00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely vot bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. How many of you guys have seen um? Uh No Country for Old Man? That's good several times. Yeah, that's a good one. This guy wrote in asking this question where you're saying that, uh, He's like, He's like, if you were in that situation where he shoots that antelope, you know in the beginning, Yeah, well is the case? Like so the writer Corman McCarthy, who I think is the and I'm not out on a limb by saying this. He's a probably the greatest greatest living American writer. UM has his book No Control Man. The Coin Brothers made it into a film. Any On the beginning, the guy, the main character, shoots an antelope and hits it bad, gets a bad hit on it, and the book he explains the bad hit better where he dropped short and a bullet come off the hard pan and and hit the antalope bad. But he starts trailing the antelope, blood trailing it and comes across the scene of a major shootout and dead bodies laying everywhere in a whole bunch of money in a suitcase. A guy recently wrote in saying like, hey, what would you do in that situation? Do you feel as though he should have finished trailing that antilope? I was saying, I think that I would forget all about the anope dead dudes mowed down, the machine gun, gunfire, and a blood trail leading off. You know, wanted to say, yeah, right, I don't know. I can't. It's hard for you know. Funny about Corey McCarthy, like in that funny thing about Karl McCarthy is that he uses so many esoteric, old timey references that I feel as though most Americans most of the time don't know what Karen McCarthy is talking about. I think you just gotta skim past all the live stock firearm manufacturing references because I'm pretty like well steeped and old timey esoteric ship and I have to look up stuff that he's talking about. In the end of that movie. In the book, we'll just talk about the movies. I think more people see the movie they read the book. At the end of the movie, uh, the character played by Tommy Lee Jones is talking about a dream in which his father is on horseback and rides up through a pass ahead of him in the snow and says he was carrying a horn of fire. I know, Kevin Murphy knows what a horn of fire is. Just the torch, isn't powder horn? Powder horn? Do you take? They take a powder horn, fill it full of embers in the morning, but you'd have to prick a little air hole in the powder horn just to keep some oxygen in there, and then at night you dump you you'd have enough ember to get a fire going. So to say he's carrying a horn of fire as he's got embers in a embers in a powder horn with a pinhole board into it keep the embers alive. I wasn't bring it up for that reason. I was just bringing it up for the reason of the guy's question. Because we do handle some questions, you know. I want to do one more question because this is a good one for Yanni. A guy wrote it in he wants to be a hunting guy. How's he become a hunting guy? Johnnie Boy, let me introduce everybody. First. Is the Lavine Eagle? You honest? But tell us Garrett Smith, dirtmth Dirtman, tell him, tell him why your photography company is called Dirt Myth had a speech impediment when I was young, and I'd introduced myself as Dirt Myth as opposed to Garrett Smith, and it's stuck now his new names walk on water because yesterday you made the rookie air like people who grow up around lakes. People who grow up around lakes assume a certain depth transition that happens from the bank outward, Like they'll extrapolate the pitch of the bank. It's like how quickly it gets deep. And they'll be like, and I'm six ft away from there, assuming that that pitch is constant, I am in two ft of water. And so Garrett made that quick calculation, pitched over the side of a boat into a twelve ft hole in the body Ohio River with camera gear. I have so many times seen on a river where someone a beach a boat and people just bail out. I have no idea that it's like a bottomless hell hole order standing. So Dirt Myth and then the Mighty Um Kevin Murphy, Paduca Kentucky squirrel master, what else? Engineer just all around outdoors. But I thought all around outdoors and hobby engineer and then Adam mo fat what moffat? But if you have somebody like when you spell it, I just tell him mow fat and they're like, but it's moffat, but it's my fat. Yeah. Camera operator. What do you guys like to call yourselves the days? Like photographer? Yeah, camera operator. The cinematographer kind of went away, right, that's film. It's more film. I know, I hate like videographer because I don't know that word sounds so right, right, so camera operator. I think cinema shooter, but no one knows what the hell you're talking about. I think that if I said I'm out with a shooter, people are gonna think that I'm out with the dude who's like shooting stuff. Well, yeah, I've done. You know. I've had people are like, oh I shot that, Like oh she shot it, Like, well I filmed it, you know after times. Yeah, sometimes clarify so your business card'll say one on it, uh, camera operator DP, director of photography. I mean you guys operate because people always ask about a camera guy on the shows, just like operate like independent freelance, Yeah, independent freelance. Fall you've fallen in with something and it becomes more regular and then yeah, yeah you have your let's let's call clients, you know. So, yeah, you get more regular clients who work with the show than like your stuff. Do a bunch of work with them, you know. So the lab you'd say the Lavin Eagle as a client. Yeah, yeah, I would say the Latvin Eagle. With your client, I'll send him a nice card at Christmas. You know there's a you're gonna send him a card. Yeah, but don't do it for Christmas. To do it for one of the Lavian pagan holidays. Send him a card if you want to win more business, hundreds of cards, all kinds of clients in Christmas if you want. If you want to win with Yanni, send him something about like a lunar phase or send him or send him a summer souls equinox kind of thing, or Yanni Day, because all Latvians are named. Be honest, there's Yanni Day. When's that summer solces? Oh, Yanni Day is the summer solsces. They do a combo? Yeah, okay, did he be able to bonfire Monday night? He was talking about that on a telephone with mate. No, but they'll get a little molten lead and throwing the bucket and pull out the lead and then hold it up to a candle and cast a shadow on the wall and figure out what's gonna happen. Now next year, whoa really good times? What's gonna happen the family around? Yeah, you don't like him eating too much sugar. We don't mind the playing with round. I think those days are changes. The new Latvian parents are rethinking that whole gather around family. I'm gonna turn a boat torch out of this year to lead. UM, so we it's two things manly. We're gonna discuss catfish. Kevin Murphy is gonna lead a conversation about catfish. But it's the interesting thing that happened to us. It was two weeks ago that we went in bear hunted. Um, we're bear hunting southwest Montana for black bears. And we spent four days, five five days very solidly glassing I mean like glass and good looking stuff where bears had been found in the past, UM, and couldn't turn up a single black bear. And I feel like you wouldn't be able to do that again without finding a bear. But the interesting thing is we found in four days, we found seven grizzlies. If you accept, and I'm not, this is an a loaded statement, but if you accept, now I just I just want to touch on this briefly. But this really, this subject really starts to make its own gravy, and it's kind of hard to touch on it briefly. We were in an area that is known in um and people discussing habitat or ecology, is known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, So it would be if you imagine like yet Also National Park is sort of the the center of an area of the Northern Rockies, but not the Northern Rocky Continental Divide ecosystem, but but a portion of the Rockies centered around Yelsto National Park. You'd call it the g y E. The Greater Yelstone ecosystem. The Greater Yelstone Ecosystem is kind of like about the size of Indiana within that. Are you actually right now reading the I just want to make sure I wasn't drinking too much sugar. Janice is reading the ingredients list on his beverage right now in the middle of my explanation. So we're in the Greater Yelstone ecosystem. It's side of the Indiana. Now hold that thought in your head from it and I explain something more. Uh, we're talking about grizzly bears here. So in grizzly bears were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and given protection under the U s A. They had been subject to hundred fifty or two hundred years of of a fairly focused person ution in the form of wide open unregulated hunting meaning hunting, no bag limbs, no seasons um poisoning where guys were poisoning predators. You know, like a poisoning trick would be that you would take a horse or you know, a mule or any number of things and shoot it and then inject it with stryct nine before it's heart quit pumping and the and it would getting the vascular system and so it kind of distribute the strict nine all throughout the animal's body and then whatever would come up and eat it would eat the strict nine. They would target Kyle's wolves, but you did invariably kill all kinds of other things. So poisoning was going on of grizzly bears. A lot of habitat destruction division of areas breaking up different habitat, you know, with barriers such as developments and roads lead to problems. And after this long period of persecution, um there were only about maybe about three grizzly bears left in the Greater yellow Stone ecosystem, and so they got all grizzlies in the lower forty eight got listed as threatened under the s A. Now you got fifty thousand grizzly bears like an Alaska, Canada, and they've been threatened in Alaska and Canada, but the Lower forty eight was declared threatened. Grizzly bears were present on the landscape at the time of European contact. They're president the landscape very roughly from the Missouri River westward. So when they got listed as threatened, they got list of the threatened across their historic range in the lower forty eight. So everything from you know, including let's just say including San Francisco was former grizzly bearer habitats. So they're there. Years go by and we have and years go by and we recover grizzly bears in two areas. One the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, which takes in Glacier National Park, Bob Marsha Wilderness, um bears come up to thrive in that area, probably have reached carrying capacity of that area. The other area where they've recovered, by many people's definitions of the word, would be the Greater Yellstone ecosystem. So portions of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. You have now about eighteen hundred grizzlies maybe two thousand grizzlies in the lower forty eight in those three states Montana, Idaho, Wyoming. What they did in order to try to to try to manage this population is rather than treating all the grizzlies in the lower forty eight as this one group which you will never recover, like we're never gonna recover grizzly bears in San Francisco, We're just not gonna have like we're not gonna meet carrying capacity in the Bay area because of human conflicts. So people within the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages species that are listed under E s A protections as these are threatened or endangered, came up with this idea of this concept called distinct population segments, where they broke the grizzlies of the Lower forty eight into these smaller management units, so you can start to think about management units in a more nuanced, detailed way. And there's five, i think five distinct population segments, with the vast majority the bears living in two of them, Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem um. Unfortunately, right now those two are not connected by a very viable corridor, so you don't have any genetic interplay moving from one to the other. Bears that are in the g y E or the Yellowstone area do not have a protected, readily usable corridor to connect with bears that are, you know, a couple hundred miles away in another area. But you've got a ton of bears in those two spots. So we're hunting the g y E and saw seven in four days. If you accept the population estimate of approximately seven hundred grizzlies in the g y E, which is a very contentious estimate. Basically, it's a number that everyone on both sides of the issue that I'm about to present to you. It's a number that everyone will agree on because there are people who find advantage in the argument that there are fewer, and there are people who find advantage in the argument that there are many, many more, and you can imagine which side holds each viewpoint. But they agree on the seven hundred figure. If you accept that figure, we glassed up one per cent of the entire grizzly berry population in four days in a in a land mass the size of Indiana. Um, what just happened? And I wrote, I wrote a op ed about this in the New York Times a few weeks ago. What just happened is the US Fish and Wildlife Service just came out and said this in a decision supported by the man who was in charge of recovering grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, who works for the US Fishing Wildife Service, they said, we're gonna take this distinct population segment and declare it recovered because it's met our recovery objectives, which have included a minimum of five dred bears. People agree that that was a number, that was a good number. That's they that's been going. They've met that every year for twelve years. For females with cubs, they've met that for over a decade. So they wanna do what we'd call d list that portion g y E only delist the bears of this Indiana sized hunk of land. They're getting tremendous amounts of blowback on this because once you delist something, it goes back to state management. So Idaho wolming in Montana, the state fishing game agencies would have to draw up or will have to draw up, a management plan for the bears in their states, and that management plan will need to be approved by the fetes. Once that happens, they will assume management of grizzlies the same way that they assume management of all other large mammals within those states. So these states are already managing, including, but hardly limited too, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, black bears, mountain lions, wolverines. Yeah, you name a couple de bird they manage all of it. They would also be managing grizzly bears. I think it's good to note to that management and management plan doesn't necessarily mean hunting plan. No, because everything has a management even things that don't hunt have a management plan. So but here's the catch though. The catch though, is that it is very likely that Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho are gonna use hunting as in their vernacular management tool, meaning that they're gonna it's it's not inevitable, it's highly likely that they're gonna use hunting to some degree to minimize human grizzly conflicts because there are areas where most people who have a stake in this agree that just are not gonna work as grizzly habitat Okay, subdivisions are not gonna work as grizzly habitat some mountain ranges or some island mountain chains. They feel it's not plausible that you're gonna have grizzies there because the potential for human grizzly conflict in the form of livestock depredation and human casualties are high, and they're gonna discourage bears from moving into those areas, and a tool they'll use his hunting, because right now, drugging and relocating a bear is very expensive, and once you get a problem bear that's habituated to humans, it's very difficult to to to to prevent them from doing it. You can move him into the middle of the Bob Marshal Wilderness area and they tend to have like a high level of recidivism where that bear will once he's got in his head that human, human occupied locations are a good place to find food. He just is going to continue finding that spot, so they'll they'll move a bear again and again and again. Bears in those areas and bears like that are likely to be there's a good chance that those bears are gonna be subject to hunting, or they're gonna try to use hunting in a way that would target those bears, even to the point where it might almost be like a hit list. But rather than having government agents go out and and drug it, move it, they would have a hunter who would be awarded some kind of permit through a lottery system, would get a permit to hunt bears in some area in a hope to do that. The prospect of hunting is what leads people to really feel as though we should not delist grizzlies because you want to talk about charismatic megafauna around top of the list. Um. Back when we had wildlife calendars, they always made every wildlife calendar. People look at him and they and they feel um a spiritual kinship to grizzlies and are very opposed to the idea of honting him because we haven't hunted him since UM in the lower forty eight I don't know if something magical happens at the border where grizzlies become they're a hunted thing. But people just have a hard time getting your idea around. Another criticism of delisting is that, um, a lot of people pay a lot of money to go to Yellowstone and see a grizzly, and they feel that if you were going to hunt them, you could potentially put you could put at risk that tourism drive. But here's the thing, here's here's my my stance on this. When we listed bears in n you go in and say to all these state agencies and different stakeholders, You're going and say, we're gonna list these bears with with the object of recovering them. Because the Endangered Species Act is meant to be a thing where things go on it, we recover them and delist them. There's a process for all of this. We've listed about two thousand animals, two thousand species, plant animal species. We recovered less than two. Okay, some of those things we've removed more from the list because we removed them from faulty data. I mean, thinking there were fewer than they were, and then they get list and then we realize there's a lot more things have been taken off the list for taxonomic reasons where you might have been thinking you were looking at a distinct subspecies and then you learn that it's not, in fact the distinct subspecies, and and that's something that maybe on the island is very rare, but it's very abundant on the next island over. Doesn't warrant es A protection, so it could get removed. But as far as like actually recovering something, for instance, the peregrine falcon and the balled eagle UM are examples of this. As far as the actually recovering something has been very few species, less than two UM, but the grizzly in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem has for well over a decade reached recovery objective. But now people want to use the e s A as a tool to protect their favorite animals from any threat of human exploitation. So they're not even looking at the wording of the es A. They're just saying, Oh, I really like them, I like looking pictures at the of them. I feel as though they're very cute and cuddly and if it if removing them from Endangered Species protection means they might get shot, I think we should change the entire meaning of in usage of the e es A in order to protect my favorite animals from human exploitation. It's kind of what we're up against. Anyhow, None of this really has anything do with anything from your perspective as a listener. Because the public comment period just ended on this plan, I feel that the plan will move forward, and I'll make this prediction, and I'm not like pulling. This isn't me. I mean this is it's almost a factual matter. The Feds will move to the list grizzlies in the Grade Adelstone ecosystem, and it will spend a decade in federal court because what I regard to be fringe wildlife groups are going to go and sue the federal government and cost state agencies and federal agencies tens of millions of dollars. They will enrich a handful of lawyers in order to put off delisting, and it will go on to make the essay the Endangered Species Act, which is an extremely valuable tool and a very helpful tool. They will increase public disapproval of the act, frustration with the act. Western ranchers and landowners and other people, and and people from fishing game agencies will more and more feel as though their efforts are not rewarded. That the carrot has constantly moved farther away from the horse. That recovery is this slippery, highly objective notion that just gets moved around, and it will increase some level of animosity towards the animals themselves. What do you think, Johnnie Well, I think the main point that I try to tell everybody too is that with all that going on, they will not probably save a single grizzly bears life because all these bears are turning into problem bears. They go out of that that core management area, they get classified as problem bears or whatever they get classified as, and they get taken out. I mean, some of them are drugged and moved, but there is that threshold of whatever it is x amount of bears that basically they're allowed to kill when they get you know, outside of that area and they're starting there's human conflict or they're you know, hit by cars, so in the end they're not helping the bear out, you know. But And the other thing about is they can't lower the bear population, like you think that anyone who's struggled to get bears recovered wants them to go back on the endangered species list. So they've already drawn up a mortality threshold which includes every thing right up to natural cause depths. The number can't go below a set number, like let's say you decide it can't go below five fifty bears, and I don't know the numbers not decided can't go below five fifty bears. That would mean that got relisted. Do you think anyone who's trying so hard to delist bears and take some of the regulatory burden off of state game agencies who do a phenomenal job of managing wildlife, do you think they want to see them go back on the list. Of course not. So this idea that they're gonna delist them and then go out and eliminate them from the landscape would be like kind of a classic example of of you know, shooting yourself in the foot. Now, there's some complexities that I don't because I want to talk about calf fish more. But there's some complexities that are worth considering here. I have a friend. We're kind of more emailed bodies than anything else. But he's a hunter, he's a instruman, he's involved heaving wildlife politics. You met him, that kit fisher. Maybe you haven't met him, I don't think anyways. The guy in Montana comes from a legacy of conservationists, like he has some concerns. He he he doesn't, he's not that. He just like categorically UM opposes the idea of delisting, But in conversations we've had, he's brought up some legitimate things. Montana Fishing Game. You go to their website and read it, Like if you look at their grizzly plan, their long term grizzly plan would be that you would establish a corridor for bears in the Glacier area or Northern Continental Divide area to have genetic interplay with bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Not just bears, but you have a corridor that can serve for all manner of animals that are imperiled now or may become imperiled in the future. You can move mountain lions between those populations, wolves between those populations, wolverines between those populations. UM. Now you can go look at Montana Fish and Games website. They talk about the viability of that corridor. If you talk about delisting and they're gonna start trying to remove bears, that that they might use hunting as a tool to control to to control human grizzly conflicts, is that gonna wind up contradicting efforts to allow bears to have genetic interplay between those two populations. I'm in the situation where I strongly support delisting because I strongly support state management of wildlife, and I do not like the idea of people using just emotionally emotional based arguments to take management decisions out of the two out of the you know, to take management decisions out of the jurisdiction of professional wildlife managers and to put it into the jurisdiction of a lot of people who have never even laid eyes on one of these bears. UM. But at the same time, I strongly support the idea of that corridor and and having very viable, thriving populations wolves, bears, wolverines, mountain lions on these landscapes. So yeah, I hope these state management plans come in UM and I hope that they are not a little too reactionary, overly eager to control depredation on livestock and allow for and and kind of prove as I believe that they will prove again to the world that state management of wildlife is the best system ever been demonstrated on the face of the earth. UM, and it has the interests of the people and best serves the interests of the people. UM catfish, Kevin Murphy. We break down for us what calfish live here in Kentucky. Well, this week we targeted three species, the blue cat. We were pretty very successful, uh obtaining UM can interrupted, Kevin, let me set the stage. We're Donna, Kentucky. All kinds of famous rivers flow through here. The Ohio meets the Mississippi not far from here, the Cumberland River, Tennessee River. Give me some more famous rivers, Clarks Rivers, a smaller river, the Green River. Everybody knows the John Primes song. Oh Lord, take me back to Meelenberg County, down by the RD. The Green River flows here. That's here, it flows into the Ohio. We didn't fish that one though. Now it was probably up about to river miles from where we ate catfish. Yesterday Yeah. So years ago I was doing some bow fishing on the Ohio and I ran into some guys who were doing something called polke Poland where they were fishing calfish with set lines where they jab a pole into a bank and hang a line with a bluegill bated on there, and then you come around and watch and see if the poll's bucking, and you caught a catfish. I was done hunting squirrels to Kevin Murphy last winter, explaining this to him, and Kevin got to talking about limb lining. So we made plans to come back down and fish catfish and do other fun activities in the hot ass Kentucky sun triple digit heat index. And so now with all that set up, talk about the three caltfish you guys got around here. We've got the big blue cats that are out of the main channel the river, the largest species uh in Kentucky. Uh and in the do u as the biggest biggest catfish and sink maybe Kentucky state records a pounds. Don't quote me on the b the least known catfish because channels and flats are everywhere, uh yes, and most parts of rule I think I find the people more with the hell of blue catfish. Yeah, pretty much. And they're like what it said, like main channel, main channel, out and out in the out of the deeper water. Uh feed on cut bait, just opportunists, whatever is out there. You know, they're they're pretty much after and they're like a suspended feeder. Two. Yes, Yeah, they feed up, you know, they feed up and from um. The brighter the sun, the better off they are. You know, a lot of fish like walleye for it's bright sunlight, they go down deeper hard. You know that they're not surface feeders, but the blue cats are. The sunshine pops out. You know, I've been out there many of times, be a little bit overcast, all of a sudden, the sun pops out, heating up. I don't know if it's plankton drawing bait fish up to the surface or what's going on, but that kind of triggers the blue cats to start feeding when he gets real hot and sunny. What's the biggest blue you ever caught? Uh, Freddy at fifty pounds, the one I showed you from last year. Got into a creek that was rising, water was coming up. It was triggering the blues to come in and feed on earthworms. Um, my friend and I, Brian Womble, we called the pounder and then the smaller one in there was probably read at forty pounds, you know, kind of back to back on a on a you said those blue catfish were packful of red worms. They were full of red worms. Yes, yes, just his stomach was was giant from from worms waters coming up and the red worms are getting drowned out and coming out of the ground. Yes, so you'll do when you leave your gardenholes on on accident you realize there's all kinds of drawing worms lander. Afterwards, it triggers the fish, a lot of fish to feed blue gill. The shell crackers will come in. Uh, some of these nicely manicured lake lawns that when the water gets up into those starts driving out earthworms. Shell crackers come up and feed like like crazy them. I have not been fortunate enough to hit one of those yet, but that it happens, it happens. Was the uh the mulberry feeding cat was that blue The way that he came into the service when we saw those were channels will occasionally also come up. We were underneath. I'm gonna do a quick digression. Here we're messing around the mulberry gang. Yeah, getting ready to set it what we're doing. But yeah the eagle. Oh no, you guys are still setting minds. I had my foot on the old trolling motors. I worked down the bank, and I had a little croppy ride in my hand, and I was working the bank, and I look over and just happened to be looking at this little eddy and then mulberry hits the water, and about maybe a half full second later, uprise that big I thought, I didn't know for sure what kind of fish it was. I thought it could have been a carp could have been a catfish, but it was a good size fish two ft plus maybe three ft. And he just sipped that bulberry off the surface like a brown trout eating the may fly. And then we had that try line under there, and all the hooks that sat under that mole very tree had a fish on them. So the next calffish flatheads flatheads is to me kind of the top predator of the catfish prefers live bait. Uh, very good, very good meat. Um. Like I said, um, this time of year. I think when we started out, I told you guys. Well, so this is the spawning season. The boys around here that like the tickle and noodle hand grab for fish, they've got lots of bathtubs, concrete vaults, pieces of pipe, anything that I hold a catfish they have around the edge of the lakes to go out and place infrastructure to lure in flatheads. You know, explain that first. Okay, Uh, this time of year, the flatheads are in the breedy mode and the males help find nest and guarden nests for the females. So they're looking for holes up in the river bank UH, sunken logs there holla like beaver beaver, beaver entrance, beaver entrance, somewhere where they can get in, where they feel safe, where they can lay the eggs. And they pretty much they're feeding activities somewhat shut down, and they're interested in mating and and finding a place to mate. And um, what generations of hand grabbers have found if they put in artificial structures to imitate a sunken log. Basically, we we talked to the the UH commercial fisherman yesterday, you know his he's got what they said, sixteen hoop nets out there, and they imitate a log. Also, they will coat those nets with black tire and the hoops on them too, so when it's underwater, it feels like looks like a sunken log. And the catfish go into the hoop nets and then they get caught because it's got two throats and there that keeps them from from the mental trap funnel funnel. But like I said, getting back the local boys, what they do is around the shoreline gravelly areas, they'll play some type of infrastructure to house a catfish. They come around, someone will dive down kind of reach around fill in there and if they feel a cat in there, then they come back up. And then it's kind of like a two partner deal there. One guy will stand put his feet in front of the hole or the catfish interest to keep him from going out. The other person dives down into water anywhere from you know, four ft tube to six ft depth and he will run his hand in there and let the catfish bite them. Yes, and everybody knows how painful and raspy a catfish body is. There's a uh, one of the guys that I know, he's about six ache, big long, gangly guy. I saw him. Has been a couple of years ago in his hand arm from it like a shoulder down to his fingertips. It looked like somebody had taken a wood rass to it. I said, what in the worr you've been And I've been catfishing, and I'm thinking, you know, I might run my hand up into the hollow log or hollow tree to pull out a rabbit. But something that's got got a like a catfish, Nah, i'll do. I'll take a bainskt stick down there or something a sharp stick, harpoon, whatever, But no, I'm not gonna sacrifice my trigger finger or something like that. And there's other critters that could get you right there is you know, occasionally could be a snapping turtle down there. It could be a beaver whatever. You know, I haven't heard of anybody being mangled by that, but it's that possibility. But the catfish bite you, and what you do, you you don't. The hardest thing to say that you that you do is the automatic reflex of pulling back. So you've got to mind over matter to do. You've got to leave your hand in their mouth and let them bite you. Then they kind of relax a little bit, and then you run it up and you hook it over the gill plate. Jodey's boy, Joe, he's a he's a noggler. I think a sixty pounder flathead is the biggest that he's he's pulled. Of course, he's a big gangling boy there. But you you pull it out, you're getting right there and you bring him to the surface. There were kids, as I sayd you catch bigger catfish by noodling as opposed to like rod and reel or the other ways or like of is that kind of the loura you typically are gonna catch a bigger Yeah, you know that's what everybody is, whether rod, a real whatever. There you can catch this big with with a rod reel. You know, you've got these target areas you know you're making when you're out there fishing. Yeah, you've got some fishing hose where they may be whatever, but you know you can come out there. Maybe you've got fifty boxes out or set so I don't really know what they call those. I've never been on one of those trips, but you've got fifty so you go out there and run of those and so you you know, you might have five or six catfish in those fifty or if you're out there fishing, you know, just gotta fish in here here there. So it's kind of like, you know, you're building a home for them holiday end, you know, coming for the catfish. So you know, when I was young in the lake I grew up on in the spring, bullheads would you know, do the same exact thing. But they would go in and find cracks and sea walls, any kind of thing. And we would even put out little areas that we knew about. Areas you just take a couple of three whole bricks and stack three whole bricks up. No one did a bullhead is gonna veer in there and set up shop, but we would do. I mean, you know, these things are big ones, a couple of pounds, nothing like a flat ahead. But we just go around to those spots and just take a little cleo like a little spoon with a trouble hook on it and just a hunkle line and just dingle in front of their face or dingle it down in the mouth of the hole and they would come out and grab it. I remember one night we went out, we'd go out flashlights. Remember one of we went out and had nine of them like big bullhead just by doing that. And I've even done it where they were down so deep that we would get a snorical mask and just have some string on your hand with a thing and dive down and jiggle it in front of there into his little crevice, catch him, and then just hauling up and throw them on the boat on the end of a hook. You know. I just thought it was like something completely unique too, but on a on a much giant scale, like from going from two pounds to forty pounds. Then instead of hanging a little clear, you're just sticking your hand because they wouldn't hit it like they were hungry. They'd hit it like they're pissed. And that's territorial thanks what it is they're protecting. They're a little turf, you know, they don't want anything to get in there near their eggs, So it's that's a territorial response. And that's what the flat hits pretty much. Yeah, because you could do it and sting his lip with the look and then do it again and sting his lip with the hook and do it again, and then like he just kept slashing at it something eating for food. I was wanna time up on the north slope of the Brooks Range, like on the Arctic Plateau leading out of the Arctic Ocean, and I was fishing for grailing in these little streams, and streams would be like riffle, you know, like to be like a little riffle in the hole. In a little riffle in the hole. Every hole have a grailing in it, like in a territory, like a fish in there and not letting anybody in there. And you land a fly on it, and he couldn't help himself but hit it. If you stung that fish's lip with a hook, he'd go down to the bottom of that hole and there was no way in hell he was gonna come up and hit something again. But it was funny because you could test his memory. Could you come back to that fish twenty four hours later, and however fish's head works you laying a fly on it, he come up and nail it. So he's like you could be like an hour is not enough for a grailing to put that off his mind. Twenty four hours he's like like, what are the chances that's gonna happen? Or like whatever switches in his mind. It was like you could sort of find out like how how he perceived danger and how he perceived the path, Like what the passage of time is? You are grailing because if I stunned gunned you right now and I walked up to you tomorrow with a taser, if there's no way you're gonna stand there and let me tease you again, right, that's great. Maybe ten years later, ten years later I might walk up to you and tase you. I probably wouldn't let you take me in the first place. I've been around those things all my life. It's danger, Will Will Robertson danger, So get into a bottle of Whiskey's hard? Yeah, Yeah, I still have a hard time with Canadian Hunter from from me and my brother Danny being like in our teens sitting down the bank of the White River at the spire of damn Um. I still can't go into your Canadian Hunter. The hell is that stuff? Anyways? You know what I'm talking about? One, No, it's one of those things that they mixed like really shitty whiskey with sugar. It was a punch of them Southern comfort that's medicine down here in Kentucky. That's what I was. I still can't drink that stuff because of what you're talking about getting stung by Southern comfort. Uh did you have more? Right now? You cool? I'm cool, adam cool dirt. I'm curious to the third one because I can't remember it. I haven't covered it yet. Yeah, okaye. I was gonna say, don't tell because it's somebody if he can't remember channel cats. I was just he thought he was one yesterday. You guys didn't know. But all right, it's a breakdown. Channels. Channels are like by far there are there have to be. If you put all the channels in North America in a pile, and put all the flatheads in North America in a pile, and all the blues in a pile, the chance a pile is gonna be, by a magnitude of out of hundreds, bigger than any other pile, right I probably probably so. I would say they're the most common by far of any any catfish is out there, and it's the most commonly one for aquaculture, like when you go in and buy like some cheapass calfish sandwich and it's from a pond caltfish. They can do other ones, but probably a chance, probably channel most likely most likely the smaller of the catfish. Other than we get down into the very smallest catfish in Kentucky's a mad tom a little bit catfish, maybe three or four inches long. UM in some of the backwater estuaries and swamps is where the were the mad times. And all your bullheads are in the catfish family to right, the bullhead being bigger, but the mad tompy and the very very small and and not a As far as any I know, nobody's ever goes fishing for mad tim's out there, but the big three, the big three channels, flats and blues. We got the flat heads, and then we've got the channel. So break down the channel for me. Uh, smaller fish noted with specs up and down his body. Uh. When you scan them, it's got a yellow streak that immediately turned some people off. And that's what we were talking about. I trimmed away till I learned yesterday you don't need to trim it smaller fish, You just leave it in there. And I've never been able to tell any difference. Um. Predominantly people call the channel fiddlers, but any small catfish can be in the category of a fiddler, but usually let me, let me, let me discuss that. I never heard that turns. You told me a fiddler in Kentucky lingo. I thought it was Kevin Murphy lingo. But I realized now it's like couldn't tuck A fiddler is a small cat small catfish. Now, we had a gentleman yesterday show me on his cutting board a mark where he has such a high level of specificity about what a fiddler is does no matter what species it is. But if it if he puts his tail at the end of his cutting board and its head is shy of a mark, that's a fiddler. And he prides himself on the uniformity of his fiddlers. Where he doesn't like him that are much smaller than that, he doesn't want to use them. He wants his fiddlers to hover right around that specific mark. In the other name for a fiddler is a little dinky catfish. School try a whole fry, not a whole fryer, but a whole fry. And I didn't learn that term toill. Like four or five years ago, somebody was sound about, there's some whole fries. We're gonna have some whole fries. I'm thinking potatoes. Hell, I didn't know what to think a whole fry, and they finally said, oh, you know what you take to take a whole small catchfish? And fried I said, you mean a fiddler. No, it's a whole fry, you know. That was their term on it. Where you just take the entire catfish, chop it, you skin it, uh, cut his head off, leave the fins on it, and and fried up crispy. A lot of people like eating the tail fan of that. Uh, it's got a real mild flavor. I like the fiddler catfish. You're picking the meat, Yeah, you just take a fork and just pick it off, and you've got this, you know, Fred Flynn stone skeleton when you get done, you don't have to worry about bones. Uh um. You know, as far as small kids and things, probably shouldn't do it. But there's really not any bones that come out with the meat. There. Nice crispy skin has got a ravery unique flavor, not strong whatsoever. Uh. You know, when you get into the bigger catfishes, when you have to start trimming to get that strong stout flavor out of them. There's some some things on the catfish that you, as my friend Leon says, you take not so good fish and make a really really good fish out of it. That's the thing I learned most of all the hanging out and catfish and we've done the last few days, is the import of properly cleaning and trimming catfish place. And when when I was young, we would know and then get into these big gas flatheads doing all this stuff. We'd catch big flatheads and we had them in our heads. They were inedible. And I don't say that about much, but we had in our heads they were pretty inedible because we just flam and skin them and not trim them. And it was the muddiest, nastiest or as your friend Leon said, you don't want that in your mouth. And it's trimming that song a bit trimming in processing. Even after we got it and we got it all trimmed up, laying there in a in a bucket, float in the water, all kinds of fat, still there a lot of blood there. So that you've you've got to go through, like I said, all the processes. You have to to clean it, you have to trim it, and the chilling it down too. That's another thing. That's new. Uh. Makes the trimming process you can kind of makes the fat congeal on it. You can kind of feel it better, say it better. And then after you get it, get it trimmed out, could all the red meat that blood vein that's running down the middle. Then you put it in the in the bucket of water and let it soak for you know, or have a have a misting water hose on it, a slight trickle. And as we all saw, it started out a bloody red. It was like you're it was like you're rendering. It was like you're rendering fat too, because fats rising up out of there. So after a while, uh, it starts clearing up. And at the very end, you know, the water looks clear enough that you could take a drinking glass just down there and dip it out and you could drink the water. And if you smell the meat at that point in time, it doesn't smell to it's gorgeous fishes. It does smell like it supposed like fresh meat. No fish smell on it whatsoever. So, Yeah, we've talked to some leading what i'll regardless of leading catfish experts in the last couple of days being like guys that handle thousands and thousands of pounds of catfish for commercial sale and and other things, and supplying fish fries and lifetime devoted to catfish. And the message I got is two things on a catfish taste, like ship fat and blood when you get a muddy piece of fish or an off piece off piece of fish, because you're getting fat or blood in your mouth catfish fat and blood catfish flesh. One of your friends, Leon said, if there's a criticism of it, you needn't put it this way. He said, if there's a criticism of it, it's two mild yes in that you need to want a good catfish guy is a guy as good at seasoning. Compare that to a good piece of tuna. Good piece of tuna, the less you do to it, the better, right because it carries its own perfect faiver. Or like a good oyster. You want to do anything to good oyster. He's saying, a good pie's calfish properly trimmed is a It's a platform on which to apply flavors. It's like a clean slate on which to apply the kind of flavors you like. It's that mild so in getting the fat off the fat. Once you do your flay, you've got fat rides the fat rides between the skin and the meat, and that's an important area to get off. And you've got fat that rides along the belly and fat that rides along the top. So they'll pull a flay off. Like imagine, like lay should try to visualize this. Lay your hand flat out on a table around your leg or whatever, and like lay your left hand down and look at it, and imagine you're looking at a flame. You want to remove as you view your left hand laying flat, you want to remove half of your pink the outer half of your pinky finger down to your wrist. And you want to remove the outer third of your thumb from the thumbnail down to your wrist. Get rid of that. And then the face of the fish that lies between the fish's skin and the flesh, get rid of anything red. Let's when we uh cut the skin off the catch fish. We don't try to ride down on the skin. Yeah, we do a song in motion, and we cut a lot of the red meat off. I always skin fish by basically scraping that some bit and it comes out like clean. But these guys Yeah, they're floating the blade down there and leaving skin and fat in the red muscle on that piece of skin. Yeah, rather than like scrape in the skin and then shaving that junk away. It was like intuition for him, muscle memory. He showed us a knife that he had skinned something fish with that he'd wore a bevel into the handle, just as the angle that you want to go go with, I like to Leon said in regards to you know, using all the meat you have on him, the stuff you're trimmings not waste because it's because it is waste. It's waste. Yeah. Yeah, he goes. People say you're wasting meat, but you ain't waste anything, waste his waste. And that's that's you know, you take a not so good to fish and make an excellent fish out of it. No, and I'm talking about your wife here for a minute. How long do we got so explain her gripe of fish? You know, she just doesn't like the texture. I think because she was brought up in the desert. Yeah, well it's interesting. Well, that's it's so interesting because I think even from my background I grew up we both grew up in Utah, and I think a catfish. We catfish his kids. You know, we throw a piece of steak over a boat and hang it out all night and wake up in the morning and reli cat fish in and they just don't, I mean, unfortunately, just don't look. When you pull a catfish out of the water, they typically just don't look appetizing. Does a salcy look appetizing coming from it's laying in a mulle? I mean no, that's a good point. No, but I think that you that animal pile of ship. But I think that was the how we look. But you pull other fish out, like you know, trout or yeah, a little better. And so I think coming out here, I was like, okay, I mean I've had black and catfish before and I like it, but I was like, I was kind of curious. And then like watching you guys trimmed the meat. It's it's it's almost clear like in color, like how white it is, and it looks amazing. It's the whitest if you laid that meat from a blue cat, if you laid it on a piece of printer paper, you and b will see the something you wouldn't be able to see the thing it's it's it's no white, I mean no white, just so weird to see caffish flesh like that. Yeah, and that looks appetizing. But your wife, God bless her, doesn't like fish. But it's not but she wouldn't even like that fish. Yeah, she doesn't like any fish doesn't like and she doesn't like anything like trustations or yeah, anything from the sea she just doesn't like. But it's a texture thing. Yeah, you're a water based dude, though, I know it's tough. So what does she eat? She she loves meats from stuff from the land. Yeah, she she just like or swordfish. She won't eat you. I want to touch it, and I don't trust me. I've tried, will she el No, that's pretty fishy. Yeah yeah, but you're like it's this Yeah, and I love her, I never met her. By love her, i'd marry her. But it's just so she's not gonna eat that, like if you cooked it up for she's tricker. Because see that's the interest thing is where do you tell her it is? Yeah, weird pork, the lightest chicken you've ever had. Yeah, No, but that's why it's probably she doesn't like anyone it's a very unique texture that couldn't be imitated by anything else. Yeah, dude, yeah, I think what you need to do maybe make a chowder a suit. But it's like a lot at this point, it's psychological because even here's what you can do here, here's I was a real finicky eat or growing up bancorn bread. We were out one Saturday when I was young. I could eat my weight every day, maybe twice a day, but I was kept of some of my friends cut Tobacca and his mom was the most excellent old timey cook in the world. Man, what we need? Country Ham over there? Steve loves country ham. I mean the best country ham. They had three or four apple trees. They had a big orchard, and she cook up some country had. You know what it means if you if you took a ham and somehow made it saltier than salt? Can you really quit to explain country ham? Country ham is the American variety of a prosecutor ham from Italy. And that's statement. It's almost offensive. He said that times. It's almost offensive. But okay, But the early pioneers had no refrigeration, you know, told so when you did hog killing in the in the fall of the year. You go out and you saved everything but the squeal from the hog. You know, the made hedgees out of the that the head of the hog make house pigs, feet, cracklings. You rendered, it's a term in Virginia, maybe it's South. You just rendered all out and mixed corn meal in there and make like a like a corn meal bread. It's full of jowl meat. And and man, I wish my buddy Ronnie was here because that's his favorite food. I want to make it bad. Process the hog and all the trim and scrap and everything they cooked down into a gelatinous Okay, So then they stir in cornmeal and in there, and you eventually wind up with like a like a you'ld be like head cheese. It's like head cheese, but corn meal. And then you slice that corn bread and fry in a pan they called pond has like a soy burger. Was a little little bit of meeting some so bab Anyways, Ronnie Beam, it's like he didn't know about it, so he moved to Virginia. Hams and Virginia is so salty that they don't you don't get him off the refrigerated section. They got the things that a burlap sack laying on the shelf of the grocery store, a desiccated ham in a burlap sack next to like the canned goods. But you like, I'm gonna make that with a wild pig some day. What about the soup beans last night? Oh? Good many, what were you doing that? Yeah, you've got over your You're gonna tell him how to fix his wife up? Yes, yes, what you do, it's take her, adlexaid. I was into the back of patch, and man, I'm thinking, you know, I would go cut the back of these guys for free if I just get to eat at Tommy's mother's house there about seven thirty have been worked for thirty minutes, and about seven thirties is man, what we're gonna have to eat today? Oh mama had to go to town there, says she's got a big old stack of a minuted cheese sandwiches in their maiden. So we're gonna go over there in the durn watermelon patch and bust one open there and eat the heart the other and water balls. And I'm thinking, I hate pamenta cheese. I hate pamenta cheese. So we got around the lunch time and we get in there and she's got this big stack of pamenta cheese and I reached in there and I took a bite. It was the best damn thing I ever had in my entire life, because I was hungry. To this day, I like pimenta cheese, and there's different grades of pmina. You're saying, he's a starve up as a starve up, starver up, starve up right there, and give us some catfish, some deefis. I don't know. I don't until I met my wife's family, I had never had a pimento cheese. Yeah, Yani married into the South. Pimento cheese is basically a couple of types of maybe grated up cheese, a hard cheese, maybe a soft velveta type, mayonnaise and pimiento peppers. And that's what I was scared too, because for first probably twelve fourteen years of my life, I would not eat cranberry sauce because it was red. Red was off my my bean. You know. We go through the school lunchline and they hit his big gelatinous loaf of stuff in there that they was carving off and it looked like maybe raw liver or something to me, so I would not even try. I Uh, cranberry sauce, now, I love the thing right there. But pimento cheese had these little giblets of red pimentos in there. And there are several different recipes. I think some people, uh put a little sugar in a thing, give a little extra taste, you know, either mayonnaise, salad dress or something like that, and just make a spread out of it and it's out of this world. My mom would take pimento and olive and make pimento cream cheese, which is oh man, that stuff is good. Yeah. So yeah, the mrs I know more. Here's the thing. I know more, and and I know more guys that have problems ridge his wife all, you know. And I've had girlfriends in the past the hat on. I don't eat this, and I don't eat that. Oh my god, listen my wife. My wife is mad at me quite often. But one problem I do not have is, uh, she eats everything. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's I could be like that's rat. She eat it because she don't like to cook, and she likes it. The she likes it. That we wild meat and that's and the kids eat wild meat, and she doesn't care. I could. She will eat any kind of food I cook, doesn't care. And she'll have friends over, even like people she works with over, and what she don't ask me like what are you gonna make? And don't make this? She could bring the whole crew over. I'll be like, it's rat. She's gonna be. She just dig in, be like you don't what to eat it, that's but you make it good. You make it good. Yeah. But I'm just saying, I like, after having lived through all kinds of ex girlfriends who had like, oh I can't eat a rabbit, but she'll eat. But I love your wife like she I'll bring home We brought home pig and I've cooked everything. We've brought home mule here and she and she likes it. Give me some stuff. She's like, yeah, I'm not nuts about it, you know, but yeah, it's it's the fish thing. And I mean she's even to a point like she loves like Tai Foo, but they cook a lot with like oyster sauces, and she can be like, yeah, they put oyster sauces. I could taste it. I don't like it really. Yeah. The one thing my wife doesn't like, uh skanky salmon. Like if you leave salmon and freeze are too long and it get skanky no matter what you do to hide the skank, she don't like it. That's weird because most people I know love skanky sandon. Um. Yeah, my kids man too. It's like they you know, we don't have to deal with that either. But we've never done the thing where I know people that cook separate meals for their kids at night, which is just I think the worst that you're gonna pay for that the rest of your life. We sent our kids in school the Muskok Sandwich not long ago to you. The only kid in Seattle Public school ever go down to the Muskok Sandwich. They don't even know that. They don't even know it's weird. I was weird skull. We were riding horses and my little three year old said she wanted to get a horse. I said, we don't have anywhere to keep a horse. She says, no where to eat. It's two year old, that's right. Yeah. We cut the lawn on our at our house and it was it was quite tass. We didn't know all the critters that we were running around there, and we know that we have cotton tail rabbits running around on the hillside, and I guess this morning they were washing the cotton tails out front, and my two year old looked at her mother and said, we're gonna eat that bunny. Um. All right, back to cooking catfish. Why is the flathead belly? This is interesting? We covered fiddlers. Everyone's satisfaction? Oh no, because I was did a little Google researching here, and the best I can find out without getting heavy into it, is that because we couldn't do we ever find out where they got its name, I mean just local term that you know that we're up with. They are the catfish that fiddle with your bait. Oh I like that, And I've had a lot of those fiddling them a bait like a bull bullhead kind of. The second answer that is called a bait stealer around here. The second answer was that they make a fiddle like noise when they're pulled out of the water, which I'm not going to accept that I pulled plenty of up and I haven't yet here any fiddling have you that that croaking? Maybe it's a bad faidler there's all manner of fish. I mean, like all the grunts, and you know I don't look like a little fiddle. Ye I don't know about that. Then the big one would look like a big fiddle. Or if something was used from the I've called we're done talking about that. Um, I'm just I'm making an executences. We're not discustom where the name came from. Has have we covered the consumption of fiddlers? Kevin? Could you tell me a weight or and or length at which a catfish is ceases to be a fiddler? In my opinion, like he's making a two fists, so so extend your thumbs out from your too fists, your thumbs tip right there. That's a fiddler. That's a fiddler pretty much a grown up adult. Two fists. Put your thumb out like you're making thumbs ups. Touch thumbs tip to tip. You're looking at a fiddler that's undressed. That's head to tail. Yes, yeah, I head to tail. That's that's probably the truth. If you get a big fiddler, it doesn't want to fry good. It takes longer to cook. So if you've got if you've you've got him, he's toilve inches long, you skinning chop his head off? Good, he right there, then he'll fry consistent. You won't have to the big ones, you know if you if you get one and out here two pounds, then he's this bigger round. So to get him cooked all the way through there, his tail end is gonna be over. Considering another word, you guys like, and it's not specific to your area, but you guys use it heavily. Like where I grew up, you clean stuff. You guys dress stuff to be like, are you gonna address it? Like we yesterday we dressed the turtle. I would have growing up. We would said you're gonna clean the turtle, but your body. Jordy was like, did you dress the turtle? That's Jody's term. I pretty much say clean so here both ways, but but I'm pretty much a clean so again, just real quick, small calfish breakdown. You're you're heading them, gutting them, skinning them. Well, the first thing you would do would be to skin them head on, head down, because it's easy to get hold of there's a little bone that sticks out right below their fan. And if you've got some, if you're gonna be a catfishman, you need some catfish skin implyers. They're all purpose you know, you we use them skin turtle. Yeah, yeah, there, you know, get you a good bear, keep a sharp edge on things. Idea many many uses there. But when you hold the catfish kind of sideways, then that I don't know what that bone is. Actually you just snip that bone right there, and that's where you can get a start on the skin because you've got something hard to get it get against instead of flesh. And the catfish skin as slick as we all know, it's starting to wall around. But when you push poke that bone out there, it becomes like a little little grab point set point right there. Just nip it with live then you've got your skin open. Grab your skin then and just slow, steady pull all the way out to the to the fin skin boat. The skin is kind of peters out at the tail. And then do both sides. Uh. You might clip the the top fin off or the side fins with a with a catfish flyers so you're not peeling yourself on there. And then when get it gutted, and then the last thing, cut your head off and a little blood vein in the along the back backbone, take your thumb and whatever, take that off and pop that open more ship out and very mild. You don't need to trim it because it's small fish, right, there's no need going in there looking for blood or fat or whatever it is. It it'll cook up and not have any type of all flavor whatsoever. And that's probably one of the reason why I used to like eating fiddlers so much growing up when I was small. The big thing around here, we didn't filet fish because you're gonna waste a morsel of meat or something. That fish is a is a luxury of, is a luxury of like wealthy countries, cultures you go to, you know, you go down even into Mexico, South America, Asia, it'll flish ship. You cook fish whole head on and get every bit out of there. But we would either have fiddlers or we'd have catfish steaks. You'd go to a restaurant somewhere and that would be the two choices. You want fiddlers or you want catfish steaks. Well, when they stake those things up, got all that red meat in there, and so and it cooks up. Black is what he looks like. Black, gray nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty there, So you just kind of picked around that. Sometimes you could do that very successful. Sometimes that flavor would go ahead and pregnant. The meat be very strong, be very strong. That steak fried, yes, yes, steak, yes, yeah, yeah, we fried cat cat fish steak. Yeah. Hardly any baked will black. And you know a lot of racetorists will black and catfish now. But but the catfish steak was you know, it would be like this wide or so chunked up, same way you steak out of swordfish or shark. Yeah. Down, you need to have the bones, you know, still in there, and you just pick around rick around the bones there. But very it could be very very strong, very strong flavor. They were small catfish. Yes, it's good, I mean, you know, very good. So that's every cool unfillers at him. Um Now other cats, why do you guys eat flathead belly but they don't eat blue belly or channel belly. I've got a friend that's very particular about what he eats. Another one of my friends said he was raised on vanilla wafers when he was a kid. Does he admits that, yes, yeah, yeah, he admits that. And he commercial fish for a while, and he tells me, he said, if I could get just one source, get flathead catfish bellies, I could put every catfish restaurant in the area out of business. The texture is a little bit more like meaty, meaty texture, and you know it does have a very good, good taste. You know, when what do you do about that silver skin inside there? Do they scrape that off? Just fried off, just right up, just pull it out there, and you know it has no off off paste on that, so that what we do, cut that off tape, so you're you're pulling the skin off the catfish, but then the whole damn belly park part. Yeah, we'll cut that out, you know, catfish. You know we're looking at a twenty to forty pound flathead, so it's gonna have a pretty substantial um stomach on it. Laid outside of a pipe place, yes, pine plate there. Cut it in long straps and pull the skin off, cut that inside out there, and you've got that meat texture. I think I showed you a Garrett. I said, open that piece of fish up and you can see the meat texture running in there. Wasn't flaky, had more structure to be there. It was like I said, I said, this looks like flathead to me. And that's when I went up there to the waitress and Nascar said, that says this flatead cat fish. You said, yes, that's what we serve her flat head kind of like crabs crab meat in that like stringing stremulated their stranger form there. And how do how do you guys cook up belly? They just fried up the same way, fry the same play. So another thing I noticed when they're cleaning. So so that's the anomaly there or the difference like a flathhead people like keep the belly. Now, I noticed everything else. They flay, flaying blues and flaying channels around here. They not only don't take the belly, but they don't flay out and over the ribs. So when they come in and cut that flay and they get to where you get that thin piece over the ribs, they run their knife out and leave the rib and belly meat on the carcass. Just pull off the flay, skin it and then pull the vein out of the flay, but not even keep the rib meat. Now, I had a guy mentioned to me that it was twofold that once you trimm there's nothing left. It's not good, and um, you know it's It's been widely reported that if you have high levels of metals in your fish, they tend to accumulate in belly flat fat fat of the belly. So that's your understanding of why they don't keep that rib meat. I'm gonna adopt because I've eating the best catfish down here I've ever eaten in my life. Um. Meaning another way of putting that is the mildest, least muddiest catfish very eating my entire life. I'm gonna adopt wholesale every aspect of how they flake catfish in Kentucky. I will never handle a catfish another way? Why should you? There's no reason I can't. All right, we fished catfish three ways down here. I'm not even gonna touch on regu old fish and pole fish and rod and real fishing because everybody knows what that is. It We jugged, limbed, and trotted. I don't know if those are actually verbs. I recently learned that golfing is not a verb. It would be like saying tennising you play golf, you do not go golfing. Um. You know, another little thing to keep if you if you want to be if you want to speak the language properly. You can't give away something for free. It could be free of charge, it can be four a dollar, but it is not for free. Well, Jody said he was gonna learn your English. Tell you what so breakdown. Jogging jugging um is the technique where you take some type of floating device, whether it be bottles to lead pop bottles, uh silicone together to give you four leaders. That keeps you from when you get the big big daddy catfish on her. You don't have to chase it all day long, and they fit very conveniently in a nice uh leader bottle rack. Uh. In the state Kentucky, you're allowed twenty five jugs per person. Uh, no more than fifty per boat when you go on a jugging expedition. When I was a kid, you could throw out hooks that is jug. But by law, a jug can only have one singular multi barbered hub. That's correct, that's correct. Uh. Some people you can run a trouble or a jay hook or a circle, but only one. When I was gonna come from drivers, some people use the pool noodles the pool floats for the kids to long. You know, they're like like three ft long four ft longs. Yeah, but can you imagine having fifty of those things dangling in the wind. That's what Leon doesn't like them because Leon used the same thing. If you ever see a guy deliver pop to a store, they got those little cartons, those little crates that are fit to hold two leader pop ball. So he runs, he transports all his jugs and an actual pop carrying deal and it's organized a double a double pop carrier. Because I made a mistake, was that the four other day and the cocola man was there delivering I'm thinking my opportunity, opportunity, Say, can I back up all those uh those cartons right there? And uh he says, he said, I'll just give you some how many you need? And I'm doing the quick calculation. It holds eight in each one. That says, uh, can I get six from you? Would that be a problem? No? No, So he just hands on too me. I get them back and I know I needed twelve because he cuts the bottom out of one and glues it siliconsa together to give it that height. You right there, So I'm halfway there. Man. That dude's level organization and tidiness. Loved it anyhow, Juggy, we don't need to explain what jugging is yet. You got you gotta float a buoy. You've gotta gotta buoy float with a line on it um. One method to jug is if you're gonna be fishing an area, you keep leaving up parts that I wanted that that I think he was a no about not much line. Well, I s where I was going and you interrupted me. My friend Leon has been jugging for forty years. It's pure science. And you and you you do Leon's way or the highway, and but everything he's got is there for a reason. And he'll have his jugs color coding. Do you have like orange will have a uh five to seven ft uh later on it um green, uh three to four and then red maybe one to two. Are these any secrets that he doesn't want general public color coding? No, No, just in general Lee Because he said he's old enough. Yeah, he said, fifteen years ago would have told you boys shit about anything. Leon words that. He said, I'm old that now. And I had a little thought with him. I said, yeah, I said, you know when they come down, and I took him squirrel hunt, and I said, I pretty much everything I knew about squirrel hunting. I told him because you know, if for some young kid, if he can take a little bit of what I've told him and go out there and have a good experience, we've got to get more people in the field hunting and fishing and having success. It having success, that's what it's all, apart in cooking, you know, from from uh, catching, cleaning the cooking. We need to be out there showing people there. This is what It's not about killing out there. It's about the whole experience of being outdoors. And just like you know, we witness Yanni witness that mulberry falling in that water yesterday. To me, that's better than catching any fifty pound catfish whatever. That I saw that. I was able to go out there and experience that right there, and it registered on my hard drive up here, saying hey, let's put that to use. See your fruit and mulberry. Yeah, yeah, if you see that, I mean it, and we and we did, and we were successful. That's being outdoors. That's being outdoorsman is observing nature to see what's going on out there and utilize it to the fullest advantage there. But now my friend Leon, he's he he would not care like I said, he would like to see some more people. You know, as I told you earlier there, they used to have a jugging tournaments out there on the river there the local fire department we put on for a charity fundraiser and said they would last two days Saturday and Sunday. Said two days out there on the river from daylight to dark. Said it'll make a man out of you. But now we'll explain. But like I said, he color codes them that way. You know. I was wishing with him the other day and he said, don't throw none of the the orange ones out. Said, we got too low water in that one area. They're all going to hang up when we float over it. We'll throw them out. And it's oh, I got you. But in a heavy braid like braided line, heavy braided line. You know, we're not fly fishing. It's not don't it's not a trout that we gotta fool. All. We wanted something on the end of the line that's gonna hold them, and not like parachord, but like me, about a third diameter para cord. Yeah, I think it's like it's like a hundred pound test braided line, but not braided like not like a spider wire, but like a like a cord. It's a braided nightline line. Yeah. Like in the last they call it Gannon, it's not actually buy that at the bait and tackle shop. Yes, And he runs the number nine jay hook a number nine alt nine nine j hook, big hook, big bait, big fish, Uh, not so much big bait with those um the catfish kind of go through a stage where they're out in the river. They may be what Leon says, sampling out and they'll come up and hit a jug or something. They may take it under and all of a sudden they let go of it. They're just out there hitting whatever. And uh, you guys, I think saw one go completely under the other day and then he let go. And then when they're fading, they're up there goblin and in that hook is way down in their mouth. Let me again. I feel like I'm like, I feel you're playing, you're playing. I'm I'm playing bass, and you're in, you're in, you're in, you're playing your your soul low guitar. But I want to like just set the stage because Everything you're saying is great, but I feel like the the the order of information on jogging, I'll backtrack. Yeah, let me just lay it out for a second, because then you're gonna give all the nuance detail. But you're not unders because you grew up around, You've known about jugging your whole life. I don't know what the hell it meant. So I'm gonna give you the very very offer but very layman's explanation of jogging, and then you will lay on all the things I don't understand. You got floats, jugs with small two to six ft leader address on them, name an address on them, in a hook and a white in a wait a washer, and you kind of wait to get it down in the river more than a washer. And in the Mississippi specifically stainless nylon locknuts, big gas stainless nylon on some of the ricks, but a big oh wait. You get above suitable area in a river, you get above where you know a calfish to be hanging out. Kevin will explain what that is. You bait all your hooks and you start throwing the jugs overboard. Then you drift down in your boat with your flotilla of jugs, and when you're throwing them, it's not just like on one long you spread them out. They're kind of spread out in the line, and it's important to note and Cameron probably says it's earlier too, but they start on the inside because the current is faster towards the middle of the river, so they start dropping them there. That's the new ones though. Sorry, I'm trying to lay down the bay line. Yeah, sorry, And you're not killing it exactly right. So you throw your jugs overboard, yes, in a very specific timely way that we'll get into. You're floating along with him. You throw your jugs overboard. You drift down river, watching the jugs for the telltale sign of a fish being on there, which would be when you're running to two liters silicone together. The jug stands up in a big fish will pull it under, at which point you use your paddle or trolling motor very stealthily, not running your motor, but very stealthily go over, grab the jug, raise the fish up, net them. What's holding them there. He's not slack lined because he's fighting the jug. The jug is performing the function of your rod tip like he pulls in his resistance and so he's never getting slack lined. Um and you pull them a boat. Yeah, add you know all your color. And but I feel like now the listener understands what we're talking about. Yeah, totally, totally, No, I think Kevin should because obviously already have to talk Kevin. Okay, Garrett did raise your hand? Well, just because I want to let Kevin free wrap once he gets going. But for me to understand as a you know, born and raised Montan and moving around elsewhere, illegal all point out and you can set up but you can set out a set line with six hooks on it. That's a fix of the bank. Yeah, but what equated how I wrapped my brain around observing what was going down? It would be like if you were ice fishing on a mobile ice chunk down the yellow Stone, you know what I mean. But like the jugs were like tip ups kind of like fifty tip ups yeah, and the moving Yeah, and you're moving with the ice. But that's all right, now lay down the color. You're getting ready to roll your jugs out. You look at your river conditions, see how much currents going the wind. The wind plays a big factor in those yeahs. You've got the big two leaders, four leaders setting on top of the water acts like a sail, So you've got to take in consideration. The current is the main factor, and you're trying You're trying to deliver the bait to a river feature the same way when you're casting, you're like, oh, cast into that seam, or cast into the edge of that hole, or cast into the shade line. You're trying to drop these things in when they're gonna be two yards down the river and deliver them right into where you want without your boat going in there and spooking the fish. I think one of the rules of thumb is that uh ten of waters hold the fish. I hear. I keep hearing that of the fisherman cash n and yes, And that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to manipulate those jugs. You've got to watch out for bards traffic to you know, we didn't fish in the channel. We did have three jugs get hung up on a buoy uh from a log that was out there, so they took those immediately. The log hung up on the bully and the jugs got hung on the log. But like you said, you're trying to figure out, Okay, the currents running this much this morning, We've got this much of a wind there, war do I need to set those jugs to make them hit those locations in the location that you want to go. You want to transition most of the time from shallow water to deep water. They're laying a little clay in in those those areas that those those river um jetty's that are built out there to redirect the flow of the water. You know, they come out there. It's scouring the bottom of the the river, pushing the current over, keeping the channel cut. And then you've got me. We may be in four foot of water, then all of a sudden it jump, it jumps off to twenty five ft of water right here. Rivers you learned to know. You know, you can look at the surface of the river. You know the water is not clear. You can look at the service of the ever tell a lot about what's going on in underneath the river. And you're looking for those little edge what what's he called the little edges? I think reefs? What he was No, he had no he had uh brick breaks breaks, current breaks to find out what the underwater topography last, yes, but you know that's what you want to fish for. You put those jugs out and hopefully you know, sometimes you might want them all concentrated in one area, or if you're not for sure where the fish have been feeding, you've got to spread out from close to the bank all the way out to the main channel. And then as that was, you know, we've got the confluence of two rivers, the olying in Mississippi, quite a bit of current coming in there, and you just have to know the river. You know, we're if you're up here on Kentucky Lake or whatever, that you may go into a bay and you know that that uh, the wind is blowing into the bay, so you'll go out to the mouth of the lake the old river channel, set your jugs there, let them blow into the into the bay, and collect them there instead of going into the end of the bay. And then it may be blowing out of the bay, so you'll put them on the windward side and do that. So you take the factors of you may be an area where there's very little current and then the wind goes into be the main factor of of jug um manipulation or motive or motoring from that away you can. And there's a wide variety of bats, cut bait, live bait, um, chicken gizzards, chicken livers, en, bigar looking jello, dear heart, you know deer hearts out there. Um like people if they if they can prefer um. Since the Asian carp has hit our waters, Uh, they're in competition with all of the bait fish and we just not see the bait fish are hard to get in certain times a year. They're hard to get anyway. And like I said, one of the methods of leon is I've got a good bait. It might not be the best bait, but consistently it's a good bait. And and also damn good man, she can get her sorked in garlic. God, and there's how you open that cooler. But I started getting hungry, and we know what the issue is to getting bait. You know, we really needed some blue gill when we went fishing, but didn't have the time opportunity. I tried to get my buddy, uh Raymond to catch us some bait. Two weeks ago, we went down to a little spot throughout a one cast off ave thrown. It had fourteen fifteen blue gill well, rains came in all the little places that he had fished it filled it with water. He made several floes and he'd come out with one shad out of that time. So so you know, a bait, it becomes an issue that that, yes, if we had had some uh small blue gill, we would have fared in the short and those gar I think we're taking those shiner's office fast and set down. So anyhow, so getting back, like I said, he's got a bait that he doesn't have to spend an hour or two, uh you know, fishing for we were. We got down the arrows and it was a short, short night for you guys, got up about three and we met down there at uh what quarter to five, you know when he was in the water by five thirty, you know, right there at daybreak. And the reason he likes to do that is we started off by fishing a bar, a six ft deep bar. And he said, the minute pleasure boater or a not so smart jug fisherman runs his boat over that bar, it pushes all the blues off the bar. Like the very sensitive that he likes to be the first boat on the water because he wants the first thing that he doesn't want any to spook those catfish off that bar so he can run his jugs over it. He said. Once that happens, you know, he says, he sees a lot of guys, well meaning guys zoom across the bar from a downs to come from downstair, drive over the bar and throw all their jugs. He said, its pointless because you run all the catfish off the bar. And we kind of proved that to ourselves because we went back and fish that bar one one fish. Yeah. The first time we pulled I don't know, we caught total that day two hundred pounds of fish. In the end, like I said, we went the second time, we got one fish. That's someone that went down that There was a boat. We don't know for sure if they were jugging in line, they had good fat, they had a good float. But we came in right behind those guys. We came over and I don't know, we caught fifteen or something the first time, or I don't know, some number of them. We have a two hundred pounds of fish, thirty eight pounds of trimmed boneless place, no belly mate, no belly meat. Yeah, and I don't know if you guys got to see it, because you know, there's a certain monotony that kinda starts after you figured it out and you see what's going on, and and it's kind of like, all right, all right, I kind of got this jugging thing. But there was an instance, because you're watching most of the jugs when they were getting hit, they're kind of flopping around a little bit. If it's a bigger fish, it's the dug jug disappears for half a second, it pops back up, you know, it starts to really flop real well. And that's when Leon was starting to get excited. But we were about ten feet away from two jugs I just happened to be. There were like in my you know, periphery, and all of a sudden, one of those jugs just goes bye bye, I mean just just is gone. And I'm going, what what? And and the guy was driving our bows just like shit, He's like, let's hope it doesn't come up. It ain't coming up. Let's hope it doesn't come up. And I mean we never saw it come back up, and obviously it did because we recovered the jugs, and that you just lose track because the rivers drift in the fish is dragging it around. You don't know where it popped up and when it did, but I mean for at least thirty seconds a minute, this jug was gone. So we had a giant on It gets exciting when that happens. Yeah, he gets some fish to approaching hunter pounds. He's got a hundred pound picture one there on the on the wall of his garage, and he said, you trimmed that thing up flat and trim it up. He says, you can't tell the difference in that in the four pound cat taste wise, this is an all the thing, all right, lemon, There's nothing like seeing pulling up and having a big flat head on there. And this Liam is going, we get it. You gotta lay the groundwork, said, everybody know how to limb line. No limb line. That's the technique where you take a single hook and you tie it onto a limber branch sticking out over the water. Uh. If you did hit it to a snag or whatever. If you get a big fish, he's gonna tear off. He's gonna tear off of that yanking and pulling. But um, you take one of mother nature's fishing rids is hanging out there for you. Tie you uh one wrap around a double hitch really easy to pull off. It will hold the fish. Uh. Have us whatever small weight, maybe a washer, maybe a nut, may be a lead sink or whatever to keep your bait down in the water somewhat uh anywhere from know your river conditions, know what your river is gonna do. Because you don't want to be fishing in air the next morning air, but you you're because you're fishing so like a foot to three ft yes, what I like to like to fish in uh even better with if the river is rising somewhat, Um, you mark the river bank before after we got everything set to see what we're going to be the next day, and I think it actually had risen just a little bit, so we had a pretty pretty much uh steady river elevation. But there again, uh, you need some type of marker. It's route easy to lose your limb lines. I use a black tar braided line. If you use a whiteman it shows up much better. But everybody else can see those two and we put a small orange marker on them. Plus we had our names on each one of the limb lines about law you have to do that, and how many limb lines allowed to run per person? You're able to run twenty five per person. You're supposed to check them every twenty four Yeah, every twenty four hours. And and you let that thing dangl are and fish yep, put it in. We baited up in the morning. Uh probably all in all. We used shiners, which were very easy to tear off. Going to try to keep live baiting. We were gonna target flatheads is what we were going for. The flatted cats, and in their number one food is live probably one reason why their belly meat taste better on the on the flat ist because everything they eat is lying protein there. It's not you know, whatever is floating in the river. But UM beat them up. I used eight alt just a straight jay hook with a swivel in there. And then our weight was a shiny washer, uh hoping that that's a fish attractant with it turning there in the water. Looks like some type of bait fish in there, so a dual purpose. It holds it down, maybe maybe attracted and um we baited with um with a shinermans and deer heart deer hearts and another very very excellent um fish attracted. So I would say on average these things are set from three four yards from the bank out to ten twelve yards in the bank right whatever overhead limb. The limb was probably typically five six ft at the most above the water surface ten ft a line tying not put a bait on, let it dingle in the current and uh live bait and then let it do its job. We have illegal where I grew up that line. All this stuff that all illegal. Huh. You're like one line, one line in the water has ben a routing reel. So that's pretty easy one to understand. I mean when you had the time, when you had them bade it up, we had a fish on. Yeah, pull little channel cat fish off trot line, and I think many more people are familiar with trot lining. Another version of limb line and is the one I was talking about, which is poke polling, where if you don't have good overhanging limbs, you take a big limber sapling, cut a sharp end on it and just jab that some bitch way into the bank and then tie off on that and you're basically making a limb. You know, you're making like a limb in the perfect position you wanted in and then letting that hang there and come back through and check it. Which is poke polling, variational limb lining. UM trot line. A sports trot line can have no more than fifty hooks h per line. Uh eighteen inches apart from one hook to the next is the minimum amount of distance and needs to be some three ft underwater. What why is that recreational boat props? Yeah, it can be lower than three three We've run our own set lines over doing that and you know, like cut them off with the prop, you know, And what you have is a little square box um that's holding about. It's got little notches cut in. You've got a mainline that's big, it's like probably like a hundred and twenty pound, hundred and sixty pound tests and then you string what we call the tugs. The tugs are a smaller Brady line. Let's say it's it's a hundred pounds. Other folks call them droppers or leaders. Yeah, well okay, okay, and uh um it's got a swivel on there. Uh mine were made up. We're head beads on each end, so the tug can can can spin around whatever it needs to do. A We had some small hooks. We had some well fiddler hooks on there, pretty much number two number two hooks, and we baited those up mainly with the little chunks of dear heart and about the size of your end of your little finger. I think we did put a shiner or two on theres uh. Like I said, when we made the ani made the observation of the local of quick stop for the fish to get the mulberries. And I tasted some of the mulberries, and I've been the mulberries for fifty years or longer. My grandmother had three big mulberry trees in her backyard, and the ones that we got to sample the best of ever had the best in the biggest, like hydroponically grown on the bank of the Ohio River, and they were just outstanding. That's what they called the bulberry gang. That's right. Well, I got purple hands, and it's pretty hard to get off, pretty hard. But you've got your line of your truck line, fifty hooks tied up to tugs. You have a special box built um that's four sighted holds, has about twelve to the thirteen fourteen slots in each side. Uh you call with a screen bottom in it so water can run right through. When you retrieve your line, you don't have a multi mess in there. And so you you take the lead in of your trouck line uh put it in the bottom of the box. And then each of those notches you put a tug with a hook attached. And so then you just put them in there in order to go around. And then when you get ready to uh um place the line in the in the in the water, you may need a a piece of Brady line to tie off too, uh some type of structure like we did, and we just start feeding line out. You bait it up before you start fishing. Where you got your bait on there, tie off to a tree structure or whatever. Or if you want to go out in deep water, you may drop an anchor down with a float. Get the depth of the water, maybe twenty feet. You want to fish ten feet of water, so tie your line ten feet, have a float up at the top, and then you've got a line suspended out of the deep channel and then do the same thing on the other end. But you just start um um reel in your your box line out and went fairly smooth. I mean, you know you've got fifty hooks, right you guys string there. You gotta string that something. Bitch banjo tight banjo. Yeah, you get her banjo tight in that way. Uh, it stays at that elevation that you think where the fish are gonna be. Uh, doesn't flop around in the current. You know, there's all types of debris in the water sticking up roots, limbs and all that right there. So you get her tight. You know, she's out there flopping in the water. She's allowed to get tangled up on all kinds of We lost fish because of having the fish wrath around like that. One time we had it hung up, we lost two cats or three cats right there. Yeah, yes, trying to because we've got some slack in her line, you know, trying to just trying to get it unsnagged, and it's and just got your name and idea and andreas on that. Also, like I said, you're you're allowed to fish two fifty hook boxes per person. Our one fifty box. And so we set out to lines over probably a hundred yards long maybe oh yes, yea, every bit of that fifty hooks on each and we strung them parallel to the bank, a fixed too, snags and over and falling trees, so you're basically running it a little bit. I don't know, thirty ft off the bank, parallel to the bank. All bait it up and um it's fun. Man works good adam. Concluding thoughts, it's a trip, man, I love catfish. It's good. Thank you. You had a good time. Yeah, now I had a great time. A little warm for me, the humidity. But you've seen all manner of fishing. Yeah, I've done a lot of bill fishing, a lot of sale fishing one yeah, big big game fish. I guess you would call them me sales Marlon tuna. I've seen a lot of it, so I always I always think it's fun to. I like fishing, so it's fun to We'll see how it works other ways. And do you think all those yachtsmen with helicopters on their boats and whatnot are gonna come start fishing noodlers tomorrow? Probably not? You never know. Yeah, any concluding thoughts, M I had one, can you come back to me. I forgot it. I got to dirt alright, alright, first one, I wish we had time to talk about the swamp night because that was pretty well. Yeah, I do want to mention something, but you use your concluding thoughts, Well, you could do it cleanly and efficiently. Use your concluding thoughts that mentioned any aspects of the trips. I'm gonna mention too, the paddle fish and the snapper. Okay, well I gotta worry about those, Okay, Well, before I get to that. The other question I had, like, these are big rivers. I'm bad with geography. He can't barely say it. So when when I came down, I knew the Mississippi was big, but I didn't realize that all a lot of these rivers are huge. The Mississippi is a sham. The Mississippi is the Missouri named it before they realized the Missouri. The Missouri heads yeah up in Montana. Yeah, flows all the way across the continent. Is gigantic when it picks up a little piss aunt creek called the Mississippi, which then assumes the name of the Missouri and then picks up the Ohio, which it get is bigger than that. But it's a bullshit river. Calling it the Mississippi's bullsh Yeah. But yes, all that stuff, he just says, but my question just to give the listeners an idea. These are big waters. There's a lot of trees, there's a lot of there's not many like landscape markings, and like you guys are setting on specific fishy areas and you never use GPS s And I'm curious, like a lot of people and other sportsman activities, will you know mark certain areas in this net? And I haven't seen you guys do any of that. You know you nor leon to take a stab at that after Kevin answers it um, we look for landmarks that coming to our eyes. Like when we stopped putting down, you know, I knew where we're gonna start, you know, putting limb lines in not far from the boat ram ptt be easy right there. Well, when we put the last limb line out, I looked there and I saw a feature, a snag into the bank round but is like thousands of it was a special snag. What do you say? Thinking what Lee I was saying. He goes, oh, there used to be a bar right here. There ran four hundred yards like basically from here, he goes, what's gone? Now? It's such a dynamic waterway, it's always shifting the whole islands that like weren't there when he was a kid, and they're there now. Yeah, And then no GPS and the channels move around all the time. It just is like it would be irrelevant. Oh yeah with the GPS. He's like, oh sometimes this bar, like this bar used to be a mile down. But I mean like because you got these flood cycles. Like he's saw a boat we've been going around and he's talking about you'd been looking up a hill at a at a gazebo on top of the hill, and he's been talking about the water being need deep in the gazebo. They built smithland locks and like two and before that the shoot that we fishing, and you could pretty much walk from there over to Hercan Island. It was just that there was a big, huge sand bar out there. In my buddy policy, that's where we all learn to swim out here on the sand bar. But it was very little, very little little water through there. And now they raised the pool like six seven feet and it's become a big big lake. Um what they it may change, it won't change you more. Um, they're getting ready there in the process of being onstead down that's that's halfway between there and Leon's most expensive core of engineers project ever, and it's gonna take out a couple more locks out there. It's gonna we're gonna have a huge lake pool from from from about sixty seventy miles down from there all the way up. It's cool though, too, because you're taken note in real time as opposed to being hooked to some screen. You know, you're being more engaged with We may may look on the river bank and see a tall tree. Now when we motored to the other side and the river feature that I noticed, I told Stevens, see the tree with the still got the leaves on it that's been knocked over. I said, that's where we're gonna start, you know, with her with her jokes, so I knew when do I come across. And then when I got across there says, well, we put the trout line up river at the Mulberry Tree, so I had my one landmark to go and going up river. If it had been nighttime, I might have had a GPS out there, because you get real confused like that going to a deer stand in the morning on the far side of the Island. Very confusing, very confusing. You got your thought edity more time? Yeah, we because I can go another item. We are just not gonna get to talk about too much. But the e Town River Restaurant. Yeah, that's that's gonna be your concluding thought. Yeah, all right, break it down. Um, it's just it's super cool because it really is like the maybe the the last place where you can get fish like that close to the source and went back in time. Yeah. So this guy processes thousands and lots lots. I wasn't gonna say how many thousands, just what I thought. He's gonna many hounds, Yeah, um of catfish that are brought to him by commercial fishermen. His his restaurant is a floating is on a barge on on the Ohio River. Yeah. And I'll point out or I'll let you no, I will. This is one of very few commercial freshwater fisheries in the nation for native fish. Will name some more. Canada runs some commercial fisheries. Michigan has like a commercial fishery for Lake White Fire. There's very few commercial fisheries, maybe some in Canada, some in in northern Great Lakes, often with trial only with tribal fishermen anyway, it's one of the very very few commercial fisheries for native freshwater fish go ahead, and so the fishes bought there. It's clean right there. I mean literally, the little cleaning station is not jumping distance, but certainly a stone's throw from where the fryer is. You walk right on there and you're getting fit. You're you're eating on top of the river that the fish grew up in. And the live well is within jumping distance of the cleaning station. Yeah. And uh, I was talking with the owner a little bit about us filming there and whatnot. And he owns another restaurant up on the hill just a couple of blocks away, and they serve catfish there too, but they have on the menu they have pond catfish and river catfish. And uh he told me that the river fish stays on the river. So if you want to eat that actual river channel cat no flathead, you have to walk out onto his barts. You cannot and you cannot buy it, you know, two blocks away up on the hill, which is like, it's pretty cool. He has the customers away, he was saying, So when he turns him away, he sends him up to his other place. But they gotta go get pond Keff. They gonna get aquaculture fish. They can't get river fish. Stays on the river Elizabethtown in Illis, and there's a really nice house on the river. For listen, Yanni called in on it. What do they want for that place? One or four quarter? Bucking a quarter? Kevin thinks you'd get it for a hondo. I'd be afraid out from a hundred for it. So it's because of water raising and stuff. No, I think they would sell it in a heartbeat for I'll do my concluding thoughts in Kevin and go one it I get. I'm just getting a little sick of this, like uh and nothing against you, Garrett, just like O GPS, Like oh you know this kind of like I don't need GPS. You know I'm a woodsman. It's like, are you. Here's why I have a hard time with people who are saying that, and I know you're not saying that, but what is wrong within an enhanced understate ending of what's going on around you? We fished halibut in the place um that you can look at charts and get like a somewhat of an understanding. And I'll and I'll point out, at one point in time, charts were a damn sure new fangled technology. Like Columbus wasn't sailing on good maps, so he could have said, oh, you bullshitters now that use maps when I was a boy, why right? Okay? So then charts also, they had a way to sound depths electronically, and they drew up charts. Now people are like, I use charts, by god, I don't need a GPS. It's like, okay, it's the same guy like I don't have a cell phone. I got my regular phone hook to a wire. And a few times someone's like, you mother scratchers with these phones hooked to wires, us a blanket in it. It's like, so we fished halibut in the spot. I never understood the spot. I never understood why I was there. You looking at a chart and you can't tell anything about what's going on. You get rough stands. It's like a high plateau. I got a GPS now in a sona on my boat. I'm like, oh, no ship. There's a big underwater mesa and it's really good to fish in a saddle between that and another mesa. I wonder why that is. That's so interesting that fish like to hang out there. I wonder if I could replicate this by going to other places and understand the mysterious ocean depths better. It's like I don't need no deeper. My second thing is we're out running, we're out setting limb lines and down the river. I don't know who spotted that thing. Down the river comes a paddlefishase in your guy's boat. You know spotted it. Spotted it. Dirt, dirt, dirt, crippled up paddlefish coming down the river to get hit by a boat prop clocked it in the head, cut off part of its gill cover down the river, like great shape other than a gash in his head. Jody tried to scoop it up in the net, and it scored it away from him. But I had my bow fishing rig and we just pulled up to it, and you could probably grab it if you kept that, you could have grabbed their net. We just put an arrow into it in order to get up on the boat. And it looked like it just happened. Wasn't. It wasn't infected. The official's fat, perfect shiny health, but just had been dealt a deathblow by a boat prop, and so we were able to how much that the other twelve pound paddle fish. Yeah, so we staked that thing out and then we were out frogging art night and before it got dark, I think it was you saw a turtle head pop up. And it was funny because on our way in there, I had saw what I thought was a turtle head the night before, and I said, oh, is that a turtle And Kevin said, I thought that was a turtle last night. It's a stick. So we're out there and all of sudden, Adams says it's a turtle head and I'm like, no, it's a stick. Because it was six inches away from where the stick was. I'm like, no, we all thought that was a turtle too. Was a stick? Goes No, I saw come up and go away. I'm like, bullshit, it's a stick. I go over there and shine my light in the water. Big old snapper land there underwater. So I grabbed my bowl fishing bow arrow and put a bow arrow into his shell and heat eighteen pounds every bit of that, every bit of that. He was eighteen pounds. After we trimmed him up a little bit and then we dressed him as Geordie would say Michigan, you might say we cleaned him yesterday. And so we got a bunch of turtle meat too. And down here you're allowed to You can't trap turtles and conventional turtle traps, but you can take turtles any method that you can use to take rough fish. So you can set line, jug line, trot line, limb line for turtles, no limit. And with paddle fish was a paddlefish season for conventional tackle. But a bow fisherman, if you're using a bow you're allowed too pad fish. And you can use a turtle trap a kilt trap where they come up, but I've never I don't know how you would catch a snapping turtle in because I've never seen one on the long No, they don't climb up the sun. So well, you can you can hook and line, you can gig which you can spear, bowfish, turtles and um when I was a kid, we would You couldn't do any of that. However, you can turtle trap, and we used to use funnel traps or cage traps. Concluding thoughts, Kevin, wait, could you tell them real quick about when we got on the land looking for frogs after you bowe the snapper. It was harder than dolls sheep hunting. When people ask the ill say, when people ask me, now, like, what's the hardest hunt? You better hunting bullfrogs and Kevin's marsh. And then we probably wouldn't even have gone. If I showed him a snake poster that it gave him last night, and I got one of those by a giant water bug. I'm assuming I'm my ankle, which for about thirty seconds hurt like holy hell if they pinch it. I got pinched by a water bugs, Steve, and they just got bit. That's something everyone kind have got. Bit was a snake. I'm going through my hard draft trying to figure out and I was saying, giant water bug, that's it's an Amazonian bug feature there. It looks like it come right out of Amazoni River. But when I first got hit, I thought I got hit by a snake. It was that like it was that intense. It was like that sudden intent didn't last at all, But it was like the resund grabbed you. The pair of needle nose players on your legs. Well, it was like number four on the byte index. Right, Yeah, it's got a high. Yeah, it's got a high on the on the Schmidt pain indexes. I think does it score high the Smith Pain index? I don't know. It was pitch black. Yeah, all he knows. The guy in front of me goes, oh, something's been me. It's black and I'm standing in like three water ago. What do we wanted? The want? But here the bullfrogs this area were tricky because they all were in the heavy cover. They're all in overhead to cover. So you got this giant marsh and there's no all the bullfrog calls. You think like, oh the marshall bullfrogs throw on the edge and the nastiest, thickest willows and ship with a lot of overhead covered tucked under little things, and and it's so thick you can't see anything. You can't see the end of the spear. So all you hear is that you're going toward a bullfrog in tonight boom boom when he's going off, and the only thing he hears him spook you know the whole What was going through my mind the whole time, and said, how's this gonna look on camera? When I jabb Stephen asked with this, this is this game? I said, maybe won't get into too deep. But that was pretty much of a trick too, is having that that gig toil foot gig. And then then the tallest camera man was right behind me and I was bopping him in the head all the time, so I had steve. I couldn't couldn't manipulate it there. So it was the water too coming towards us that was never identified or not or something or not or down there. But godmu so big, can't even be quiet anymore. These breaks. That's a cod mouth that breaks. You know. We waited through there all night. We didn't see one water snake, you know, which I thought we would have seen some water snakes in there. And I had zero bug repellent. None. I heard a few mosquitoes kind of buzz my um ears and stuff, but no swarm. I think you'll wore a little bit of bug repellent. And did anybody really get mosquito? Be you you try to sell this place, I'm selling pleasant area, but the misconceptions of a swamp. You know, when you when you've got a ecosystem that's in balance, everything is pretty much taking care of itself, the fish and the frogs. You know, we saw lots of small baked fish swimming around. They keep the mosquito in check down there. It's not not bad. Now. We had all kinds of small frogs, green tree frog, the bird voice frog, and um, you know, it's just one of those places is just very unique. It's a nice little path. Definitely, when those frogs get gone, it's like loud like the it's loud like the jungle jungle. Yeah, definitely. My full moon calculation was off about by fifteen minutes or so. But when the full moon did get up, then the whole course started. You know, the host swamp became alive, howls in the background, all the frogs, insects, you know. So it's a very special place. So Ken concluding thoughts, Well, when you boys come to town, it's like hunting fishing boot camp. I go back. I feel like I'm you know, you say twelve years old, but I didn't have my driver's last so I'm saying sixteen, you know, out prowling around doing what I want to do, you know. And that's why I spent almost thirty years in utility business. I had the opportunity to retire early, and I'm still very fit and can get out and prowl around with you guys, and I enjoy y'all coming down. And it's just like a new adventure, you know. I just the way I was always raised. I always wanted to go up this creek, down this river, whatever. And UH like showing you guys around, showing you different hunting techniques. We eat good, cook good food. You know, there's lots of really good sportsmen out there that's more than killing. Like I said, they liked being outdoors to see what goes on. So it's a pleasure when you guys rolled into town. Well thanks for having us. Yeah, there you having the great Kevin Murphy. Thank you, Kevin. You're welcome. Take care,