with, like a white turquoise looking stone, which is my favorite. Um, and it's three rings. It's surrounded by a setting made by a dorn smith in Cooe Emerson Graves, just my favorite jeweler. Um, it's really pretty, one of a kind, custom made, custom made. You know a lot of people when you're getting married, he'll come out and they'll play that here comes a bride. You should be playing great white Buffalo. Nugent's great white buffalo. Like it all that ring, pumping that ring in there. Uh. Seth was thinking about putting on putting that ring into a helimet stomach for a link cod stomach and then having you there and gutting it and then being like he's gonna be like, let's see what it ate? Yea, what do we have here? Well? Well, well, or I told him take you up to the waterfall and have that ring just setting in the gravel there. Sounds dangerous. And then he'd come up and be like, well look that little shiny little nugget. Yeah. We yeah, we threw around a bunch of ideas, but you took her up to the lake. Took her up to the lake. It was pouring rain. We paddled across the cove on on in the canoe and chatting. Danielle came with us. Danielle is a wedding photographer. So you're hitting the bushes, she hitting the bushes. The timing on This is pretty amazing because um, uh, Jester, I understand the right at the moment. Uh, you found an old boat and under that boat was a fishing rod, and so he decided to take a poke. There are two of them, Yeah, And I knew they were going to propose. He was going to propose. You were getting bored. He's like, all right, buddy, let's let's get on with this. Chester pulled a Chester move and he took a cast right at that moment, made a cast and went and I look over and seth is on one knee and I quick reel then and ran over. Why the group deal? Most people do it privately? No, they don't. They don't do it privately. Do that like baseball stadiums? Yeah, I saw a news story the other day about a dude who got down on one knee in front of it, got out on the stadium. You see this. It's horrible. Uh. Somehow he gets his girlfriend or whatever out on the like the pitcher's mound or something like, out in front of the whole damn, what do you call it? At a baseball game stadium stadium? And there's all these cell phone videos of it. He gets down on one knee. She puts her hands over her face and runs away. I can't do that here because she was not not because she was nervous. She didn't want to marry that. Ye see, I I trapped her. She had nowhere to go, she said, no, She's like she's in an awkward spot. Guy. I seth boy, he was gonna do if you said no, and then here, you too are stuck up here. He said, he's just gonna fish. Yeah, which is what you did anyway. So it's like kind of the same plan would being the exact same plan. No. I asked him about a hundred times if he was serious. That was my reaction. Why do you want to be married to cecil Man? Love him? Love? Guy? Uh? Oh? Why more stuff about love? Though? I don't know if I can talk about this, I'll just talk about it. She gets Maddy. She was mad. Do you remember Taylor thorn Right? She taught me and Janni how to do the Were you there cal and we did the three guns? You know you were out of town or something like that. I didn't built at the last minute, m Ammo shortage. Uh Taylor thorn tooss to do the three gun video or toss do three gun and we made a video. Like bazillion people watched the video us doing a three gun thing, including some fireman who took a shine to her. And they just eloped. Really and she said that, um, in some ways she has to give us credit. Huh, well that's great, she said. She does stuff fast, shoots fast, gets married fast. It wasn't that wasn't that long ago when you guys did that, right, they eloped by credit? She means the dowry that fireman owes us chunk, just a little little chuck of his pension, chunk of pension something. Oh there the thing so yeah, the cabinet, the Shack of Love. Hm ah. I don't know if you want to get the details there, Andy, No, probably not what you have been on the showing forever. Andrew chef Andrew Radlowski comes up at the i P of the weekend. He may or may not have gotten lucky at the shack once many many years ago, decades ago. Uh, my brother Danny got married here. Uh my brother Matt realized he had to break up with one of his girlfriends up here, She says, offsets the love vibe. I was telling Matt my plan for up here, and he went on to tell me all about the times he broke up with women and had bad things with women happened to him up here. His current wife doesn't come up here, his only wife, not his current wife, the only one he's ever been married to that summer, I don't know. And right there, like twenty ft away from here, we decided the year my brother Danny got married, me and my wife standing right there next to the boat. Uh decided to try having a baby right next to the boat, right there, No, like you know what it came to, the decision on the rocks next to came to the decision was the tide going out or coming in? Yeah, I can't remember. I could probably look back at the photography and look at the rocks and stuff and try to tell if they looked like it was coming or going. I think Andrew Chef Andrew Ragelowski's cooking prowess is something to note, but it goes far beyond just coming up here to the shack and cook guys out there marking halibut spots. He's got a jigging stroke that strike fear any halibut out there. Squares off to his fishing pole. Knows his crabbing stick. Um any more you want to say about yourself, current situation or anything things new since you've been on Andy, Well, yeah it's been a little bit um still plug it away, glad to be here, you know, Well, I mean on the love. No, let's at least say like the only person I have ever met that has taken a Pulaski and carved a trail between between his lady friend's house and his own. He's so in love that they moved into houses next to each other. Correct, keeps it, keeps it fresh. You know that we don't gotta worry about When you see something laying on the floor, you just know it's yours. You know, you think it's their third thing. Oh where we're sitting right now? So we're on Prince Wales Island. And this is interesting because this is a long this is a long burning debate. We're on Prince Wales Island right now. So if you if you're from the town to ketch A Can and went due west out of ketch A can um catch cans on Ravilla Island and you went due west of there, you'd wind up out at Prince Wales Island. If you went east to catch can you wind up kind of the in the panhandler, the like the sorry not the panel, you wind up in British Columbia. So we're down in that neck of the woods, southeast Alaska. The is out here have there's a wolf, the wolves of out here. Some people will just say they're regular wolves. Some people say they're a special wolf called the Alexander Archipelago wolf, and they are edging closer to Endangered Species Act protection. And it's been a contentious thing because you have wolves, a very healthy population of wolves. There aren't on this island twenty miles from here. Do you do they get to be separate? Like do they get to be regarded as their own thing? Because they're archipelago wolves. They're they're they're defining features. They a lot of salmon, and uh yeah, defining features and then defining habits that would separate them from mainland wolves. Put it simply, Uh, my brother, who's my brother, Danny, who's a biologist in Alaska, not referring to this, but he said, of taxonomy, he said, you have your lumbers, and you have your splitters, and they know who they are. Um splitting like this in this case splitting, in this case saying like, hey, these are different wolf splitting is always splitting is often used as an environmental tool in the old toolbox for environmental battles right where if you can point to anything and say that and make an argument that it's endemic or separate, you can usually get protections for landscapes. And you'll find the industry is usually trying to be like, nothing different about that wolf, same old wolf. As a bunch of them over here, who cares about those ones? It's like an ongoing There might be cases where industry wants to separate. By generally, industry and commercial interests like to lump and they want to be like, as long as there's a bunch of wolves somewhere, who cares? And I imagine out here this archipelago region, the issue would be uh habitat destruction like timber timber harvest, I would imagine would be the number one thing. I cannot imagine anybody's saying like all the wolves come in here and eat all the salmon um and there's no real dance like livestock type of agriculture for conflict, which is kind of like the main the main conflict is the main human conflict is competition for deer. Yeah, so they did, uh, you know they have around here, they have various seasons, and they loosened the wolf hunting season, and uh, people got a lot of wolves recently. Kind of shocked people how quickly they got so many wolves, which made people think there's more wolves than typical. But anyways, this has been a long simmering thing. But yeah, if you have an island in the Islands ten miles away from another island, and that islands ten miles away from the mainland or whatever, the hell, is it fair to say that the things that live there are their own species? Have these wolves always been on the island forever? Swam out here? How well they got here? Yeah? You know interesting? Do you know what people used to There used to be a theory about human migrations that that humans crossed the first humans, the first Americans, crossed the baring Land Bridge and then then approached what's now the Lower forty eight through the mid continent. They used to have this idea that there was an ice free corridor and the humans must have emerged down to the great plains like South Edmonton, Alberta. And that was like the hot idea for a long time, the currently fashionable ideas that people cross the baring Land Bridge and then island hopped in boats down because people now that we know how long ago people arrived in the New World, the ice freak corridor thing doesn't make sense. Like they were there. They were down in like Chili, earlier than there would have been a ice free route, so they must have come down the coast. And there's a lot of interest in these islands around here, meaning that you might find it's plausible that the oldest New World human occupation sites are on these islands, even though the shoreline that they were inhabiting is underwater by a lot, you know, it's a couple h ft underwater, but that what would have been mountaintops then or mountaintops now, and that you might find very old There could be like somewhere around here, very very old sites from like the real first It would be hard to find though everything just governed it is, but like tie you back to the wolves right where humans who leave things behind that that you can find other than just bones, you know, stone points, maybe smart work, maybe some structures here and there. And we still don't know how the hell they exactly ended up where they ended up, and then you have wolves that don't leave around the extra stuff. It's it would just be bones um it. It's kind of like we learned so much new every year, it seems about how things get around. It's like, is this archipelago wolf really different just because we don't know for sure how it got from point A to point B m hm. Is kind of the argument that that pops up to me. I mean, we know, like how far Alaskan brown bears swim from. They'll swim to islands that they you cannot see, um jeez, and you know it's off of like a scent more than likely. But it blew people's minds when radio collar came out and they're like, oh, we had a bear swim from this island to this island. I didn't think that was possible. Well back to that wool thing. So this is primarily being brought by petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and defenders of wildlife who don't self identify as anti hunting organizations. But my god, you'd get the impression they're they're tied into a lot of a lot of stuff that would I think conservation minded hunters would enjoy and a lot of things that conservation hunt minded hunters would not like. You know how this is like the shack of love. Man, did I get a big fight out here one time with one of our co owners, with Dan Bulgan. Me and him got a huge fight when I said that when I was describing the Centers for Biological Diversity as an anti hunting organization. He got pissed because you can rattle off some good stuff. Yeah, got pissed, all riled up, good guy. Um, okay, Ca'll explain the Senator Heinrich emailed me about this. They're getting closer explaining recovering America's Wildlife Act, which is getting close. Okay, So Recovering America's Wildlife Act or RAWA is a big package. The what this kicked off at least four or five years ago, big chunk work done under the Trump administration. And basically it is a bunch of federal funding for state wildlife and given state wildlife managers the tools they need UH and tribal wildlife managers the tools they need to protect sensitive species every state. Um. The tribes were asked to come up with species of concern and that that could be plants, pollinators, to mammals. In total, twelve thousand species, twelve thousand species, and there's a lot of back and forth on like what should make the list, but basically states were asked to like give me your top ten, like give me the most important UM and all of a sudden we have the opportunity to try to get this thing past. It's seen a lot of bipartisan support. We need everyone to contact they're duly elected representatives and and uh tell them to get on board. Ideally co sign on UM recovering America's Wildlife Act because if we act fast prior to the end August here, which is a current session, this could get incorporated and and voted on as part of the big infrastructure package, which would be lightning fast and and fantastic. One super encouraging thing is a Senator Blunt out of Missouri. Missouri, if folks don't know, is like they have a wildlife program in that state. That's like the envy of every single state because when you register your car like car like driver, your license plate, right, it's like every chunk of it's like a point eight eight, it's like an eighth of a cent for goes directly to wildlife of all like state associated sales tax. It's all sales tax because he wants to be in a huge amount of money, and it'll I mean, it allows that agency to do all the things that all states want to do, like all the educational outreach the Missouri Conservation Magazine goes out to like everybody, and every couple of years, some greedy state politician wants to reach into that bucket and take money out of it for some other program, and the public, the citizens of Missouri always smack it down. It's really cool to see um but you know, it's kind of like a Pittman Robertson type of deal where it's like if you brought it up today, would probably no way it would pass. But since it got put in place, people are really proud of it, and the um UH Wildlife Agency in Missouri does a does a great great job over there. So any funny the things that we're so proud of that would we would never pad that are overwhelmingly popular today, that would not have a prayer to pass today. Wilderness Act which had like vote in the Senate, you couldn't get that thing passed now. But everybody's so like, oh, good, good, gracious, we did the Wilderness Act. You ever get it? Because it's it's not about the act itself, it's about what people can. Okay, Well, if I vote for this act that everybody knows is a good idea, then I get something right and it gets bogged down in the in the in the bs. But um, so yeah, almost a billion dollars for tribes. Um. Every state has input and it really is supposed to be giving the tools to the states that they need to manage the wildlife. Um has a lot of bipartisan support, but we need need a lot more, folks. One point three billion and dedicated annual funding for proactive on the ground efforts across the country point five million annually. Two tribal nations. Mhm uh. This version introduced by Roy Blunt from Missouri Senators Roy Blunt Missouri and Martin Hunder from New Mexico. Martin comes on the show off and to explain various things passionate gay. Yeah, um so yeah, really really good deal. You know, we got a lot of good stuff passed into the Trump administration by uh folks, you know, right and in and and and playing the game you know, contact and you're you're duly elected, and we need to make sure it gets done under the Biden administration as well. And a lot of this stuff got got built under the UH during the Trump years. So if you remember, we had with Fosburgh, the president CEO of Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on and he was saying that, uh, paradoxically, you like that used that word, I like how your lips are kind of swollen up from their chapter from Jellyfish Bites. Paradoxically, when there is a lot of discord and discontent and fractious argue in d C is a good time to come in and get conservation work done because they can't get anything done. All the contentious ship they can't get taken care of and everybody and and so they're looking to be like how we're doing something, Yes, exactly, And when it was a good conservation bill that has a lot of bipartisan support, the envirals like it, hunters and anglers like it. The lets some sign stuff and do stuff, do feel good stuff because if not everybody sitting back being like what what do you people doing? That's that's the deal. It's like you know, you're they are your representatives, so you you can always call in and be like, yeah, I see you're not getting anything passed, like we've we voted you in there for a reason. What's going on? Yes, when they're all like fighting over the fighting over the culture wars and who plays what sports and whatnot, and they're all fighting about that, then they say do some conservation for Yeah. Yeah, so this this is a this is a good one. This is a good one. I've already been doing some writing in and some some phone calling and you've covered us on Cal's we can review blow by blow I have, Yeah, I started and then working on an article um for the Mediator dot com. It's probably already out. Well, you know, did you come up with that? I notice on your flame knife it says cal and someone made it, say Kelly Ente you is that your idea? That that was my idea? Solid man? You know that means seth uh Espaniel, Yeah, I know, but hot, Okay. That's a Casey Hawks original from first Light Casey Hawks. Kelly and I love that. Uh oh, you know nor interesting news item. We covered this Arizona, which is the most trail cam and state on the face of the planet recently, band trail cams for the purpose of taking or aiding in the taking of wildlife, or locating wildlife for the purpose of taking or aiding. Huh. That's so. I feel like someone could do a quick editorial pass on some of this not our stuff, lost stuff, outlawing them, outlawing them quote for the purpose of taking or aiding in the take of wildlife or locating wildlife for the purpose of taking or aiding in the take of wildlife. I like that not the same thing. Yeah, I think what that boils down is you can have run. Meanwhile, Wisconsin is uh stepping up on the trail camp game. Wisconsin starting a thing called snapshot. They're d n R So they're fishing Wildlife agency encouraging people to get the trail cams out and then you make them online. And it has to do with monitoring wildlife and creating a resulting database for management decisions. It's a citizen monitoring citizen monitoring wildlife project. It's citizens science. There are all sorts of awesome. Um you know bird plant bug down to you know constellation uh apps that you can get on your phone, and folks have discovered species thought to be extinct by you know, downloading these apps and being like, oh, what what is this? I wrote about a guy and I think Columbia who was going in to use the toilet and a weasel came out of his toilet and stood on it. Remember that it took a picture of it, and it was like it was a reasonally thought he had gone extinct. Yes, yeah, so you rediscovered a species that they thought had been extinct, which is super cool. Um, I always have your phone with you when you're going to the john And then, uh, remember remember me and the guy that got the big fight about Center for Biological Diversity. Well, I had a trail camp stet up on the trail up here and his uh wife used the rest and used it, went to pee and he pulled my card. Never got that card back. Uh. Anyway, Yeah, these these cameras are fantastic tools. They're they're very inexpensive. A lot of people have them for a lot of reasons now, uh, and and they definitely can add add to this. You can also like go and and we saw like a lot of this come up during COVID where people doing let's say, like a shark research but don't have the funds to go out and do an actual, um, you know, a self assessment of fish stocks shark stocks. In this case, they actually like combed through. They got like grad students combed through Twitter instead and like using hashtags like pull up recent pictures and say like, well through these ten thousand photos, taking the last x amount of time from these, you know, geo tagged areas, like this is what we have. You know, so um it is it is valuable. Current thinks everyone from Arizona who's bummed should move to Wisconsin. Or she's not here right now, but I'm looking at what she wrote, or uh, if you're in Arizona, you're bummed about this whole thing, going explain to your people about this stuff. Yeah, and say like, look at man, look at what we're missing out on. I want to know Chef Ragilowski's take on moving a bunch of Arizona folks up to Wisconsin and what that would do to the palate up there. Yeah, that spice, Well, chet would be a good one to talk to. Least, that was concept data. But on a hard roll, hard roll, No, they don't like spice in Wisconsin. Some people do, but pretty cheese and sausage. Remember how we were covering off on that whether that dude should be allowed to name his kid. His last name is Fisher and he want us to name it Hunter Fisher. Someone sent us in a newspaper clipping about a guy named Hunter, last name Hunter marrying a woman whose last name is Fisher. No Tyler Fisher, Audre Hunter. Dude named Fisher marrying a woman last name Hunter, and they made a little couzy to like commemorate the wedding, says, part of your bass off or get the buck out Fisher Hunter, Fisher Hunter. That's cute. That's more stuff on love This. Yeah, it's the podcast. I love that. Just seems like you're setting yourself up for something that you gotta explain every single time somebody sees it down the road, Like if you want that little memento from your wedding, what, oh, you know the Hunter Fisher in and people loved it at the time, I swear, so I want to follow up and find out she took his name or not. If I were her, I would just combine and have kids name them Joe Joe Fisher Hunter, No Joe Hunter Fish. I wish my name was that, Like angler. Yea forager for fisher. Start a little Instagram page. People your age. I thought you guys think about all right? Speaking of love, um Chester, we've had Chester on many times, Daniel, Yes, you have tell me about how little fish you beating in your life? Well, let's see, it's pretty ship up creek to them. And who's the uncle? I can't give his name. I'm kidding. It's my uncle Dale. And does he listened to the show? Does you know about it? I don't know. But the first time my eight fish was with him and I was actually five and caught a salmon, cooked it up, and but to give to give him a little salmon. But this is when you were five years old. How do you remember? I have a good memory. Never forget, never forget to taste that's good. Anyway, it was not a good taste. So when you're five, uncle Dale went on a fishing trip. You don't know where you went. I don't know nothing work in the river mouths. What was he doing? I don't know. All I know is he had a fish and I had to clear my plate and I was for like growing up you had a clear plate before you're sure man? Yep? So he made me eat that whole thing, and I was like, clean, clean plate. I was clean, clean, clean plate, Club Uncle Dale salmon dish, and then took twenty years off. Well, so yeah, I ended up not eating salmon again after that, but I was I was also young. When you're like a kid, you're so picky. Kids are so picky with what they eat, So I could have just been like, you know, I didn't like the taste. I don't know what it was, but I just from then on I was like, I'm not trying that again. Until it came up here and had some vandy salmon. It was delicious, but that also ruined you on the Yeah, it did. I think I had this like persona of like everything is going to taste fishy, and I didn't like. That's the taste I didn't like was the fishy taste. So but I've had fish sticks and I've tried, like, Wally, you never wrote a Long John Silvers or anything like that. This last night, I can't say that I've done that. Nope. Uh, do you know there's a place called Long John Silver's. Did not know that? And explain how you could explain how you cooked the salmon in order to win. Oh not quick question? Why did they call you? Don you know? I got the nickname from a guy. It was that we hung out with a lot of friend I don't know how it's just more fun to say it's d a h N. Really, it depends on, you know, the mood of the situation and Dan. Back to the fish thing though, Danielle's my wife and she doesn't give things a good shot sometimes when it comes to game or fish. But I feel like coming up here, I'm super proud of you, so like giving it a shot? Is that a sentence? I like it? Though I knew that was actually coming up here. Winchester, you know, told me about this opportunity. I was really excited for, like, just to see everything out here and be out of my comfort zone because at home, I didn't grow up in the woods doing stuff. All I did was sports. Growing up. My mom worked a lot, so I didn't go camping every weekend. When you started working you're nine years old, yeah, pretty much. My dad was never really in the picture, so I kind of just been, um, you know, I just worked and played sports, and that was my favorite thing to do. I learned, I learned the you know meaning of money at a young age, and if I wanted something, I had to work for it. So if I wanted a hundred Paradolargians in high school, I had to pay for it. Which why did I do that? But I mean, I guess I never grew up eating this stuff. And Chester, as everyone knows, he's allergic to it. We haven't covered off on that. Okay, Well he's my My husband's an old fishing guy who could not eat fish, and he's allergic to it, so we don't cook it at home. He's been going gang bolsters on the shellfish. He's been going. Next, So Andie, explain your salmon cooking. So Andie lives on San Juan Island south of here. But you guys eat all kinds of fish. Yeah, yeah, it's rich and seafood over there. Um. But that Sam and the other night actually had quite a bit of a journey to get to to get to the dinner table. We uh well, we got on silvers up at Frank's and flayed them up, came back and uh oh, they fired up the grill outside. Had all intentions to get a nice little crispy skin on that on the on the grill and as we threw it on with a little propane malfunction, grill kind of went down to a little whimper of a of a flame, so quick brought it inside, threw it into hot pan, and then went to finish it in the oven, and the pilotlight was out in the oven, so we had a start back over. But all said and done, by the time I got there, I put a little honeymuster glaze on. It was actually pretty dang good. It was absolutely yeah. We we overcame the you like to do a skin side down? I well, actually, if the girl no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not skin if you have a ripping hot grill or what I prefer what I have give say, cooking one on one, Well I have. I have a couple of girls at my house. But my favorite way to do is, I've got a flat top girl, So a big cast iron, you don't flat top and get that things smoking hot, a little bit of oil and flesh side the season you know, generously, and then flesh side down until that thing just tells you when it's ready and just starts to curl. And that cast irons, if it's seasoned right, you just get up under there and flip flip the whole fla over and it's just got that perfect little crust on there, and then finish it with skin down. You get a little bit of crisp on that skin and it's money. And you can do that on a on just a regular barbecue grill too, right, sure, sure if if you're confident in your grill not sticking, you know, it's it's all about the heat. If you can get that heat high enough and you have a good season season grill um surface, it shouldn't be a problem. But in the same note, you can do that kind of stuff in a cast iron pain inside. You know what I was explaining about the flat top grill. The only downfall is that is if you don't have a good hood system, your house is sticking like fish for a couple of days. Yeah that you know, if you're really searing fish where it's like white hot with just that oil starting to smoke, that's where you want it to put that flesh side down. But then yeah, your house is going to stick a little bit. My wife used to get mad at me when the bath towels smelled like fish. Yeah, you know, three days fish? Uh? Tell us an I asked about cooking. Oh, talk about how you fry fish. Well, there's a lot of just fish. So I prefer breading posed to a battered dip. I mean, batter dip is good for some applications, but I just find it gets that some people get a little too heavy with the batter. You've got a half inch battery better breading, like when you get like traditional fish and chips, that's usually a beer battery like that. But a lot a lot of restaurants are home cooks do it where there's just like a half inch thick breading before you get to the fish, and but it's not cooked probably and by the time it gets into the center, you kind of have that soggy breading in there and it just kind of MUSHes the fish out of Oh yeah, you give that to your kids, and it winds up being that they eat all that and then the middle is like some little chunk of fish because they picked all that garbage off the out side of it. So I prefer to more of a a breading on there, where I would take usually dry bread crumbs mixed with a little bit of flour and some seasoning. Sometimes I even throw a little bit of cornstarch in there because or like a rice flower or something that's going to give it that real nice Christmas. And I'll usually do the three um into the flour into the eggwash and then press it hard into the into the bread crumbs. And the key that is is hot oil. You know, if your oil temperature is too low three below three fifty below, you're gonna get soggy fish? Do you aim? I? Typically yeah, because your oil is gonna the temperature is gonna plunge once you put all that old fish in there, So you aim for three seventy five. Yeah. I always got a little hot and then it comes down. And then another trick is if you're doing rounds, let that let the oil recouping that get back up to temp because a lot of times you're rushing and you throw it right back in there, but that oil is plummeted so far down that everything's gonna get soggy in there. For big groups like this, though, do you have, like what's your trick when you're doing rounds, like multiple rounds of fried fish? And this would be applicable at your house too. Steve Um getting your first match and your second match to like match up by the time it hits the table in one round. Yeah, it's tricky. We're running two friars the other night, which is nice. We had actually electric fire that kind of you know, maintains that temperature pretty well, and then we had and flirts with like burning this whole place down, kind of flirtsh with that. But I get, uh, I get a dutch op in line up paper towels, take a load off, dump it in there, and don't put lit on all the way because I want steam to get away. That keeps more and then you're just keeping that outside, you're not throwing it back in the right next to that, I think the other trick to good fried fish is well, there's a couple of a couple of things. Is the thickness that you cut it. And I've been working on this for for the last couple of years, just really trying to dial it in too thin, and that fish is overdone by time your your breadings, I'm gonna get that nice color on it, too thick and you're not gonna achieve You're gonna still have a little raw fish before that breading starts to get too dark. So it's it's you gotta hit right in that sweet spot. Um. You know I can see hits out the back of my head when someone's got to hit on the rod, even on other boats. Um sho, dud. It's like a curse. Man, I see every hit. Did you see our heat? I could. I could probably feel it. You can probably hear mine. Oh yeah. Anyways, um, frying fish somehow like the sound, like the vibe, like I just can tell when it's done. Oh, you need all your senses today. When it's done, I really do. It's it's something like the bubbling. Do you know what I'm saying. That's the other trick is to pull it. It's a it. You almost have to lead it, right, You want to pull it? When you gotta lead it? Yeah, you gotta think when you think it's still a little bit raw, that's when you pull it and let it sit for two minutes and then it's movements. Right. There should be that nice translucent like flaky because it's not the worst in overcooked fish. I was at a gun range in Washington State one time. I got talking to the dude next to me at the gun range, and he learned where I was from, from Michigan and somehow he felt basically that I was from Wisconsin. Um it was telling me about when he lived in Wisconsin. Actually from Yeah, you know, it didn't matter. It was very much like the same region Wisconsin. N It's really if you think someone's from Wisconsin, there's like an immediate like bonding that you have. You're like, oh, you're from Wisconsin. So I can see why that he was from Washington. Oh really met me. I told him I'm from Michigan, and he proceeded to talk to me, is from Wisconsin, like in his head, just no difference. Yeah, right. Anyhow, he was telling me how he almost he was in the military. I can't remember what tell he was, but anyways, met a girl, almost got married, but then changed his mind to last minute, moved back to Washington, and he said the defining part of the decision, as he said, one night, I said to myself, do I really feel like sitting around here eating fried fish every Friday? I remember thinking, give me that lady's number. Well, we all grew up the mid West. I mean that's uh, well you myself a Chester, but that's that's a staple on a Friday night. Love fried fish, man and people apologize about it now, But I don't know why would you? Andy? How did you do your sauce? The charter sauce was so good? Oh yeah, that was just got What was that? I threw some pickles in there. I think a little trick to that is I always spill a little pickle juice into the into the male and give it a little thing. But that had some chopped up capers and garlic and thinking man sauce. Yet you throw pickle juice in there, Yeah, gives it that get a little lemon juice too, kind of thins it down and it kind of gives it that little little briany goodness. Mhm uh, Kelsey, tell me your biggest, like biggest impression, Southeast Alaska impression. Oh my god, the biggest three whatever? Faces looking better? Thank you? Got a little puffy this morning? Yeah? You thought I was all depressed this morning because I woke up with a little congestion that I was crying about my engagement if we'd broke it all right now, I've just been here for five days and I'm puffy. Um, this has been the best trip ever. I mean, it's like, come on for me, never been to Alaska. I love the scenery, the wildlife, fishing like just the experience. I don't know if you want to call it an experience, but um, but like got engaged, had all my friends here, my dog. We had so much fun. Call your first halibut caught my I mean caught my first halibut, caught my first salmon, caught my first green ling, like kelt green ling. What would you say your biggest strength and weakness? Biggest strength and weaknesses as a helibut fisherman are the weaknesses reeling for sure? Really and that sucker up. I'm like, this is a hundred pounder, tough, get it up. I don't know what was my biggest one pounds which is so decent. We never weighed it, but it was tough to get in the boat. Um, that's probably I don't know. Strength, my napping skills, Yeah, that's important. Fill that real line click losing to drag, drag the line over your between your toes or something. Pretty much. Yeah, there's a good picture of us all pretty much laid out in the boat napping. I pulled up. You guys all perked up. Oh we couldn't let me blacken. But you're generally you generally enjoyed it. Oh, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Yeah, it's a good time and the benefits will last. We have a lot of fish. I spread the love. I love food. So I'm going to be remembering this one for a long time. So this means that Seth's slowed down on wallete fishing, right, fish, That makes sense. Range back there we were talking. We told you this morning, we're up. You know, we've been here for five days and we've just been fishing our ass off and it's been amazing and we're going home today. But Chester and Seth, you know, saying good night to everybody. Last night. The last thing they said was Seth was like, hey, Jester, do you want to go fishing on Sunday? Did they make a little date? Oh? Yeah, they made a date already. That's cute. Yeah, Because you guys have becoming tournament wallee fisherman. Next year we're hitting the Montana circuit. We're gonna sponsor you guys. Yep. We're going to try and do something super cool with our winnings too when we take them all. If we win. Yeah, you guys, to explain what you're gonna do with all your with your winnings. We don't really know yet. We're gonna consult with uncle col over there because he's good with that kind of stuff. Conservation um. We'd like to maybe do some fishing access um stuff. Maybe some fish cleaning facilities. Yeah, we got we got some access. Yeah for the lake that you if you gave the purse money to the leading issue that the lake you won, the person has around access enhancement, enhancement facilities, improving a boat ramp, fish cleaning stations, whatever, porter potties, who knows whatever. We'll figure out from someone who knows what the what the area needs. We might not, we might not win anything. That's a bad attitude. I'll tell you what, buddy of mine, is there a ranger in an area, pretty affluent area, and people are always looking to make donations to get the trail heads up to what they think is the shape they should be in and things like that. Uh. But everybody wants like some grand beautiful trailer or something with their name on it, but really what they need are outhouses and nobody wants their name on a shitter. So man, if you guys thet you can take off on a on a tear on the Walleye circuit and have a shitter named after you had every boat, I'd be all, go take a Chester. Yeah, I'd be down to donate a shitter. I'd probably use it. But he he'd cut the line all the time. You could work in that quality control is part of the deal. Yeah, seth h move your biggest like like Southeast Alaska impressions. I mean, you've been here before, but still I've been here before. Um man. The I was just I was hooked on the halibut fishing this time around last time. It was just like cool to see everything, but um especially because I struggled. I caught like one halbit the first day and then when a couple of days struggling, so that just made me want to we broke your fishing reel? Yeah, I broke. I broke my fishing reel on the first day, brand spanking new, brand spanking new, and which made me struggle the rest of the trip fishing with it broken reel. But um just man, everything there's so much life up here, like everything that you can do. We're out at Frank's trying to catch salmon, and Chester discovered you could vertical jig spinners for for flounder and and uh um sculpts. Makes you feel like you're fishing wallete and you can look down, you can like five five whatever fift however, you know, until you can't see anymore. Yeah, just vertical jake and it looks like nothing's down there, but all of a sudden you put that spinner on the bottom and jig it up and down a little bit and like these little flounder just come out of nowhere. That was cool. All shrimp crab bears everywhere, deer make running around. Out of all the meteor trips we've ever done, this is still my favorite. Like the meteor trip we did up here was my favorite one out of everything. Yeah, I just like this area. You know, there's all the we're largely surrounded by Tongas National Forest, and there's always a lot of back and forth. But right they were gonna do uh here a lot about the Tongas rolled less rule m. Therove was debating whether to cut a bunch of more road up here to access more old growth September, and it seems like that's gonna be off again, at least till the next presidential election. Right, because what what was your like personal experience with the effects of like some of the logging practices, not necessarily like logging in general, but the logging practices here out in your area. Well, historically there was effects to the land and effects of the water, um they would. So out here it's there's a lot of what's called marine based logging where you're coming in on small islands or in areas so there's no road system and it's like you have to establish a beachhead, like they blasted one in over not far from us four or five years ago. That was on tribal land. Um. They still they're quitting now. But the tribal corporations up here, so see Alaska's a tribal corporation here that represents coastal tribes. They own their very expansive land holdings, and they up until very recently have been extremely aggressive around old growth old growth logging, old growth rainforest logging. UM. And they did a monster cut not far from us, and they're wrapping that cut up earlier than expected. I guess they weren't getting the yield off that they thought they would. But they come in and dynamite in a landing and then they're pulling all that timber out and they raft the timber and yeah, they floated. They create these massive I mean we're talking about many, you know, hundreds of acres of raft logs when it's all said done. Uh. The weirdest thing about that and these cuts up here is a lot of that incentive. The log comes from the death of the milltowns and that industry. This logging project when they do it here, that stuff goes from the woods into the water, It goes on barges, and it is shipped in the round directly to Asia. It never sets foot in an American town, no way. That all goes in the round to Asia to be milled in Asia. It goes on ships out there out to the sea, not milled here. Yeah, they make ship with it over there and then we bring it. So the land effects are obvious and and they're not all negative. Right, Like the clear cuts are amazing deer if you if you like to hunt deer. Yeah, the fresh growth that comes in there, because this is true rainforest. Right. So like when you're sitting here and you look, I was looking at like possibly some trees to cut, and then trying to imagine what kind of headaches that would cause, like you have this dark undergrowth that that is really open. But if you were to cut trees out and allow a lot more direct sunlight in, it's not like that would just remain open with more sunlight. That would then get a bunch of uh growth responding to that direct sunlight like a jungle, and all of a sudden, the kids wouldn't be able to run back and forth down there, right, So you gotta think about that stuff. But that's it gives a job to the kids, very clear that out. Yeah, there's nothing worse than like, it's nothing worse than looking at a fresh clear cut. To me, it's just ugly. It's just I'm not even like I'm not even getting into the I know, the economic stuff and all that. Like it's jobs. Just saying like very personally, very subjectively, to look at a clear cut of old growth hemlock and cedar and sick of spruce is is ugly to me. But man, you get that stuff a few years and it loads up with deer uh and then and then it kind of enters along like not very productive cycle. In fact, when we first started coming up here, we used to hunt a clear cut at the time was like seven or eight years old, was spectacular. And then now it's got to the point where it's just nothing. It gets too high, too too high, too thick to hunt. Uh so does that advantage. But one of the unforeseen things, and when we had that clear cut coming in where we're at now this is a big debate, is when you raft those logs they shed their bark and there was a cove near here, I mean very cold, you can see it from here that they rafted lumbering when they did the cut I was talking about. And it turned that it's a large cove network. It is a completely sterile environment. Now you used to be able to crab it like nothing lives there, all the crab pots in the world, and that cove, nothing lives there, and it winds up being many many feet of bark that just suffocates the sea floor. When they put the clear cut in near here, they had to determine an area where they can't remember what they determined, an area they felt was nonsensitive um and some local people pushed back on it. But in the end, uh they rafted logs in an area they felt it was a viable place. The raft logs and completely anecdotally, like completely anecdotally. UM. And and take for Graham, I'm not here that much, right, We're in and out over a month every year. UM. I can't point to like we shrimped near there and stuff. I can't point to any obvious impact from that. But I don't know that it's not there. But they might be more careful about the selection now. But it's a strange process. And there's other thing to do here is helicopter logging, um, which is great because then you just select caught from a from a hunting perspective of anything that does is when the helicopter log an area, Man, you cannot get through it. It's tough navigating. It's horrible. Steve dropped me off there one day and it's like, oh yeah, just walk up here. It'll be some deer in there. I think it just got logged. Should be easy walking. And it's like you are crawling underneath trees to then get up on top of trees to then go underneath trees, and the topography is so broken you'd be like climbing on some dead log and you jump out into our dead log. And also you look down you realize you're off the you're on like a soap slippery log. You know that's like rotten, right, and you're like, oh that that's not good. Nobody's gonna find me in here ever. Yeah, this is my first time diving up here, um, doing a little little snorkeling and free diving, and it's absolutely mind blowing how much life there is when you're looking just looking at the sea floor here like it is. It is a living sea floor. It's not like sand and in some turtle grass and the occasional crab. Every it's like every square inch of the ground out here in these bays is alive. Yeah, that's a good point. You can put your hand down anywhere and you'd be laying your hand on a living organism absolutely, not not like silica, not just like sand or rock whatever you put your hand down, it's like your hand is laying on living organisms with without doubts, So that it would be like another great example of Steve's like lumpers and splitters thing, and like how uh the s A can be used to protect areas. Um, you know, you you could very well go in like if you really want to do a survey of one of these bays that they're going to potentially raft a bunch of logs. And I'm sure you could go through there with the right people and really cover it well and find some you know, tiny sea star or something where you're like, oh, not a lot of these left, yeah out here, but here often you're dealing with in this area, you're often dealing with sort of the most effective tool against environmental degradation is the subsistence community. Um, And you it's very if you're impacting subsistence hunters and fishermen who say that you know, not say who's who's food and sustenance comes from those resources, that is a that's a force to be reckoned with. And and so for there it's like like you know, they'll push like that shrimp ground, that's crab ground to select stuff. But recently this corporation here, this tribal corporation that owns most of the coastline here, Um, they're gonna do a ninety there. They're gonna fade it out right now and they're gonna take a year break from old growth law sugging. Wow. Well, I wonder which is a like major decision. Oh yeah, I mean it's it's an entire lifetime of work off for a lot of people, right hiatus No, I guess they'll reassess the ninety nine years. Incredible. The thinking about the subsistence living up here too. It's like the week at the fish Shack is like a crash course in logistics. I'm like, you see those cup of sugar, Where did this cup of sugar come from? You know? Uh? And he's doing the the food spreadsheets for this place, and you know, uh, you're talking this morning about the kids grabbing random packs of oatmeal. Yeah, like, hey, that's somebody's breakfast. Yeah, you just eight Thursday's breakfast on Tuesday. Yeah, that's that's That's Actually one of my favorite parts of this coming up here is the logistics of getting everything out here and making it all work. It's it's it's definitely has to be fairly fine tuned to make it all work, or else you're you give stuff in a little trouble. Well, it's so funny because we're not in the middle of nowhere. Like really, if you zoomed out a little bit, there are people everywhere. There's you know, a commercial planes flying into a place not very far from here, as the Coral flies, and it's still like you got to really have your thinking cap on if you're going to have your fuel, your groceries, you're all your stuff dialed for a week, you know, yeah, yeah, hardware stuff big time. I'm gonna skip ahead. I was gonna I wanted to hit everybody's primary impression, but no, no, I'm skipping ahead to me because you just brought up one of the things I was gonna mention first. One thing I like the most is the way when a good hal of it shows up in town, he never gets caught the first time. Like how bad at aiming they are? Yeah, I mean we will be like bump head a bump, bump heading on our bump. Someone else's like just had a bump. Like you just imagine him down there. Oh, he's going around to everybody and sometimes five or six times before someone buttons into him. And like, when one shows up, he's generally gonna get caught, you know, when you start getting like and sometimes you'll you'll hit three times before he gets himself hooked. It makes you wonder how they get by. I was thinking, I would love to just have like a bird's eye view of what's going on ice fishing camera down because we're up there for you know, some of these days we're up there for eight hours and not knowing what's going on down there, and then one shows up and like or you're a you're just quiet and just see him over and yeah, Andy, I think that was your biggest one, right that you were so like had him on for like three or four and then he got off and you sent it back down and then you called him again. Yeah. He I had him on for a minute and then just like Steve was saying, then all of a sudden he came back around and I was going to miss that second time. Yeah, but the whole time you were just cool as a cute cover. In our boat, the late twenties boat, when we were something up, it was just chaos. Sounded like childbirth going on. Look at me. Yeah, we had Kelsey made this comment and uh we were like, okay, like how much longer should we be here? Like, oh, I'll give it twenty minutes. And I hear Kelsey go, we've been here six hours, and I was like, we have, but with that, who got the last minute fish? Oh yeah, And nineteen minutes into that twenty minutes, I gotta fish. It's calculated. Uh. The other impression I was gonna mention that was based on the one you did is is annoying. It's it's like, I have my three kids up here right now. It's hard to have. I mean it's just hard. It's like a lot of people to manage all their coals, all wet, stealing, frustrate me, Like I want to strangle them. But um I do like them too. I think it's value for them to see, like what goes into utilities. I mean, liked, do you get a bed, understanding of stuff, how stuff functions, water, how to fix everything right, I'll be all moldy and everything, be all wet, moldy all the time. Your kids, I'm probably to get, like how to get your feet? So they got trench foot man. Those kids, they're out there in the pouring rain, play in with like one didn't have a raincoat on. It's just it's like cold and they're just going like nothing phases. It's interesting. I don't know when people turned into babies, but nothing phases. They went out there by themselves in a canoe and came back with three fish, and we were like, what was good? Yeah, yeah, they drive me nuts, but I do like them to be exposed and stuff because they got it. I mean, look at our normal house. They got it. Gravy, gravy. Their mom like, oh, you need their extra snack, you know, like just all the time. Man, that's not what she sounds like, but you get what I'm saying, like totally made. Yeah, and here it's like you have to rash in those pretzels and you're not gonna get anything. Life has just served them on like a planet. I don't think Rosie liked our boat. She went to Jimmy when we switched kids, and Jimmy was like, yeah. She was telling me how many rules you guys have on your boat because we're all like every time, like it was, we get out there and about nine fifteen, she's like, can I have a snack? And were like, we have the whole day to save this this food. And next next thing you know that it's open and she's in there. You had the late twenties boat, but all we have experience with is dogs, so we were like, we're talking my dog to shut up. Alright, Chester, hit me with your impression. Southeast Alaska in a nutshell. Oh man in a chestnutshell. That's going to be difficult, but first I just want to paint a picture. I'm like sitting here next to my wife in a little tiny shack and it's a shack. Yeah, we just called a cabin. My wife's like, it's not a cabin. Yeah, but it's there's something less of the there's fish posters hanging on the wall. Books, I got coffee sitting next to me. I'm looking through a window. And whoever painted that window didn't know how to cut very well when they were painting painting the frame, so they were drunk in a way. I like it. So there's paint on the window. I'm looking into like a mid tide, not a low tide. Cal's mother was out on the beach picking rocks and digging around for shells, and not thirty now, probably a hundred yards past that. The kids were catching salmon not too long ago. And there's boats parked out on a little floating dock that we take out every morning into the into the ocean basically into other coves and fish for hall a bit. And there's call and Steve did diving like there's just dope for scallops, and there's just so much life and it's hard for me to put it in a chestnut shell. But I'm the kind of guy that likes to experience, Like I want to fish for salmon, I want to dive, I want to do all this stuff. And I wish we had more time. But you never got to dive, never got to dive. Um. So I mean it's an amazing place. I could see myself like spending some serious time up up here and not getting bored. Um. And yeah, I just wish I wish we didn't have to leave. We gotta go to a wedding, which it'll be good, but I wish we had more time. But I mean, I appreciate you having us up here. I was almost like bummed yesterday a little bit that it was winded down. Yeah, and I ran out of chew starting to shake ut. Yeah it's good. What's up is that where you're smacking that gum right now because you just bodies like your body so bad? Not really, But the second piece, since we've done try it down impressions, all right, Um, I've already been thinking about this. First of all, I will say I'm so excited to try the food, Like finally, I came up here, like I said earlier, Chester warn We're like, hey, you have to try this food. That's all we're gonna eat. And I at home, you know, I don't really practice the palette of different foods, and so coming up here I already knew. I mentally I was like, Okay, I'm gonna try some food. But not only just trying it. It's like we literally caught it just this afternoon and we're packing it. We're you know, I just love the working I like, I love waking up the way we got I finally getting into rhythm, packing the boats, what needs to go in the coolers, and getting everyone assembled, getting all the kids dressed and you know who's going what boat. It finally felt like really good to have an order and like go out and really fish and going to that stupid wedding. Catching my first fish was really cool and obviously I think you might have heard it, I did, but yards away, I get really excited even catching like a little, you know, this big of a fish. So out here I knew it was going to be a different experience. So the fishing was great. The hellib it was incredible. Um I will say another one actually, I really enjoyed was when you took Julie, Kelsey and I to shrimp for the first time. It was just a perfect setting. It was cool that you taught us like what to do, like you didn't just like you really just told us what to do. And I felt like it was cool because sometimes people will show you physically, but you like literally just told us you need to do this and need to do that, go for it. And obviously we looked Kelsey and I looked each other like, oh ship, we got to pull it together. And it was really cool to watch the process. And then on our way back seeing that killer whale, that was one thing I really wanted to see on this trip. I was like, just the marine by you know, the wildlife is just so different than what I've seen because also, you know, I'm scared of everything, and out here I feel like I got some acclamation and I'm not scared of bears anymore. I saw a lot of bart bears, not scared of killer whales. I know. I literally was so excited about the profilely influenced by free Willie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess when I watched that a lot when I was a kid, and I just loved that whale, and I just think that they're just like a boss of the ocean. I don't know, they're just something different. I mean, you see, I feel like you would see I see. I've seen different types of whales in California, like the pump back. I just never really seen a killer whale unless you know, unfortunately to see world once. But I will say Danielle approached this trip with the way that she approaches everything in her life, which is like feverish enthusiasm and fun. And it was really cool to watch you do that. It was pretty excited. You guys were fishing off the boat and I was like, there's a will I got really close to her and I was like, well, that's really there. It was I don't know, I just felt like I really want yeah. And then my last impression is for photography. I just visually like, so I obviously photographed weddings and people a lot, and I knew I really wanted to grow my visual um artistic abilities out here and I really wanted to, you know, look at life in a different way and versus just when you photograph people. It's such a different it's so different than photographing stuff like this and to be able to go home and show my experience, like through documenting it and like not just like oh here's a pretty picture, like really documenting what like how we fished, not like the pretty picture. And anyway, it was really exciting. What's your range? Like like plug your wedding photography business? Oh yeah, my name is Danielle. My wedding photography business is Danielle Lopez Photo UM on Instagram. What do you mean what's my range? How far you travel? Photograph of wedding Um, I'm actually wanting to travel, Like that's my whole goal is to get out and travel because I, I guess because I love being a visual learner and visual artist. I would say Bozeman is getting saturated, like I'm in the same venue, same areas, and I really flourish when I'm in new places and I see different because I feel like I see things differently than others. Hard to explain it, but that's also why I feel like I'm meant to do this job, because I see things differently than others. So being out here, I was like, oh, you know constantly and so and so people if they want to see your wedding, do you post your wedding photography on that Yeah it's on Instagram. Yeah, so it's Danielle Lopez photo. Um on Instagram, people can hire you to come photograph the writing, but you kind of filled up now, Um, next year is getting there? Um? This year, I've I'm at twenty one weddings. Um, and next next year it's not even like I'm already at like ten so and I have like eight emails to answer, So it's exciting. Um, I think I'm capping it at twenty. But I really wanted to trigger more of like the intimate, like smaller weddings, because I feel like that's just where it is. It's not about like all the glamour and like the details. I just love the capturing connections and actually genuine photographs and cut some people off the list. You don't everybody called down. I'm here, I'm moment. The one thing, the one thing I'll add about this trip that I mean, the only downfall is we ran out of boobe. Yeah we had no We're cutting up fish, Like, how can we make a cocktail around here? That when I drank a lot, we used to buy cases of vodka leave it up here, cases of handles. Well there's some crazy with the liquor, but we ran out of beer. Yeah, thank you so much for having me up here in Chest just the invite was incredibly special. Yeah, thank you, great chef Andy impressions. Well plug your business? Are you still doing catering? Yeah? Plug away down creative little table full of people. Well, obviously I've been fortunate enough to come. This is my thirteenth straight year coming up here. So years. Yeah, yeah, thirteen straight years. Um, So I feel very very lucky to be a part of this. And obviously that being said, have made a lifetime of memories over those thirteen years. And that's kind of the obvious is the company up here is just a great group of people. And over the years we've I've got to beat so many different people because like here it is like table full of people I've never met before. And over the years it's been it's been that way. There's always you guys are always bringing in quality people here. So it's it's been it's been a pleasure getting to know so many different people through the course of the last decade plus up here. Um. And then that being said, being able to be a big part of this and and put my culinary spin on things, and and be able to cook for people, which tends to bring some sort of joy to people. I guess when you when you have good food in a setting like this. My wife, uh is, like when she's planning on coming here, she's very interested in overlapping. She checks. She wants to know what andy schedules bring it up. I mean, said I. I And one of the biggest things for me is I catch myself a lot just kind of laughing, just like the pure like spoils of this place. Like any given night, I'll be staring down the barrel literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars of of seafood like on the market, like and I've got just all of it at my disposal to to play with it. Sometimes it's just mind blogging, like when I'm looking at all this fresh dungeoness and and prawns and and helmet, and I mean, it just it's sometimess like overwhelming, and the fact that it's it's so direct, because I mean, you go to the grocery store and you're seeing that nice little packet of cellphone salmon, and you think about the the fisherman, the deck hands the processing ship. Then it goes to the you know, to the cannies, to the truck driver, to the do you think about how many and then to the grocery store handler, like how many people have their hands in that we're here. It's like you're waking up in the morning. You're going to get that personally, processing and taking great care of that product, only to then turn around and like be able to share it with people not only right now, but then down the line. We take the care to package it, you know, rent everything really well. Get home on that snowy you know, December night when you're cracking that pack of how but open and it's like, you guys are right there. That's one of my favorite parts of this whole place is like and then I take that and then share it. I mean I could you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of people have experienced this fish from this cabin through the years that I you know, I just give the step away a lot, just like, hey, you guys need Albert for your dinner night here? Yo, Like I love being able to take this a experience and then pass along. So this place is Yeah, this place keeps on giving all year around this place keeps on giving. Yeah, yeah, that's great, man, I know I'm looking forward to anymore. Do you hit your impressions yet? Let me wrap it up, because that's gotta get on the old airplane to go to that stupid wedding. It'll be a fun wedding. Chester. Do you get your speech done? Oh? Yeah? Can you want previewer speech for everybody? Chester? Yeah? Chester is the best man. That's like we have to go. Yeah, No, I hope this guy's I hope this wedding is great. You're gonna say some nice stuff about her, give me an idea about her? Oh, beautiful, beautiful Ashley. You're too good for Bill. Since I'm the best man here at this wedding, I don't know why you're not marrying me. Um, you don't want to talk about it. No, I'm just gonna I'm gonna have some talking points that I'm going to write down and just kind of wing it in a way, but have some structure to it. Throws some jokes in. Yeah, probably they'll be bad. It'll be bad jokes. Why not? So you're gonna say something nice about her, say something nice about him, Tell a little story in there about how he was so drunk. Yep yep um. And you know mentioned the chicken political petition. It's a good one. Oh yeah, they started a petition, chicken petition that they started, so that'll be something. Well, they're chicken crusaders to try to be allowed to have chickens in their yards and they're going hard on it. When you see Seth, he's got his shirt buttoned unbuttoned down to his belt. He's got a tie tight around his head. Do you see that? Pictures? Send them home. That's my favorite set Send them on the minute. He ties the neck tie around his head as a headband. Didn't do that wedding because we wore bolo ties, so he's got a bolo tie around his head like a headband. Send him on. Alright, Cal, Oh did you have to do yours? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, lots of life. Can we give a shout out to Cal's mom. Yeah, Cal's mom crushed really is awesome. We got to meet Cali. That was his date. Yeah, Jack of Love. So, I mean, that's that's the coolest thing. You know. I'm I'm thirty eight these days, and and that's the first trip that my mom's or my mom and I have ever done. Um yeah, yeah, and she, I mean, she loves this this stuff, and I knew she'd take off out here and she's she's very comfortable working, uncomfortable not working, so she loves little jobs and stuff like that. So, um, it was It's nice just being when the first float plane takes off and it's got your mom on it and Steve Ronnella, like, you know that they're going to get along just fine because they're gonna have plenty of things to work on at the Fish and yeah, so that was a really really cool deal. And uh, I know she'll be talking about this forever. She's she's in heaven out here, and um oh, man, I I haven't been up here. I came up a lot after my first stay because we did and ended up coming back here for a show and and something else. So I got like a lot in the first year or two years, and then I haven't been up here in like five years. And yeah, it's just like it's just like another spot on that list of place is that you're just like aching to come back to before you actually leave, which makes it hard. I hope you just want every day to be like the best day we've been putting in big days. This this is a killer crew. It takes takes seventy two hours up here for folks to settle in, getting a rhythm from from what I saw this trip, and how to dry their socks. Yeah, you know all the things, and yeah we're breaking up the band too soon. Oh where's that? All right? Well, there you have, Ladies and gentleman, Special edition Shack of Love. Thank you, not live from the fish shack, Shack of Love. Let's go catch some fish, Let's go tune in next week. One