Ep. 717: Is Live Scope The Death of Fishing?

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Danny Thompson, Jeremy Smith, Tony Peterson https://www.themeateater.com/people/tony-peterson, Brody Henderson https://www.themeateater.com/people/brody-henderson, Seth Morris https://www.themeateater.com/people/seth-morris, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics Discussed: Getting stung by a lion fish; collared doves; backing in; debating live sonar; the future of using tech in fishing; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 1:29Steven Rinella?

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• 2:13Steven Rinella?

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• 2:52Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case underwearless.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  We hunt. The Meat Eater Podcast.

• 3:01Steven Rinella?

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• 3:23Steven Rinella?

  All right, Phil, you ready?

• 3:24Speaker 03

  We're rolling.

• 3:25Steven Rinella?

  I already started.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Thank you, I appreciate that.

• 3:28Steven Rinella?

  Um, we're just having a little chit chat prior and the subject, did you bring it up Seth?

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:35Steven Rinella?

  Seth brought up how we have the shirt that Fisher was wearing on the, on when he found the weights in the walleye. And then I was wanting to point out to our guests here who are fishermen, that we actually hold in our possession, the knife.

• 3:50Steven Rinella?

  That was used to disembowel the walleye.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  It's a, it's a piece of history.

• 3:55Steven Rinella?

  To find the weight and he, and then it was an interesting little detail, is he was a little bit embarrassed about his knife work. In the video, he's, he's cutting open the walleye. And he was, he was embarrassed about that it looked like his knife work was in expert knife work. And he pointed out that his leather man, the leather man someone handed him had a broken tip.

• 4:19Steven Rinella?

  And that's why he wasn't able to more expertly extricate the lead.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Listen, when I was watching that video, the last thing I was worrying about was his knife work.

• 4:26Steven Rinella?

  That's the first thing I thought of.

• 4:32Steven Rinella?

  So this morning I was reading that Harvard University, they've been in the news a bunch for getting their balls busted about antisemitism on campus, but

• 4:43Steven Rinella?

  they bought a different news story about Harvard. They bought a mag, a copy of the Magna Carta, did you see this? For $27.50, long, long, long ago. And these scholars just realized that it's the original copy.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 5:01Steven Rinella?

  Someday, they're gonna be arguing about this knife. And I wonder if there's maybe hopefully like wall eye DNA.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  You mean arguing about the provenance of it?

• 5:13Steven Rinella?

  They'll be like, that can't be the actual knife despite the label.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  On this side, is that, there's like a little rust, is that rust or is like some dried?

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Dried blood.

• 5:24Steven Rinella?

  I just hope no one washed it. So when there is like a big thing and like a big scandal and like it sells on Sotheby's for millions of dollars and shit, you know?

• 5:33Speaker 04

  It's like owning the, the gun that shot Lincoln or something like that.

• 5:37Steven Rinella?

  Exactly, yeah. Well, I traded that for this.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's the actual knife.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  It's impressive.

• 5:47Steven Rinella?

  Here in our private collection.

• 5:50Steven Rinella?

  That might be our only, no.

• 5:53Steven Rinella?

  I don't think we have a lot of artifacts, like culturally significant artifacts like that.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Start collecting more.

• 5:59Steven Rinella?

  Uh, today we're joined by two enthusiastic anglers who happen to be not friends with each other. I hope you come out of this friends.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  We built a good friendship yesterday.

• 6:08Steven Rinella?

  Friends with Chester, who's not here. Jeremy Smith and Danny Thompson. And what we're here to talk about is we're here to have a friendly discussion. Um, a friendly discussion about, uh,

• 6:21Steven Rinella?

  What's the slang term for it? Live scope.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Forward facing sonar?

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, no, live scope. Live scope.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Live scope.

• 6:28Steven Rinella?

  The other day, I was sitting at, I was stuck at a boat launch for hours because the wheel fell off my trailer. Made a lot of friends. Um, especially when it was, it fell off the trailer blocking the boat launch, you know?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Oh, you're the asshole.

• 6:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it was funny. There's two kinds of people in this world. There's people that will do anything to try to back a trailer around you in a moment of distress. And there's people who will come up to help.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:51Steven Rinella?

  Right, you know? Um.

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  There's a funny joke. There's two kinds of people in this world. There's people that think you can bucket everybody into two brackets. It's a joke. Uh.

• 7:05Steven Rinella?

  Anyway. While I'm sitting there in my moment of, no, my moment of distress is over because thanks to the help of a, of a fellow angler. We got the boat out of the way. And then we were just people sitting there with nothing to do, waiting for a flatbed trailer. And a guy bragged to another guy. He bragged to another guy. He's like, just got forward facing sonar. Boom. So I thought, man, you should come into the studio because we're going to be talking about this in a couple of days. We're going to be, we're going to have a friendly discussion about the future of forward facing sonar. Is it the end of fishing or just the beginning? Um, and we have a sonar enthusiast. Danny Thompson.

• 7:46Steven Rinella?

  Works for Garmin, but it not, is not here representing Garmin. Can I even say that you worked there? You got a Garmin t-shirt on.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  I mean, people are going to know.

• 7:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Works for Garmin, but is not here as a rep of Garmin, but he's a sonar enthusiast. And we're also joined by Jeremy Smith. Um, who is, uh, from Lindner Media Productions and anglingedge.com. Um, who is, is it fair to say suspicious of, nervous about?

• 8:17Speaker 05

  I think there's reasons for concern with.

• 8:19Steven Rinella?

  Reasons for concern.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  With the technology in certain cases, yeah.

• 8:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Um, I don't want to lead, uh, we're going to, we're going to do the news first. I don't want to lead the thing, but we've been here before. Uh.

• 8:33Steven Rinella?

  For hunters out there that don't care about fishing, we've been here before with drone technology.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Smart rifles.

• 8:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, remote hunting with remote control rifles. Yeah. Like this comes up, this comes up.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  How do we fit new, how do we fit emerging technologies into our regulatory structures?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Wireless cell cameras.

• 8:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, wireless cell cameras, two-way communications. Like throughout the history of wildlife management.

• 9:03Steven Rinella?

  We've done two things. We've gone back and reconsidered old technologies like dynamite. Right?

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:10Steven Rinella?

  They're like, you know what? I know y'all been fishing with dynamite, but we're gonna stop.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:16Steven Rinella?

  So we've done that, and then we've engaged around emerging technologies and um, I have a couple of thoughts about how that goes and uh.

• 9:25Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna hear, we're gonna hear from the fellows here about their thoughts, but can I throw out one tittle later, just tittle it everybody to keep them hanging around?

• 9:35Steven Rinella?

  The minute there was like a whisper of using drones for hunting. They went after drones before there was a user group.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Smart.

• 9:43Steven Rinella?

  And I started to think to myself, like, you have, if you are, if you look at an emerging technology, you cannot wait for a user group. And you cannot wait for an industry to build around it. Once you wait for an industry to build around it and an enthusiastic user group.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:00Steven Rinella?

  You missed your chance.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 10:02Steven Rinella?

  You missed your chance. Um, like, had someone a long time ago said, you know what, these gas-powered boat motors are gonna kill fishing. Now you got dudes everywhere.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:12Steven Rinella?

  You could fish five miles from your house.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  You're not shutting that down now.

• 10:16Steven Rinella?

  You would have been like, people, you could have gotten some old timers to be like, yeah, what's wrong with rowing? And you would have gotten, you could have banned boat motors for fishing, but you missed your chance. It's too late. Now if you bring it up. I remember my dad in the lake I grew up on trying to get a no-wake zone in the evening, geez, it about burned our house down. Um. But first, the news.

• 10:40Steven Rinella?

  I got two news pieces that aren't really, well, one's a news piece. The other day, you know that there's a dude that, uh, one of the guys that works at the meat eater store on Main Street. The other day he calls my kid to ask me, um, they're headed to the emergency room because he'd stepped on a lionfish.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  Oof, man.

• 10:59Steven Rinella?

  Which is painful. And I got, uh, zapped by a lionfish and I thought I was gonna die because I didn't know about it. It's like, I remember getting bit by a bullet ant and I knew it was bad, but I didn't know what happened. And when I got hit by a lionfish in the hand real hard, like someone swung it on the end of a pole spear into my hand. Um, I was with Ronnie Bame.

• 11:24Steven Rinella?

  I remember Ronnie Bame yelled to me, put it in cold water. Like, and it like, you look online, don't put it in cold water.

• 11:34Steven Rinella?

  Uh, what you do, and I haven't talked to these guys since, but, um, it was extremely painful, but, uh, very short-lived. Like your hand, like my hand, his foot, whatever, just blows up and it's excruciating pain. Like I was just laying in the bottom of the boat writhing in pain. Two hours later, I couldn't even remember where the hell it happened. Um, you get hot water. Is hot, like get it so it's too hot to put your hand in. And in the minute you can put your wound in that hot water, somehow it dissolves that toxin and alleviates it. Um, so yeah, they had been waiting through the mangroves and one of them had stepped on it,

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  but I haven't heard any news from them since then. Um, another personal news bit is this morning I was trying to remember if the invasive dove is called a ring neck dove or a collared dove. It's a collared dove, but they're everywhere now.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:31Steven Rinella?

  In this state, we're recording in southwest Montana today for the first, I'd always see them around town. I saw the first three in my yard today.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Oh, really? First and.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  First three I ever seen, like the first three I ever see, I've seen them from. Actually, I need to go into my bird list and put them down. We keep a bird list for the yard. Uh, the first thing I ever seen like touch foot in my yard.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Huh. Yeah, we've got tons of them.

• 12:57Steven Rinella?

  So I'm debating, like my kid will get them now and then elsewhere. I'm debating, is it ethical or not ethical? To start a little feed station.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Eh, go for it.

• 13:09Steven Rinella?

  Cause on one hand, you're supporting them. But on the other hand.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  You're whittling them down.

• 13:14Steven Rinella?

  You're trying to whittle them down. So ethical conundrum with probably legal, with probably legal components. But you're allowed to feed birds.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:23Steven Rinella?

  And they're not a game bird.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  And they're invasive, so.

• 13:25Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  I don't know. They're bigger than mourning doves, I think.

• 13:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I can tell them just if you get like, cause I mean, mourning doves are a little bit. You know, there's like the Montezuma's dove. It's like a real small little shit in mourning dove. And you got like a mourning dove and you kind of get used to that size.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:41Steven Rinella?

  It's just a plumper.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:43Steven Rinella?

  It's a plumper bird. The other day we were at, the other night we were at my neighbor's, we're shooting bows at my neighbor's. Cause he's got a great shooting setup.

• 13:54Steven Rinella?

  Um, and I look out in his front yard and there's a collared dove getting a drink of water out of a mud puddle. And I told my kid, try to get him.

• 14:04Steven Rinella?

  And then we questioned it. Um. My neighbor's wife pointed out that that might not be the most popular move with a neighbor.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 14:11Steven Rinella?

  So we did not do it. And then I told him, I was like, confirm the collar.

• 14:18Steven Rinella?

  Or else you might be in big trouble with the law.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:21Steven Rinella?

  Cause you don't want it to be a mourning dove. A dude wrote in, we had had a big discussion about Doug Durn's emphasis on, um. Always backing in.

• 14:34Steven Rinella?

  And how he credits backing in with saving his father's life, which I think is a, is, is an overstatement. Um, I think, I think Vince Durn would have survived getting attacked by his own chainsaw, whether he had backed in or not. But there's a term for it that I didn't know. In the mining industry, what's, what's the O and G industry?

• 14:58Speaker 04

  I was trying to figure that.

• 14:59Steven Rinella?

  He says, in the mining industry.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Oil and gas.

• 15:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay. This guy says in the mining and oil and gas industries. It is called the move, it's called first move forward.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 15:15Steven Rinella?

  Backing in. You can call it backing in and everybody's like, yeah, I know what that means. Or you can call it first move forward and people will be that they don't know what that means.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  That's like the tactical name for it.

• 15:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 15:27Steven Rinella?

  It's like your wallet. Used to be your wallet, now it's your EDC.

• 15:34Steven Rinella?

  Your pocket knife was always a pocket knife, it's your EDC. A guy wrote in a big thing about Red Dawn, which I don't know why. Did we talk about Red Dawn? It's a great movie.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think so.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  You've brought it up a lot.

• 15:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Throughout the years.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Eating the deer heart and whatnot.

• 15:49Steven Rinella?

  Well, I brought it up because I, I am now, like, I now have my boy being, my boy is at the age where, you know, 14, 15 years old. He's at the age where I can now go show him all the movies I liked when I was 14, 15 years old. So we recently watched Red Dawn. And the guy wrote in and I'm not totally sure why.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  I like it enough to talk about it, but I don't know what he's getting at.

• 16:20Steven Rinella?

  He says, Red Dawn 1984 is a masterpiece of modern cinema. Makes you think about all kinds of cool stuff like government, authority, history as written by the victors, and of course, dirty commies.

• 16:39Steven Rinella?

  But I'm puzzled by histories written by the victors because in the end of Red Dawn, they go to the monument. And you gather from the monument that

• 16:48Steven Rinella?

  we beat the commies.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:49Steven Rinella?

  We beat back the commies.

• 16:53Steven Rinella?

  Um, as a boy eating Pop Tarts and watching TNT, the film made me think about words quite a bit, like definitions of vigilante, freedom fighter, terrorist and the like. Also, how all my Boy Scout ranks and commendations would crush in a post-invasion America.

• 17:16Steven Rinella?

  That's another good thing he brings up because in Red Dawn, the guy that has the Eagle Scout is being targeted by the Ruski's.

• 17:24Steven Rinella?

  Remember, they think it's a paramilitary organization.

• 17:29Steven Rinella?

  He says superheroes are kind of vigilantes. America is at war with the. I wish I better understood where he's going with this. What it boils down to in the end.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  He's trying to ask what are, what are those kids in Red Dawn?

• 17:43Steven Rinella?

  No, that's what, that's what, yeah, I love it.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:47Steven Rinella?

  Alex, love everything about it. Love your letter. I think he's saying like that from, it depends on whose perspective.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:55Steven Rinella?

  Because here you have, they're violating, they're, they're poaching deer to eat. But they're the heroes.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:02Steven Rinella?

  So are they? Poachers?

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, are they poaching? Like, are you still a poacher if you're being occupied by some?

• 18:12Steven Rinella?

  It would have been good if they had showed him tag that.

• 18:18Steven Rinella?

  He like validates his tag.

• 18:19Speaker 07

  Take it to the registration station.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  I think they get a pass.

• 18:23Steven Rinella?

  I'm really nervous about going back into town, but I need to register.

• 18:27Speaker 07

  I only got 24 hours.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you go up to the Russian general with your tag. It's legal.

• 18:33Steven Rinella?

  It's a great question. Um, and then he gets into, of course. Uh, the Mary, the, the Robin Hood's people.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 18:44Steven Rinella?

  You know, Robin Hood's people are poachers. Because they steal the king's game. And, and, and share it with the poor folk. Uh, this would have been better directed to Clay, who does a lot of his bear greases about. Uh, violators, poachers. But in Clay's formula, he won't do a poacher unless the poacher is dead. He won't profile a poacher. He'll profile famous dead poachers, or he'll profile poachers who.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Reformed.

• 19:19Steven Rinella?

  Reformed. Who saw the light.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's not talking to active poachers.

• 19:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't.

• 19:25Speaker 07

  Enthusiastic poachers.

• 19:28Steven Rinella?

  I think that's it. That's it for the news, right? Oh, no.

• 19:32Speaker 06

  There are a couple of things in there, but they're not all

• 19:36Speaker 06

  amazing. Pick and choose.

• 19:38Steven Rinella?

  Well, we got that. And then we got a guy writing in that just is an interesting thing for people to follow. He puts thing in quotes. There's a thing in quotes happening in my little hometown of Elkins, West Virginia that I find incredibly entertaining. He says he has no affiliation with anyone related to this and he's been moved out of there for 15 years. But he still likes to follow the local hunting and fishing scene on Facebook. He says there's a young man named Trent Mullenau. Mullenax, maybe. Mullenau, probably. Who's been catching an absurd number of absolutely gigantic rainbow trout. And he's been putting his photos up at Middle Mountain Sporting Goods. The local hunting bait shop.

• 20:25Steven Rinella?

  And he keeps hammering giant trout. And everyone in the town is in an absolute uproar.

• 20:34Steven Rinella?

  Accusing Trent of all kinds of nasties. Like unable to explain this streak of success. Saying he's following the stock truck.

• 20:48Steven Rinella?

  Other guys are defending his honor. And saying these are huge fish, no matter how he caught them.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  People have begun writing poems.

• 20:59Steven Rinella?

  To explain his incredible streak.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  We had one of those to read right now.

• 21:03Steven Rinella?

  Like it's inspired poetry.

• 21:07Steven Rinella?

  Trying to explain his incredible streak.

• 21:12Steven Rinella?

  He says it's worth at least a mention and then he gives the Facebook page.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  Or search Middle Mountain Sporting Goods. On Facebook and you'll find their page and you can follow his trout fishing exploits. You can follow the arguments of his critics and defenders.

• 21:30Steven Rinella?

  That seems well worthwhile.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Must not be a lot going on in that town.

• 21:36Steven Rinella?

  But it remind, it a little bit reminds me of um another famous, another uh, it reminds me a little bit of the Ron Paul bucket. And Mitch Ron Paul is legacy of giant bucks in that it like, here's this guy, like, well, giant buck and then buck after buck after buck.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:55Steven Rinella?

  And people are like, why I don't get bucks like that? How could he be getting these bucks? There must be something going on. Um, he posts another buck, you know what I mean?

• 22:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's a level of success where you just go, ah, really?

• 22:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 07

  Yeah. That's, that's exactly what I thought when you were talking about that. I'm like, in the hunting industry, every once in a while, somebody will all of a sudden be just, you know, one eighties, two hundreds in a situation.

• 22:22Steven Rinella?

  They're just on fire.

• 22:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, where you're like, really? Like four of them in a season kind of thing. And sometimes when that happens, eventually you find out that it's just, there's some shenanigans going on.

• 22:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 07

  You know?

• 22:34Steven Rinella?

  I'm not saying that Trent here is.

• 22:35Speaker 07

  Right.

• 22:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 07

  No accusations. There's just a level of success.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  This reminds me of my high school days, because we used to go help stock the rivers around my area. And then we kind of knew what holes to fish.

• 22:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that was not, but this would be brood stock.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:53Speaker 07

  Right.

• 22:54Steven Rinella?

  If he's fishing stockers, he's fishing eight inch, he's fishing eight inch rainbows.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Well, no, they always dump in some of the old worn out breeders.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, they dump big ones.

• 23:04Steven Rinella?

  You dirty dog, Trent.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  What, but who cares?

• 23:07Speaker 07

  Wouldn't it be super identifiable, though?

• 23:10Speaker 03

  It doesn't, I mean, those fish are gonna die.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  They got worn out.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  By midsummer anyway.

• 23:15Steven Rinella?

  They don't live.

• 23:15Speaker 07

  The brood stock when you dump them in?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  If, if they can find it.

• 23:18Steven Rinella?

  Because they're not naturally reproducing.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  If they can find a spot where there's some cold water, but the, at least around Pennsylvania and some areas, some, some streams, it just gets too warm.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:29Steven Rinella?

  Let's have a quick poetry contest. If people go and um,

• 23:36Steven Rinella?

  if people don't mind, like, go type in, what are you supposed to type in?

• 23:40Speaker 06

  Um,

• 23:43Speaker 06

  Middle Mountain Sporting Goods.

• 23:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so Middle Mountain Sporting Goods. If you want to write a poem.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  This is in Elkins, West Virginia.

• 23:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Write a poem about Trent.

• 23:55Steven Rinella?

  Send it in. We'll judge the best poem. We'll send him a present. And then, uh, and then if Trent, if you want to call in, I'd love to have you call in and talk about your experience. Is that all fair?

• 24:06Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 24:07Steven Rinella?

  All right, let's go around the room and introduce everybody. Danny?

• 24:10Speaker 07

  Well, Danny Thompson, obviously, you know, worked for Garmin Marine from Andover, Minnesota and fishing enthusiast, been in the industry now for like 10 years, I guess, in the fishing business, so.

• 24:21Steven Rinella?

  Do they know you're here?

• 24:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 24:23Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you told them?

• 24:24Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:24Steven Rinella?

  Did they, did they express any kind of reticence that you would come on and express opinions?

• 24:29Speaker 07

  No.

• 24:29Steven Rinella?

  No? Okay, supportive.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 24:32Steven Rinella?

  Good deal.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  Sweet. Well, I'm Jeremy Smith. I work for Linder Media Productions. We make fishing content, so we specialize in making sport fishing content in the upper Midwest and Canada and avid angler. So I also would be representing a technology company in many regards with Johnson Outdoors. They're a customer of ours.

• 24:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, excellent, yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  So, yeah, so Danny and I both have that connection to technology.

• 24:53Steven Rinella?

  And Linder is the Lind, the Lindy rig?

• 24:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, like Ellender, yep.

• 24:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, can you explain that?

• 24:58Speaker 05

  Founders of.

• 24:59Steven Rinella?

  Because I think people will know, maybe people would, well, when I say people, I'd be like, me, for instance, I grew up knowing the Lindy rig.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 25:08Steven Rinella?

  And then only later it was like, oh,

• 25:11Steven Rinella?

  oh, Linder.

• 25:11Speaker 05

  Linder, yeah. So, yeah, the Linder family founded, they made the Lindy rig famously, and then In Fisherman magazine, which turned into In Fisherman Television, and then in the late 90s, they sold that company and then started another company called Linder Media. And so they've had that business for about 22 years. I've been there for almost 20 of it, so.

• 25:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's fun.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah, I get to fish all over, so if I like fishing, it's a good job.

• 25:36Steven Rinella?

  Seth?

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 25:37Steven Rinella?

  If, if now, I gotta say this here, Seth is a, I, I wouldn't even, I, I've fished this, this emerging technology with Seth.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 25:48Steven Rinella?

  Seth, would you regard yourself as an enthusiast or suspicious?

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Um.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  I like using it, but I I think there's.

• 26:00Steven Rinella?

  Cause it works.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  I have, I have mixed opinions.

• 26:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  I, I think there's, there's at times you gotta be real careful, certain things. And then other times it's real fun.

• 26:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. The first thing, if you're listening at home, the first thing we're gonna do after these intros is someone is gonna explain what we're talking about.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:18Steven Rinella?

  Someone's gonna explain like, like a sort of a. Um, impartial explanation of what is live scope.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 26:27Steven Rinella?

  And I have gone with Seth live scoping walleyes and you're able to sharpshoot. Specific individual fish.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 26:36Steven Rinella?

  You're able to be like, no, he's like 10 feet to the right. No, little, little.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, like cast a little further.

• 26:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Drop it right on his head.

• 26:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's facing left. Yep.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Boom. Yep.

• 26:50Steven Rinella?

  Um. Corinne?

• 26:52Speaker 06

  I've used it once.

• 26:54Steven Rinella?

  Did you like it?

• 26:54Speaker 06

  Ice fishing. I did. It was, it was cool to be able to look in the hole. As one window and then look on the screen. As another window. For, you know, information as to what was going on.

• 27:10Steven Rinella?

  Did you catch fish you otherwise wouldn't have caught?

• 27:13Speaker 06

  Uh, I don't think so. Cause you know, like in a small hole in the ice, there's, I mean, we weren't spearing for anything. It was just our line was down there. So not really.

• 27:26Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you a technology that lets you catch fish you otherwise wouldn't have caught ice fishing is a underwater camera.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 27:34Steven Rinella?

  When they go to mouth it, like sometimes they'll mouth. Something that you would have never even registered to hit. And you're gonna be like, one, you're like, no.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Ford facing sonar isn't that far off from an underwater camera.

• 27:46Steven Rinella?

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• 28:28Steven Rinella?

  process and preserve their harvest with confidence. Visit lemproducts.com and use promo code STEVE15 to get 15% off plus free shipping. That's lemproducts.com promo code STEVE15. LEM: Built for the work, there for the journey.

• 28:51Speaker 04

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• 29:38Steven Rinella?

  For 30% off helixsleep.com slash meat eater. This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Holiday season is damn near upon us. In my house, you know, we've been talking about Thanksgiving and pretty soon we're going to start talking about Christmas and it could bring on a lot of stress. Also, holidays could bring on a lot of family issues. And sometimes when it comes to family issues, it might be smart for you to go and find someone you can talk to about it and to help make sense out of it all. Well, insurance options may now be available nationwide with BetterHelp. With insurance, many members pay $15 or less. Some pay nothing. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for

• 30:20Steven Rinella?

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• 31:02Steven Rinella?

  That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash MeatEater.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I'll tell you real quick, I'll tell you, fishing canyon fish through the ice for perch, that some days I wish I didn't have forward-facing sonar, because you see those fish come right up to your bait and then just swim away. And you're like, I would rather not just assume that there's nothing going on down there.

• 31:29Steven Rinella?

  You'd get home a lot earlier. But you're like, dude, they're down there.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:35Steven Rinella?

  Tony? Tony Peterson.

• 31:38Speaker 07

  Uh, I have, actually have a weird connection to both of these fellows.

• 31:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  Danny and I live in the same town. So every once in a while, I'll be at like a dance class with my daughters or something. I'll look over and he'll be standing there because his daughter's in the same class. Which is weird. And then I used to work in the in fisherman office.

• 31:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 31:53Speaker 07

  So I started out as a fishing writer. My, my first gig, like real full-time gig was as a editor for Peterson's Bow Hunting Magazine. And we were in the in fisherman office. So.

• 32:03Steven Rinella?

  Cool. Which, which one of them is smarter?

• 32:09Speaker 07

  We'll find out.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  But I, I'm, this is a topic that I'm like crazy interested in.

• 32:17Steven Rinella?

  Are you?

• 32:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:18Steven Rinella?

  Are you using the technology?

• 32:19Speaker 07

  I don't have it on my boat, but I've used it. My tournament partner has it. I've used it. I'm, I, I don't, I, I literally am kind of agnostic on it. I have one foot in each camp because I can see, I can see where I think it's going. And I feel like when it comes down in price and the, the average walleye guy gets it where I live, it could be a, could impact the resource. But I'm also like real, I don't like taking stuff away without a really good reason.

• 32:45Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Can I tell you a story?

• 32:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  You know how, uh,

• 32:52Steven Rinella?

  drones and hunting? And now guys are putting thermal.

• 32:56Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 32:58Steven Rinella?

  On drones supposedly for recovery. Who was telling us recently? Some guy they know.

• 33:05Steven Rinella?

  Already. It's like, if you know where a whitetail buck is, it's not like you're going to sneak in and kill it out of its bed. Right? Just that doesn't really, you're not gonna like crawl up on a bedded whitetail and kill it. I mean, maybe once in a lifetime. But when he's setting up,

• 33:22Steven Rinella?

  he flies his area to see where deer are bedded. And that influences where he sets up to pick them off coming out of their beds. So already.

• 33:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 33:34Speaker 07

  When you like.

• 33:35Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, oh no, my buddy, uh, lost the buck. I'm just trying to find it.

• 33:41Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, you think about that and say, say the difference between a big woods hunt, you know, low deer density or whatever, or fly, you know, fly a drone there, it'd be a different thing. Think about like a cattail slew or a western, like western Minnesota where you could be like, that dude's bedded in that little willow patch.

• 33:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 07

  There, we're gonna go push him out or I'm gonna go sit up over him.

• 34:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 07

  So it's.

• 34:02Steven Rinella?

  The wind's doing this.

• 34:03Speaker 07

  Right.

• 34:03Steven Rinella?

  He's bedded there.

• 34:05Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah, so I, yeah, there's, there are ways you could put that to you. I mean, we were talking about turkeys earlier. I mean, you could probably find a roost. I, I've never used a drone with the infrared on it.

• 34:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, God.

• 34:18Speaker 07

  You could probably find a roost and be like, we got birds.

• 34:21Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  Right there, you know?

• 34:23Steven Rinella?

  Sure. Brody.

• 34:26Speaker 07

  Uh.

• 34:26Steven Rinella?

  Brody is Brody.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Yep, I'm Brody. Um.

• 34:29Steven Rinella?

  You're probably torn.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  I'm torn. I don't have it on my boat. Like, I fish a lot for walleye perch around here all summer long with my boys. Um, and I've been tempted, but I haven't. I haven't gotten it because, mostly because I don't want to be staring at that screen all day long, like. And it's not like this, like, war against screens necessarily, but it's like you go out fishing and the whole day goes by and you haven't like.

• 34:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  It's just, and, and we do all right without it. You know what I mean? We do fine.

• 35:05Steven Rinella?

  Uh.

• 35:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 35:09Steven Rinella?

  This is the last thing I'm gonna say before we explain what it is we're talking about.

• 35:13Steven Rinella?

  This is interesting. Bass, so professional bass circuit. They've limited competitors to one LIS transducer and 55 inches of screen space.

• 35:27Steven Rinella?

  What does that mean? Let's explain what it is first. That's too complicated. Who's gonna explain what the hell it is? Danny?

• 35:33Speaker 07

  I'll give it a shot.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  But don't get into whether it's gonna end the world or not. Yeah, yeah, no. So basically, if we look back at sonar and what we're running in our boats and whatnot, you know, traditionally, we'd have traditional sonar, like 2D sonar. We're kind of sending a ping down to the bottom. It's coming back. If it comes back with something like a fish, it might look like an arc, or we might get bottom, something like that. But it was all basically history, right? So we'd mark it, whatever sort on the right-hand side of our screen there would be most recent. And then it'd kind of scroll across the screen. Okay, look, we went over rock pile. Maybe we went over what we thought was a big walleye.

• 36:08Steven Rinella?

  What, what was the delay?

• 36:10Speaker 07

  I mean, it, you know, it depends on how fast you're going and all that kind of stuff, but let's say. You know, get to the middle of the screen. It might have been, you know, five to fifteen seconds ago, depending on how fast we're going. Could have been second ago if we're going fast, right? But now with live sonar, what we're doing is we're basically taking like scanning sonar. So it's almost gonna be more of like a side imaging image or a down imaging image. We're speeding it up really fast. And then on top of it, what you're able to do is get a really wide cone angle. So with traditional sonar, we're maybe seven to sixteen degrees.

• 36:42Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 36:43Speaker 07

  So the coverage of the bottom, not only was it like historical, we might only be covering anywhere from five to, you know, ten feet of the bottom, maybe. That's all we're seeing.

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 36:54Speaker 07

  Now with a live scope transducer, let's just say in this case I have it mounted on my trolling motor, I have a hundred and thirty-five degree cone angle by twenty degrees. So if I'm sitting on a lake like Malax on the mud flats, I can look backwards, let's say twenty-five feet. And I can look forward up to two hundred feet. You know, and and obviously, you know, it's depth dependent. So the shallower we go, the less distance that we can see, the deeper we are, kind of the better the image really gets.

• 37:22Steven Rinella?

  And and what is, um, tell folks about, at what depths does it become irrelevant? Like, what are the, the, the technology now allows you to fish not a hundred feet, right?

• 37:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, we could go, you know, trout fishing up in Canada and we can see down past a hundred feet of water.

• 37:38Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 37:39Speaker 07

  You know, um, and then there's, there's other transducers now, like we've got an XR that will work like saltwater. You know, so you can get down to like five hundred feet freshwater and three hundred feet saltwater.

• 37:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, dude, now I want one, man. I was on the fence.

• 37:57Steven Rinella?

  I was on the fence, but now I'm like firmly in the.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Podcast over.

• 38:03Steven Rinella?

  As soon as you said three hundred feet of saltwater. Cause that's like mystery land down there, dude.

• 38:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, but and it's, and it's live, you know, and then as, as we go shallow, we actually have what we call. Like a perspective mode, so we can kind of take that cone angle and turn it on its side, so to speak.

• 38:19Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 38:19Speaker 07

  So we're gonna be 20 degrees up and down, we're gonna be 135 or technically 150, kind of that left and right. So now, when we get in that under 10 feet of water, we can still get our distance. But it's not like you don't, you can't see your bait dropping as well, you know, the fish, the image isn't quite as good as it is like in the forward mode.

• 38:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 38:40Speaker 07

  But um.

• 38:40Steven Rinella?

  And for people that aren't familiar, like you can point that thing to where you want it.

• 38:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, so like, like in this example, I'm in a bass boat, right? And I have it on my trolling motor. Wherever my trolling motor is pointed is where that image is looking. You know, and then that's why we picked that 20 degree cone angle. So if we're flipping docks or I'm, you know, throwing a bait into some mill foil or I'm scoping walleyes with slip bobbers, when I see that fish 75 feet out and I make that cast, if we were to go wider, we're not able to be accurate. So we keep it 20 degrees so that when we throw that bait, the bait's gonna land relatively close to that fish.

• 39:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 39:17Speaker 07

  If I can land in a 20 degree cone angle.

• 39:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:21Steven Rinella?

  All right, Jeremy.

• 39:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay, here's what here, you're gonna get a lot more chance to talk, but the, the, the what's good about it is pretty obvious.

• 39:35Steven Rinella?

  Helps you catch fish, all right? Jeremy, if you wouldn't mind,

• 39:40Steven Rinella?

  now that he's explained what the technology is, can you articulate some, like what, what is this, what are the concerns the anglers should be considering as we, as we

• 39:52Steven Rinella?

  make up our minds about this technology? And, and I just want to remind people, and before you go, I want to preface this by saying, just, just to, just to give the historical context.

• 40:04Steven Rinella?

  In fisheries, wildlife management, fisheries management, there is, since the beginning of fisheries management and since the beginning of wildlife management, we have regulated technologies.

• 40:20Steven Rinella?

  Net size, mesh size, use of explosives, use of poisons, use of electronics. We make it that sometimes a year you can't fish. We tell people how many fish they can have, how big a fish they can have. We distinguish between whether you're a resident or a non-resident. Like, we regulate the piss out of hunting and fishing. Just to set the, this is not like, you know, this can be a lot of things. But this can't be a issue of, is it fair to regulate fisheries?

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:54Steven Rinella?

  Because we regulate the hell out of fisheries.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Absolutely, we do.

• 40:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so I just want, that's, I'm just telling for the audience, like, any question, I think it's fair, but I'm like, but it should start with the knowledge that we always are weighing impacts on, impacts on resource.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, and you hit on a topic right away that I think was good. So, in terms of technology, like, fishing hasn't really looked at tech and said, you know, like, this, this, this tech is out of bounds. I mean, we have with dynamite, for example, but electronics technology, for example. So.

• 41:24Steven Rinella?

  Like, you can't think of an example?

• 41:26Speaker 05

  I, I can't. So, nobody said, like, you can't have side imaging or down imaging or mapping is, is out of bounds, right? So, but with hunting, you, you hit a good point earlier on, Steve, that like, you've got this adoption rate when this technology comes on board, where you get a big user group that loves it, right? And then others are concerned about it. So, in terms of regulating something beyond that, that becomes really difficult. So, to me, one of the biggest places of concern, and I know you love these critters, Steve, with Larry Ramsay on here, is muskies. Right?

• 41:58Speaker 05

  I also want to ask if you've got Larry's girlfriend with your bluegill bobber bait leak?

• 42:02Steven Rinella?

  You know what, though? I, I think I need, I realize, he invited me to go muskie fishing.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I don't think I've ever legitimately caught a muskie.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  Yeah?

• 42:11Steven Rinella?

  Even, yeah, even after talking to him.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 42:14Steven Rinella?

  Tiger muskies, which don't count.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Well, they're cool. They're super cool fish, but, yeah. So, muskies, in my opinion, like, they're, they have low reproductive rates, they get really big. They tend to suspend in open water, so they're really easy to see with this technology. So, muskies are, in my opinion. Awesome, right? They've got a fish that's really hard to catch. You gotta bust your ass to catch them. They live in cool places. There's all this cool culture around musky fishing, making lures and you know, just the mystique of it. And so now with the technology like this. Um, you know, you to encounter one has been historically really cool. Now you talk to a dude like, how'd you do today? He's like, oh, we got 10. Any big ones? Oh yeah, we got, you know, four over 50. Like what? No way. Like you can put this tech down.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  And drive, you know, cross sections of a lake and be like, we're not fishing until we see one. You don't even bother with trolling. Like that's completely. A waste of time now because you just use this tech to find the fish, cast at them. Boom. Right? So musky anglers like have a huge problem with this, right? And so.

• 43:14Steven Rinella?

  The trad, traditional musky anglers.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  You bet. Yeah. And I would say, you know, not all of course, but a, a large percentage of them are saying, hey, man, like. You know, we've had, I'm, I'm sorry to go to Minnesota here for this example, but it's what I know is like, we've had a history of. What I would say, poor management of muskies since the early 2000s where we've lost. A number of our stock fisheries, the numbers of fish that we have, which has forced a lot of pressure on our native fisheries. Because the stock fisheries that they built, they built this big group of anglers who love participating in the sport. The fish aren't necessarily there anymore. So we're putting all this pressure on our native fisheries.

• 43:48Steven Rinella?

  Can I ask what's happened to those fish?

• 43:50Speaker 05

  It's been a stocking issue and we've had issues with the, the politics around it. We had a bunch of people back. I mean, maybe 10 years ago that just hated, hated muskies. And so it got to be this political climate where. It just became difficult to get fish. We've had problems raising.

• 44:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause they were mowing on.

• 44:06Speaker 07

  Walleye.

• 44:06Steven Rinella?

  Walleye.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  They, they eat everything, which obviously is not true. That was a thought.

• 44:11Speaker 07

  That was like the narrative used against muskies was that, that they're eating the walleye and the walleye are more valuable.

• 44:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the, the bottom line is when you've got these big predators and systems, like you've got a really quality fishery. Like. We know that, right? Places where muskies live, big pike live, there's just good fishing. If you want a quality fishery. So.

• 44:29Steven Rinella?

  So there aren't many bad fishing lakes that just have giant muskies everywhere.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  They're all amazing.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  Big muskies in them, so.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  They go hand in hand with good fishing.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  They do. They definitely do. So, Leech Lake, for example, which is one of our native fisheries, it's a place where we get all the brood stock for muskies. I was on this like crusade throughout the winter, having done this, like, just to give you an example of how powerful this technology is, it's like, oh, you know, we know that these fish are out in these open water basins and it's like these big, huge expansive areas that essentially like from a wildlife side, you would look at this area as basically functionally remote, just because the technology wouldn't allow us to access this, these fish or these fisheries with any, you know, precision, any efficiency, really inefficient, inefficient means of targeting fish. So, now you go out there, I'm like, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna take my 10-year-old

• 45:23Speaker 05

  kid out there, half hour, boom, two 50-inch muskies, you know? Like, what? No, man, like, I've done this for 30 years, like, this doesn't happen. Talk to my buddy, you know, oh yeah, we got 31 in the last four days, like, what? Any big ones? Yeah, the smallest was 47, you're going, dude, this is nuts. Now there's 30 boats out here and this has never been fished. Like, what, what does this mean? And there's dead fish floating.

• 45:47Speaker 07

  Right. So that, okay. That's the concern. It's not, it's not that it's easy, not that it became much easier than it traditionally was to catch a muskie, it's that now that it's so efficient to catch them, the mortality rate is gonna go way up and the resource is gonna be in real trouble. If it, if it goes the way it looks.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  So, so yeah, it could be mortality rate, but you also have to look at this as like the opportunities. So, it is going to, it is gonna condense opportunities, right, to those who have the technology versus, so, because you're trying to recycle these opportunities, right, with muskies, you're not, you're not looking for a harvest component of this, you want, you want the fish to stay in the system. So, all of a sudden, let's just, just make up a number, say there's 100 opportunities for muskie, if you're condensing all those to June, at the beginning of the season with people using this technology, the outcome for the angler who wants to go throw it a weed bed or a rock pile is now different, right? That opportunity's gone to this, you know, driving around, not fishing until you see a fish. So, there's a group of anglers that are like, hey, man, not only could this

• 46:48Speaker 05

  be killing a lot of big fish that are hard to replace in our native fisheries. We also like to go just cast and suffer, you know, do all this hard work. Like, we really appreciate the suffering of the sport. The reward is big and that's changing the outcome for us and we want to do something about it.

• 47:08Steven Rinella?

  Now I'm back to being against it. Danny?

• 47:13Speaker 04

  And I think here's the deal-

• 47:14Steven Rinella?

  I got one in my shopping cart. At the end of the episode, I'm gonna hit buy or not?

• 47:20Speaker 04

  And me and Jeremy got to talk about this a lot and we're actually both on a panel with the Minnesota DNR where we actually do get to-

• 47:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you are?

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Somewhat discuss this a little bit, you know, which is a new thing, obviously.

• 47:31Steven Rinella?

  I'm sorry, what's the panel?

• 47:34Speaker 04

  So, and Jeremy's probably better on explaining that. I've only made it to the one summit that we just had. I just recently got like appointed to it, but um-

• 47:42Speaker 05

  So, the Minnesota DNR has these like species or interest work groups where they've got stakeholders that meet with the agency and you come up with some ideas of, you know, what do we want to do for better management for panfish or walleye or muskie? In this case, they've got one on technology, so-

• 47:58Steven Rinella?

  They do?

• 47:59Speaker 05

  They do.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Recently. And they have one on muskies too, so you know, they kind of go hand in hand there, obviously in Minnesota.

• 48:06Steven Rinella?

  Is the technology one focused on a broad spectrum of technologies or is it basically they're talking about live?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  It felt like we're basically talking live scope at this point. I mean, that is the most pressing issue when you're talking technology and fishing right now, so-

• 48:22Steven Rinella?

  Can I throw, there's one that I know is riling folks up. I'm not, we're not gonna get it, we don't need to like debate this because this is, I don't know anything about it, but um, dropping baits with drones?

• 48:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:35Steven Rinella?

  Is becoming relevant in a couple pursuits, um, dropping baits into bait balls?

• 48:42Steven Rinella?

  Uh, where you can, instead of getting a boat real close, where you gotta start spooking fishing bait balls, you have a drone fly out and can drop a live bait onto a bait ball. And then there used to be a thing like surf casting. You'd keep a boat and then you'd run out and drop where you wanted it. Um, and now guys just stick them where they want them. So, maybe you guys can argue about that in your little thing. But, go back Danny.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  No, basically, I mean, I feel like, you know, and to kind of touch on the first point we've talked about, me and Jeremy got-

• 49:19Speaker 02

  To talk a lot, obviously, at the end of the day, like, nobody wants to do what's wrong for the fisheries. Right? And I feel like everybody's opinion, and and this is, this is the point that, you know, we always talk about and and like me and him talked about yesterday is. You know, a lot of it is coming down to ethics, right? But everybody's ethics can be a little bit different on on what we want to do. And and at the end of the day, I don't think any. Outdoor industry company wants to do what's wrong for any other species. Like, we want people to catch fish. We want to make superior products that. Help people catch more fish and, you know, have more opportunity. So if we go in and we're devastating a fishery.

• 49:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Like a muskie, that's very easy with this technology. Like, I don't think anybody necessarily wants to do that. But I think what's important is we want to make decisions sort of based on science, sort of based on, you know, facts and and that sort of stuff. And not necessarily on emotion, right? Because everybody in this room, right, might have a different opinion on. What what is good and what isn't. And some people might like traditional fishing versus some people like. You know, we in this room are all around the same age. I'd say we grew up in an age where like fishing meant, you know, we're talking yesterday, like I got a handheld GPS. Then I'd navigate out on the lake with, well, my dad would mark a tree in a cabin and and that was his method of mapping the lake, right?

• 50:44Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  And then ice fishing, you know, I I was in college during the crappy boom on Red Lake and. Like, I got a flasher and thought that this was, you know, that was the end. I was going to catch a limit every single time, but. You know, that isn't always the case either, right? And, you know, I I always talk about like Bass Master Classic, they should got the best of the best. They got the best of the best equipment when it comes to electronics and all that stuff. And some of these guys still can't catch a limit of fish. They're the best anglers out there, you know, so like, there's certain use cases, yeah, where like, I think it might be smart to maybe look towards some stuff. But also, like, just being careful that in the overall broader picture, fishing's huge, right? And just.

• 51:24Steven Rinella?

  Making sure we're making the right decisions. Cause at the end of the day too, and, and this is the case, I think for everything from whitetail deer to, to wolves, to, to fish. It's not one thing that's killing these fish or ruining a fishery. It's always kind of that death of a thousand cuts. Yeah. Right? So like, not only do we have really good technology, we have really good boats now, really fast motors and, you know, good, the 2D sonar is better than it's ever been. Side imaging is like, you know, there's, there's a lot of, you know, things that, that can lead to, you know, the detriment of a fishery. I want to hit you guys with a couple of clarifying questions. Um, then we'll get into more opinion.

• 52:05Steven Rinella?

  None of us is probably, none of us is old enough to remember.

• 52:09Steven Rinella?

  And it was pre-internet. Well, I was, I was going to ask about the advent of just fish finders, sonar.

• 52:17Steven Rinella?

  None of us is old enough to remember and those pre-internet. So there wasn't like a place for people just to like regurgitate. Uh, opinions. So you don't really know, but, uh, I remember being a kid. Out on, we used to troll a lot of salmon in Lake Michigan and I remember the graph paper.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Hmm. Sure. Yeah.

• 52:35Steven Rinella?

  You had that pencil and you'd go home with a big roll. It was like your day of fishing captured on a roll. Uh, I, I, I wish.

• 52:45Steven Rinella?

  I, I wish I could recall what, if that was pointed out as.

• 52:51Steven Rinella?

  Was that argued about?

• 52:52Speaker 05

  It was.

• 52:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  That was. There was actually legislation in the seventies regarding that. Yeah. So I thought that was going to be a big, big problem and crashed fisheries for sure.

• 53:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay. That was debated.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  It was. Yep.

• 53:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Um, the other clarifying question is how have, just, just to help further set the situation up. How have the governing bodies of competitive fishing?

• 53:17Steven Rinella?

  What has been their attitude about it? Yeah. I mean, obviously bass fishing is the big umbrella, right? So in, and walleye fishing is kind of business as usual at this point.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  But in bass fishing, you know, there's the few different main, you know, leagues, I guess, that people fish. And it's almost like all three of them sort of went went a different route. And so you've got one that said, okay, no forward facing sonar.

• 53:43Steven Rinella?

  And who was that?

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Would be NPFL.

• 53:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  And then we've got the major league fishing series where they're going to allow it for like one of their periods. So they'll split up the tournament into different periods. And so, okay, one of them.

• 53:57Steven Rinella?

  Dude, that's a great little test right there, man. That's almost like research, right? That's like A B testing.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  And then Bassmaster actually is allowing like one, one live scope on the boat. You know, and that's sort of new this year. So last year was, was, and the years prior was sort of free for all. So that's why they're limiting the number of screens and the number of live scopes. Cause what people were doing is putting live scopes, say, on the back of the boat and using it for side imaging. And now you're getting live side imaging. And you had guys that were running, you know, four graphs on the dash, five up front. And so they just said, okay, we're gonna bring this down a little bit and, and we'll see what happens.

• 54:33Steven Rinella?

  Put a limit on it.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  After this year, right? This will be a good learning year to see what happens.

• 54:38Steven Rinella?

  And in the wall eye, nothing?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Nothing. Yep. Yeah. And as you go around the country, you know, like he's speaking with the muskies and speaking with different fish, like different fisheries and different fish are more susceptible to it. It's like when we go up north and we're doing a small mall tournament. A lot of times it turns into a scoping tournament, right?

• 54:57Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  But like when we're down south and, and the, the guys are learning how to use forward facing sonar, even in the south, like just left Lake Fork and a lot of guys are scoping there, but a lot of guys are fishing traditionally as well.

• 55:10Steven Rinella?

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• 55:37Speaker 07

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• 56:22Steven Rinella?

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• 58:26Steven Rinella?

  All right, let me hit you with an opinion one.

• 58:30Steven Rinella?

  A way I've always looked at things that the influence efficacy is that we have a

• 58:40Steven Rinella?

  our resources occur in a limited pool. Okay. And the way we allocate resources is dependent on

• 58:50Steven Rinella?

  success rates. Meaning, just to put it in the simplest terms, let's say you have, I'm going to put it in a, I'm going to put it in a big game term and someone at the table hopefully can come up with a fishing analogy. In big game, let's say you have a unit of space. Okay, you have a, however you divide it up, you have a region or a unit or a mountain range, let's say. You have a mountain range and on this mountain range, you have 100 elk. You've determined that you're going to pursue a 10% harvest rate on those elk. So you're saying we're going to kill 10 of those elk. We know that our hunters traditionally have a 10% success rate.

• 59:35Steven Rinella?

  Therefore, we're going to give 100 individuals a hunting opportunity in those mountains because we're going to wind up hitting our harvest objective. If we look at this historic efficacy. Then let's say you were to go to that mountain range and you say, we're going to try something new this year, boys.

• 59:55Steven Rinella?

  We're going to give out 100 tags. You can hunt at night. You can spotlight. You can drone. You can thermal hunt. You can mount a firearm to a drone. Okay, unlimited. We're going to make the season 365 days long. Now you turn out that you have a 90% success rate. 10% of dudes don't show up. 90% success rate. The next year, when you issue tags, you're like, you know what? I think that we're going to have to do this. We're going to have to issue 11 tags, not 100, because efficacy has shot through the roof. So now 11 people will have an opportunity to participate as opposed to 100 people having an opportunity

• 1:00:41Steven Rinella?

  to participate. The question to each of you is, um, do you feel in fishing?

• 1:00:49Steven Rinella?

  There could be a similar situation at play where you're going to feel, um, you used to be able to keep five, but no one really caught five. Now you can keep two or whatever the hell. Do you picture, or to put it to an ethical question? It's two parts.

• 1:01:09Steven Rinella?

  Will this, could this become a thing in fishing? And would you regard that as an acceptable cost of, of, of using the technology? So will it happen and would you support it happening? I'll let Jeremy go first.

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  Well, I, I think you hit on just a great point here. So, you know, this, where in hunting, I mean, you guys know the efficacy of a, of a spear, of a longbow, of a compound bow, of a crossbow, of a, an open sight rifle. So all these technologies obviously can add to the efficiency of a harvest or, you know, harvest opportunity or a catch in the case of fishing. So we're asking the question right now in fishing that kind of drives me nuts a little bit like, does forward facing sonar impact catch rates? Like, we have no idea what the answer is. Of course, the answer is yes, but it's variable, right? It doesn't, it doesn't happen every time, but it can, obviously, and it can make a, make a big impact. So.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  We're going to address this, sorry to get off track here, we're going to address this a little bit like we want to, we want to look at data, we want to look at science to answer.

• 1:02:14Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 1:02:15Speaker 05

  Answer this question, right? So, and I'm not at all against science, but I'm going to just say that the means in which technology is improving and the adoption rate with anglers is happening is massively outpacing any regulatory processes that can happen, the way we collect data, the way we analyze data, the way we implement what we learn from that data. So like a good example in Minnesota, I've got a buddy who's on this bluegill committee, right?

• 1:02:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  So for like 10 years, they're even longer, they've been saying that like, hey, you know, we're losing the big bluegills in Minnesota. This is far before forward-facing sonar, even side imaging, right? Just the big bluegills are disappearing. They're being harvested. We want to protect the big bluegills. We want to, you know, have a quality bluegill fishery in this state. So they talk about it for 10 years. Clearly, the best solution is to not harvest the big bluegills, just keep the big ones in the system. Keeps recruitment low, all these great benefits to it, so.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  Which would, which is complicated because you're introducing the idea of a bluegill slot limit.

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  Okay, right, yes, exactly. So let me get to, let me get to why this is so complicated. So this is clearly the, you know, that's, that's the answer. So they talk about it for years. Eventually, they come up with the idea that, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take some lakes and we're just going to keep less. Well, that's not the answer. The answer is don't keep the big ones, right?

• 1:03:36Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  So now, in five years, now they're going to take 10 years to assess that, to see what the impact was in a reduced bag. And now they're talking about, once that's up, we're going to look at doing like a nine-inch, you know, maximum size harvest. So this is going to be like a 25-year process to use this science to identify, like, look back 25 years where we're at. So I'm not saying that science isn't wrong, we shouldn't look at it, we shouldn't use it. I'm just saying we also need to look at how this is a, a social science issue as well, that like, there's just some places or people who don't maybe want this type of technology or as much advanced technology coming into certain areas of the sport. So it's not a, it's not a. You can't have live scope, no more live scope for anybody, you know, or you can have it.

• 1:04:19Speaker 05

  But like, we've got a lot of opportunities to experience, experiment with different resources, where we could use it, when we could use it, special regulate, we've got all these opportunities that I think we really need to be looking at more. Starting with the social component, you know, saying, okay, we know we've got groups of anglers, let's listen to anglers, let's try to manage for what the users' expectations are and want as we work on the science in the background.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  So has there been any like knee jerk regulatory actions taken, like anywhere yet?

• 1:04:51Speaker 05

  Well, Montana said no paddlefish snagging, right?

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  And a few states have lowered, you know, catch limits, but that's really Harvest limits. Harvest limits, yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 05

  That's really about it.

• 1:05:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay, but you gotta answer my question.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  Okay, what was the question? Oh, I went on a tangent.

• 1:05:11Steven Rinella?

  Do you feel, or whatever you have for any kind of survey data or anything like that, do you feel that in some fisheries,

• 1:05:23Steven Rinella?

  live scope could lead to, could lead to adjustments in the regulatory structure? Second part of the question is, would you feel that that would, is that acceptable?

• 1:05:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it already has, right? Like in harvest species, like Mississippi lowered crappie rates on their big four down there, and they attributed that to live scoping.

• 1:05:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So they articulated that that was a response to that.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:05:48Steven Rinella?

  The dudes are tearing it up on crappies.

• 1:05:50Speaker 05

  Yes, so that is already, already happening.

• 1:05:52Steven Rinella?

  And then paddlefish?

• 1:05:54Speaker 05

  Yep, yep, paddlefish, it's happened.

• 1:05:57Steven Rinella?

  Well, that, that was different, like for Montana to say you can't use it to snag, paddlefish is the opposite, not the opposite, it's like, okay, the technology's coming, we either limit the technology, or we say, it's coming, everybody's a better fisherman now, you can't keep as many fish.

• 1:06:14Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:15Steven Rinella?

  Right, you're all better now, so now, um, we're gonna lower the potential impact by going after bag limits, going after seasons, in order to accommodate the technology. So that'd be another way of putting the question is.

• 1:06:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a great way to put it.

• 1:06:30Steven Rinella?

  You feel that it could lead to a reduction in the resource. And when you look at a state agency coming in and saying, um, okay, it's here. We're going to lower bag limits. Uh, do you like the, that's an approach or does the approach of it's here? We don't want to lower bag limits, so we need to make it not be here.

• 1:06:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and I think it can be, you can look at it different ways. It, it can still be here, but maybe used during certain timeframes, right? So, I mean, it's, it's back to this whole, how efficient is your effort? Right? How efficient is the angling effort? So I, I think it's, um, I think we should ask users what, what they want, how they, how much do they value the technology? Over the experience of catching fish? Would you rather be able to use this technology and be able to catch whatever you can catch in a certain window of time? Right? Or would you just say, you know what? We want this experience to last longer and therefore we, we want to limit technology. So I think that's that social component that I think we, we need to understand as much as, as much as anything.

• 1:07:32Speaker 05

  Because to say that this technology won't impact opportunity or catch rates, just, you know, to try to understand what that is. I, I think we already know what the answer is.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  From an enforcement perspective, the, the reduced bag limit approach seems a lot easier than having, having a ward and going around checking every boat. To see if they got a trans, a live scope transducer.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Like, that seems like a nightmare.

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. If they, if they did it instead of getting rid of like,

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  basically saying you can't, you can only keep two wall eyes and use live scope year round or whatever. Um, rather than like just getting rid of it all together and keeping that bag limit bigger.

• 1:08:19Speaker 05

  Well, and we've got plenty of people in here who don't have the technology. So is that fair to you? You don't have the technology. So now you could keep six, but now because this guy is using it, I only get two.

• 1:08:28Steven Rinella?

  I want to give Danny a turn to respond. I like where you're going.

• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  I want to respond to that.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  That's a good question.

• 1:08:35Steven Rinella?

  No, I'd like everyone around the table, like, okay. Um, I had a meandering, I wanted to give Danny a chance to respond to, to the question, which is being, um, is the answer to regulate around it? Will that even be necessary? Or is the answer to, uh, stop the technology? I mean, and, and this, this is like I said, this is where it gets difficult, right? So everybody's idea on what to do with it is going to be so different. Hmm. And and and the hard part, and we talk about this quite a bit, is a lot of times it's that top 10% of the anglers that are doing all the catching, all the keeping, a lot of times. Saying about that.

• 1:09:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and so it's it's it's hard because, you know, we're we're making all, we want to make all the regulation on that. And then also, like I said earlier, is we we don't want to make regulation based on an emotion. And so like in the panel, for example, we had a lot of guys that were very anti, you know, against live scope and whatnot, but they've never used it and they they don't really know, you know, the implements of it, other than what they've maybe heard. You know, and and then there's some media out there that's kind of like, you know, just putting taglines out there, headlines out there to get clicks. But then it's not necessarily like they're they're almost pitting it as the bad guy. Well, you know, like I say, if if if you're going to go out and catch, you know, 10 muskies in a day, like you're the bad guy.

• 1:10:02Steven Rinella?

  Not necessarily the technology, right? So why why do we need to limit a great resource where I can learn about the fish? I can learn about the fishery, I can see what's on the bottom and and use it, you know, respectfully or ethically, whatever that means, versus a guy who's going out there and he's not. Yeah. You know, so and and a lot of times, especially in muskie fishing, a lot of a lot of it's like the guides, like there's some guides. So state of Minnesota, a prime example, like you can go out, put an ad on Facebook Marketplace and say, hey, I'm a muskie guide. And no license, no training, no nothing. Hmm. And go out and target 10 muskies every single day to make your money. There's no, there's no, there's no licensing or process on that?

• 1:10:47Speaker 05

  Unregulated.

• 1:10:48Steven Rinella?

  Unregulated. No, not even like insurance requirements.

• 1:10:51Speaker 05

  Well, I'm sure there's that.

• 1:10:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But any, any, any, you could become, I could be, go there.

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  You could go be a guide tomorrow.

• 1:10:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  But you don't need like captain's license or anything?

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  It's a great lake.

• 1:11:03Steven Rinella?

  So like, you know, you know what I mean, like there's a lot, there's a lot to this. It's it's it's the death of a thousand cuts again. It's not like every single person going out there is is catching all these fish and and causing the problem. It's kind of that top tier, it's certain small groups, you know, that's all sort of leading to something. And that's where like if regulation is needed, then then that's the avenue. Maybe we go down. But we want to do that with like a good. Science based or some actual factual information versus going on emotion or going on what small select groups are doing. We want to make sure when we're making these decisions, we're actually making a smart decision. You know, it's pretty funny. Our colleague, uh, Ryan Callahan.

• 1:11:48Steven Rinella?

  We were one day talking about. Technology, specifically, we were talking about, uh. Putting a camera down through the ice to watch fish. And he was talking about the emotional side of how you perceive it. Like you're saying, like guys that are against it. They don't really know what it is. They've never seen it. They haven't seen any data, but they're just against it. Cal was talking about this feeling of like, if you're ice fishing, you could be catching fish and having a good time. A guy comes and drills a hole near you and lowers a camera down and Cal says, you get this feeling like we're fucked now.

• 1:12:25Steven Rinella?

  All of a sudden, it's like less fun, you know, you'd be having, you thought you were having a great time, but now you're not. But that feeds in exactly to what I'm saying, right? So I might sell live scopes to a hundred people at a sports show one weekend, right? Okay. But 10 of them are going to know how to use it. You know, like you, you can have all the technology. You can have the greatest rifle and hunting gear. Yeah. But you're not always going to shoot that deer, right? Like, so obviously it's a tool that helps, but it's not the end all be all like, like, like it's made out to be. All right. Um, people want a chance to weigh in on it. So I just want to clarify a question because it's a complicated question. Well, we could, we could forfeit the idea that it's going to impact harvest.

• 1:13:08Steven Rinella?

  I think everybody here has acknowledged it's very effective for fishing. So let's just accept that it's going to impact harvest. If you were to clarify this and put it, um.

• 1:13:21Steven Rinella?

  Everybody needs to imagine a lake they like to fish. Okay, there's a lake you like to fish.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:27Steven Rinella?

  Your favorite fishing spot. And they come to you and say, okay, we can do two things.

• 1:13:33Steven Rinella?

  We're either going to lower bag limits and shorten the season and keep live scope. Or we're going to ditch live scope and keep the regulatory structure the same. So it's come down to, you don't, Danny doesn't like this. Go ahead.

• 1:13:45Speaker 04

  No, no, I, I, I, I like the question, but like, once again, it just, it feeds into like, no, no two people are the same, right? Like, I like to hunt whitetails on private land out of a deer stand that I already hung. Tony likes to go to public land.

• 1:14:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  And, you know, ho- hope something's there, right?

• 1:14:05Steven Rinella?

  Do you feel the question is, is not a good?

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  I, I could give an example on the fishing side of things. Like, I like to go to Fort Peck and target big walleye and I'm never going to keep them.

• 1:14:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  I would love to use live scope doing that.

• 1:14:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Exactly. I, I love.

• 1:14:21Steven Rinella?

  But that's not answering my question.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  But what's, what's the guy that likes to go to Fort, Fort Peck and, and keep a limit of walleyes? You know? He's not targeting big fish. He just wants to.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, like in my case, I'm looking for a limit. So like, I'd be like, I'd be, I'd be like, we're out, the lake I'm thinking of, I don't need the forward facing, keep the limits the same.

• 1:14:42Steven Rinella?

  That's where you would fall.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:43Steven Rinella?

  If you were put in this, what's a Faustian decision? I don't know. Isn't that a thing?

• 1:14:49Speaker 06

  I'm Googling.

• 1:14:50Steven Rinella?

  There's something like.

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  It's a bargain.

• 1:14:52Steven Rinella?

  All right.

• 1:14:53Speaker 06

  Thanks, Phil.

• 1:14:54Steven Rinella?

  And, okay, so you don't have to answer, you could do like Seth and have some like, wa- some kind of waffle.

• 1:15:01Steven Rinella?

  Where he doesn't like, like, Danny didn't like the question. Seth didn't answer the question. Tony, uh, do you, uh, what do you feel about the question?

• 1:15:06Speaker 07

  Do you know, this, this is almost giving me PTSD because this feels just like the crossbow debate in the whitetail world, right? And I act- I mean, I look at forward facing sonar kind of like, well, we're almost going from traditional bows to crossbows.

• 1:15:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:15:22Speaker 07

  People are scared of it. People don't know, uh, you know.

• 1:15:26Speaker 07

  To Jeremy's point, you're like, okay, well, we're gonna, we have the social aspect where a lot of people are like, I do not want this because this is going to change the game.

• 1:15:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:15:33Speaker 07

  And on a, on a broad level with the average user.

• 1:15:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:15:36Speaker 07

  Which is kind of undeniable, right? But you also have, what actually is the impact on the resource? And so what you're talking about is like, the science, to get the science, we always have to go retro. Right? Like, either that or you just ban it and go, we're just gonna be proactive and it's gone, but we don't live in that world right now.

• 1:15:55Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, the drone situation was that world. But there was, the, the minute there was like a whisper of private drone use, I always remember it was kind of one of the more interesting wildlife management moments of my lifetime. Thirteen states, I mean, in, in one year, thirteen states banned drones for hunting use. Western states.

• 1:16:17Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:16:18Steven Rinella?

  And also some states that are not hippie dippy anti-hunting states. Like some hard hitting. Wyoming was one of the first. Some hard hitting, conservative, pro consumptive use.

• 1:16:31Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:16:32Steven Rinella?

  States, Alaska. Right? Like pro, not just like looking for any reason to screw with hunters. Some, some like heavy forward-thinking game management consumptive use states, right wing leadership.

• 1:16:49Steven Rinella?

  Right out of the gate.

• 1:16:50Speaker 07

  Right. And that's fair.

• 1:16:52Steven Rinella?

  And no one had, no one waited to be like, well, let's wait and see for 10 years if, if efficacy rates changed, they just knew. And they did it.

• 1:17:00Speaker 07

  Well, and I, I mean, I think the, the only devil's advocate I'd play there is it's like a, it's a different beast managing elk versus how many crappies are in Minnesota. Right?

• 1:17:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:17:09Speaker 07

  Like, so I, I mean, it's, it's a fair point, but I look at it and go. Maybe, maybe this is a weird perspective, but everything that makes it easier, a lot of these guys who are like, no way, I don't want that. I don't want crossbows, I don't want to bait deer, I take it right down the line, I don't want cell cameras. The adoption rate, when that stuff becomes a little more affordable, a little more ubiquitous across the hunting population. These people who are against this stuff they don't understand, often end up on the side of using it. Because, so if LiveScope was 150 bucks and it took you five minutes to mount on your boat. All these guys would have it, right?

• 1:17:51Steven Rinella?

  You think there's a haves and have nots component?

• 1:17:54Speaker 07

  Well, there, there isn't. There's just a component of just not, not, people not being familiar with it and like hearing about, you know, and so the, I think you have to play in the world of going, okay, this stuff exists. It's legal right now and it will be adopted by people who are against it if it comes to that. So kind of to your drone point, like if you believe that, and I do, then you would have to make that decision. Do we proactively go, no? And I'm not, I'm not on that side yet. I just, I feel like it's coming and it's going to be, it's going to change regulations.

• 1:18:30Steven Rinella?

  I, I think that I, I've mentioned this drone thing a couple of times, but out of fairness, I need to acknowledge that these are not analogous.

• 1:18:36Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:18:37Steven Rinella?

  Like, like you could look at sonar as being an evolution of sonar. We agreed what it was in the seventies and somehow we were on a trajectory of not regulating sonar. And then sonar, right, right, this isn't the answer. I'm saying like sonar advanced. What made the drone thing, what makes it imperfect as an analogy is it really was sort of this brand new, altogether new concept, right? It, it was like, if there had been some other, like the drones at first had extremely limited capabilities and you couldn't really picture where it would lead, right?

• 1:19:21Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:19:22Steven Rinella?

  Um, it might've had a different path, but it was sort of like it emerged as an altogether new thing. And was sort of, you, you had an opportunity to like, say yes or no.

• 1:19:33Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:19:33Steven Rinella?

  In a way that perhaps even like cameras, the, the gradual increase in efficacy of cameras, and then they kind of became that it was cellular cameras, right? There was never a real clear inflection point.

• 1:19:49Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:19:49Steven Rinella?

  I would say.

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  That was a big leap. Yeah. And the closest thing would be scouting from an airplane.

• 1:19:54Steven Rinella?

  Which they had already haggled about.

• 1:19:56Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 1:19:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a good point. They had haggled about airplane use and it had already said, if you fly, you can't hunt that day.

• 1:20:05Steven Rinella?

  Let me hit, can I hit you guys another question? I want to set up with an observation of my own.

• 1:20:11Steven Rinella?

  Very similar bit of technology. When I started fishing in Southeast Alaska, we would fish off charts.

• 1:20:19Steven Rinella?

  Like. As close as you can get to no detail. Just, it's like, it's like an open ocean. Uh, portrayed on the chart and then you have some soundings printed. Um, in a sort of equal spacing. So you could tell 20 fathoms, six fathoms, 40 fathoms, whatever. No detail. Uh. It made fishing very challenging because there was always this feeling of a kind of randomness. Okay.

• 1:20:52Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I've now gotten to the point where, uh.

• 1:20:57Steven Rinella?

  I use Navionics data. Um.

• 1:21:02Steven Rinella?

  My catch rate 100% went up. My understanding of the ocean and what's going on and my enjoyment of the experience. Went up hand in hand. Where it was like, oh, wow. I didn't know that that was like a really sharp hog back ridge. It would be like, in the old days, it'd be like, now and then you'll catch a blank. Like over in that kind of area. Now I'm like, oh, wow. They like to lay.

• 1:21:35Steven Rinella?

  On the drop off point of a hog back ridge. And when you get there, get ready. It like, uh. Afflicacy up. Understanding up. Sort of like inspiration about the landscape up, you could, it was just like, it was better. More fun. More educational. Um.

• 1:22:01Steven Rinella?

  Taking that and looking at it with live scope, do you feel that it's a? Do you feel there's something similar at play? Is it like ultimately?

• 1:22:11Steven Rinella?

  Taking from the experience or is it adding to the experience? We'll start with Danny. So I'm going to give two, two things here. Okay. Right? So I've obviously.

• 1:22:19Speaker 05

  Actually, you know, like, I love LiveScope. I love to fish with it. I like how I can be selective in which fish I catch. You know, if I'm targeting eater fish, for example, I can target eater fish. I don't catch big fish. I don't catch small fish. I don't catch, you know, accidentally catch muskies. Back in the day when we'd, you know, rig leeches and creek chubs, we'd catch whatever would bite it. Yep. And it would swallow the hook every time. Like, I feel like I can actually fish more efficiently, but also more, you know, ethically, so to speak, with the fish, fishing with that technology. I can learn about what's on the bottom. I've sat on Malax Lake in the wintertime and watched the migration of wall eyes as they come and go off those flats morning and night. And it's like,

• 1:23:03Speaker 05

  I've just learned so much about fish behavior and what they do. And that's where like, if, you know, like, using it in that matter, or matter, it is so beneficial to an angler. You learn so much. I enjoy the experience more. I'm able to bring my daughters there, be able to see the fish moving around. And if anything gives you hope, you don't always catch them, but at least you can see them down there, right? But then also from like an industry standpoint, right? And the crossbow thing here is a prime example and hits me, hits me because I'm a whitetail guy, right? And, you know, with forward-facing sonar, I mean, the one great benefit it also brings, not only understanding fisheries, but look at what it brings to the industry as far as dollars go, right? So now we've got all these baits aimed at forward-facing sonar.

• 1:23:48Speaker 05

  You can go buy, you know, a new Berkeley power switch, and it's got the FFS forward-facing sonar logo right on that bait, letting, you know, the angler know it's forward-facing sonar. So it's created new industries within fishing. There's a new fishing line called Forward. Daiwa makes LiveScope rods that are, you know, $1,200 rods you can use for live scoping. So like, you bring all this new money to the industry like crossbows did. And, you know, a lot of times if that money can go back into the industry or keep the industry going, especially coming right out of COVID with all the new anglers we have. I mean, there is a lot of like fringe benefits you don't necessarily speak of that not only add benefits to when you're out

• 1:24:32Speaker 05

  On the water, but benefits to the fishing industry in general.

• 1:24:35Steven Rinella?

  Um, they're subject to what's the fishing Dingle Johnson.

• 1:24:39Speaker 05

  Dingle Johnson.

• 1:24:41Steven Rinella?

  Is that technology hit by Dingle Johnson tech or?

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  The technology wouldn't be, but a lot of the other stuff would be.

• 1:24:47Steven Rinella?

  The hardware is not hit by Dingle Johnson?

• 1:24:49Speaker 05

  Yep. Marine electronics are exempt.

• 1:24:51Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 1:24:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Why is that? Dude, boat gas isn't exempt.

• 1:24:57Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. So it was a navigational tool when the, when DJ was, was getting started. So it hasn't been modified.

• 1:25:03Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they need to get in there and hit that. How, how much is a, how much is a, what, what are we talking about? We never established. How, how much does it cost to get your boat set up?

• 1:25:12Speaker 05

  I mean, a LiveScope system is going to be 1699 retail.

• 1:25:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:25:16Speaker 05

  And then, you know, a screen that you'd use with it, you're looking at anywhere from, let's just say 800 bucks on up, depending on what size you had, you know, like when I first started, it's a lot of seven inch units. Now we're sending, selling a lot of 10 inch screens. So you're going to be, you know, about three grand.

• 1:25:32Steven Rinella?

  All in.

• 1:25:32Speaker 05

  Say it to be all in.

• 1:25:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:25:34Speaker 05

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• 1:27:55Steven Rinella?

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• 1:28:24Steven Rinella?

  Does it improve or detract from the experience?

• 1:28:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I don't want to come off as like I just hate this technology because

• 1:28:31Steven Rinella?

  No you don't.

• 1:28:32Speaker 05

  As a student of angling, fishing my whole life, this is the most insane coolest thing ever to happen in fishing.

• 1:28:41Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:28:41Speaker 05

  Oh, all the like, it fundamentally changes it, like what's out there? Oh, I know what's out there, there's a big wall, you see it, right? Like, so it just, it changes things, so it is really cool. Um, so that you brought up the, the great point, Steve, of the GPS technology, like all of the other tech is really, and that's really the foundation of a lot of it, right? So if I can't easily navigate to these locations, it will likely be spots to hold fish, right? Like, it, forward-facing sonar isn't that great if you've got, you know, just a paper map that doesn't show you much, like if you're not going to go to habitat.

• 1:29:17Steven Rinella?

  Like where to begin looking.

• 1:29:18Speaker 05

  Right? So, so the map is, is huge and talking to, you know, I was talking to Al Linder about some of the big moments in his career in fishing and one that I thought was most interesting is he was like, big outboards, man. Like bigger boats, bigger outboards, when we could go out on Lake Erie, when we could go out in the middle of the Lax Lake, he's like, that changed fishing.

• 1:29:38Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  You know, like that was a big moment in changing fishing. And that's marine electronics often get picked on, but that, that was a huge deal. You brought up outboards earlier.

• 1:29:48Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:29:48Speaker 05

  And this, and then the other, you know, fundamental shift was mapping and being able to navigate, you know, especially big bodies of water, fine spots in the middle of the lake, traverse Canadian Shield waters now that, you know, spinning the map around, everything looks the same, you know, like, it's pretty cool. So, technology absolutely adds to the, it can add to the experience, yeah, absolutely. So I guess, how much, how easy do you want it to be and how much do you value some of those intangibles that are the mystery, the difficulty in fishing? And that's kind of, I think what we want to measure to some degree is how much value is there in the mystery, those intangibles? And those are some of the things I think we need to consider.

• 1:30:30Steven Rinella?

  Uh, let's say, this isn't a question, it's just something to respond to, just a thing to muse on. Let's say I developed some crazy technology where I could, uh, I all of a sudden had some technology where I had, I could put a map in front of you and I could be like, every elk at all times is on this map.

• 1:30:53Steven Rinella?

  Um, and I went to a body mount. I'm like, check this out, right? Most dudes are gonna be like, let me look at that map. Right? But then I come and be like, I'm gonna sell this map to anyone that wants it. Then people are gonna be like, I don't think you should do that.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:31:10Steven Rinella?

  But I think a lot of guys would want to peek at the map if they could peek at it secretly. Right? So there is a point at which, like, we go to that extreme. And I, some people don't like extremes when debating, but I'm a big fan of extremes when debating.

• 1:31:27Steven Rinella?

  Most people would agree that if we could do that, if I could show you a map and every elk in existence on that mountain is on that map.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  Or just the 360 bull is on that map.

• 1:31:40Steven Rinella?

  He's always on there. He's know right where he is at all times. I, I, I think that you'd have 90, whatever the hell, 80, 90% of people would be like, that's just going too far.

• 1:31:51Steven Rinella?

  And I would go like, but think of how educational it would be to understand how elk use the mountain. That's all the big bulls. Isn't it cool? You can see exactly where they like to lay, when they move, when they spook, where they go, what they eat. How educational. And people would say, eh, yeah, but, yeah, but.

• 1:32:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, but.

• 1:32:10Steven Rinella?

  So there's like, there is an extreme.

• 1:32:15Steven Rinella?

  I don't know how to put that into a question, but

• 1:32:19Steven Rinella?

  this can't be, this can't be that.

• 1:32:24Steven Rinella?

  It's not. Like, it can't be that all mysteries are revealed, right? And, you know, like, it's not, obviously. And I know one thing people like to say is using live scope is like spotlighting whitetails or spotlighting deer. Okay. And although you can find the fish quicker, they still have to react, right? And if anybody's tried to catch a walleye on Leech Lake as of recent, you'll know real quick that the fish start to learn about live scope and boats following them around. And where before it used to be able to maybe make a 40 yard or 40, 40 foot cast at a walleye, you now have to try to make a 80, 100 foot cast. Like, you know what I mean? And so, like, the fish still has to react and bite that bait.

• 1:33:05Steven Rinella?

  I've thrown my ned rig at a walleye hundreds of times where they don't bite and you just gotta keep moving on. So even if sometimes you know where the fish are, it doesn't necessarily. You know, mean you're gonna catch them all the time, you know, and and obviously muskies are gonna be a little bit different. I feel I feel like they're always gonna be maybe an exception. There's other species that are too, but like, you know, knowing exactly where that bull is and then, you know, going with a long range rifle or something like it's it's it's similar but different, I guess, just like spotlighting a deer like once you spotlight the deer, like the deer doesn't have any choice there, like the fish is making the choice to still react, bite the bait, you still gotta make your cast within that 20 foot or 20 degree cone angle. You know?

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  Yep. Um, I got kind of an example up. Chester and I fished a tournament on Fresno here in Montana a few years ago and everyone was kinda in this one part of the lake and we we motored up in this part of the lake that was super stained like two, three inches of viz. And we started marking a bunch of fish, but there were no one fishing there. So we dropped, dropped down mega live and

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  we figured out if we're, if you drop, we're drop shot in these wall eyes and if you put it five inches from them, you weren't catching them. But if you were to place it right on their nose, you could catch them pretty much every time.

• 1:34:31Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  And that's like an example where if I, if we didn't have that, we ended up taking like seventh in that tournament. And every, like a lot of people struggled.

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  But we just figured out this one little thing in the super stained water. Where if we didn't have live imaging, like you would never have caught those fish. Um, but we were just able to like really sharpshoot and like pinpoint these fish using that technology. And we like ended up catching a bunch. But I I'm, I was pretty confident where if we tried to do that, like you, you just had to put it right

• 1:35:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:07Speaker 03

  on their nose.

• 1:35:08Steven Rinella?

  It was getting you fish you otherwise would have never got.

• 1:35:10Speaker 03

  Would have never have caught those fish.

• 1:35:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, last, uh, you want to address that one?

• 1:35:15Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:35:16Steven Rinella?

  Nothing, I don't know what to dr- you want to comment on that one?

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, I mean, you just get this precision accuracy.

• 1:35:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 05

  To your point, that just wasn't, wasn't possible, and, you know, like, you know, back to the musky thing. I mean, that's not, like, the spotlighting common or whatever, that's what, that's what, uh, musky guys call it. They call it road hunting, spotlighting, sharpshooting, like, guys who do it are like, this is bullshit.

• 1:35:37Steven Rinella?

  The guys doing it call that.

• 1:35:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And so, this is, if you guys are familiar with the, the concept of the tragedy of the commons as well, like, this really applies in many of these, these cases where, um, and i- it's quite interesting, like, get back to the musky world, like, uh, on Leech Lake, this has gotten to be a hot topic. So, all these guides are out there, they know, like, this is bad. Like, what we're doing out here, like, bad, we should not be catching this many fish. But, if I don't do this, I'm not going to catch nearly as many. So, if I decide, you know what, I'm gonna take the high road, and I'm gonna just go fish traditionally, not do this, but you know what, the guy who's 20 years old, really good with tech, just buys this stuff, he can start guiding tomorrow, and he's gonna kick his ass. The guy's been doing it for 30 years.

• 1:36:21Speaker 05

  So, they're just caught in this rut and saying, hey, we need, we need help, we need help stopping ourselves from doing this. So, it's a really interesting situation that we're, we're in with that.

• 1:36:32Steven Rinella?

  There was a famous buffalo hide hunter, and he observed when he was down in the, I think he was in the Texas Panhandle,

• 1:36:42Steven Rinella?

  he, he knew what they were doing, that they were pushing the animals to extinction. And he would say, sometimes I'd get so disgusted, uh, and I'd be like, I'm, I can't do it anymore. But he said you'd wake up and off in the distance.

• 1:36:59Steven Rinella?

  And he's like, someone's doing it.

• 1:37:02Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna happen no matter what, you know?

• 1:37:04Speaker 05

  Yep, that's it.

• 1:37:06Steven Rinella?

  All right, the last question, um, and we'll go around the room, everybody can have, you can have, do two things. You have a final thought, if you want, but you also got a crystal ball.

• 1:37:17Steven Rinella?

  What's a fair number? 10 years? 20 years? 10 years. 10 years. Where are we sitting? Just kinda like, you know, where are we sitting on the debate in 10 years? What happened in 10 years? What'll have happened? Um, as we, as we weigh this all out. Uh, so a final thought, if you got one and then crystal ball it. 10 years down the road, I would expect to see. Blank. Yeah. So I guess final thought, I'll start with that. Obviously, you know, obviously I think my, my big perspective on it is, is I, you know, there's, there's always going to be the two groups, the people that like it, the people that don't. People kind of fall in the middle. Doesn't necessarily matter what we decide as far as regulation or whatever else.

• 1:37:58Steven Rinella?

  Like it's still gonna, there's still gonna be that, that, those groups, you know? And that's where I say like, as long as we're making decisions based on the science, based on, you know, actual facts and, and what's going on versus just on emotion. And whatnot. I, I think we'll be, we'll be in a good spot. You know, the one bad thing and, and Jeremy alluded to this a little bit is like right now, how we're getting those facts isn't necessarily like the most effective way, right? So right now we're getting a lot of those facts through Creel surveys. Um, you know, and, and to some degree, there's probably some truth to them. And it's pointing out that that top group is, is the group that's catching the fish, doing most of the harvest, that kind of stuff.

• 1:38:42Steven Rinella?

  And everybody else is still kind of the same, right? We're not really showing that much, or if any increase in catch of fish or any of that kind of stuff. Um, you know, so right now we're showing like, really it's not having an effect is basically it. But, you know, how are we getting these Creel surveys? Are they doing them at the correct times? Are the muskie guys really coming off the boat access at noon? No, they, they're coming off in the middle of the night or, you know what I mean? Before, before the sun comes up. Whatever else. And are we actually hitting those guys that are harvesting a lot of the fish, right? So I think there's a little bit of a flaw in how we're getting that data, but just making sure that we are using good data and, and good information. We make those decisions. I think, I think that's the most important because it does have a big impact on the industry.

• 1:39:27Steven Rinella?

  We are bringing a lot to the industry and a lot. To the upcoming generation because of the technology. So 10 years down the road, where are we going to be? Well, I mean, I've been in this business now for 10 years. Been been with Garmin for 10 years and when I started, we were using 2D sonar. Okay. Right now, we're using LiveScope. I can see fish 200 feet away in live time. So I mean, who knows what's coming, right? And we're sitting here and we're debating what what's happening right now. But like, you know, we're all middle aged guys, right? And we grew up in a time where there was no cell phones. There there wasn't really internet and all that kind of stuff. And now look what we have, right? And so this generation of anglers that's coming up right now, like with the new Bassmaster Classic Angler being young and a lot of young guns.

• 1:40:13Steven Rinella?

  Kind of in in this the tournament series and in the content game, right? Like they're going to drive that technology, I think, further and further and further. And so what we should be looking at, maybe concerned about talking about is what's coming more so too versus what we got going on right now. So in 10 years. Yeah. I mean, who knows? It's a good point. And that's where like, I think Jeremy has a great point. And hey, we like, we can't wait for 25 years to figure out if we have an effect on bluegills, right? We we need to figure out that right now. So let's let's figure it out. Let's make good decisions. Let's work together. Let's drive the industry. Let's continue to get these anglers. You know, we added almost a million youth anglers to the to the industry last year. Let's let's keep doing that.

• 1:40:58Steven Rinella?

  Let's use the technology with them, but use it in the correct ways. Train ethics. You know, like a lot of it really comes down to the anglers, like deer hunting, like you you can do a lot of things that you maybe shouldn't, you know, but where does that start? That starts with like the values and the ethics that we have as fishermen and outdoorsmen. 10-4. So. Jeremy?

• 1:41:19Speaker 05

  Well, I guess I to crystal ball it, I I think there's going to have to be some examples of a fishery crashing or really, you know, showing like, oh, boy. There's a strong correlation between this use before we decide that we're going to be proactive on managing technology for the most part. And it'll be a reactive management strategy going forward would would be my guess, at least in the state of Minnesota where I can speak to. But I think technology is not going to slow down. I think we're going to pursue this idea that we want to make the fishing experience easier, more comfortable. We want to improve catch rates. We want to make, you know, I mean, that's just, that's just where it's going. So I don't see that like.

• 1:41:58Steven Rinella?

  Easier and more comfortable.

• 1:41:59Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. That's, that's where it's headed. So I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm just saying it is what it is.

• 1:42:04Steven Rinella?

  That trend will continue.

• 1:42:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, that trend will continue. Yeah, man.

• 1:42:08Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I, I'd use live imaging and I like using it. It's fun. Um, some fisheries I don't use it because it just, like you guys were talking, like there's, there's times when it's helpful and other times it doesn't matter.

• 1:42:26Speaker 03

  And I'm the type of guy who maybe keeps a limit of walleye a year. I don't keep a lot of fish.

• 1:42:35Speaker 03

  If it went away tomorrow,

• 1:42:38Speaker 03

  I'd still be out there fishing. And I don't think it'd make a big difference in my life.

• 1:42:42Steven Rinella?

  Got it. You'd fish, you wouldn't change, you wouldn't fish less days?

• 1:42:46Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:42:47Steven Rinella?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:42:48Steven Rinella?

  No. Corinne?

• 1:42:50Speaker 06

  Well, I don't really have enough experience with any of this. Um, but one thing stuck in my head from talking to you guys before the show, before you came out here, which was really again focusing on, um, and this is what I can't not think about, the generation that's coming up with tech. And, uh, if that's just going to be,

• 1:43:18Speaker 06

  if we won't get ahead of that. Um, so I know we touched on that a bit today, but, um, that, you know, in five, 10 plus years.

• 1:43:31Speaker 06

  The generation now, your kids' age, you know, what they're used to and what they're gonna be clamoring for and if we're really gonna set regulations in advance of that and and potentially with technology even developing faster, better. That that's just the one thing that's in my mind. So not not sure if we'll react fast enough.

• 1:43:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Tony?

• 1:44:00Speaker 07

  I feel like when Jeremy's talking about the muskie guide thing and feeling the pressure to compete against the 20 year old who's gonna use it without any no compunction at all. He's just like, I'm gonna go, this feels just like how deer baiting is sort of a social contagion. Where you're like, I don't want to do it, but now my neighbor's doing it and all my deer disappeared on opener and I want my kids to get one. And so I just think we have to look at this and go, it's gonna be pretty widespread adoption, I think. And what I what kind of just occurred to me while you guys were talking is, so we live, we're all kind of Minnesota boys. We we live in this world and know these lakes and kind of that's the filter which we kind of view it through. But I was like, in my head, I'm like, imagine if you had like a selfie stick kind of thing

• 1:44:45Speaker 07

  with a little portable version of this and these fly fishermen out here go walk up to a hole, stick it in there, look at their phone and go.

• 1:44:53Steven Rinella?

  Do they be doing it?

• 1:44:54Speaker 07

  Right, but, right. So 100% people would do it, but that would be a catalyst for like work like I think that people would go, this is a use case, like it it's too far for me. So like we, if you're really close to the muskie issue, this is like, if you really appreciate that opportunity, like this is a hot button thing right now because you can see that that specific use case is probably gonna be trouble at some point or it or already is. It's like a lot muddier when you're talking like grand scheme of things, panfish populations, walleyes, whatever. But I tend to err on the side like Danny, you're you have like a pretty charitable charitable view of the average fisherman.

• 1:45:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:35Speaker 07

  Like, oh, we gotta train them in ethics and this and I'm like, I think about a lot of the old timey. Like guys, I know I'm like, you give them a chance to put more fish in the boat, they're gonna do it.

• 1:45:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Speaker 07

  Like, they're not gonna, they're not gonna think about that for a second. And so I think we have to operate in that world. So 10 years down the road, crystal balling it, I feel like we'll probably see some level of reduction in opportunities if that's just limits, or if it's shortened season or something like that. I think we have to consider that. Cause I, I could see that, like, I believe that's probably coming.

• 1:46:05Steven Rinella?

  Come, Brody.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  I'm still on the fence. I'm nowhere, like, I'm in the same place I was when I walked in the room.

• 1:46:13Steven Rinella?

  Well, crystal ball it.

• 1:46:16Speaker 04

  I, I, I mean, the cat's out of the bag. It ain't going anywhere. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think, I think you're gonna have a real hard time

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

  disallowing the technology, other than in very specific cases like Montana paddlefish where it's like a, a, a, a set number of anglers on a short stretch of river that can be monitored. I, I, I just, I don't think anybody's gonna be like, no, you, you like, you can never,

• 1:46:48Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, it's there. I, I'm, I'm leery of put, the reason I, I'm leery of putting it on my boat now.

• 1:46:56Steven Rinella?

  Cause you'll watch it.

• 1:46:57Speaker 04

  Is because my boys will pay attention to that, to the exclusion of everything else. Like, which is annoying.

• 1:47:04Steven Rinella?

  That's true. When I introduced ice fishing with a camera,

• 1:47:09Steven Rinella?

  my older boy, if you don't got the camera, he's less interested in going.

• 1:47:12Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:47:14Steven Rinella?

  He loves it. Uh, and he'll, he would sit there for three hours in a tent, watching that screen.

• 1:47:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:47:22Steven Rinella?

  Glued.

• 1:47:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:24Steven Rinella?

  Um, but that's different. That's parenting. That's not regu, that's, that's parenting. That's not regulation.

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:47:31Steven Rinella?

  When I crystal ball it, just to stick to the pure crystal balling, if I crystal ball and I really had like bet money on it, I would bet that you will see a noticeable.

• 1:47:43Steven Rinella?

  You would see a noticeable increase in restrictions. Meaning, just as we can point to, uh, just as we can point to like paddlefish, snagging, whatever. I think that you'll have,

• 1:48:02Steven Rinella?

  in 10 years, I think you'll have more examples of a fishery for perhaps an imperiled, um, low fecundity fish, whatever. I think that you'll have some instances where people find that a resource is pretty limited. It's really reliant on low efficacy and, and it might be that rather than shutting off the fishery, you'd have select instances where you decided to control the technology. I, I think that like, I would bet on seeing a handful of more examples.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  And a place like Minnesota where there's so many lakes, you could have like forward facing free lakes.

• 1:48:42Steven Rinella?

  Just like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what form it'll take when I crystal ball it, but I think that we'll have, instead of us keep saying paddlefish, paddlefish, paddlefish, I think we'll be able to go paddlefish, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. And we'll have more examples. With all that said, I have to be totally fair. With all that said, if you showed up in my fish shack.

• 1:49:01Speaker 04

  Oh, and you could go find.

• 1:49:03Steven Rinella?

  And you said, no dude, here it all is. Let's hook it up. I would be like, dude, let's.

• 1:49:07Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:08Steven Rinella?

  Like, yeah, I would say, let's go. Now, to continue that thought, at the end of the day, at the, depending on what happened, at the end of the day, I might, I might have, I might also say, that was amazing. You shouldn't be allowed to do that.

• 1:49:24Steven Rinella?

  I had, let me give you just a, like a, sort of a closing thought from Phil's wave me off. I'll keep it quick.

• 1:49:33Steven Rinella?

  You can hunt coyotes with thermals. And in the state of Lebanon, you can hunt coyotes with thermals. We were out thermal hunting during deer season one time. Okay. It's deer season, but we're out at night thermal hunting coyotes. And it occurred to me, I'm like, dude, we ain't breaking the law.

• 1:49:52Steven Rinella?

  But there's some hot intel. Some hot intel.

• 1:49:56Speaker 07

  Right up against that line, buddy.

• 1:49:57Steven Rinella?

  Coming my way.

• 1:49:58Speaker 04

  Especially if you were coyote hunting at 5 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:50:01Steven Rinella?

  What's the worst?

• 1:50:02Speaker 04

  And first light was at?

• 1:50:03Steven Rinella?

  We weren't. We were at the tail end, but I'll just say it just occurred to me like, dude, I could be like, I'm coyote hunting, bro. And um, could have had a feeling like, yeah, I could see someone saying that you can't deer hunt after you coyote hunt with thermals.

• 1:50:15Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 1:50:16Steven Rinella?

  Alright, thanks guys for coming out, man.

• 1:50:18Speaker 05

  Thank you. Thanks for having us.

• 1:50:19Steven Rinella?

  I really appreciate you coming out and um, and uh, and kicking this all around.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  It's a good conversation.

• 1:50:26Steven Rinella?

  It's a great conversation.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Steven Rinella?

  It's interesting. It's one of those things that makes everybody a little smarter to think about.

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:50:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, alright, thanks, thanks again to our guests, Danny, Jeremy. Thanks, man.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 1:51:03Steven Rinella?

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