Bear Grease - Ep. 471: Trout Grease - A Hostile Takeover

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Bear Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker stage a Bear Grease hostile takeover and head to the river to do some fly fishing without Clay Newcomb. The two talk fly fishing, Bear’s river rafting abandonment, building Bear Grease YouTube Channel content, mule training, and the value of getting outside and simply “moseying” around. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Good boots for good tops. Welcome to the Trout Grease podcast, and this time we are not kidding. That's right. I'm Bear Newcomb. I am Josh Landbridge Spielmaker. And we are out on the river today, fly fishing. A little bit of a change of pace from the regular Bear Grease podcast. My dad usually likes to make fun of fly fishermen.

That's right. And we're tired of it. Sick and tired of it. We've had enough. So today for the extra job, we are out here on the river, fly fishing. River's a little muddy today. It's a little muddy. We've had a lot of rain, and we had torrential rain last night, but we're going to make the best of it. We watched a dude up by the boat ramp, just pull out a nice brown trout, so hopefully they're hitting.

But Bear and I have done a hostile takeover. Hostile takeover. Yeah. For those of you who have been listening to, to the Civil War series, and you're a little inundated with history and all the details of the Civil War. This is a little break. Yeah, Trout Greece has been a long time coming, I feel like.

I agree. I feel like my dad really started coming around whenever we had Dwayne Hayd on the podcast. I agree. Although he's not out here with us. No, no, you're not going to catch him out here. But anyway, it's a mid-sendezer. Summer fly fishing, what are they hitting? What are the trout hitting?

Well, typically we would be fishing some hoppers. You know, we'd be getting into hopper season right now, getting a little dry fly action. But we've had a pretty, I would say, mild, moderate June. As far as rain goes? Rain and temperature. It's not been quite as cold or quite as hot as it would typically be in. June. True. So the terrestrials are not quite popping out yet like they would be this time of year.

So right now we're throwing a couple streamers. Water's real murky, so we're trying to throw something out there that might see. We have had earlier in the month, I was doing a lot of creaking, small mouth creaking. And it all kind of slowed. Oh, look, there's a baby phone right there. Little, little, little tiny fawn. Wow, that's cool. That joker's probably not even a month old. Little spotted fawn. Incredible.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we like to come out here. That is exactly why. But what I was saying was earlier in the month, we had a day, well, a few days of heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy rain. And the river, there's a river that I raft a lot, that I go float a lot. right and it got to 13 feet one day it was higher a few days before that but there was one day where it got to 13 feet um and i decided to go float it because this is the time of year to do that so i got the pack raft out and there was a little uh it's called a low head dam oh are you on one or is that bottom i think i'm home it's called a low head dam which i later learned is pretty

not a good idea to float. Probably should have done my research before floating it. The actual dam? Yeah, it's like a... Okay. Why? It's probably... Well, because basically, imagine like a dam that sticks out about the water, maybe eight feet, and the waterfall, there's a little waterfall coming off of it.

Whenever it hits the water, the water's going straight down, and a lot of times it'll recirculate. Oh, create a little eddy underneath. Yeah, so if you drop off that and then the back of your raft, gets caught in that circulation, then it can suck your raft under and then suck you under.

And... Doesn't sound good. The other dangerous part about it is that the water's really aerated and that makes you less buoyant. Oh. So you're more likely to sink and your life check.

It isn't going to do as much. But anyway, I floated it, jumped the low head dam, made it out. This is before I realized it was dangerous. But the water was really high

and it was probably a class three, one of my bigger floats that I've done. And I called my dad about halfway through the river because my friend wasn't going to pick me up, but I decided to do more river than I was expecting. Okay. And I called my dad. Trustee Clay Newcomb. I was like, hey, do you think you can come pick me up in a few hours at this bridge? And he was like, no, but I could go drop your truck off up there. And so I was like, okay, perfect, that'll work.

And I float the river, a couple hour float, get down to the bridge, I walk up, and my truck is not there. And I was like, where on earth could my truck possibly have gone? What was your first thought? Did you think, well, somebody took my truck? No, first thought was he forgot. And I called my dad, he didn't pick up, called him, he didn't pick up, called him, called him, finally. he picked up and I was like, where's my truck at? Did you park it out the wrong bridge?

That was my first thought. He part of the wrong bridge. And he was like, oh, I forgot. He sure enough forgot to drop the truck off. Listen, I feel like all the, and we can say this since we've done this hostile takeover. I feel like you, like number one on Clay's Dishing Out Crap list. I would say you would be number one. one and my hair and i would be number two and so i just i just want everybody to know that that

this is our day this is like a we get to dish it back out but when he's not here yeah well i ended up calling my neighbor and it took him about an hour and then he goes out to his car and realizes the tire was flat and so he's like it's going to be another hour and i was like no man so i called My other neighbor, and he swung by and picked me up in like 10 minutes. So we made it back. Now you know who your real friends are. Yeah. But that was for an episode of the Bear Grease YouTube channel.

So that brings up an interesting thing to talk about because the bear for anybody who doesn't know yet, the Bear Grease YouTube channel is wild. wildly popular and wildly exciting. And if you're not watching the content, you should be. Because you don't even have to be an outdoorsman to enjoy it. Bear makes it entertaining for everyone. Yeah, my goal behind the YouTube channel is kind of just to show, how diverse the outdoors can be. because I think anybody in any given place,

if they've got access to some sort of wild place around them, I think there's something that you can be doing all year round. I think there's never a time where the outdoors don't have something to offer. But a lot of times that means that you kind of break outside the box of hunting and fishing. A lot of times that means things like rafting or rock climbing or craft. The thing about rock climbing is you can do it just about anywhere. I mean, you can do that in a good spot in the city. All you need is rocks.

And so, yeah, we got pretty diverse content. But the way I view it is I'm just out there moseying around. Mosy and around. Yep. And so, yeah, there's a pretty diverse set of content. But the other thing that I'm trying to show inside of it is that the natural, world is as relevant to us today as it has ever been. And so on the channel, we are finding relevancy in the natural world.

Whether it's through making a bow or eating the food that we catch, that's kind of what we're after is the relevancy that the natural world has in a modern society to modern people. Well, I think that's not just cool, but it's important. And I think, you know, I've known you your whole life and I've watched you grow up and just seeing the things that you're interested in versus what is popular today. The stuff you're doing is not necessarily popular. Right. But I feel like it's so valuable and people have missed out on the benefit of what's available outdoors. And I love that you're kind of putting that on for everyone to be able to see.

And to, you know, I feel like you can watch one of your videos and just learn a lot. Yeah, yeah, that's another big part of it. There's a lot to learn. And there's a lot that natural world can teach you, really. I mean, I've learned so much through just being in the outdoors. I've learned a lot of very important life lessons. I've learned a lot about the actual systems themselves, and it's kind of inspired a lot of what I do in my craftsmanship

or really just my life in general. And so that's what we're showing over at the Bear Grease YouTube channel. I like it. What's been some of your favorite videos that you've done so far? Probably. I did a video. where I tagged along with one of my buddies, who's a falconer, Aaron Kincaid, and we went down to South Texas and trapped a wild Harris Hawk off a telephone pole with a little cage with a mouse

in it that had some snares on it. Trapped the hawk. And then in six weeks, he trained it, and we went and hunted with him. Just turned around like that. and that was pretty fascinating because I do a lot of you know I do some well I wouldn't say a lot I do a little bit of mule training a little bit of dog training you know train some critters and the falcon was a super interesting experience because what I what I learned is that it's all kind of the same like same principles whenever you train any animal but there's just different like there's certain aspects of a falcon that you need to like ramp up. whereas with a mule you might ramp that aspect down but it was pretty interesting doing that another another really fun video was uh i went out to this cave kind of an old hermit cave i've heard it called um it looks like a moonshine cave i don't actually know what they were doing

whenever they built it but it's a cave with a rock oh did you miss one i just missed a good fish shucks it's a cave with like a rock wall built it's a cave with like a rock wall built it around it, a little chimney coming out of it. And I went camped in there and turkey hunted off the mule and then only ate the food that I could catch, kill, or find out there. Did you go home hungry or did you go home satisfied? No, I really, my stomach did not growl once. I mean, like by the end of the trip, it was like, you know, nice to have a good meal, but I was not that hungry. Because the fish were just, I mean, you could catch as many fish as you wanted to eat. There's green briotips and all sorts of foraging opportunities, but that was a

fun video, taking slow trap out there, camping in that cave and turkey hunting. But, yeah, there's been a, we've got one coming out this week. I went to southeast Alaska two weeks ago, just got back from that trip. And we were on a meteor shoot, so we were filming for, a meat eater episode for next year. We were bear hunting. And I did a behind the scenes of a meat eater shoot. So where I basically, I interviewed the producer of the show, interviewed the cameraman and kind of showed just some of the stuff you won't usually see.

And one thing that I tell people a lot is that the cameraman are usually way cooler. unsung heroes than the people in front of the camera it's true i i interviewed a cameraman named dirt myth who is one of the coolest people that i know uh has just done all sorts of stuff film for some wild shows and uh has some crazy stories he told some of them on the on the video but that video will be coming out coming out this week cool it is like love you feel it in your heart iR radio Canada's Number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate, love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere.

Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride, Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHartRadio.ca. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit. you. That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino

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and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Man, I love being out on the River Bear. Agreed. This is my happy place, man.

Yeah, a little morning fly fishing. It's hard to beat. It really is. One of these days, I'm going to get your father out here. He's been out here. He's been out here with me once. Okay. We had the previous director of Arkansas Game of Fish,

game and fish out here. And I brought him fishing and clay tagged along. What people don't know that your dad doesn't want to admit is he's actually, he's got a pretty good cast. Yeah. He's done it a little bit, but. He does. He does. Yeah, I've been doing some small mouth creaking.

as many mornings as I can. I recently... I've never done much smallmouth fishing with fly rod, or with the regular rod, for that matter. And a good buddy of mine... Man, I just had another hit. Dang, where do you think?

Black, Zonker. My buddy, Chris Graves, and I, decided to enter a smallmouth fly fishing competition. And we... We fished, and neither one of us are big smallmouth guys. We typically fish trout, and we didn't, we weren't, it was like really slow. Again, the water was real murky, and we were just fishing. There we go.

There we go. Nice. Got a fish on. This camera over there. We were fishing, and we only caught. I caught like a little small 7 inch small mouth. And I put him on the bump board to measure him. Uh-huh. And he flopped off.

Oh, dadgum it. Dang, just like that? No, I had him in my hand, and I set him on the bump board to measure him. And he flopped off into the water. Oh, okay. And we fished all day, and we only caught about, we only caught two other fish. We caught a pretty decent small mouth. And then we just thought we were doing terrible.

Uh-huh. And we got back there probably, they had two classes. They had an all-fly where you could just fly fish whatever fly you wanted, and that's what we were fishing. And then they had a one fly where you and your partner could only use one fly of one pattern each. It's like you both could pick a different pattern. No, you had to have the same pattern, but you could both have one. So you had two flies to fish all day long. Oh, dang.

so you can't even lose them. Right. And there were probably 15 teams in each class. Uh-huh. And we got back and they... Oops, sorry, Bear. They started announcing the winner. They announced the winner.

They announced third place. And that was my bad. Third place was like... Had like 12 inches of fish. Uh-huh. Total? Total. And then they...

They... announced second place and they were like team land bridge and we're like what because we had we had 21 and a half inches of fish uh and then they announced first place and first place had 23 and a half inches dang so if i hadn't lost that seven inch fish we would have gotten first place oh wow so anyway i i uh i got new appreciation for for the small mouth guys and small mouth fishing it was a lot of fun Yeah, the other fun part about smallmouth fishing is you catch all sorts of other fish, catch a lot of sunfish. Right now, those little long-eared sunfish look like something straight out of the Amazon rainforests. They do. They look tropical almost.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Gorgeous fish. And, you know, I heard somebody told me fishing with a spin rod is like reading the, reading the gospel. Okay. Fishing with a fly rod is like sitting in Jesus lap while he tells you the stories himself. And so I just love catching everything I possibly can on a fly rod. Yeah.

I've never heard it describe like that. I would compare it to compound bow is like fishing with a spin rod. I would agree with that. And then fly rod is kind of like switching to a trad bow. And I'll tell you what I one day want to get into is going to the self-bow of fishing, which would be making your own bamboo fly rod. You know, I've thought about that myself. It's such a, it is such a craft. I mean, it is, it's an art.

Yeah, it's just not as simple as just like getting a couple of rivercane switches and taking them out. Exactly. Like you got to like split on. It's made from six pieces, six different pieces of bamboo that are like precision planed. Yeah. And you've got to use a jig that makes the taper. And so it's, yeah, it's definitely quite an art. Yeah.

One day I would like to make a fly rod. And then maybe I'll get hooked. Who knows? No pun intended? None taken. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we're able to, to, I tell you what, I just, I'm standing here watching Baranookum fish and that man has a very nice cast. Well, thank you.

Very pretty. I'm glad we could bring people along. Yeah, it's about time. I mean, Bear Grease is great. Don't get me wrong. You know, I'm the producer of Bear Grease, so I'm all in on Bear Grease. Right. To be able to go out in the field.

being the SS land bridge here fishing and giving it to them straight and giving it to them straight that's right this is pretty pretty great yeah so bear on the bear grease channel like what kind of stuff is coming up can you give us a sneak peek of anything cool that you got yeah um so i'm going to be showing the full video about how i trained slow trap, my mule. Okay. And then I'm going to show part of a trip we did in New Mexico with him last year, which was kind of like a ride of passage trip for him.

And then I'm going to take him on a bigger ride here in the Ozarks and do kind of a mule camping, maybe some squirrel hunting. And so that's coming up, the full video on how I train slow trap. I'm also doing another kind of survival video you could call it. But I'm taking my dog, Osage, and taking my Danger Ranger with the rooftop tent. And we're going to go overland for three days. And we're going to eat only what we catch and kill. Okay.

We're going to squirrel hunt, fish, forage. And I'm going to be kind of progressing. towards a destination that is a waterfall way down in this valley, thick as can be to get in there. And you can float it. It's a little creek, and you can float it whenever it's just pouring down rain. That's the only time. And I'm going to be floating it trying to jump the waterfall. Sweet.

Yeah, it's probably a 10-foot waterfall. Any bow fishing stuff coming up? I don't think so. Man, I love the bow fishing. Do you? I like watching the bow fishing stuff. I'm kind of always on the bowfish. But the thing about bow fishing and YouTube videos is nighttime content is just really...

It's hard to film. It's hard to film and just like not... It's hard to really show what's going on. Yeah. So I do some of it whenever I find a good opportunity. We do these segments called Cooking with Mom. Yeah. Where we'll, I'll go catch something or kill something, bring it back.

My mom will show me how to cook it. We cut a big old grass carp, 42-pound grass carp, biggest carp I've ever shot. That's a big carp. Yeah, I shot it with a self-bow, too. And we cooked it up. And it was not that good. I'm not going to lie. When you fried it, it was all right.

but it actually did kind of meet up to the reputation that it has as a muddy fish, which I was kind of surprised by it because I feel like a lot of times people make reputations like that for critters based off of like one poor experience. And I'm not giving it that reputation. I'm just saying on my experience, because I have also had a good experience of the grass carp. Oh, really? Eating it? Yeah, I baked it one time and it was really?

Yeah, it was like a really nice flavor. makey meat. Huh. And I'm not sure what I did right that we did not do when we fried it. But, so I'm not saying grass carp's bad. You need to go figure that out for yourself. Yeah, I think that's important. Get out there and grass carp, folks.

Yeah. With a fly rod. Yep. Or if you can't catch them, just shoot them. That's kind of what I resorted to after a while. Yep. Well, beautiful morning.

Beautiful morning. It looks like the sun's wanting to come out now. Yeah. I feel like I'm wearing a sauna in this rain suit, so about time for me to shed some layers. Same. Well, thanks a ton for listening to trout grease. Yeah.

And let us know, send us some comments. Let us know how good this episode is, and like if you want more. Yeah, if you want more random trout grease. That's right. 20, 30 minute, drops and we'll keep doing them we'll talk the powers that be into letting us do some more so yeah thank you guys for listening we appreciate you appreciate you guys listening to bear grease

it is uh it's a joy that we get to do it and we hope you guys enjoy it um so keep the wild place it's wild because bears like trout that's right oh and you know what we say on the youtube channel what's that mozion mozion mozion Mozyon. Get out there, Mozyon. Thanks, folks. Join me and follow the podcast Conspiracy theories, where we explore what's really going on behind the official narrative. Like, what if the Loch Ness monster isn't a monster at all, but an elephant?

What do the richest 1% know that we don't? Why are they building all those bunkers? And really, what the heck is going on with the Denver airport? Join me every week to see just how high up this goes. on the Spotify podcast conspiracy theories. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.