Ep. 953: You Can’t Afford Not To Fish

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater Crew discuss: Only Fins Katie; livescope effectiveness; the commercial panfish fishery; Ted Cruz’s cormorant control bill; tough titties; Alaska Native and U. S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola; and more. Follow Katie on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/onlyfinskatie/ and find OnlyFinsKatie Merch at www.onlyfinskatie.com https://onlyfinskatie.com/ 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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• 2:52Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got more news on America's most divisive issue, which is live scope. We've got only Fins's Katie in the studio. We've got a market report on panfish fillets, as the Cajuns call them. We're going to cover Ted Cormorant Killer Cruz, Senator out of Texas. We're going to talk about how Phil loves video games. U.S. Senate candidate and Alaska native Mary Peltola joins us to talk fisheries and more. But first, we're going to get into that live scope deal with the one and only Seth Morris.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yep. Um, hold on Seth, I've got a new sound and it's very important. Phil, this is the headliner, right? Take it away, Phil.

• 3:44Steven Rinella?

  I couldn't tell what he's saying.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Meat Eater News Headliner. It's early, but you've got to stay. That's great. Love it.

• 3:51Steven Rinella?

  That's not good.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Steve doesn't like it. Damn it.

• 3:55Steven Rinella?

  You think that's good?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  I think it's pretty good, Steve. It's early in the show, but you, the listener, you've got to stay. You gotta, you gotta be here for the whole show. Oh. The audience is going to love it.

• 4:08Steven Rinella?

  All right, we're joined by Ryan Gary, um, who is the title black bass manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Welcome to the show, Ryan. That's good. You got the, can you cut over to me real quick? Yeah. Just because Randall, that's Carbon County, Montana, ladies and gentlemen. Come on.

• 4:28Steven Rinella?

  Anyway, back. This guy's a very important figure in mind in my children's lives here.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 4:33Steven Rinella?

  No, not you, Randall. Cut back, Phil. Cause then Randall can quit campaigning. Thank you, Randall. Randall doesn't know who this guy is, but this is a vote from Carbon County. Go ahead. That's good, Phil. Sorry. Sorry. I just had to get, I didn't want Randall to be there for hours. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, Ryan Gary is here, um, joining us today. He's title black bass manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. And he ran, which I would consider the most legit live scope study that I've ever seen. Um, so Ryan, can you please give us a rundown on this study?

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, thanks for having me and, uh, and thanks, thanks for that compliment. Um, so I think I heard a little bit on this show, you know, a year, a couple, a year or so ago, but, um, Major League Fishing, which if anybody's not familiar with is one of the largest bass fishing organizations in the country, uh, made a big change to one of their big tours, the Bass Pro Tour. Um, and that was basically dividing up, um, the period, the tournament periods into being able to use live scope and not use live scope. So there's three periods throughout the day. Um, and they restricted use of live scope to, uh, to one of those period out of the three. Uh, and so when I heard this news at the beginning of 2025, you

• 5:52Speaker 03

  know, as a scientist, as a biologist, um, you know, the first thing I thought was this is a, a perfect lineup, uh, for a scientific study of, you know, how does live scope or forward facing sonar affect catch rates? Um, because we can compare these periods where they're using it, uh, to the periods where they're not using it. Uh, and even more so, um, you know, working with Major League Fishing has been awesome because they're really focused on using some of this data and how people like myself, biologist, scientist, uh, can use this to further research and further reason. And so, uh, the Bass Pro Tour is a catch, weigh, release format, uh, which differs from typical bass tournaments where

• 6:35Speaker 03

  you fish all day for your biggest five and you weigh those at the end of the day and whoever has the biggest five wins. The catch, weigh, release for, uh, format basically is cumulative weight throughout the day. So these anglers catch a fish, um, they weigh it, they release it, and they keep fishing. And, you know, the total cumulative weight of all the fish they've caught throughout the day, um, counts to their bag. Um, and really important with that is because it's a professional tournament, the lot on line, um, each one of these anglers has an on boat efficient. So that on boat efficient weighs that fish, leases it, and then of course, really, uh, important data points that are associated with it, not just fish weight, uh, but also EPS locations of where it was caught, um, the lure that it

• 7:19Speaker 03

  was caught on, the depth of water that it was caught in, habitat, so it was caught on rip rap, was on open water, was caught on a brush pile. Um, and so we were able to use this really in-depth data set, uh, to analyze the 2025 Bass Pro Tour, uh, which was eight different events spanning from, uh, Lake Conroe down in Texas, all the way up, uh, the Smut River, borders Maryland, Virginia, trees that I manage, um, and then all the way up to Saginaw Bay. So eight really diverse fisheries. Um, and that accounted to, you know, 73 individual anglers that fished in these events that we could analyze their data, um, and over 12,000 fish caught, um, during that time span that we can analyze. And so

• 8:04Speaker 03

  it's really comprehensive, um, the data set. It allows us to compare these fisheries. Um, it allows us to compare the anglers' performance, um, when they're using the technology versus when they're not using the technology, compare them to themselves, uh, and then also, you know, compare them throughout these systems. And overall, what we really found was that across these eight systems, generally, uh, forward facing sonar or live scope increased, uh, your catch rate. So how many fish you caught per hour, uh, but that varied across those different systems. Uh, so we had two systems that really stood out, um, that really forward facing sonar really increased the catch rates. Um, one of those increased the

• 8:44Speaker 03

  catch rate by 1.6 fish per hour. Uh, so if you're fishing across in, uh, an eight hour day, you know, that's an increase of, you know, almost 12 fish throughout the day, which is pretty substantial. Uh, but only two of those lakes did not have any significant difference in the catch rate. So forward facing sonar did not make a difference. Uh, but what's really important there is that, you know, at best, this technology through our, our analysis was a wash. So never was not using forward facing sonar, um, an advantage to using forward facing sonar. Um, the other thing we looked at was the average size of fish caught. Um, it kind of surprised me doing that, but, um, that, you know, we didn't

• 9:26Speaker 03

  really see a large difference in the size of fish caught, um, when using forward facing sonar or when not using forward facing sonar. So across those eight systems, generally, there was no difference in the size of fish you caught when you were using the technology versus not using the technology. And the last thing we did was we, we looked at those, um, those habitat, uh, factors that I talked about. So the depth of water that fish were caught in, um, you know, was it caught on a brush pile or rip rap or open water? Um, and what we found was that anglers were almost three times more likely to catch a fish using forward facing sonar in deep water. So water that was deeper than 10 feet, um, and more

• 10:06Speaker 03

  open water. Um, so what I kind of equate that to is, you know, having a set of binoculars when you're out hunting. Um, so if you're hunting grouse, you know, it's probably not going to be helpful in deep, thick woods to have binoculars. Um, but if you're out, you know, in an open desert environment, hunting elk, you know, having binoculars or a spotting scope is going to be a big advantage. And that's kind of the results we found from that habitat analysis using live scope. So that's just kind of a quick, you know, dirty dive into, you know, the analysis that we did on this tournament series.

• 10:38Steven Rinella?

  So the, what was the lake you saw the significant difference in like higher catch rates?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Uh, so we saw significant difference in increasing catch rates on six different lakes, but the one where we saw the largest difference was Lake Conroe down in Texas.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  And that was that 1.6 fish per hour increase when you were using the technology.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Now, could that be from time of year, um, just where the, the fish are setting up? Um, you know, I don't, I don't know Conroe. I've never fished it. Um, but like if it was a spring tournament, maybe they're, they're, they're just, it's like better fishing in the spring compared to a different time of the year.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, so we, we weren't able to compare, you know, these tournaments happen throughout the year from, uh, from February all the way to August. Um, so we weren't really able to substantially say whether seasonality played a difference.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  But one of the things we kind of speculated on, um, is that Lake Conroe has a lot of really good shallow habitat in the summer and good, uh, aquatic vegetation. But the Lake Conroe tournament happened down in February. And typically that's a time of year down in Texas where we would see them in more deeper water, more open water. Um, and Lake Conroe also has a lot of, uh, submerged timber. Um, so while it is more open, there is some structure out there, but it's not incredibly complex. So that's kind of one of the things we speculated on that during that time of year, you know, when those fish typically tend to be a little bit deeper. Um, you know, this is probably one of the reasons that may have contributed to that big increase, um, in catch rate using the technology down at Lake Conroe.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 12:20Steven Rinella?

  Let me kind of hit him with a clarifying question.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:24Steven Rinella?

  Were, were you saying that, that live scope is never a deficit?

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. So in our analysis, you know, we looked at eight different lakes and we never saw that, or that live scope negatively impacted catch rates. At its worst, when you were using live scope, it was a wash. It was equal to using, uh, or equal to not having live scope.

• 12:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Hmm. Interesting.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Make a little bit makes sense. Like a guy pulling into a brush pile. Right? He's going to fish it, you know? He knows where to cast. You know how to work it.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:04Steven Rinella?

  But out in that big, open water, instead of being like, I'm going to cast the whole damn lake is what you'd have to do. Or it's like, no, I'm just going to cruise and find a fish.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I, I think, I think once, when this technology came out, like it, it significantly changed the offshore fishing. In, in these lakes that, you know, you couldn't like, like you said, you just, if you're offshore, you don't really know what you're casting to. Unless you like, see, you can, obviously if you can read a map, like these days there's maps. So you can tell if like you're on a hump or something.

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  But I mean offshore, it's tough to fish with, without it. Um, so, you know.

• 13:42Steven Rinella?

  Just needle and haystack.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Needle and haystack, or like what you were saying, Ryan, like fish that are set up in deeper water. It seems to be more effective, which makes total sense.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Especially in like lakes, like, um, you were saying they were on, on Lake Murray, right? Like, I, I think Lake Murray is a lake where there's a lot of suspended fish. That aren't, aren't even around structure. They're just.

• 14:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Out there, you know, which the technology really helps for that.

• 14:10Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Um, Ryan, when you looked at this study and we're following these, these anglers, what, was there a angler that really, um, stuck out as like? The premier live scoper?

• 14:26Speaker 03

  So we, we didn't get really that far into the weeds on it. I mean, I had all these, you know, I could obviously tell what I, I had anglers names associated with catch rates and associated with fish caught. But, you know, we had, it's, it's such an immense, immense data set, you know, 12,000 fish, eight different events, you know, all throughout the day. Um, and so I didn't narrow it down. Uh, I'm sure, you know, I could have looked into that and seen, you know, what anglers were better at using it, which were not as good as using it. But in general, I was just looking for these larger scale trends on, you know, how is it affecting catch rates or fish size, um, in some of these tournaments?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Gotcha. I know it varies a lot from lake to lake, but in your opinion, is, is live scope something that we're going to be? Like, do you think in 10 years, kind of like crystal ball? Is it something that's going to be banned in areas and free to use in other areas? Is it going to be like a state to state thing or a, a lake to lake thing? What, what's your thoughts on that?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  I think it really depends on the lake and, and the species. Um, you know, one of the main reasons we did this, uh, study. Cause we were hearing from our anglers that were concerned about, you know, is this having an effect on fisheries? And so I really see this as, um, you know, if you have a shallow system, um, that's really complex habitat, brush piles, uh, submerged aquatic vegetation, you know? I'm not as concerned about it. Um, but if I have a deeper lake, you know, where, you know, there might be a subset of the population that's now available to be targeted because of this technology.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  I might be more concerned about it. Um, you know, we looked at just black bass, you know, which is largely a catch and release fishery. Um, so the only thing that we're really concerned about is, you know, angling mortality, you know, is that increasing as a result of increased catch rates? And, and targeting these different subsects, um, that weren't previously available. But I think if you look at other species, you know, like paddlefish, uh, there's, there's talk about it being banned. And I think it is banned, um, in North Dakota or Montana, using live scope. Because you can clearly see these large animals, you know, a hundred plus pounds. And it's, you know, it's not very ethical, um, at least in a lot of people's opinion.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  So I think it really depends on the species and the fishery. Um, you know, what I really recommended to a lot of, you know, biologists or fisheries managers in this research is that, you know, if you have one of these fisheries, that's more conducive to increase catch rates with this technology, you know, a deep in more open water system. Um, you know, maybe if you start to see concerning trends in your fisheries population, you know, investigate, you know, what is the prevalence of forward facing sonar? Um, and you know, how effective are they being in that fishery? Um, I don't necessarily see it banned, except in, you know, some of those certain cases like paddlefish.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Um, but I do really see, uh, fisheries managers and state agencies reacting to the efficiency of the technology. And we've seen that in some situations where there have been lakes throughout the country that have reduced their bag limits, uh, on certain species as a result of the increased prevalence of forward facing sonar.

• 17:56Steven Rinella?

  Ryan, you don't need to comment on this, but you know, one of the things I think you're gonna, there's going to be a reckoning sooner than later is on gator hunting. Me and Seth were just down gator hunting, live scope, gator hunting.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's effective.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  I don't think I'll have to reckon with that. We don't, we don't have any gators up in Maryland.

• 18:18Steven Rinella?

  Live scope, gator hunting is a whole deal, man.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  But I can, there's, there's no bounds at which the, uh, the forward facing sonar hasn't reached.

• 18:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Be like, oh, that one's nine feet, four inches.

• 18:33Steven Rinella?

  Right there.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty wild.

• 18:35Steven Rinella?

  Thinking he's all hiding on the bottom.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:41Steven Rinella?

  Man.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Well, cool, Ryan, man, that, that's, like I said, I think this is the, the most in-depth, uh, study we've seen on it. And, um, you got a lot of good info there and I don't know. I'm curious to see where the future, what the future holds for forward facing sonar, but.

• 19:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Only Fins Katie, have you ever fished? Have you ever seen this?

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. I've seen it online for sure. I've seen videos.

• 19:06Steven Rinella?

  But you, you haven't fished it.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 19:08Steven Rinella?

  It's not your style.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  No, no. Um, I can only comment so much being so removed from a lot of sports fishing. But to me, I mean, I think it makes sense in a lot of instances. I was actually talking to Corey about it yesterday where I was like, dude, if you're a guide and you're having people pay to like catch and like, kind of your profession's on the line, totally makes sense there. Style of fishing I'm doing, I'm like, I think there's a difference between getting better at fishing and getting better at finding the fish.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  And I feel like there's so much personal reward when, uh, you can do that on your own in a way. But dude, I mean, totally makes sense. There's a time and place for this technology. It's super interesting and fascinating to me.

• 19:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  What's cool these days is like these, these pro, pro level tours, like the elite series or, or the Bass Pro Tour. They're splitting it. So like, like what Ryan was saying, they have three periods during the day. One of the periods they're allowed to use it. Two of the periods they're not. And like the elite series, you can, they do a coin flip. So you can like 50% of the, the places where they fish, you can use it. Um, 50% you can't. So it's, it seems like these organizations are, are noticing that it's like, it's a, it's a thing. And so they're, they're kind of going back to the old, the old days of not using it. Um, but they're still using it. So they're just splitting it up.

• 20:40Speaker 04

  That's the biggest.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  And I, I like that.

• 20:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  No, sorry. I, that's the biggest question I've had is just like how people feel about it being used in tournaments. Cause I feel like that just like drastically has changed what it means to be involved in sports fishing that way.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Man, it's, that's one of those things where we could sit here for hours and talk about it.

• 20:58Steven Rinella?

  In fact, we have.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there is, I mean, there is thousands and thousands of podcast hours you could listen to on different opinions and, and. Some people love it. Some people hate it. That's kind of all I can, all I can give you. It's pretty split, um, in my opinion. Wouldn't you say so, Ryan, in your experience?

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it's definitely pretty split. There's a lot of guys that, you know, feel like it takes some of the skill out of it. And there's a lot of guys who feel like, you know, this is the new wave and it's coming. So hop on the train.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yep. Yep. I hear that a lot. Hop on the train or get run over.

• 21:34Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Hate the game, not the player.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  Thanks, man.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Thanks, Ryan.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  I appreciate you guys having me on.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 21:45Steven Rinella?

  All right. Take it easy. All right, Phil, hit it.

• 21:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Steve, why don't you make me like a bullet point list of things that you would like to see or hear here?

• 22:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you wanna know?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, specific sounds.

• 22:04Steven Rinella?

  The viewer can't tell. The viewer can't tell this is a problem.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:07Steven Rinella?

  The cardboard.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Well, now they know.

• 22:11Steven Rinella?

  We, we repaint this whole damn room. Nate restains this table. And then you come in and put all this cardboard around.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  All right. Audience, audience, write in if you can see any of the cardboard.

• 22:25Steven Rinella?

  No, he hides it from them. He hides it from them.

• 22:29Steven Rinella?

  Uh, here's the deal. As I've said before, I don't traffic in emojis whatsoever. But except with my daughter, I'll put emojis in there because it's just a running joke between us. However, I was like, if there was, I was like, there is an emoji I want, and the only emoji I want doesn't exist, which is a tough titty emoji.

• 22:50Steven Rinella?

  That's the only, that's the only one I would ever use. If I had them, if like, if there was an emoji, people are like, thumbs up people. If I had an emoji for communicating with my kids, right? I would be able to save most of my text messages and send them a tough titty emoji, which made me be like, what would a tough titty emoji look like? So it got stitches. I think it's like a ren and stimpy. Like it's a hog. It's a hog. Teeth. With stitches.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  A pierced nipple?

• 23:21Steven Rinella?

  No. No, I'm thinking like a hog, teeth, calluses, like a real ren and stimpy kind of thing.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. You can't go into super detail though, because emojis are small.

• 23:32Steven Rinella?

  Well, I know, but here's the deal. I was talking to one of, I was talking to Logan Dub. I was like, man, we should have, you can get, we should design a package of emojis. They call them stickers when you do this. I didn't know that. Design a package of downloadable emojis that would be appropriate.

• 23:50Steven Rinella?

  The, the, the tough titty will be like an add-on. It'll be like appropriate emojis for people that like, for people that hunt and fish and stuff.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Like dead deer. Yeah, like a big buck down emoji.

• 24:00Steven Rinella?

  Big box with like, you know, drop to, I don't know. If, so he says that's easy to do, but what we need is people to write in with what emojis they feel they're missing. Like their arsenal of emojis is short on, like what is the emoji if you had, like for me, the tough titty emoji? What emoji do you wish you had to facilitate quicker communication with your peers?

• 24:29Steven Rinella?

  So if you have ideas, we could do 10, we could do 20, and we'll create a package of emojis you could download and put on your phone. And it will include, once you figure out what it needs to look like, it'll include a tough titty emoji. So if someone's complaining to you, you send them that.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  So write into.

• 24:46Steven Rinella?

  Like, I really don't understand what's going on with this meeting later. You'd be like,

• 24:52Steven Rinella?

  don't even need to reply, dude. I mean, you reply, but.

• 24:56Speaker 06

  Never in my life did I imagine that I would be involved in even

• 25:01Steven Rinella?

  Creating emoji.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  At a distance and creating a pack of emojis.

• 25:06Steven Rinella?

  I might become a user. If I found, if I found a collection of emojis that, that helped me, I was switching, begin using them. Where, where should they send these, Nate? We need to work up like a dozen.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:19Steven Rinella?

  A dozen emojis.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Meeter Podcast at meateater.com. Subject line emoji dash whatever you want.

• 25:27Steven Rinella?

  Like emoji idea. Maybe you'll figure it out.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:30Steven Rinella?

  Don't put an emoji in there.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Lightbulb?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause if you put an emoji in there, you're communicating, you wouldn't need our.

• 25:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You're, you're, are you demonstrating that you already have, you're already facilitated in emoji communication?

• 25:46Steven Rinella?

  I travel quite a bit and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time. But when you're on the road, it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart. I've seen it and that's why I like Athletic Greens. Now AG1 is already the standard for daily foundational nutrition. AG1 Pro is what's next. It's built for people who don't want to stop there. Creatine, C A H M B, advanced gut lining support on top of everything AG1 Next Gen already delivers. You can get it in travel packs. One travel pack, 10 to 12 ounces of cold water every morning. If you're already taking creatine separately, AG1 Pro simplifies your stack.

• 26:31Steven Rinella?

  One thing in the morning covers more than your current routine might for less than a dollar more per serving. AG1 Pro supports protein synthesis, helps reduce protein breakdown, and supports muscle recovery and consistent training performance. Visit drinkag1.com/meateater and get an AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your AG1 Pro Welcome Kit. Again, that's drinkag1.com/meateater. Grab yours now. Throughout the year, I always sleep in some weird places. A lot of nights in the back of my truck, under the truck, if it's raining, I don't know, bombed out old campsites, whatever. I'm always sleeping somewhere weird.

• 27:14Steven Rinella?

  And I love knowing that the most comfortable bed I will sleep in all year is right in my own bedroom at home. And it is a Helix mattress. Helix is over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect model for you because a good night's rest sets you up for a great day. And they got cooling upgrades, so you can get the best rest even on hot nights. And Helix delivers your mattress right to your door. You never gotta go down to some annoying mattress store. They got free shipping in the U.S. You can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix Guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress.

• 27:56Steven Rinella?

  Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Go to helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. Helixsleep.com/meateater. Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco. Now you know how long it takes to build something that actually holds up? Well, Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours on it, 20,000 hours,

• 28:38Steven Rinella?

  working alongside American farmers, growing and barn-curing leafy greens to mimic the taste and texture of real dip without the tobacco leaf or stem. That's not a shortcut. That's a commitment. They started this thing in 2015, right here in America, and they got it right. In wintergreen, mint, and straight, the taste you already know. And long cut and pouches. It dips like the real thing because they refuse to settle for less. Check out your local gas station or convenience store. Chances are it's already on a shelf near you or head to blackbuffalo.com

• 29:19Steven Rinella?

  and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative. It's everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. Okay, uh, Way of the Hunter.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Steve, that's right. Moving on to more things that I've been doing that you probably have a problem with. First of all, I just want to say, I thought you'd appreciate the Steve Miller Band. You didn't like that?

• 29:44Steven Rinella?

  Man, you know what?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  He didn't even know it.

• 29:46Steven Rinella?

  I hate the Steve Miller Band.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  You know, that doesn't really surprise me, but I just thought, I just thought that the seventies rock would, would, you know, would be endearing.

• 29:56Steven Rinella?

  I hate, hate, hate.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Really?

• 29:59Steven Rinella?

  The Steve Miller Band.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:01Steven Rinella?

  Is he alive? That'd be a good one for dead or alive.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  I don't think he is. I don't think he is. Someone.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  They're just too chill for you, too laid back.

• 30:07Steven Rinella?

  I just, it's, no, I've, I've never, I, I could never stand Steve Miller. The only thing good about, well.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yep. 83 years old. Corey, Corey Googled Steve Miller Band guy and it pops up.

• 30:23Steven Rinella?

  You know, what's his name? What's his name? Steve Miller Band. You know, the main guy.

• 30:30Steven Rinella?

  Cause you know what I want to do? I keep trying to get Spencer to do this. It's, it's a game called Dead or Alive Three Pack. Cause everybody knows Dead or Alive, but a Dead or Alive Three Pack is you take three dudes named Steve.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  So he's alive.

• 30:46Steven Rinella?

  So Steve Miller, Steve Buscemi, Steve.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Jobs.

• 30:52Steven Rinella?

  Jobs. And then you gotta go alive, alive, dead. It's a Dead or Alive Three Pack, but he won't do it.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  Doesn't work without trivia shit.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Spencer's right on that one.

• 31:06Steven Rinella?

  You could do a Dead or Alive Six Pack.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  We just do a whole. 20 of them.

• 31:11Steven Rinella?

  Well, you do a whole.

• 31:13Steven Rinella?

  You gotta like, you're not gonna think of like dude, 20 dudes named Steve.

• 31:18Steven Rinella?

  Bob, Bob Dylan, uh, Bob Dole, Bob. That'd be a BD Three Pack. Anyways, Way of the Hunter.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Steve, I've been playing a game. It's called Way of the Hunter 2. Came out in September on PC, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series consoles. Uh, it's, it's a hunting game. Uh, you, you kind of have to suspend your disbelief here because you sort of are the overseer of this reserve. And, um, you're in charge of, of kind of restoring it, uh, rebuilding tree stands, um, and managing the, the, the wildlife. So.

• 31:51Steven Rinella?

  My kid plays this game.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Really? Randall, you've, you've been playing the, the game as well. What are your, what are your thoughts? Cause I, I invited Randall to play because I do not have the context of a, of a real life hunter, a lifetime of hunting exploits, uh, to, to compare this to.

• 32:05Steven Rinella?

  Phil's like, so this is what it's like?

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I know all about it now. Ask me anything.

• 32:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, I, I haven't been playing video games seriously since I was, uh, 20, 21, maybe 22. Got laid off from a construction job and, um, bought a bathrobe and an Xbox 360 and just got after it. So when Phil invited me to play this game with him, I was thrilled. I've been coming into the office more so that we can play this game. I've found perhaps what was most rewarding was the ability to make a ton of mistakes in the game that perhaps then I could avoid in, in, uh, this fall. Wow. You know, but, uh, yeah, it's been a blast. It's been a real blast. Phil, what would you like?

• 32:53Steven Rinella?

  This is footage of you two playing this?

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  You guys look great in there.

• 32:56Speaker 06

  You got a dog. Yeah. What I told Phil was when I, when I last played video games, it was before the era when people filmed themselves playing video games. You can get this dog. You can pet the dog. You can call the dog. It has all these different commands.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  The dog's a new, a new feature in this one, the, the sequel to the first one. He can, he tracks blood, can, can, can look for tracks for you. Uh, it's. Very, very helpful. So you're, you're, you kind of oversee this, this reserve in a North American uh, landscape called New Laurentia.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  I jump a lot.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  This is Randall actually hunting.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  I jump a lot more in the game than I do when I'm ordinarily hunting.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Um, there, there's.

• 33:33Speaker 06

  I fell to my death several times too.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  There's all kinds of wildlife you can hunt. You got whitetail, mule deer.

• 33:38Steven Rinella?

  Were those Turks?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, you got Turks.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  The biggest thing that I like about the game, which is, which I think is the most interesting is the herd management. So each animal has kind of like a fitness levels. You can kind of determine the health of the animal and the age of the animal. And the, the herd size and, and sort of health will change depending on what kind of animals that you kill and, and you harvest. And certain animals will grow throughout the years of, of, of playing and the years are condensed into sort of smaller time, time periods, but you'll see like the landscape and the herd sizes and herd health change depending on, on how you're hunting. And like, if you're only shooting trophy bucks, it'll look a lot different than if you're shooting kind of the, the younger animals or, or stuff like that.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. So this dude, this dude wielding the red dot shotgun, he's hunting Turks.

• 34:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's me.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's Randall.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  You can see, you can see my shot placement there.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is. This is the new bullet can.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  Not ideal.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it shows you the, the, all the, in the internal organs of the animal and sort of like where your shot placement was.

• 34:31Speaker 06

  He totally missed his head.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, man, that's terrible.

• 34:33Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 34:35Steven Rinella?

  Is that a rope dragger? I can't see his beard.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 34:39Speaker 05

  It, it says it was a hundred percent flesh.

• 34:41Speaker 07

  No spurs.

• 34:42Speaker 06

  Oh, it says female, female.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Oh, poacher.

• 34:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, but, uh.

• 34:47Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, it's a really gorgeous landscape. The one thing I liked about it as a, as a sound guy is the sound design. There's sort of different biomes depending on where you are in the area. So the swampy area sounds a lot different than sort of like the alpine hunting and, and, and, and stuff like that. But I've been having a lot of fun.

• 35:02Speaker 06

  The, you can hear in your headphones, the direction of the animal. So if you hear something, yeah, if you hear something break, like a twig break.

• 35:10Steven Rinella?

  Who's that guy?

• 35:11Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  He's one of the NPCs.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  Me to all these characters. I was, I was less interested in them.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, um, it's, it's been great. And all, all due respect to, to Yanis, hearing us, oh well, a far off bugle in this game sounds a lot better than, than Yanis' far off bugle sound.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Was that a grizzly bear?

• 35:30Speaker 06

  It was.

• 35:30Steven Rinella?

  Did you just shoot it?

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Uh, I shot that one a bunch of times.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  So we're, if for those of you who are only listening, we're watching a, a video of Randall and I playing the game. And you can watch the whole 15 minute video on the Meat Eater Clips channel.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  I fall to death.

• 35:47Steven Rinella?

  Do you guys, cause you guys are big Buck Hunter fans.

• 35:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:50Steven Rinella?

  Is this more fun than big Buck Hunter? I mean, it's gotta be.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  It's, it's way more absorbing.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Way more immersive. You got a truck.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 35:58Speaker 06

  No, the truck was fun.

• 36:00Speaker 07

  Keep it on the road.

• 36:00Speaker 06

  Can you hit the, hit the animals? I, I crashed the truck.

• 36:05Speaker 06

  I've, I did a lot of things in this game that I don't do in real life.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Phil, why is the camera quality so dang good there? It's better than we have in the studio.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Uh, shout out to developer nine, nine rocks games. It's great.

• 36:16Speaker 07

  You mean, why do Phil and Randall look so good?

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Triple HD.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Uh, that's, that's in my office. Filmed that, uh, in, in my office. Here's Randall driving the truck into.

• 36:26Steven Rinella?

  He's running that snorkel deal on his truck like, like he's from New Zealand.

• 36:31Speaker 06

  What I really enjoyed the most about this is, is getting up in the morning and drinking my coffee and, and Sydney asking me, Sydney asking me what I had to do today. And I said, Phil and I have this side project going on. We need to make this video. And, uh.

• 36:47Speaker 07

  That's Phil like celebrating a lot.

• 36:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 06

  Phil's way better, Phil's way better at video games than I am.

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  Trophy room is gonna be incredible.

• 36:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:59Steven Rinella?

  You're getting charged.

• 37:00Speaker 07

  Phil, shoot him again.

• 37:01Steven Rinella?

  Get him again, Phil.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  Oh, saves his own life. Yeah, Phil's really good at this game.

• 37:10Steven Rinella?

  That was stressful when Phil.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  If you want to see the, the entire journey of Randall and I playing, and guess what? There's gonna be two more videos. So there, there's a North American area in this game. There's also like a whole African biome with a bunch of different African animals as well.

• 37:25Speaker 06

  Phil's taking me to Africa.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  That's right. So, uh, check out the Meat Eater Clips channel. If you want to see us in, uh, in New, New Laurentia and Way of the Hunter 2. And then next month you'll see us in, in their African biome.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  I noticed Phil, uh, Hart shoot a big whitetail there and it even did a big death kick.

• 37:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, had that hump up. You want to see? It's good stuff. Uh, a couple of corrections real quick.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  Your news.

• 37:47Steven Rinella?

  Is this your news?

• 37:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:48Steven Rinella?

  Sorry, Phil, play your little.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, you know what? We'll just skip it today. How about that? No, let's skip it.

• 37:53Steven Rinella?

  No, it's.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Um. Guy wrote in, so we did a, we did a Meat Eater Sheds episode on our family fish shack up in Alaska. And a guy wrote in that I had some, and I felt like I looked this up online. I'm wrong or he's?

• 38:14Speaker 07

  You're wrong. Well, we gotta ask that as the camera guy, but.

• 38:17Steven Rinella?

  But either way, there's a scene where there was a couple of American flags

• 38:22Steven Rinella?

  put up

• 38:24Steven Rinella?

  in a, in our outhouse. And I wanted, like, I found those weirdly. I found those floating in the ocean.

• 38:30Speaker 07

  Hmm. Oh, I, I slacked in that picture.

• 38:32Steven Rinella?

  And rescued them.

• 38:34Steven Rinella?

  And then looked up how I'm supposed to put them, to hang them that way. And I screwed it up.

• 38:38Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 38:40Steven Rinella?

  So how are they supposed to be?

• 38:41Speaker 07

  So.

• 38:42Steven Rinella?

  And this isn't something where the camera is like.

• 38:44Speaker 07

  That's what I gotta ask. So if there's a picture.

• 38:46Steven Rinella?

  Seth will be able to answer that.

• 38:47Speaker 07

  Pull it up shortly.

• 38:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 38:48Speaker 07

  A guy writes in Logan Hanson.

• 38:50Steven Rinella?

  No, cause the, the hand sanitizer is where it belongs.

• 38:55Speaker 07

  Uh, but he said, I noticed something I couldn't brush past. I even went back to make sure I saw it correctly. In the outhouse of the fish shack episode of Meat Eater Sheds, the American flags are hanging with the Union portion, the stars, to the viewer's right hand side. If this is due to camera flip process, then I stand corrected. But if not, we need to correct this detail.

• 39:13Speaker 06

  No, the slope of the hill makes it seem like it's definitely.

• 39:16Steven Rinella?

  No, it's right. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm gonna fix that prono.

• 39:19Speaker 07

  See, we looked it up.

• 39:20Steven Rinella?

  Unless there's some problem with the other side of those. No, there's not.

• 39:23Speaker 07

  Flag code states, the US flag code, when displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the Union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is the observer's left.

• 39:35Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 39:36Speaker 07

  So you gotta flip them.

• 39:37Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I apologize to America and I'm gonna, and, and thanks to this guy for pointing that out and I'll be fixing those quick. And I'm trying to get like points, points, redemption points by pointing out, I rescued those from the ocean.

• 39:48Speaker 07

  Hmm. I, uh, have a flag in my office right now. It's hung just like that. So I'm gonna flip that around.

• 39:54Speaker 06

  Oh geez.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Easy way to remember now. Just be red, right. The red side goes on the right.

• 39:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you can remember that from marine navigation, red, right, returning.

• 40:02Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 40:02Steven Rinella?

  Red, right flag.

• 40:04Speaker 07

  So that's the first correction. Second one, over the last few months, we've mentioned that we were unaware of the right to hunt and fish being used in legit legal proceedings. In episode nine, Nicholas Rodriguez writes in, episode 943, Steve mentioned Rhode Island as one of the states where he suspected a more radical animal rights agenda would be tested as opposed to Colorado or somewhere else. I want to share a little context about my state. Rhode Island and California are the only two states whose constitutions explicitly protect the right to fish, but not the right to hunt. In 2008, a commercial fisherman challenged Rhode Island's fishing license restrictions, arguing they violated his constitutional rights. This is Riley versus Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

• 40:45Speaker 07

  Our Supreme Court upheld the restrictions, reasoning that the constitutional right belongs to the public collectively, rather than granting individual commercial fishermen unrestricted access.

• 40:54Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 40:55Speaker 07

  The court also emphasized the state's authority and responsibility to conserve fisheries. Signed Nick, behind enemy lines in Rhode Island.

• 41:04Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 41:05Speaker 07

  So that's just interesting. We, we thought North Carolina's deal this year was kind of one of the first ones.

• 41:11Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 41:12Speaker 07

  Rhode Island.

• 41:12Steven Rinella?

  But this, but point out that in this case, someone, I, I want, I want to very quickly frame up what we're talking about is, is roughly half of the states in the country have a constitutional right to hunt and fish. Apparently there's two with a constitutional right to fish. And I was questioning, when is that right ever, ever leveraged legally to affect change?

• 41:41Steven Rinella?

  He's kind of got a, he, he's, he's got an example, but in some ways it's a non-example. Because here's an individual trying to use it unsuccessfully.

• 41:51Steven Rinella?

  I'm interested in a situation where a piece of legislation comes up that would infringe on one's right to hunt and fish. And then some lawyer, some attorney would point out, hey, this violates my constitutional right to hunt and fish. Therefore I would like to see this corrected and have that be. Or that a piece of legislation, proposed legislation would be dismissed as unconstitutional because it infringed on one's constitutional right to hunt and fish. Still, thanks for sending.

• 42:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is an example. The, the analog would be some guy yelled fire in a crowded theater. And then the court said, actually that's not protected speech.

• 42:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:33Steven Rinella?

  Good job though, Rhode Island dude.

• 42:35Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. Finally, our third correction. Last week, we were talking with Melanie Thornton from TRCP about the Colorado River. And we mentioned how Las Vegas recycles water and gets rid of grass. So Tor Leonard, T O R R, just kind of wondering about the origin of that name. He writes in, when Steve asked about whether removing grass in Las Vegas was required by law, the guest said she thought it was voluntary. But Nevada passed a law in 2021 requiring businesses, apartments, complexes, apartment complexes, HOAs, other properties to remove decorative grass that serves no practical purpose by the end of 2026. Homeowners' private lawns are generally exempt. Just a clarification.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  Remove the grass that serves no purpose.

• 43:18Speaker 07

  I like it.

• 43:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I just wonder how you go like, well, no, mine does.

• 43:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:25Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to do a whole show on that, but I, but, but I, I wonder about that. What that means exactly. If you go like, no, no, no, I, I, I.

• 43:33Speaker 07

  Producing oxygen.

• 43:34Steven Rinella?

  I, I go out there and I lay down on it. It serves a purpose. I'll just be curious more. We don't need to follow up on it.

• 43:41Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  So those.

• 43:43Steven Rinella?

  It would just become one of those things on this show, one of the many things on this show that never dies.

• 43:47Speaker 07

  Peter out.

• 43:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 07

  Um, we'll, uh, we'll send out, we got to vote on the best one. Send out a mulch tree camera, whoever's the best.

• 43:57Steven Rinella?

  Flags.

• 43:57Speaker 07

  Flags.

• 43:58Steven Rinella?

  Hundred percent.

• 43:59Speaker 07

  Flags vote. I'm flags.

• 44:02Steven Rinella?

  You get it. What are you voting for, Katie? Flags, Rhode Island.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Is it matters here?

• 44:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, anyone in the room, even Phil votes.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, the flags.

• 44:12Speaker 07

  All right, the flags have it.

• 44:15Speaker 07

  Thanks, Logan.

• 44:18Steven Rinella?

  We good? Okay, jumping over.

• 44:23Steven Rinella?

  This is not one of Phil's things, Katie.

• 44:27Steven Rinella?

  You like that one?

• 44:28Speaker 04

  One of the better.

• 44:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 44:30Speaker 07

  Thanks, Katie.

• 44:31Steven Rinella?

  Only, only, only, only Fins's Katie. Do you know, can I tell you how I know about you and why you're here?

• 44:36Speaker 04

  I'm so curious, yes.

• 44:37Steven Rinella?

  You want to know how I know about you and why you're here?

• 44:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:40Steven Rinella?

  Not why you're here, but what, yeah, how I know about you. My, I've had the same literary, liter, I can't even say the word. I've had the same literary agent for over 20 years. He brought you to my attention. He thinks you're a very good writer.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Love to hear it.

• 44:58Steven Rinella?

  And he sort of wanted me to, he sort of wanted me to like, he didn't say this, but he kind of wanted me to suss you out.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 45:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause he thinks you're really, he thinks you're a great writer.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  I appreciate that so much.

• 45:09Steven Rinella?

  But you make, but you're, you, tell, tell people about your Instagram page.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  All right, Instagram page, only Fins's Katie. Um, I love a good pun. I essentially started this Instagram page now 63 days ago or so. Um, under the guise of fishing every day until I can quit my job and get paid to fish. Um, it started as just kind of holding myself accountable to get out and fish every day and learn how to fish. I, I had not fished really until maybe. I'll say like February of this year, I went up in Kern and Sequoia and fell in love with trout fishing. Um, got super addicted. I was just using a Zebco push, push button rod and reel combo.

• 45:58Steven Rinella?

  Randall knows what those are called. Spin cast.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 46:02Steven Rinella?

  Spin cast.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  There you go. Um, anyways, fell in love with it. Uh, my current day job, you're staring at a screen all day, every day. I've always loved nature, hiking, camping, fishing was just another thing to add to the outdoors arsenal that I love. Anyways, started this account, started with me just like learning in front of the public how to fish. Um, putting myself out there, engaging. I don't have anyone within my family or friend group that fishes. I didn't have anyone to go to, to like, guide me on how to fish, so.

• 46:37Steven Rinella?

  And you live in LA.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  I do live in LA. Best place to fish, best place to learn how to fish, right? Um.

• 46:45Steven Rinella?

  But how, how did fishing come on your radar?

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Uh, camping. So Kern County, Kern River is this beautiful, beautiful river that runs through Sequoia. I like to liken it to the better version of Tahoe or the less explored version of Tahoe. People hate when I say that, but, um, very undiscovered, pristine rainbow trout fishing there.

• 47:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Um, I was just like, why not? Why not? I love camping already. Let me just buy a cheap $30 Zebco and try my hand at fishing. Fell in love with it.

• 47:19Steven Rinella?

  And you caught what?

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Uh, caught a bunch of rainbow trout, did a catch and cook. Um, probably went back again, maybe like two weeks later. And then again, like the month after that. And then I was like, okay, there's something that I love here. Um, let me upgrade from the Zebco. Um, let me explore the ocean. I mean, I'm from LA and the ocean's been there at my fingertips for forever, but had never even tried saltwater fishing. So then I was like, I need to get my hands on a saltwater setup and get out there. Oh my God, surf casting is. It's no joke. I swear the people who surf cast know they're never going to catch anything, but whatever.

• 47:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cause you fish a lot of, um. I don't, I don't want to be mean about it. It's not mean.

• 48:03Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 48:04Steven Rinella?

  You fish a lot of not great fishing spots.

• 48:08Steven Rinella?

  Because you, because part of your deal is like, you're just going to fish.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 48:11Steven Rinella?

  And you're in LA and if it's a, if it's a drainage canal, if it's a crazy park pond. It's like, if it's water, you're going to fish it.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Hundred percent. I mean, there's only so much, I mean, yes, the ocean is there. I live in East Los Angeles. Getting to the ocean. Uh, can take two hours plus. I have a day job after work. There's only so many places I can go to fish. Um, so yes, unfortunately, sometimes it is a drainage ditch. A lot of the times it is the LA River, which so many people will talk shit on and say like, oh, it's so disgusting. You're fishing in there. Like you're going to get a disease, but. Um.

• 48:49Steven Rinella?

  You catch a, but you catch like an enormous variety.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, it's insane. That's one of the things that people have loved to see is like, wow, that's all the fish that you can find in the LA River or whatever weird ditch I'm in. They're like, there's no way.

• 49:02Steven Rinella?

  Like a lot of kind of fish.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:04Steven Rinella?

  You catch fish I've never heard of.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Uh, it's, it's almost every fish I catch now at this point, now I know a decent amount of what's local in the area. But, uh, that was such a discovery to me too, just like every fish I was catching was new to me. So getting to learn about all the different species was awesome, but yeah.

• 49:22Steven Rinella?

  You got, you got sent to the emergency.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 49:25Steven Rinella?

  You caught a first scorpion fish and landed in the emergency room.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  Oh man, yeah, that was a good time. That was a good learning experience in front of the internet. Um, yeah, I did. I was going after spotted bay bass and ended up reeling in a California scorpion fish, also commonly known as a skullbin. I thought it was just a normal rock fish and this was day seven of fishing every day. And went to unhook it. And, uh, this is me being ignorant, touched the fish right on the dorsal fin and several other places. Um, stung, it stung me like, I think it was like five times in my finger. And I was alone fishing. I didn't know what was happening. I was just like, oh, it was a spine, whatever. My finger hurts.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Kept fishing and then I was like, oh shit, something's traveling up my elbow. Something's traveling up my entire arm. What's going on? Went on the internet and was like, oh my God, that was a venomous, venomous fish. Um. Didn't, I was alone, didn't know what to do, went to urgent care. They didn't know what to do with me. They were like, we don't know what you're supposed to do with this. So they sent me to the ER, which was just kind of hilarious.

• 50:33Steven Rinella?

  Wound up there, yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, they had to take x-rays of my finger because there were like spines still within my finger. I honestly think there's still one in my.

• 50:42Steven Rinella?

  Like it doesn't act right yet.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Um, she was like, you could have permanent nerve damage. Who knows? Um. Anyways, amazing, uh, learning experience and lesson for me, uh, to obviously do your research before you touch any fish.

• 50:59Steven Rinella?

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• 51:42Steven Rinella?

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• 52:25Steven Rinella?

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• 53:09Steven Rinella?

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• 53:50Steven Rinella?

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• 53:57Steven Rinella?

  What's the biggest fish you caught so far?

• 53:59Speaker 04

  Uh, okay.

• 54:00Steven Rinella?

  You catch a lot of, you catch, with all due respect, you catch a lot of like interesting little small fish out of, right? But have you caught some hogs out there?

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Oh my God, what I would consider a hog is probably nothing to all of you guys. Um, pro, I think the biggest fish I've caught at this point was within, uh, the LA Aqueduct, which is another not so pretty destination to be fishing. Um, but I caught a channel cat that was 11 pounds.

• 54:27Steven Rinella?

  Ooh, okay, that's a good channel.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  That's a hog. Um, but yeah, I, I, uh, my audience affectionately calls me the queen of the dinks and I have come to be more than okay with that and that's okay.

• 54:42Steven Rinella?

  When you say that make like.

• 54:46Steven Rinella?

  What in your mind does it mean to make a living fishing?

• 54:50Speaker 04

  So when I started this account, I had no idea because I was like, dude, you see these people catching fit actual hogs?

• 54:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  And they're real anglers. Um, I knew I would never be that. I'm like, dude, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, how am I going to make a living fishing every day? It was just kind of a joke of like, I just want to stop looking at my computer screen all the time. And then the channels kind of evolved and this kind of circles back to like original, just question of like writing and everything. But, um, as the channel evolved, like if you start on day one and go to the most recent video that I posted for me fishing Montana the other day. It's just content wise has drastically changed to where, um, I've kind of like found myself where I can fit within the fishing community.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  Um, and it is just like a lot of humility, a lot of learning, but also, um, it's turned into almost like this like philosophical travel, history, science channel disguised as a fishing channel.

• 55:55Steven Rinella?

  Yes, yes.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  I'm using fishing as the entry point into culture, history, um, a lot of pop culture references that I just love to inject in there too. Just because it's something that's so easy for people to relate to. Um, but it's almost turned into this like very mini educational platform, which I love.

• 56:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You get into space exploration, gentrification, different, different videos, gentrification, like existential issues.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 56:28Steven Rinella?

  Uh, the impending doom of artificial intelligence, all tied into like 90 second fishing videos.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  Oh my God. Yeah.

• 56:35Steven Rinella?

  I think that's why my agent thinks you're a good writer. You have a good line too. You talked about that it was a really gloomy day. And you caught a bluegill and he said he had all the colors he could get his fins on.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 56:46Steven Rinella?

  And like good lines.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I've always, I love reading. I love writing. Um, originally when I was in like high school, I thought I was going to be a journalist. Um, have always had a strong passion and then my, my actual nine to five job is within the creative industry, not writing. Um, but it's just like a skill set that I've always loved, but I've never had any sort of like reason to express or utilize so much. And then this account just like slowly started to evolve into that. And I was like, wow, I love this. This is turning into like everything that I truly love into like this little, little perfect, perfectly packaged thing.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  It's like the fishing, the outdoors, science, history, writing, um, and being creative. It's been awesome.

• 57:39Steven Rinella?

  There's a lot of people watching because you're in some crowded spaces.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

• 57:44Steven Rinella?

  What's, what's your tackle shop? Like you throw to your tackle shop now and then?

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Um, yes, I have to, dude, I have to shout them out. Martin, he's, um, Martin's fishing and tackle in East LA. Funny enough, the only reason I found out about his tackle shop is I was like in Marina Del Rey, pulling up to a harbor and I was like, can I even fish this harbor? And he pulled up and I saw maybe he had like 50 rods in his van. And I was like, I gotta, gotta pick this guy's brain. Like what's up with this fishing spot?

• 58:13Steven Rinella?

  Like he must get a discount on rods.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  It was, I, I just wanted to know about the fishing spot, man. Um, and then he was just like, oh yeah, dude, you gotta hit up my spot. Like I'm right in East LA. He had no idea who I was. Um, and at the time I think I was maybe on like day 10 of fishing every day. And, uh, went to his shop and just, he's such, he's such a homie. Um, gave me so much info at the time. This is actually before, this was day six. I know this because day seven is when I got stung by the scorpion fish. Um, I was really on the hunt for a spotted bay bass. I'd heard so much about how the fight is awesome. They get massive, um, in parts of Marina Del Rey, which is close to, uh, my office. So it was easy to jet over there after work. Um,

• 59:01Speaker 04

  had been on the hunt for one, couldn't land one. They kept taking me under the rocks. And I was like, dude, what am I doing wrong? Like what is going on? So I was telling him about my, my, uh, journey to catch a spotted bay bass and he gave me all these tips. He's like, bro, you're using the wrong bait. You need to be using these jig heads. What are you doing? He, he set it up. He set me up. I went back to that spot, got stung by the scorpion fish because I caught the scorpion fish on his setup. Went to the hospital and immediately after getting in the ER, went back to the fishing spot.

• 59:31Steven Rinella?

  Got a baby.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  I'm literally like fishing with my little hospital band on. And yes, I land a spotty dude. And it was, it was, it was big for me. I think it's big for that area too. Please someone say that I'm right, but, and say that I actually caught a big fish. It was, yeah, it was awesome. And now, now I like, I, dude, now the spotties I can slay up and they're, they're so fun to catch. They're awesome.

• 59:54Steven Rinella?

  One of the, one of the first, one of your pieces I watched, what made me laugh is, you know, like the term like fighting a fish.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:01Steven Rinella?

  So when you reel a fish, you dub in the sound of gunfire.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  I do.

• 1:00:05Steven Rinella?

  To make, to kind of like amplify the fight, you know?

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Some people hate it so much.

• 1:00:10Steven Rinella?

  Like machine gunfire and stuff.

• 1:00:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. It's a fight. You gotta, yeah. It's a battle. You're battling the fish.

• 1:00:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And you're good about reporting on what tackle you're using.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. Um, I feel like if I'm learning and other people want to know and want to learn with me, I gotta give the free, free information.

• 1:00:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, you know, you don't, so you don't cat, you don't cook these fish up ever?

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  I've done a catch and cook once on my channel. This is when I was.

• 1:00:41Steven Rinella?

  I just mean like it, but never even mind making a video, like just at home for dinner. You don't cook fish?

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  Oh no, I love fish, but dude, eating fish out of LA is a little gnarly. I'm not about eating LA rivers.

• 1:00:53Steven Rinella?

  So like the bluegill, for instance, you just like, I'm not going to eat a bluegill out of that water hole.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  Hell no, no, no. If you were to actually see that little lake, that, um, beautiful lake, no shade to this lake, but, um, it's pretty dirty. You don't want to be eating there, even like the ocean water within the LA area. Um, one of the things I love about fishing is so much that I've learned, but, um, in the seventies, a bunch of DDT barrels were dumped in between Catalina Island and Palos Verdes. And they still to this day are leaking out chemicals and the fish that get tested there just have like gnarly amounts of it within them. And there's fishing, um, eating, uh, what do you call it?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Consumptory advisories?

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yes. All around the area.

• 1:01:35Steven Rinella?

  He's the only guy that pays any attention to those things. You and him.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  It, it'll, it'll say like, you can have one yellowfin croaker a week.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Technically like, and it didn't, dude, I have no shade, like tons of people, 90% of the time I'm out fishing in the, uh, ocean, a lot of people are bringing them home and eating them. Um, I, I want to say that eventually I will. I think it's just maybe in the ocean specifically, I haven't felt like I've caught something worthy of like taking home and eating. Like it'll be some, you know, queen of the dinks. I'm catching small guys that I'm like, okay, yeah, technically I could bring this home and eat it, but it's not that much meat. Let me send you off to get bigger and hopefully you're waiting for me when you're bigger.

• 1:02:18Steven Rinella?

  So someday you might catch the queen mother of all eating fish and cook it up.

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  Totally. But yeah, I mean, I've done.

• 1:02:23Steven Rinella?

  I don't really care. It doesn't matter to me.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  No, I've done up in, uh, uh, further north in, um, like Morro Bay area. It's called Moss Landing. I caught two beautiful, beautiful chunky, uh, black surf perch. And I did a catch and cook with those guys because that water is a bit cleaner.

• 1:02:40Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  Um, and then when I've done the fishing in the Kern River for the rainbow trout, I've, everything that I catch there, I eat.

• 1:02:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Steven Rinella?

  I got a question. It's gonna, you're gonna roll your eyes. I gotta ask.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:51Steven Rinella?

  Do, do, when you're running around LA, like at night in weird ass places.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  Are you having, um, and I know you, you bring someone with you, but are you having like crazy run ins? I mean, do you ever feel like, man, I'm going to wind up getting like, like, uh, accosted, abducted, like some shit's going to happen to me if I keep doing this?

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  Um, it's been, yeah, that's like so many people are concerned for my, like my.

• 1:03:19Steven Rinella?

  That's why, that's why I said you're going to roll your eyes when I ask. It's like, I'm like, you know, like.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  I, I swear I didn't roll my eyes. Um.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  LA has a very valid stereotype of being sketchy, for sure.

• 1:03:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you're going, it's not just, you're going to where if I was a sketchy dude, I'd be like, I'm gonna set up shop down along this canal.

• 1:03:41Speaker 04

  Dude, yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's you head on a swivel, you gotta, you gotta be super aware of your surroundings. Specifically like parts of the most, I think people get really concerned when I'm in the LA River under freeways fishing at night. Valid, but dude, honestly, like, uh, the first time I fished under the freeway at the LA River, um, a homeless guy was fishing there like next to me and,

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  he was going for carp all he had, he just had the fishing line and hooks. We actually exchanged tackle. He was hand lining. We exchanged tackle.

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  He was giving me all his carp tips. He was, I was giving him hooks, uh, and.

• 1:04:24Steven Rinella?

  So you guys had a little camaraderie?

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  We have a little camaraderie. I've never, there've definitely been times where it'll, it just starts, you just get a vibe and you're like, it's time to wrap up.

• 1:04:34Steven Rinella?

  Time to go to a new fishing spot.

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  Or just, it's time to go home. Like it's 2am, what are you doing under this freeway? Like?

• 1:04:41Steven Rinella?

  So I'm not crazy to bring it up, but you don't, you haven't yet had a, like it was a scorpion fish that put you in the emergency room, not another canal.

• 1:04:54Speaker 04

  Not yet. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I tried to be, yes, I know I'm fishing some sketchy areas, but, uh, dude, you just gotta, I mean, that's like anywhere you are, like be aware of your surroundings.

• 1:05:05Steven Rinella?

  Do you ever have, this is the last, like angle I'm gonna take into this subject? Are there spots, like let's take night fishing. Are there spots where you'd say, I'd love to night fish that, but no way?

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Oh my god, yeah. Yes. Yeah.

• 1:05:21Steven Rinella?

  That's what I should have asked in the first place. So there are spots you'd like to hit, but you would need a security detail?

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:27Steven Rinella?

  So then go hit it.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  Yes. I don't know if anyone's heard of MacArthur Park.

• 1:05:33Speaker 07

  Oh yeah, that's, that's the, that's the under the bridge park. That's the heroin park. It's made famous by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 1:05:39Steven Rinella?

  There's good water in there.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  Dude, there's, I, I see videos of people fishing it during the day though. Um, catching massive carp in there and I'm like, bro, I, I gotta hit that up. But, uh, it, it is definitely sketchy. Their city is trying to do their part to clean it up, but, uh.

• 1:05:54Steven Rinella?

  Like you don't even wanna day fish it?

• 1:05:59Speaker 04

  It's on my list.

• 1:06:02Steven Rinella?

  You day fish it, but you wouldn't night fish it?

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  Uh, yes, I really want to. I want to day fish it pretty badly, but, uh, it, I gotta, yeah, yeah, I want to. It's a little sketchy.

• 1:06:16Steven Rinella?

  What's, what's the thing you think you're like, what's the most surprising thing you've learned about fishing and fishermen?

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  Surprising?

• 1:06:23Steven Rinella?

  Fishing and or fishermen?

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Dude, it's, it's not surprise, it's not even surprising. Like I never thought that fishing was easy, but dude, it, it's fucking hard. Like the, the amount of like resilience, maybe this is just LA fishing, but like resilience you have to have to just like,

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  find the spot that's not super pressured because there's only so many freshwater spots within the city. It's just like, maybe that's the most surprising thing is just like finding a spot that's gonna be like a honey hole and juicy and not overfished and not super pressured. That's been, that's been hard and surprising, but at the same time, the other side of the coin is what's also been surprising in a good way is like, there actually are a lot of places to fish in LA. Um, I feel like I'm rediscovering the city. I'm born and raised in LA, but I feel like I'm rediscovering the city in this completely different lens and it's turned into like, like my account, I feel like,

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  for all the LA content has turned into kind of this like love letter to the city in a way. It's like so cool that I'm like, dude, why would I ever have been under the 405 freeway in this ditch? Yeah, why would you ever have that reason? But here I am and now I'm like learning about the LA River and like how important it actually is. And like, there's actually 200 different bird species that live in this like weird little ditch and like however many different fish and it's like, thriving ecosystem and like learning the history about why it is now this like concrete, channel that it is now. But, um, I guess that's like this other surprising thing is like just rediscovering the city and getting to,

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  explore these areas that even maybe I had been before, but rediscovering it within the fishing lens has been so cool. I mean dude, the Santa Monica Pier, I've been there maybe like four times in my life, even though I've been in LA and have always had like a very bad connotation with it. Cause it's just like hell.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  No, now, I mean, it's an awesome fishing spot. It's also hell because of how many people are there, but, uh, it's a vibe, it's a vibe. I don't know if I need to fish there more than a couple of times a year because of what you have to go through to get to the end of the pier. But yeah, it's been awesome. Just like rediscovering all these places.

• 1:08:44Steven Rinella?

  Do you have a, do you have a, like a day count at which if you, if you're not making a living fishing, you quit?

• 1:08:53Speaker 04

  No, I'm so stubborn.

• 1:08:55Steven Rinella?

  Would you hit day 4000?

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  I mean, fingers crossed it doesn't have to happen, but, uh, dude, I wanna say I'm so stubborn. I wanna say that like, no. And if anything, like fishing is so, I'm saying this from someone who has not been doing it that often, but it's so ingrained in my life now that I'm like, I don't, do like, it's just, it's, I'm gonna be fishing forever. It's so addicting.

• 1:09:18Steven Rinella?

  What did you, was it, like if you had to rate just the whole experience of fishing with Cory on a sliding scale of one to 10?

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  10 being?

• 1:09:30Steven Rinella?

  Just the whole package?

• 1:09:32Speaker 05

  It's like a Disney movie, how perfect it was.

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  It was, dude, it honestly was. It was a 10, dude.

• 1:09:38Steven Rinella?

  Experience of Cory?

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  Cory is a 10.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Listen, listen, no, I gotta, no, I have to say it. When we first talked about where we were gonna be fishing, Cory's like, we're like trying to brainstorm what's gonna make sense. Cause he's, we're like, dude, the content is like, you're fishing in all these urban weird spots. That's not Montana. And he's like, but maybe there's a spot, there's a spot under a bridge. It's kind of this urban feel. We'll try there.

• 1:10:05Steven Rinella?

  Not just any bridge. I mean, it's like a bridge that, that bridge connects Seattle and Chicago.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  I didn't, I haven't had my chance to do my research on where we were fishing, dude.

• 1:10:13Steven Rinella?

  It's the I-90 corridor.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  All right, all right, all right. Um, we were there, yeah, we, we were there and I started with my spinning setup and I don't know, it was like my, maybe my like fifth cast or something caught a whitey and I was just like, bro.

• 1:10:29Steven Rinella?

  On a spinning rod?

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Steven Rinella?

  What he have, what was, what was you using?

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  I was using, um, a salamander Panther Martin spinner.

• 1:10:38Speaker 05

  That was all her, her decision on the lure.

• 1:10:40Speaker 07

  Good choice.

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, and the day, so when I arrived, I've got, I got here on Friday and Saturday, Sunday, I didn't have Cory to help me. I just went out and fished Saturday and Sunday, freezing. By the way, I'm going from like 90 degree weather in LA to like 30 degree weather over the weekend. Have never fished in the snow or any weather below, maybe like 50 degrees or something, but, had my waders for the first time, got into the Lower Madison, fished that and then fished the Gallatin and I caught a brown trout. I was happy. I was, hell yeah. And, uh, you gotta watch the video, dude, it's up. Um, yeah. Caught a little brown trout, was getting some bites in the Lower Madison, but couldn't land anything. Um, and then switched over to the Gallatin.

• 1:11:26Speaker 04

  Cause it was just like, I don't know, the, the spot, just.

• 1:11:29Steven Rinella?

  But you were freezing your ass too.

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  Oh god, yeah, but I was fish, we, I fished until I think like 7pm both nights. I was, my feet were numb. I was scared.

• 1:11:38Steven Rinella?

  And then, and then how many fish did you guys catch yesterday? How many whitefish?

• 1:11:42Speaker 05

  You lost count.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  Uh, I did lose count, but.

• 1:11:45Steven Rinella?

  Did he get you on the fly pole at all?

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  Dude, yeah, he did. He did. I started with the spinner and then the spinning rod. And once I caught with the spinning rod, I was like, I've accomplished that. Fine, we'll fly fish. Yeah. And that's, yeah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  You picked it up super fast.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  He's a professional. Did he tell you that?

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  I've taught a lot of people how to fly fish, but you were roll casting like a pro.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  It's fucking hard, dude, compared to just coming from like, yeah, having to get out of the like, the motion of, you just cast totally different. It's hard to like snap out of, um, how you'd normally cast a spinning rod.

• 1:12:18Steven Rinella?

  Any dudes camping under that bridge?

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 1:12:21Steven Rinella?

  No one camping?

• 1:12:22Speaker 05

  Lot of graffiti. Lot of positive graffiti.

• 1:12:27Steven Rinella?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:12:28Speaker 05

  I don't know, I didn't go see what you guys went and saw. Was there a Pokemon?

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  We were just cracking up. There was like a Pokemon graffiti thing and it's just within my content, whenever I catch a new fish, I'm like, add it to the Pokédex. It's just like a thing, you know?

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  That's good though. Now, he's gonna smoke these whitefish up.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  They're smoking right now. As we sit here, they should be ready for lunch after this.

• 1:12:54Speaker 04

  I think we caught six.

• 1:12:55Steven Rinella?

  That's a good, that's a good smoked fish. That's a very good smoked fish.

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  I'm so excited. Yeah, this was my first time catching a white. I got to add it to the Pokédex, but yeah.

• 1:13:02Steven Rinella?

  That's a good native fish too. Browns, rainbows, those are fish out of a barrel. Those aren't native fish. They're not from here.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, I was reading, they're introduced by, by, uh, Europe.

• 1:13:15Steven Rinella?

  Suckers. Whitefish is good native fish.

• 1:13:20Steven Rinella?

  Throughout the year, I always sleep in some weird places. Lot of nights in the back of my truck, under the truck. If it's raining, I don't know, bombed out old campsites, whatever. I'm always sleeping somewhere weird and I love knowing that the most comfortable bed I will sleep in all year is right in my own bedroom at home. And it is a Helix mattress. Helix is over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect model for you because a good night's rest sets you up for a great day. And they got cooling upgrades, so you can get the best rest even on hot nights. And Helix delivers your mattress right to your door. You never gotta go down to some annoying mattress store. They got free shipping in the U.S. You can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges.

• 1:14:02Steven Rinella?

  The Happy With Helix Guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Go to helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off sitewide. That's helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off sitewide. helixsleep.com/meateater. Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco.

• 1:14:45Steven Rinella?

  Now, you know how long it takes to build something that actually holds up? Well, Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours on it, 20,000 hours, working alongside American farmers, growing and barn curing leafy greens to mimic the taste and texture of real dip without the tobacco leaf or stem. That's not a shortcut. That's a commitment. They started this thing in 2015, right here in America, and they got it right. In wintergreen, mint and straight, the taste you already know. And long cut and pouches. It dips like the real thing because they refuse to settle for less. Check out your local gas station or convenience store.

• 1:15:29Steven Rinella?

  Chances are it's already on a shelf near you. Or head to blackbuffalo.com and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative. It's everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail cam or for a spot that's heating up, warmer layers for a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods.

• 1:16:10Steven Rinella?

  Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com. Speaking of fish, Ombudsman Spencer, New Hearts Market Report on panfish.

• 1:16:22Speaker 06

  Here's how Katie can try to make a living.

• 1:16:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. The commercial sales angle.

• 1:16:26Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:16:28Steven Rinella?

  Genuine walleye canal flays or something, you know, your own little business.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  I bet they're good.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  All right, for this week's market report, we are looking at panfish prices, specifically the big three panfish, bluegill, crappie and perch. I'll start with bluegill. Bluegill are one of the most farmed fish in America, but very few of those farmed bluegill are raised for their meat, at least for human consumption. The USDA estimates that 98% of commercial bluegill revenue comes from selling juvenile fish that are used to stock private ponds, both as a forage fish and a game fish. So there's a lot of bluegill raised here by folks, but very few of them get eaten by humans. It is uncommon for them to be raised for direct human consumption because they are expensive to feed and don't grow as fast as other farmed fish.

• 1:17:15Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:16Speaker 06

  The wild-caught bluegill.

• 1:17:17Steven Rinella?

  I'm learning so much, dude.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 1:17:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. We got a lot. The wild-caught bluegill that do hit the market are largely coming from the Great Lakes, specifically Lake Erie, from anglers. That's my hand, actually. I took that, yeah. Way back in my hatchery days.

• 1:17:33Steven Rinella?

  That's a big hand.

• 1:17:34Speaker 06

  If you go to Wikipedia and look at bluegill.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  She's a small fish, right?

• 1:17:38Steven Rinella?

  It's not like an eight-inch bluegill.

• 1:17:40Speaker 06

  If you go to Wikipedia.

• 1:17:41Steven Rinella?

  It's a joke, you guys. Oh, that's a good joke.

• 1:17:44Speaker 06

  If you go to Wikipedia and look at bluegill, you'll see my picture on there. That's my hand.

• 1:17:48Steven Rinella?

  Really? Did you do that?

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  No, it's because I worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And so all my photos I would take when I worked for them were owned by them. And when they're owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they're public domain. So they end up all over Wikipedia. So I have like, I don't know, dozens of fishing pictures on Wikipedia, this being one of them. So a lot of the wild-caught bluegill that hit the market come from Lake Erie. It's from anglers from both sides of the border. The American South also has a small wild-caught bluegill market, but it seems like those fish largely come from private ponds. The commercial licenses for Lake Erie are pretty affordable for most Great Lakes states. It's less than a couple hundred dollars to legally net and sell fish. And in some places, the bluegill can be one of those fish.

• 1:18:34Speaker 06

  As for the prices, I break all these fish down into two groups. One is your local markets. Those are like farmers markets, local grocery stores, Craigslist. And then there's your online retail. These are the large seafood distributors who ship frozen meat to your front door. They're the same places that will sell you crayfish and tilapia and catfish and crabs. So for local market prices, right now in the United States, you're looking at about $18 per pound. For online retail.

• 1:19:03Steven Rinella?

  For filets?

• 1:19:05Speaker 06

  For filets, yes. Online retail, $35 per pound. Here's an example. Oceanside Seafood sold wild-caught bluegill filets that are skin on and bones off for $40 per pound.

• 1:19:18Steven Rinella?

  That is an expensive fish fillet, man.

• 1:19:20Speaker 06

  Very expensive. They say it takes 15 to 20 filets to make a pound, so that's about $2.25 per fillet. They have 53 reviews for an average of 4.3 stars. So people are generally pretty satisfied.

• 1:19:35Steven Rinella?

  Do you mind if I read a quick little bit of that description?

• 1:19:37Speaker 06

  I'm going to finish here my bluegill thought and then it's on you. Prices are now about double what they were 15 years ago. The price increase has outpaced most high-end seafood. One online vendor labels them as, quote, "a seasonal and nostalgic luxury item." So that's how the sellers view bluegill. It's a seasonal and nostalgic luxury item.

• 1:19:58Steven Rinella?

  40 bucks a pound.

• 1:19:59Speaker 06

  $40 a pound, and that's bones off, skin on. What do you got from the description?

• 1:20:04Steven Rinella?

  Well, I just was noticing they call it "with a mild, slightly sweet flavor and tender texture." It says it all. 40 bucks a pound!

• 1:20:14Speaker 06

  $40 a pound.

• 1:20:15Steven Rinella?

  Phil, could you click over to the, uh?

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  This is a screen grab.

• 1:20:19Speaker 06

  What were you wondering?

• 1:20:20Steven Rinella?

  I wanted to see the dish that they made. Just wanted to get a better look at it.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Fried gill.

• 1:20:25Steven Rinella?

  I wanted to get a better look at it.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 1:20:29Steven Rinella?

  Can I say it one more time? 40 bucks a pound!

• 1:20:33Speaker 06

  All right, next, let's look at crappie. Similar to bluegill, most crappies sold are, as food, are wild-caught. According to the USDA records that I found, there are 65 registered crappie ponds in the, in the USA, crappie farms in the USA. Most of them are in northern states, which surprised me. In my head, that'd be like, oh, yeah, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, they got the crappie ponds. It's actually like New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

• 1:20:58Steven Rinella?

  Yankees, man. Yankees in there catching all them crappies.

• 1:21:01Speaker 06

  So of the 65 crappie farms, only seven of them raise them to be food size. All the rest, just like the bluegills, they're solely sold as juveniles to stock private ponds. The source of those wild-caught crappie has recently fluctuated. Up until this year, anglers on Lake Champlain in Vermont could sell the crappie that they'd catch with a rod and a reel. And these crappie made up the majority of the wild-caught fish from American waters. But Vermont recently changed their regulations to outlaw this practice now. If you want to read about America's crappie market and how it used to be on Lake Champlain,

• 1:21:43Speaker 06

  go read Pat Durkin's article on the meat eater.com called Cash for Crappie. So previous to this year, though, there were a lot of crappie coming out of Lake Champlain that were largely sold in Vermont and New York.

• 1:21:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Speaker 06

  Now, most of our wild-caught crappie market is made up of fish from the Canada side of the Great Lakes and tribal waters in the United States. All right, here's the price breakdown. Local markets, you're looking at $22 per pound. And online retail is $34 per pound. So the local markets are slightly more expensive than bluegill because it's harder to find local fish. And the online markets are cheaper than bluegill because Canadian anglers can satisfy the market.

• 1:22:24Steven Rinella?

  This is from Walleye Direct.

• 1:22:25Speaker 06

  Walleye Direct sells wild caught Canadian crappie in five pound batches for one hundred sixty-nine dollars, which is thirty-four dollars per pound. Uh, they say you get nine to sixteen fillets per pound, which comes out to about two dollars and sixty cents per fillet. Uh, their crappie listing has thirty-one reviews for an average of four point seven stars.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  What do you think of that dish, Randall?

• 1:22:50Speaker 06

  I like it. I was about to say that's, that's, that's a nice sized dish photo.

• 1:22:55Steven Rinella?

  Now for the crappie. To me, interesting to me that a crappie, I'm glad to see it because I agree. Interesting to see that a crappie, the crappie fillets are less expensive than bluegill fillets. My gripe with crappie fillets being that they're too delicate.

• 1:23:11Speaker 06

  They are.

• 1:23:11Steven Rinella?

  And they have a structure that absorbs too much oil. I find.

• 1:23:16Speaker 06

  Now, online retailers, again, remember, these are largely coming from Canadian waters. Online retail retailers really lean into the Canada aspect for marketing. Uh, advertising that their crappies come from the cold, clear northern waters. So they have less of a muddy taste than our disgusting American crappies.

• 1:23:35Speaker 06

  Under how it tastes, tastes like it just came out of the lake, period.

• 1:23:41Steven Rinella?

  And then they also, they also describe it quite similar to bluegills. But this is, this, this is the best, this is your finest work, I gotta point out. But, um,

• 1:23:53Steven Rinella?

  forty dollars a pound.

• 1:23:54Speaker 06

  Forty dollars a pound. Alright, last one, let's talk about yellow perch. Unlike bluegill and crappie, the perch market is heavily subsidized with farmed fish. Of the USDA-registered eighty-three perch farms, half of them raise the fish to be food size. Uh, this is a result of them being a, a greater demand for perch fillets than bluegill or crappie. So remember with the crappie, it was seven of sixty-something. This one is like forty out of eighty-three of the perch farms are, are selling their perch for food. Uh, the wild caught market is dominated by the Great Lakes, specifically the Canadian side of Lake Erie. And the buyers are located close by.

• 1:24:35Speaker 06

  Uh, it's estimated that seventy percent of all yellow perch sales in the United States occur within fifty miles of a Great Lake. This is from a study I found, uh, back in the late nineties, I believe. Uh, those would be places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toledo, Green Bay, Grand Rapids, Rochester, Akron, South Bend, Duluth, and Erie. Uh, those cities are basically the whole perch economy. Uh, and I think it's something we now need to refer to as the perch belt of America.

• 1:25:06Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 1:25:06Speaker 06

  That's where seventy percent of our perch are being sold, uh, the perch belt. One seafood distributor estimates that the perch belt eats about seventy million pounds of perch annually. Uh, perch is just the quintessential fish fry fish in that region. For our southern listeners, it'd be like a catfish to them is a perch to, to folks in that part of the country.

• 1:25:29Steven Rinella?

  It's like, it's like, it's a fish that,

• 1:25:33Steven Rinella?

  it was just made to be consumed in large numbers.

• 1:25:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. If, if you were go to, if you were to go to a cafe and they had fried fish on the menu, you'd expect it to be perch in that area.

• 1:25:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like if there was a bar that had fish fry Friday night, it's gonna be smelt or perch.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  If you lived in that area and someone invited you over for a fish fry, you would almost certainly have perch there. Alright, so price-wise, local markets around the Great Lakes region, you're looking at about twenty dollars per pound. Online retail is thirty-five dollars per pound. Uh, Farm Fresh Express sells them for thirty dollars per pound. All of their perch come from Lake Erie. Uh, they say you get six to nine fillets per pound. So that comes out to be about four dollars per fillet.

• 1:26:20Steven Rinella?

  God, you can't afford not to fish.

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  Here's a summary for you. For the listeners who are trying to justify gas money and bait and new gear. Uh, according to the market, panfish per pound are more valuable than walleye, king salmon, and Dungeness crabs. Uh, taking average current prices into account, the keeper bluegill is worth about four dollars and fifty cents. A keeper crappie is worth five dollars and twenty cents, and a keeper perch is worth eight bucks. And if you were to have a twenty-five panfish limit, a mix of these three, you're looking at about a hundred fifty dollars for the fish. It's just some fine dining there.

• 1:26:56Steven Rinella?

  I have photos where there's two thousand four hundred dollars where the perch piled up on the ice.

• 1:27:03Speaker 06

  The market is strong right now.

• 1:27:08Speaker 06

  Wow. That was a finely crafted segment.

• 1:27:11Steven Rinella?

  Dude, that was.

• 1:27:12Speaker 06

  My god.

• 1:27:12Speaker 05

  Did you make that graphic?

• 1:27:14Speaker 06

  I asked.

• 1:27:15Steven Rinella?

  And the screenshot of the journal?

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  It looks very similar to your Spencer's Orchard graphic.

• 1:27:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Steven Rinella?

  Unbelievable quality of the, the content.

• 1:27:23Speaker 06

  So five dollars a bluegill, five dollars a crappie, eight dollars a perch. That's what you're looking at today's prices.

• 1:27:28Steven Rinella?

  Unbelievable segment.

• 1:27:29Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:27:31Steven Rinella?

  Too bad the, like, like Academy Awards or something.

• 1:27:35Speaker 06

  I'm wishing I could go back and prepare better for a video game segment.

• 1:27:41Speaker 06

  We take another swing at that?

• 1:27:43Steven Rinella?

  In a month. Unbelievably good segment.

• 1:27:45Speaker 06

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:27:48Steven Rinella?

  Here's what I liked about it. This is something that, like, this is close to my heart, so panfish. So to learn all this new stuff about something I already know well, it'd be like if you did a report on my wife and you're like telling me stuff, I'm like, I didn't know that.

• 1:28:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, her favorite food is.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'd be like, I'd be like, man, I didn't know all that about her. That'd be a great report.

• 1:28:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Speaker 06

  I would, I would have, I would have put these prices like half of what they actually are.

• 1:28:14Steven Rinella?

  For a segment like that?

• 1:28:15Speaker 06

  No, no, no, no. Like, uh, the price of a keeper perch. What would you guess that would have cost?

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Oh, at least half of that, I would say.

• 1:28:22Steven Rinella?

  Uh, yeah, if you said, hey, what's this perch worth on the market, I would have said, I probably would have come in at like, um, that maybe it's a buck.

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. A pound of bluegill.

• 1:28:32Steven Rinella?

  I would have guessed fifteen dollars a pound.

• 1:28:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. Now, those prices per fish, that's, that's uncleaned also, which I think is part of the market value. Like, to pay somebody to clean a hundred bluegill, uh, that's a, you know, someone's spending a lot of time doing that. I don't think there's a machine pumping that out for them.

• 1:28:47Steven Rinella?

  When I was a kid, I was just forced to clean them.

• 1:28:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Steven Rinella?

  I didn't get paid to clean them. You come home from school and had to flay fish. It's terrible.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  I, aren't there, I think there are fish flay machines though that could do those.

• 1:28:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm, there's a, there's a machine that does Great Lakes whitefish beautifully. There's probably a perch machine.

• 1:29:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Steven Rinella?

  There's a machine, you run that flay through, flays it, pin bones it, skins it.

• 1:29:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. You're right, Seth. There's gotta be a machine doing this for this. I, I would assume the price was baked into that though. Like I, when I see that price, I'm like, that's because some poor soul is cleaning hundreds of bluegill.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:29:22Steven Rinella?

  Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz on cormorants. This is might be the first, I don't follow Ted Cruz too carefully. I don't think of him as a wildlife guy.

• 1:29:31Speaker 05

  Well, think again. It's gonna be hard to follow up Spencer here, but, uh.

• 1:29:35Steven Rinella?

  Did you have any, like, interesting graphics?

• 1:29:38Speaker 05

  No, dude, I didn't get that deep. I didn't have a lot of time. We've been fishing.

• 1:29:41Steven Rinella?

  No, I understand.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Wasn't Ted Cruz the guy that said Texas has two percent public land and it's two percent too much?

• 1:29:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's not a big public land guy whatsoever. I just don't think him as, I feel him, he's, he's not an outdoorsman.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I just was surprised to see him weigh in on wildlife, but when he weighed in on wildlife, it was to like, to kill a bunch of it.

• 1:30:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:30:03Steven Rinella?

  You know, which is, whatever. Let's hear the segment.

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  Well, just you wait here. Just this last September, US Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama introduced the Responsible Cormorant Management and Control Act of twenty twenty-six. A companion bill, H R one, I'm sorry, eight, one, nine, five, was introduced in the House earlier this year by Representative Tim Wahlberg of Michigan. And that was advanced by the House Natural Resource Committee, Committee. That legislation would require the US Department of the Interior to develop regional management plans for double-crested cormorants. So why are these elected officials so worried about cormorants?

• 1:30:40Steven Rinella?

  Same reason he was just talking about. Cause they're getting pressure from commercial fishermen.

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  Aquaculture. They're not as worried about the cormorants. They're more worried about the aquaculture agriculture operations, particularly the catfish industry, as well as recreational fisher folk and fisheries biologists, and how the rebounded population of double-crested cormorants are and have been wreaking havoc on the fish and their fish farms.

• 1:31:05Speaker 05

  Uh, a recent study, uh, twenty twenty-one study, so not that recent, out of Mississippi State University, found that in the Mississippi Delta region, one cormorant can eat approximately one pound of fish per day.

• 1:31:18Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  Commercial catfish.

• 1:31:20Steven Rinella?

  How much does this ass weigh?

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

  They're pretty big birds. I don't know. It's a good question. They're giant. They're way bigger than you think.

• 1:31:26Steven Rinella?

  Twelve pounds, that's my guess. But go on.

• 1:31:27Speaker 06

  Oh, I bet they're less than that.

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  Neck, it's hard to say. Commercial catfish make up thirty-three percent of a cormorant's diet in the Mississippi Delta region. And during the winters of sixteen seventeen and seventeen eighteen, cormorants consumed one point two to one point six million pounds of catfish, or about ten point three and twelve million catfish respectively. Uh, cormorant depredation on commercial catfish farms industry-wide results in a loss estimated of the range of twenty-five point eight to sixty-five point four million dollars annually.

• 1:32:04Steven Rinella?

  Them, them, them suckers are, can you edit out my earlier guess, Bill?

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Steven Rinella?

  Or dub in, or dub in me going two point six to five point five pounds?

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll take the top.

• 1:32:15Steven Rinella?

  So he's eating a pound of catfish?

• 1:32:19Speaker 06

  This says a double-crested cormorant is three to six pounds. Uh, a bald eagle for comparison is six and a half to fourteen.

• 1:32:28Speaker 07

  Go.

• 1:32:29Speaker 05

  Big wingspan, big necks. I dove pretty deep and watched a lot of videos of cormorants eating fish. It's pretty wild. I mean, they're swallowing huge fish whole, just sucking them down.

• 1:32:39Speaker 07

  Ninja bird.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  Boy, what a fun pairing between the two stories.

• 1:32:42Speaker 05

  I know, they're very similar. Here's a brief North American double crested cormorant timeline.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Oh, please.

• 1:32:49Steven Rinella?

  This is great. Is there a gra- a graphic?

• 1:32:51Speaker 05

  No, I got nothing. Starting in the early settlement days in the 1800s, early European explorers like Samuel de Champlain and naturalists like John James Audubon noted large native cormorant colonies along North America's regional coasts. Uh, as westward, westward settlement expanded, humans frequently shot the birds, viewing them as dirty, gluttonous, and a threat to their fish stocks. In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, intense hunting and local persecution drove steep population declines. The birds were completely extirpated from certain areas such as parts of Massachusetts by the late 1800s.

• 1:33:27Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:33:28Speaker 05

  In the mid 20th century, population suffered another major crash in the 50s and 60s with widespread use of DDT, which caused eggshell thinning and breeding failures alongside losses from oil spills and other water contaminants.

• 1:33:43Speaker 05

  But since the 70s, particularly 1972, double crested cormorants have been protected under the migratory bird treaty act. Uh, populations have grown roughly 2.6% per year between 66 and 2019, doubling in some regions like the Great Lakes. And today, the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there's between 870,000 to over 1 million double crested cormorants within the United States and Canada. So that's potentially a million pounds of fish per day.

• 1:34:13Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:34:14Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:34:14Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  The Responsible Cormorant Management and Control Act of 2026, if passed in both the House and Senate, would readdress that 1972 amendment. Uh, the bill is still has a way to go before becoming to law, but for now, it represents a step towards science-based regional management of the double crested cormorant while still requiring cormorant populations to remain at sustainable levels. This hope, the hope here is this, would better protect the fish resources that support commercial fisheries, America's catfish industry, as well as recreational anglers.

• 1:34:48Steven Rinella?

  This, this ties in to the new executive order on priorities around fishing where it talks about taking a greater look at predation of fish. That wasn't addressing aquaculture facilities, but just wild fish. I, I actually, I like this. I like this.

• 1:35:09Steven Rinella?

  I don't think you want to knock them back to 1972 levels by any stretch, but I, I don't, I'm not opposed at all to, to lowering cormorant numbers in order to increase fisheries output.

• 1:35:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:23Steven Rinella?

  At all.

• 1:35:24Speaker 05

  I'm hoping soon we might have a new Pardon My Plate episode.

• 1:35:27Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:35:28Speaker 05

  Of cormorant.

• 1:35:29Speaker 07

  They kill them in Canada.

• 1:35:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:31Steven Rinella?

  And they, they already got egg crushing programs on islands and stuff.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:35:35Steven Rinella?

  But I think it's real case by case.

• 1:35:37Speaker 07

  They can't possibly taste good.

• 1:35:39Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:35:39Speaker 07

  That's gotta taste like eating a minnow out of the minnow bucket.

• 1:35:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a lot of hilarious recipes out there where you say like, put the bird on a brick, you light the brick on fire, you throw the bird away, eat the brick.

• 1:35:50Steven Rinella?

  That's the oldest joke.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah. I don't know, I'd be curious though.

• 1:35:54Steven Rinella?

  So what more?

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  That's about it. I have this really funny recipe from this, this cookbook in 1965, but we can move on.

• 1:36:03Steven Rinella?

  When, when zebra mussels came into the Great Lakes, well, it kind of gave away the ending.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  Zebra mussels.

• 1:36:14Steven Rinella?

  There were, the yell, we, this ties into both y'all's segments.

• 1:36:17Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:36:18Steven Rinella?

  Um, there was a yellow perch crash in the northern Great Lakes in the 90s. I mean, just yellow perks, perch stocks just plummeted. And a lot of blame, that people were assigning blame and a lot of the blame was assigned to cormorants.

• 1:36:34Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:36:34Steven Rinella?

  And I had some close friends that were involved in this prolonged predation study where they went out and netted thousands of yellow perch and put a little micro tag next to their dorsal fin. And then you wait a while and they would go to all of the cormorant rookeries

• 1:36:59Steven Rinella?

  looking for their little tags

• 1:37:02Steven Rinella?

  to see how many of these yellow perch were getting digested and excreted out in cormorant rookeries. And the verdict was already out among fishermen in this area. They knew what the problem was. The problem was cormorants. And that was like a joke for a long time, like, God, eep, cormorants, you know? People hated cormorants. I, I, I might be wrong, but I think they found a tag.

• 1:37:32Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:37:34Steven Rinella?

  A tag.

• 1:37:36Steven Rinella?

  So in that case, in that area, blame was put on the double breasted cormorant, but that was when things were really tipping and the ecosystem was getting so upset by zebra mussels. And it threw the whole system out of whack. Changed fish distribution, changed bottom structure, changed, like everything, food, water clarity.

• 1:37:59Steven Rinella?

  But again, it was like, people look and they see a thing

• 1:38:03Steven Rinella?

  and it, it's visible, right? And they, and they attribute it to it.

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:38:10Steven Rinella?

  But you can't argue with the numbers.

• 1:38:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:38:13Steven Rinella?

  You know, so people say with wolves, like, I don't know, they ate seven pounds of meat today. It's gotta come from somewhere.

• 1:38:18Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:38:19Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  We should make a shirt that says ban cormorants, not life scope.

• 1:38:27Steven Rinella?

  That's a good idea for sure. Put that into an emoji.

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  That'd be cool. The big cormorant just sitting above.

• 1:38:35Speaker 05

  They're wild looking.

• 1:38:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Steven Rinella?

  Good?

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Mary Peltola.

• 1:38:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we're gonna jump over to, uh, speaking of fisheries, this is a very well constructed episode.

• 1:38:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:38:54Steven Rinella?

  Speaking of all that, declining fisheries, we're gonna step over and speak with Alaska native and senate candidate, Mary Peltola from the state of Alaska.

• 1:39:07Steven Rinella?

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• 1:39:49Steven Rinella?

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• 1:40:32Steven Rinella?

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• 1:41:16Steven Rinella?

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• 1:41:57Steven Rinella?

  Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com. Okay, everybody, we got a, we got a super interesting segment right now because we're, we're joined here with Mary Peltola from Alaska, who is running for the United States Senate. Um, Peltola has held a US congressional seat, but is, is looking to, to come into the US Senate. Should she, should voters send her to the Senate on November 3rd? Um, I, I would argue that this would be, that, that she would be probably the, the

• 1:42:36Steven Rinella?

  least conventional, mo- most unconventional senator to ever enter that chamber. Um, in that, she grew up in coastal Alaska, surrounded with subsistence fishing, commercial fishing, just a very unusual background. And Mary, thanks for taking a couple of minutes to talk to us. I know it's a super busy time of year from, for you, uh, you, you political folks, so thank you very much. Thank you, Steve.

• 1:43:06Speaker 04

  It's good to be here.

• 1:43:07Steven Rinella?

  Can you tell people a little bit about your, you know, I want to stick to fish here as we discussed, but can you tell people a little bit about your childhood relationship to salmon and some of the activities you were brought up around, some of the activities you were brought up doing?

• 1:43:27Speaker 04

  So I'm from the Cusco Quim River. The Cusco Quim is in the southwest portion of Alaska. We're above Bristol Bay and right below the Yukon River. We're huge and we have historically had millions and millions of salmon returning every year, all five species. The tributary that I'm from, that my mom is from is called Uichluk. It means bad river or muddy river. And even that tributary had millions and millions of chum salmon returning historically, millions of Chinook salmon, silvers. In recent history, like the last 80, 90 years, we've also had seen the

• 1:44:07Speaker 04

  in migration of sockeye salmon, reds. And it was really interesting growing up with my mom's first cousin, Robert. He would talk about when they first saw reds show up and they were, you know, what is this? What is this species? And in Bristol Bay, they have historic massive runs of sockeye. So we use their word for red, Said. And now you're seeing them migrating even more to the north, which is really good for reds. Reds are one of the salmon that do really well with ocean temperature rise, with a one or two degree temperature rise.

• 1:44:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, the salmon that do the worst under those conditions are Chinook salmon. And that's why I think statewide, every single tributary in Alaska, we've seen a massive decline in the number of Chinook salmon returning. But when I was growing up, we grew up, I grew up commercial fishing. My dad had a commercial fishing permit. And my sister and I would take turns being his helper. And so when I started, I was six, she was nine. He wouldn't bring us both at the same time because he found that we were either playing or fighting and not being good helpers. So we would each take turns going out every opener.

• 1:45:27Speaker 04

  And I just, you know, one of my earliest memories as a six-year-old was commercial fishing with my dad. And 4th of July is the peak of our chum run. And my dad was borrowing a really small wooden homemade skiff, really, you know, small, short sideboards. And the runs were so huge, the returns of salmon were so tremendous that a couple long drifts, you know, I grew up commercial drift net, gill net fishing. And at that point, we could use a full shackle. So 50 fathom net, just a few drifts, you could practically, you could swamp your boat. You could just catch so many.

• 1:46:07Speaker 04

  You know, all of us kind of have these stories of setting your net around the 4th of July, hoping to catch like six chums. And by the time you've got the full length out, it's sinking and you're panicking. And it's like, get this in as soon as you can. Don't even bother picking the fish because your net is literally sinking. And, you know, you're pulling them in kind of like grapes, you know, like clusters of fish. And, you know, when I was in college, I worked for our State Department of Fish and Game. And during this time, I remember in my sleep, I would see these tangled up chums and chums are spinners.

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  They get in the gill net and they spin around and they circle back and they get in these real, real tangled pockets. So even in my sleep, I would see this mess of chums, you know, that you'd have to try to untangle to get out. But this was kind of the abundance that we grew up with, you know, so many salmon, it would swamp your boat. So many salmon, you're kind of having nightmarish dreams about picking your, there's just so many. And then fast forward to around 2009, 2010, 2011.

• 1:47:25Speaker 04

  And it was shocking, you know, my husband and I, the scenario had always been when we were going to check our set net, we were really worried that we would catch too many, so many that we wouldn't be able to harvest them in one day, like 80 or 90 at a time with these really short set nets. But then we were showing up and there'd be, you know, 20. And then one year we were checking our set net and it was single-digit numbers. And, you know, that's when we all have to kind of stand back and pause and say, what is going wrong here? What are we collectively doing wrong to create a situation where there are just so few fish now?

• 1:48:05Steven Rinella?

  Can you explain a little about the the decline in fisheries that you're talking about, like some of the, some of the things that might be contributing to that? But also it's just been interesting, within that answer, if you can touch on this, it's been interesting that that as people are looking ahead to the election and really anticipating, is the Senate going to flip? Right? And Alaska is one of those states where there's a lot of attention being paid due to that question. But at the same time, one of the key issues, one of the key political issues in Alaska

• 1:48:42Steven Rinella?

  are fisheries. And so we're in this really weird situation that might seem very strange to people in the lower 48, or as you guys would say, the people on the outside, is we're in this strange situation where fisheries are at, are at a level of like heightened national significance right now because they're so important to the race in Alaska and because the race in Alaska is so important to control of the Senate. So just again, to remind you, like it's a two-part question. What are some of the things happening to deplete fisheries in Alaska? And how has this turned into a, how has this turned into a political issue?

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  Well, and honestly, as an Alaskan, as an Alaskan who depends on our seafood resources, our salmon industry, our, you know, just a healthy ecosystem up here. I am so thankful that this is a marquee issue in Alaska, that it's a marquee issue in the lower 48. Because for so long, we have felt like this is the best kept secret in Alaska and the best kept secret in the lower 48. So I'm really thankful that this is the topic.

• 1:49:55Speaker 04

  You know, in Alaska, we recognize that there have been so many changes in the last 20 years in terms of, you know, farm fish has taken up such a huge market share for our commercial fishermen. And that's a huge concern. I think as Alaskans, as commercial, as the commercial industry realizes that's one of the biggest threats is the farm fish. The other big threat is ocean temperature rise. And I mentioned it at the beginning. The winters in ocean, one or two degree ocean temperature rise are sockeye salmon and that helps Bristol Bay. But for those of us in every other river system who really depend on Chinook salmon, that's one of the biggest losers.

• 1:50:38Speaker 04

  And, you know, we had five snowless winters in the early teens. And because of that, like by the fifth summer of a snowless winter, we had chum salmon floating down the river, completely unmolested, like nothing, there were no gill net marks. There was nothing that outwardly killed the salmon. And then they find out that they're actually having heart attacks or having heat strokes because the river is 70-something degrees above zero and it's, you know, 90 degrees in the shade. So those are all, you know, very, very damaging and challenging on salmon. We know that

• 1:51:23Speaker 04

  ocean acidification is also a problem. One of the biggest food sources for salmon is zooplancton. And zooplancton needs a certain level, you know, a certain pH. And when we have a really acidic ocean, that just really impacts the salmon's food. But on top of that, you know, for so many decades, it has just felt like statewide candidates have just kind of brushed the fisheries issues aside and said, oh, it's too complicated. I can't understand that. And that's just silly. It is not that complicated. Yes, there are a lot of complicating factors.

• 1:52:03Speaker 04

  But the one issue that we are really seeing a movement on, because it's hard to impact acidification and ocean, ocean temperature rise at the state level, at the federal level. So one of the easiest things that we can do is get our arms around the trawl fleet. And this is industrial factory trawling. And we're talking about metric tons of forage fish being harvested and then metric tons of bycatch. And every fisherman knows that bycatch is inevitable. But chucking over metric tons of juvenile halibut, salmon and crab, it's got to have a cumulative effect. And there really is a movement across Alaska and it's so nonpartisan.

• 1:52:46Speaker 04

  It's, you know, this is not a partisan issue, food and food security and taking care of our environment and not being wasteful. That is not a partisan issue. And so across Alaska, you know, seafood and salmon and fish, whether it's herring, halibut, crab, salmon, all of these things are part of our cultural identity. And this is how we really see ourselves. And so when we're seeing this really wasteful industry that does so much environmental damage. And yeah, you know, and I can see why they would feel like it is not just us and we're not saying it is just that. But this is the one thing that is easy to get our arms around.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  This is a practice that is not tolerated in most parts of the world. Most fisheries have said no to industrial factory trawling. And the fact that it happens in Alaska legally, on our own shores, by our own government. And so much of the economic benefit does not impact Alaska. We've got these industrial factory trawlers. Not only are they usurping and really taking so much of the resource, but they're also processing it offshore. So our small communities aren't even benefiting from the processing of it. And then they don't have to. Be taxed at the same, at the, at the rate they would be if they were processing onshore.

• 1:54:14Speaker 04

  So, you know, there are some cascading effects, but all of this is such an affront to Alaskan values of, of not, um, not wasting and then being better at sharing.

• 1:54:27Steven Rinella?

  How do you, what do you feel that the, could happen on the federal level to address? Let, let's say the one issue that you said that can be addressed, like, like the, the, the commercial trawl industry. What could happen at the federal level, um, that would start to, to, that would start to address it, or like you said, get like, get your arms around the issue? Because that does seem to me, you know, coming in and battling ocean acidification or battling the warming of the oceans seems, um, you know, like, uh, brings to mind like the Don Quixote, you know? But, but the, the, the trawl thing seems more solvable, but what, what would it take at

• 1:55:11Steven Rinella?

  the federal level to start getting a handle on that industry?

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  Well, the political will, and honestly, that comes from the outside. We need, um, voters to really move the dial on that. So much of what happens in the senate and the house and at the legislative level, you know, there, people imagine that the, the legislators are the thermostat. It's really the public. The public is demanding this change. And, um, you know, I, I think that the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, we really need to look at the composition of that management body. When, when you're looking at the composition of the board, what dictates that is the Magnus and Stevens Act.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  And Ted Stevens is one of our most revered senators and he is one of the co-authors of that legislation. And it dictates who sits on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. We have a member from Washington. We have a member from Oregon. We have agency staff. And then it is primarily the industry. So it's the fox watching the hen house. And in my opinion, we really need that body to really reflect Alaska more. There, there has been a movement for years to have tribal members sit on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. They wouldn't have a majority. They would be such a mini minority.

• 1:56:36Speaker 04

  I don't know what the threat is of just having members who are, um, more reflective of Alaska. We don't have enough people who are not, um, industry folks or agency folks who really live off the land and depend on those resources. They've really kind of been aced out of the conversation. I know, um, there are a few members on the AP, um, it's one of their committees, but, um, not enough to make a dent, not enough to really move the dial. Um, these, the, the few individuals who get on there from the public, it's just, like you say, it's Don Quixote, you know, you're just so, um, alone and it's so easy for these,

• 1:57:19Speaker 04

  um, industry folks to just kind of gaslight and, and gaslight the situation. And, um, we just want a ref, you know, a, a body that is reflective of the user groups and not just the industry. And, you know, if you're somebody who lives on the Cusco Quim River, it just feels like legal corruption and it, it really is our most present example of corporate greed where we have these huge corporations coming in and just usurping all the resource, taking all that money and leaving the state. And, you know, we, we don't even have scraps left.

• 1:57:59Speaker 04

  We're, we're fighting over crumbs here and on our rivers, like the Yukon River, they have been told they are not allowed to fish for salmon for seven years running.

• 1:58:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  This has just had such damaging effects. And then on top of that, you've got the war in Iran and the exorbitant fuel prices now. Shungak's paying 2682 a gallon. Um, most rural communities are paying around $10 a gallon for gas. And on top of not having that, um, just, um, you know, we, we really became, one of the most foundational parts of our culture in Western Alaska is the reliance on salmon. And we are accustomed to being able to harvest hundreds of salmon a year for each family. And that really is the, um, foundation of all of our nutrients.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  It is so expensive. So, um, it's just insult to injury and we're not having conversations with people about this around the state. And I think that's another reason it's, um, such a emotional and, and, and one of the reasons we're so fired up about this is because folks in these rural places are feeling starved out and feeling like no one is even coming to talk to them about these issues.

• 1:59:21Steven Rinella?

  You know, uh, my, my last question for you is, is, it's as much an observation as a question, is that, I mean, you've spent your life in, in fisheries and you know that oftentimes when there's a sort of resource argument, you find that, that recreational fishermen will feel like they're pitted against subsistence fishermen and subsistence fishermen will feel like they're pitted against recreational and commercial and the recreational guys are blaming the commercial guys and vice versa. It seems to me that the, that the situation with the salmon fishery and halibut fisheries in Alaska is becoming more of a unifier right now.

• 2:00:03Steven Rinella?

  And then I think that there's, I, I'm feeling like a, a lot of different kinds of fishermen, meaning, you know, recreational tourism people that come up, subsistence people like how you were brought up, commercial people, um, that they're all coming together and realizing that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. And it seems like it's moving beyond just blaming each other for it. Is, is that, is that your feeling from when you're out talking to people in communities in Alaska?

• 2:00:32Speaker 04

  It really is. And we've all gone through the phase of blaming each other. You know, we've gone through, I, I liken it to the, um, stages of grief and you go into these management meetings and you can see where different people are. And, and a lot of times you're, you're just kind of sliding up and down, you know, the, um, range of emotions in these meetings. But, um, no, we are, it, it is really impacting every sector, whether it's commercial, like you say, or sport, or, or, um, those of us who are living off the land.

• 2:01:07Speaker 04

  And, and it is galvanizing and this is such a nonpartisan issue and it's a movement. And, and I know, um, I often get the credit or the blame for elevating this. It is not me elevating this alone. This is a movement. I am one of tens and thou- tens of thousands of Alaskans who have just had it on this. And, and we, you know, people have been going to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council for years now, saying the same thing. You get, I think, two whole minutes if you're a member of the public to try to encapsulate,

• 2:01:40Speaker 04

  um, how damaging, how impactful this is to our families. And I think folks, you know, we're so thankful that this issue has been elevated to the level that it is being elevated to. We're so thankful that this campaign is about Alaskan issues and, and issues that really resonate here with people on a day-to-day basis. It's so often in, in national races and in election cycles, these discussions seem to be about really abstract things, things, um, happening in faraway places. And nothing is more personal to Alaskans than the way we eat and, and how we hunt and fish and our access to hunting and fishing and our rights to hunting and fishing and

• 2:02:24Speaker 04

  being able to pass on those traditions and the values inherent in those traditions. You know, I can't teach my kids how to be Alaskan or how to be Yupik unless we're actually hunting and fishing. I can't teach them from a book or with words or pictures. The only way to do it is to be actually doing it, to be out on the land, you know, teaching your kids how to read the weather, how to respect your catch, how to make sure you're sharing your harvest with other people, um, maintaining that balance and, um, you know, coming to hunting and fishing with the right attitude. Just the, the tiny rules that we have to live by.

• 2:03:04Speaker 04

  I mean, you'll, this will resonate with you, Steve, just the basic rule of when you're outdoors camping and fishing, you don't complain. You don't talk about being hungry or cold or tired. That's off the table. Um, you, you, those are not things that you learn unless you're really out there doing it. So, and, you know, one of my favorite values is like, you know, when you're processing fish, when you're, um, interacting with, with your game, um, you have to be in the right mindset. You cannot be in a bad mood. You have to be grateful. You have to, um, you know, be calm. And, and what a great value to teach people.

• 2:03:45Speaker 04

  You cannot say disparaging things or things that might disrespect, um, that your, your harvest, your catch. Just everything about living off the land teaches you such, um, important values and skills that are transferable to everything. So, and as Alaskans, this, this is not a partisan issue. This is just who we are.

• 2:04:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, Mary Pelto, Pelto, thank you for coming on and talking about the issues and we'll be, uh, we'll be watching. I'll be waking up on November 4th, very curious about what, what happens up there. So thank you very much for coming on.

• 2:04:20Speaker 04

  Thank you. And it might take a few weeks for all of our ballots to come in. So, you know, it might be around Thanksgiving by the time we know how this, how this race turns out, but it's, it's, it's neck and neck. So I'm going to need every vote I can get.

• 2:04:31Steven Rinella?

  I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Thanks again.

• 2:04:34Speaker 04

  Thanks, Steve.

• 2:05:01Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. Go and ask any serious whitetail hunter what the best time

• 2:05:44Steven Rinella?

  of the year is to be out in a tree. And it's, it's not a holiday, okay? The, the best time is not already on your calendar. It's the rut. It's the two or three week window that serious deer hunters plan everything else around. And OnX Hunt's rut calendar does this for you and helps take the guesswork out of your planning. It tracks the different phases of the rut as they move through your area. So you know when to book the time off, when to have the whole camp locked in and ready, or conversely, when it's still too early to burn out your best spots. You only get so many rut hunts in your life. So use the rut calendar within OnX Hunt to make the most of the whitetail rut this fall.

• 2:06:28Steven Rinella?

  Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house. I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality, though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money. But that's what's great about the One Pay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories, okay? Like Walmart, gas or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high yield savings, your money keeps growing.

• 2:07:10Steven Rinella?

  Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 2:07:17Speaker 06

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 2:07:32Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.