The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 106: Gladesmen

Episode Date: March 6, 2018

Florida Everglades- Steven Rinella talks with Matt Cook, the gladesmen Josh Bright and Ryan Tubbs, along with Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects discussed: Janis’s disgusting seasickness; dry launching and running airboats; Everglades style and Palm Beach style airboats; giggin’ frogs; Snakehead fishing; commercial swordfishing; sightcasting; talking to ET; catchin’ your love mate; and more.   Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. I have reasons why I think it's best if you can.

That's going to stick with me all day. Don't throw that out there right before the podcast. You want to know why I think it's best if you can? Yeah. Okay, I have a theory about it. Yeah, I have a theory about why it's good. I put theory to rogan and rogan thinks it's good because he thinks people uh talk over each other less it makes it hard to talk over someone else you know if you go out to dinner like you and your lady and another dude and his lady at various times through dinner it's like for whatever there's like two conversations

going on yep like you're talking to his wife and then you're talking to your buddy and you know you get less of that effect you seem to just listen to podcasts you do a good job of people not doing that that it's one at a time it's not i mean do you see that as a challenge or is that yes Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Just a normal conversation. Like you said, people do that. Well, it's like, it's like, what are you doing?

I'm just adjusting levels. Oh. Two fingers. I feel like you got me a little out of it. Yeah, it just has, it's like a normal chat, but there's a little bit of discipline to it. Yeah, imposing the discipline. I cannot believe you guys do this every week or every couple weeks. 52 a year.

We do them, and usually we do a... Do them in batches. Sometimes we'll sit down, and sometimes we'll take a couple days and do three or four. We're ready whenever you are. Yeah, we've released, I think, 102 or 103 of them that is crazy did you listen to the meat tree ones both yep meat tree one and two i listened to permissions i've made major changes in my life oh yeah so yeah i made major changes in my life well uh canyon is going to be a pig and shit pig and mud you know i think to go and look at your place because he's full of like little ideas about deer he is and i think that uh he is going to see the potential i mean and he's going to see the ability to um that there are big areas that are

just unencumbered no one you know that part when he when he asked me like you did what does that mean like that you've never been in there i'm like i physically have never been in there yeah and it's big i mean it's a big i mean 100 acres i've never been in no one goes in and a difference between um mark and doug is that doug sort of grounded in reality where doug like looks at properties that need to turn profits yeah so Doug's got like agriculture forestry like in Kenyon's perspective it's like how are we going to make big giant bucks it is and we had that we had that and Doug so Doug came and spent a day and a half and came around he was very nice about some things we've done

things we we did do better and uh um he's like what's your goal and i you know i just i said you know i you know i'd like to hold deer and then he got into the conversation about the neighbors you know shooting the deer and not doing it and what bothers you and the same thing i went down that path he immediately took he's like all right right, timeout. You know, they're going to move through here. And he actually, I really mean this. He actually convinced me to have a better attitude about it. Like that it's just going to happen. Don't get hung up on it.

He legitimately convinced me. Those guys that own Yeti. Yeah. Coolers. Yeah. I mean, their place is unbelievable. And they're like pride themselves that it's not fenced. And everything down there is fenced. And they won't fence it.

But they got one neighbor's. It's one group of neighbors that shoots their deer. Which is not how the state views it. But their property is not fenced, they point out. It's just got a fence. Because they fenced one property line. Down in South Texas or where okay one they fenced one line on it okay because everybody else is practicing similar because these guys post up on the these guys perch up all along that property

line that part you know i've heard rumors i told this to mark that you know the neighbors the work we've done in forestry and everything that they called you know we've created a deer factory so they post up a lot of you see a lot of stands just on the other side i mean and they will because you can in michigan they'll put certain you know food items out there that I don't have on my property. You know, they'll do a pile of apples. I don't have apples. And they'll, I mean, they, you know, during certain times of the year, they'll pull deer. I mean, so they, I mean, and it's funny.

I was telling that to Mark. They've got tricks. And they, they literally, you know, they know the area where I've logged and the transition areas. You just need to go in and put something not toxic, but just that tastes like shit all over their bait piles. Human hair. Salt? Have you heard that? Yeah.

Human hair? Yeah, human hair is a good one. People do that. Go to a barbershop and sprinkle it along. Have you heard that? I haven't heard that'll keep deer away. That human hair, I've heard to do that. Like little tu little tufts of human i don't like people's hair in my mouth no well i'm not saying to eat it it's for the deer no i'm telling i'm with the deer yeah

um all right ready ready okay first thing we're gonna do today uh everyone introduce themselves Everyone introduced themselves as though dealing poker. So we'll start with Giannis. Hi, I'm Giannis. I'm here today. Just coming off a big morning of being all seasick. Like, man. Short morning. Lost an enormous amount of respect for Giannis today.

Then going down, Mr. Cook. Matt Cook from Chicago, Illinois. And you're having what? I'm just trying to set the scene. What's in your cup there, your glass? I have a Yingling beer. Oh, really? South Florida, yep.

So you poured a beer into that glass. I did. I thought you were having some sort of large glass of bourbon or or something no no it's south florida style okay moving along uh josh bright from south florida i'm drinking bud light in the can in the can josh bright right right how do you spell it b-r-i-g-h-t and then ryan yeah but tell them your name ryan tubs south florida south florida drinking bud light from a can before we start you guys are single like not married single yeah girlfriends no okay so we've had good luck in the past by pointing out people's singleness because then um female listeners all five of them will know no because there's a lot more than that because we used to talk about the lack of them and then they point out that that they are out there female listeners knowing

now that you're out there right and that you're single will come and find you. I have heard that this happens from a man whose initials are BB. You know who I'm talking about? Doesn't matter. I don't. So, Giannis, I want to start out with you explaining your morning, sort of your state of being and mind this morning. But when my state of being and mind went south, you mean? Yeah, like just your little problem.

Your little problem. Well, we went, can I tell them what we were doing that made it happen? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, so we went fishing with Ryan and ran, how far do we go? 18, 20 miles. 18, 20 miles offshore from Boca Inlet. So you're not so, Ryan, you're not so possessive about your spot so we can say we were 15 to 18 miles off Boca Raton. Doesn't matter.

Way out. Way out, pretty far out. Took us a while to get there. It was rough. On my scale of calm or rough seas, it was rough out there. Were you running? Did you think it was rough? Very choppy.

Very choppy. Yeah, rough. Rough would be a good word for it. Not like, oh, my God, the boat's going to flip, but just annoyingly rough. Yeah. Rough. From a lot of different directions. Yeah.

So we ran for at least an hour, right, on the way out. Then we finally got to the spot, started rigging up, and we were fishing with a fellow named Nick, who I guess you'd call like the first mate in that situation, right? And he got everything in the water quickly. I'd say just about the time that bait got down to 1,600 feet, I was like, oh, man, here we go. So this happens often to me.

Just like you spend enough time with a guy, and you sort of get a sense of how they handle situations, and just to see him just like not just staring off into space man they turn green i was looking for the horizon yeah we're bringing up a swordfish and he can't even look over in the direction of the rod that was the second one yeah i was like yeah saw that first one coming in no so i swear i was looking towards the shore you could still see just a few buildings you know at that distance and uh when i would turn the other direction and look at that rod and where the action was it was just like those swells were

just right behind the rod and uh every time i see one of those swells roll i mean that's all it takes you know yeah it didn't make me hate you. It made me... There was some of that, but mostly it made me just pity you, and I felt bad for you. But tinged with a little bit of disgust. Had I said we need to go in, as soon as I got sick,

then maybe you'd hate me. No, more pity. And I got in such a better mood once he started getting better. You kind of like had a little bit of a throw up, but not really, and felt a little better? No, I finally, you know, because you're running through all these things in your head. Like even Ryan's like, you know, you want to have a dip?

That'll make you throw up. You'll feel better, you know? I was like, yeah, I already thought about that. But like that's too hardcore. I don't really need to start chewing again just for this. But then I'm thinking about how Ron Layton told us about the salt water. I'm like, I wonder if I could just pound a glass of salt water and cure myself forever. And throw up.

Yeah. And then I said, you know, you're just being a little bitch. You just need to throw up. So I just jam my finger, my whole hand as far as I could into my. Well, that's what you were doing. Oh, yeah. Because I was like, you know, you're just like, you're close, you're close, you're close. And eventually, you're just like, dude, you know it's going to be better once you get it over with.

And as soon as I did it, it's amazing. I mean, but I only got like 10, 15 minutes out of feeling better. And then it sort of sunk back down again. But anyways, yeah, a little seasick. I just got hit by a mosquito. So we just... That was just a quick teaser into something we're out in how do you describe how do you describe where we're at right now i mean we're

out in a stilt house like a shack set on pilings out in the out in the glades it's an up-and-coming uh you know luxury home uh on stilts um no it's more of a shack shack six miles into the Everglades off of just west of Boca and Fort Lauderdale. And a handful of these old places out here, and they were grandfathered in under some kind of land management plan. Yep. There's in this area, it's a state area, there's about 15 of different, you know, levels of complexity. Some are falling down and some are, you know, a little newer and have been remodeled. They are leases with the state,

and so everyone out here just got their leases renewed. Good for how many years? I think it's 2020. Oh, so they could feasibly, you could have to burn this place down in two years? Is it 20 lease or goes until 2020? No, it is

20 incremental more years. So you have 20 more years. So you're breathing easy. We're breathing easy. Absolutely. But they've been around for I think since the 50s. And they were, as history said, a lot of people said they were hippie communes at one time. A lot of people have, over the years, hidden out out here, fugitives.

You hear all kinds of stories. But what they are now is just for people that enjoy the Everglades, airboating, et cetera. Yeah. Like, kind of like, you get the sense, and just from conversations with your friends here, is that you get the sense that people now buy these more as beer-drinking locations. That's part of it, for sure. There's like a social aspect to it, even though there's good duck hunting, frog gigging, bow fishing, alligator hunting. Yeah, it's not much different than like a cabin in the north woods where

supposedly you're going there to you know hunt deer for a whole week and some people do that but a lot of people go up there and drink beer for beer drinking purposes you know what it's been described someone told me a couple years ago it's a lifestyle there's several locals that these don't change hands very often so um believe it or not, it's somewhat selective, the people that have them, and so it's a lifestyle. People come out on the weekends. They very often hand them down from one generation to the next. So there's a lot of pride in this area

and the people that have been around for a long time. Yeah, it's almost like a little subculture in South Florida. You go three miles east of here and going to town and 90 of the people don't even know it exists you know um i mean they don't know that there's these little shacks yeah they don't they don't know you know they know the everglades are here and the airboats are here you know obviously you guys come in and seen the people at the at the lawn at the land we call it the landing yeah you know you see people there watching the sunset gators you know birds etc walking on the levees but they don't really know

all of what exists you know there is you know you have some tour boats you know that come out and people do see it from that you know they'll ride them by they'll see it but they see it from a distance and don't really know the whole story of them and really what's gone down here um it's like when ryan takes you to see a plane wreck yeah yeah pretty much takes you see a plane wreck they're like what happened i don't know yeah when to heaven don't know yeah i mean that's you know but I can tell you that it happened. You know, and that's kind of what the, you know, little special part of it about is out here is it's, you know,

having the opportunity to do it, you know, and have the camps. And, you know, it's something that's very small percent that actually come here and sit where we're sitting right now doing what we're doing. Yeah, I had talked to Matt, you know, one of our special guests here, Matt Cook, some months ago. And he always kind of like mentioned a camp in the Everglades and mentioned frog gigging. But I didn't really, with all due respect, I didn't pay that much attention. I mean, he showed me a picture, but it didn't really, like, it didn't, I just didn't have a good frame of reference to picture it.

So we land, we finally agree, like, yes, this is something we should come down and check out. And we flew into Fort Lauderdale, and it's not far. I mean, very short. What's the drive from Fort Lauderdale to the launch? 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So, yeah, you'd be in a big airport, right? Direct flight from the West Coast. Yeah, direct flight from the Pacific Ocean.

Land in Fort Lauderdale. In 20 minutes, you're at a boat launch. And the first impression I have coming out here is, this is the only place I've ever been where people leave their trailer in the water like I'm telling you I don't know like it is customary around the country and I have explored

it extensively to launch your boat and then drive your trailer up and park it somewhere on dry ground kind of out of the way. Yeah, but pure people are like, they back it down, drive their boat off, and they're like, you know, they're going away overnight. It's like, perfect.

I'll just leave it right here. I'll just leave it right here because this way it's ready for me when I come back. That's probably a function of an airboat, right? You can leave the hubs out of the water. Yeah, I mean mean obviously you want to leave your hubs out of the water keep keep your bearings in good shape but um down here you know way we part you know putting the boats in the water you know that's in this area a lot of the parts of the state where they airboat you actually dry launch your boat you have to you know it's it's pretty redneck you kick it in reverse floor it smash the brake and dump the boat off the trailer dry like that yeah you drop it off on

the ground because there's not like a you know we got a nice little incline where we can back in you know um other places that we airboat we're legitimately dropping our boat in a field more or less and that's what you got. You just drop it off on the ground, drive off a little airboat trail, and go through the marsh. Yeah, so we get in, and we take off in the airboats. And you guys don't run with lights normally because the way the moon is, I don't know if it has to do with whether it's throwing moonlight or not, but you've got the whole swamp, which is just black.

But the creek or the drainages and the trails look like aluminum foil. Like strips of aluminum foil and light. And you can just run. But you can see everything perfectly clear. And there's nothing to hit. No rocks. Because there's no trees and no rocks.

Yeah, there is some trees and no rocks yeah there there is some trees that you gotta know where they're at there are some submerged there's some there's some stumps there's some willow stumps willow heads you know that kind of stuff when we've we've found them before yeah and the interesting about running the airboat too is there's no prop yeah no underwater yeah no your your prop is you know it's an airplane engine you know with a prop up on top of the hall and you have a rudder and without basically the difference in a outboard boat something where you got a skeg down your only power you know the way to turn it is with power you know you got a rudder that's direct and air when you lift off the gas then you have no you

you have no control so that's why you notice when we're driving we're on and off the gas you know a lot a lot you know and you can run stuff over without maiming it yeah because we would have killed 20 alligators if we had a prop in the water yeah they're manatee friendly yeah it's just like you just like skim right over like alligators just kind of like moving under the boat and it took me a minute because at first i'm used to like when you hit something with a with a normal skiff or whatever i'm used to the you know noise of the prop yeah but here it's just like you can just like grease right over yeah everything and you arrive out here at the camp and the camp's like up on pilings is that what you guys call them yeah piling yeah and you

just pull the airboat up and you guys put your seats on them way up high so you're up looking i'm presumably right so you can see over the grass right yeah that's a you know and like i said you know as far as like uh going back to like the culture of the airboating that's a southern glades where we ride everglades style because we like to be up high in the grass. That's Everglades style? Yeah. You go up further up to the state and you'll tend to see the boats down lower their center of gravity because you'll see more of like a ride boat was what we call it. We build more of a hunt style boat.

Oh. Because you guys are saying you run a Palm Beach style hole in an Everglades style seat. Yeah. run a palm beach style hole yeah in an everglades style seat yeah it's it well it's all you know it's uh the palm beach style kind of goes back to you know in the everglades you know going way back into the you know early 70s 60s when guys were building them getting into hot rodding them up building you know hunting boats they built the brought the rigging up and then the hall itself is a palm beach style boat you know um which is how the hall is designed with the round chine you know the boats actually round in the bottom yep you know where you have a what they call like a sled style boat has more of a flat side wider bottom tends to do better with water you know shallower grass our boats going

back to the the palm beach style hall that we're running they tend to do better on the dry ground and the thicker you know and the thicker stuff you know they designed to go where everybody else don't go when did they go off road or yeah it's like a it's like a sled but best thing you can you know compare it as a sled boat to faster like a hot rod style boat our boat's more like a four-wheel drive style boat when did airboat like do you know the history of airboats like when did airboats become a thing i mean i couldn't tell you date you know to the year but i would say developing into what they are what we have now 50s 60s they start getting into you know years ago they a four-cylinder you know airplane motor they used to run them no battery gravity-fed fuel tank you know they put the fuel tank up above the motor and they

never ran they didn't run batteries none of that and they hand propped everything you know then started just like in the old airplane days when you yell contact and yeah they you know magneto hand prop it and that's how they went you know now and then they started getting and i would say in the your 60s uh 70s you really start getting popular into the six-cylinder motors building you know fancying them up a little bit uh you know and now they're going all the way to ls you know all aluminum ls car motors with superchargers and gear reduction and dudes like hot rods now yeah fuel and electronic fuel injection you know we're we're still we're starting to become considered old school the way our boats are built and you're saying there was a time when guys around here would run whatever kind of airboat and then the boys from palm beach would roll into town and people were like holy shit that's how you ought to make an airboat

yeah and then that caught on well the palm the palm beach guys that style boat were like they were known as the you know what one of the sayings was that if you told guys from palm beach that there was deer on the moon they would build a machine to get there and that's just the way it was that's that's the old saying about it so there's arguments there now there's guys down south in the in the southern part of the glades i argued that the sled and you know um there's other builders i'm not going to mention them all because i don't want to start a war down here but um you know we're biased to what we run but uh they can you know i'll take you and show you what it'll do and yeah and they can bring what they got and my gripe with them is the noise i mean it's so loud you got to wear a headset and at first i'm thinking i would just get rid of this son of a bitch and use a canoe but then you realize the vastness of the landscape

yeah that it's just uh i mean it is huge yeah like the area is huge you it's just it's just like it's kind of a way to get i mean it, it really opens up a lot. Like, I can definitely see it, man. I can hear it, but I can see the appeal for sure because once we went out to look at the downed aircraft today, you realize that it just goes and goes and goes and goes, and it's kind of monotonous. I mean, like, in that there's not a lot of like uh there's not a lot of features in some of the areas and if it weren't for the airboat trails it'd just be really hard to get around yeah um you know you do have change you know like this is an eastern you know the eastern side of it um you guys only seen a small percentage of you know obviously when you go further west of us you'll

get into more cypress you know cypress swamps um that type you know actually when you go further west of us you'll get into more cypress you know cypress swamps um that type you know actually when you go southwest of us it'll actually get rockier you know they uh years ago down there they actually used to wrap the you know we have also when you guys haven't i don't know if you've seen it or not but we put polymer on the bottom of our halls okay you know so it that helps protect also it's slicker it helps you run the ground better um and down in the southwest towards tam ammy trail uh you know big cypress area down in there they call like the loop and stair step you know they were known to wrap stainless on the bottom and rivet that to their hall to help with protect with rock you

know got you um but every area's got their own little like features for the kind of fit whatever sort of yeah there's a little niches about every place you know this this area doesn't have the you know now you're going back years ago if you went up to the northwest corner of our area there would be more tree islands as water levels have higher lowered changes you know the tree islands have you know shrunk you know died off that type of deal but for the most part this area you know you ride around you see the little wax myrtle you know you see the little myrtle bushes some willow heads here and there that's about the extent of it here as far as now there is there's a few cypress you know if you go out west of here

there's a few little cypress heads and whatnot but this area yeah a lot of sawgrass you know what from the water surface so the way these guys got the airboat rigged it's like you're kind of like it's almost like riding a super cub where the driver is right in front of you and the driver's just sitting in a single seat like a single elevated seat up above the hole and then behind that single elevated seat you got like a little passenger area with two like a little love seat basically for two people how high is that love seat from the water surface um my on my boat is it's about 70 inches from the surface okay so you're about six feet up off the water surface and how long is your frog gig 11 foot okay

the way these guys gig frogs is like nothing i've ever seen before where you're out in an airboat and the airboat is running and you're just as much as you can creep along in an airboat, and the airboat is running. And you're just, as much as you can creep along in an airboat, you're creeping along in the channels and trails, headlamping for frogs. Which you wouldn't think they do, but they kind of stand out like a sore thumb when you hit a bullfrog with a flashlight. Just like something about the shine on it,

and then the yellow throat. You can just see them. But from the elevated seat, you're just sitting down holding an 11-foot. That's a carbon fiber. It's actually graphite. It's a graphite 11-foot frog gig. And you gig them from the seat while moving.

Yep. Because if you stop the boat, if anyone's ever been in a boat and the boat stops, you send out what's called a bow wave. The bow wave spooks the frog, right? Yep. Presumably. Yeah, they feel the pressure of the wake and they'll go down. So you can't slow the boat down enough to send out a bow wave to spook. You have to stay faster than your bow wave and just as you roll by it's like watching in movies it's like watching planes warriors lance

people from horseback from horseback yeah it's like medieval jousting with an 11 foot gig on the move hitting frogs, which when I first saw you hit one while also driving, I thought that man just did something that's impossible. Yeah, but then I learned that it's not. It's like something about it. It's one of those rare things that's easier than, it's actually easier than it looks. But when you first did it i was like i just witnessed or i'm like this guy's doing a really good job of acting like he's not shocked

he just hit that frog while in motion and you guys what do you guys call the basket you used for your frog shoot a frog shoot yep explain that to people so on the frog shoot on an airboat it's you know we this is this standard feature on an airboat well i mean if you're a serious frog digger you know i mean some guys like i said some guys just come out ride around you know hang out and that's what they do but we're we like to hunt and use them to you know we're sportsmen we like to use them for obviously you've seen yes what we've done you guys use a term that i've never heard um you use the term gladesman yeah a gladesman now like up at chesapeake bay a it's a waterman just like means like basically a dude that like does a lot of stuff

around here yeah outside a dude that does a lot of stuff around here outside would be a gladesman no no yeah gladesman you gotta do a lot of stuff in the outside would be a gladesman. No? No. A gladesman, you got to do a lot of stuff in the Everglades. Yeah, I don't mean like mowing your lawn and shit. I mean like out and about, right? Yeah. I mean, the gladesman is guys that come out here. Are you a gladesman or no?

Yeah, I'm a gladesman. Oh, okay. Ryan? Yeah. But you're also an offshore fisherman. I do everything. So you can be an offshore commercial fisherman and a gladesman i get frog shoot ducks kill gators what else do you want fish fish swordfish um yeah explain the frog so the frog shoot basically what i have is it's

a six inch round piece of aluminum that's you know they we have a guy that makes them he cuts out a little v in the he makes these and sells them yeah how many do you have any idea how many he produces a pile of you know quite a bit we actually have an airboat store down here you go buy all kinds of accessories yeah airboat accessories yep and basically that shoot that six inch shoot of aluminum, it's six inches in circumference and then probably 10 inches tall. Mounted vertically.

Mounted vertically. I mount it because 99.9% of airboaters drive with their steering sticks on your left hand and you gig with your right hand. So you mount the chute on the right front corner of your grass rake. hand so you mount the get the shoot on the right front corner of your grass rake yeah just so people get it looks it's about like a coffee can yeah it's about like a coffee can mounted on brackets in the in the in the in the um bow starboard corner yeah which is that that big the which we call grass rake what goes the big uh you know

kind of the ramp yeah the ramp in front of the boat and that helps push the grass down um so basically what the frog shoot does it just increases your efficiency you don't have to grab them by hand pull them off or none of that you just stick the gig in there it goes into a little slot you pull it back and the frog drops down into a laundry bag is all we use. Yeah, so the mesh bag... So it's like... Picture a coffee can. Picture that someone cinched a sack around

the... Cinched a mesh sack around the bottom of the coffee can. So anything that falls in the coffee can falls in the bag. And then there's a V-notch. It's more complicated than this, but there's a V-notch. There's a V- it's more complicated than this but there's a v notch there's a v notch cut into the coffee can so when you you got a lanced frog you drop the frog into the coffee can and the v notch is where the the gig the spear falls down in that v notch and it enters

like a little hole and then you just tug the spear and the frog into the sack yep and it's like a little hole and then you just tug the spear and the frog into the sack yep and it's like a wink of the eye and that's a part a lot of people don't like about frog gigging is taking frogs off the gig yeah well that's it is slick yeah and you guys can stack up hundreds of frogs yeah a good night you know i mean we'll do you know in a good night i'll come out two hours and you know me myself i expect to get you know 100 frogs in two hours you know that's a good you know normally i can come out two hours don't burn a bunch of fuel get my hundred go home you know if i really want to go get crazy we have gone out and gone all night and you can get three four hundred when the condition you know when the water level's right when conditions are right yeah because they like a stat you know if there's a lot

of rain a lot of moving water fresh water we tend not to do as well when we get more stagnant water more you know that's why i kind of like the late winter months when we're not getting you know we're in a kind of a dry season you know the longer that water gets stagnant and stay it just seems you know we get more and more frogs get out into the because as the water is dropping you know as you got to understand as the oh they're getting pushed out of all the it concentrates them yeah they come out they got to feed they eat minnows crawfish bugs but i noticed you guys kept saying that the were you saying the frogs are up or high what were you saying you guys got a term you use meaning like shit loads of frogs but you'd say what frogs are up you know that's when we say they're up that means you know you're starting to see them

okay i didn't know if you meant that the population in general is up or you just mean they're available right now that means like it's available right now like it's good frog yeah it's good frogging so what's happening is the as the water levels drop they need to like areas that were once wet are now dry another thing i had no idea about that we talked about outfrog gigging last night was the idea of a gator hole the x the areas they exegrate yeah they'll go in a gator will go in and he'll wallow you know he'll wallow himself an area and he'll keep wallowing it until the point that a lot of times the you know the the roots from lily pads you know there's actually a root down there and it'll break off

and then the little mud clump will float up yep you know and he'll have a little hole in there and then he'll you know he'll live in that hole that's his sanctuary that's are they territorial about those things oh if you get a bull you know a male gator you know i've seen a male gator stay in a hole and you know until you either if it's hunting season and we kill him out of there he'll stay in there and guard that area you know and because he you know he's gonna that's his little sanctuary just like a white-tailed buck has his little home range uh gator is going to kind of do the same thing out you know out here for the most part i've noticed other parts of state where the gators are a little bit more nomadic but here they'll hang tight yeah and what it has an interesting function too because as he excavates

that hole and the water levels drop he's got a place to live but man it collects fish yeah that's it's a it's it's pretty important for other wildlife and you know fish turtles you know as the water goes down you got you got to imagine you have six inches of water around and muck and then there's a four foot deep hole you know the fish that haven't made it to the canal to the perimeter canals and yet they'll go to that deeper water you know yeah fish that haven't made it to the canal to the perimeter canals and yet they'll go to that deeper water you know yeah and that also provides that gate i mean i mean the way i look at gator he ain't too stupid because he's got him a perfect little spot yeah he's got a place to live and all the food has to come up in there it's a win-win situation for him hey folks

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onxmaps.com slash meet onxmaps.com slash meet welcome to the onx club y'all if I opened a bar I wouldn't do it around here but if I opened a bar somewhere else I would call it the gator hole is there a

is there a bar called the gator hole not to my knowledge but that's you know i wouldn't do it here because people would think you were trying you know people here would think you were right like some outsider calling it a gator hole it'd be like you were a poser but say you were up in somewhere else some other part of the country and you started a bar called the Gator Hole. Yeah. I'd drink there. Yeah, I mean, I'd be about it. I still drink. So we gigged frogs. Now, another question about frogs.

And Ryan, I'm going to get to you hot and heavy. So you can sit this one out if you want, because we're going to cover you up and down on this whole swordfish situation. But why do you guys, not because i understand now but can you explain how you clean your frogs so the way you do it is you'll take a knife you grab him by his legs you'll kind of pinch his legs together so he's straightened out and if you hold them you'll see a little arc in their back yep you know where their bone arcs and you take a knife just slice it you know slicey skin and then you stick your finger in that you know down in the little hole that you made and you peel back you know peel all the way back pull

his my old man taught me when i was a little young and pull his pants off oh yeah that's what we taught we could yeah squirrels you pull their shirt off, man. So what you do is you pull his pants off all the way down, and then you pull the skin all the way down past his feet, and then you grab underneath his belly, and you'll actually tear the belly. If you do it that way, it keeps everything cleaner. Some guys, and I used to do it, I did it a couple different ways, but I would just cut the legs i used to do it you know i did a couple different ways but i've just cut the legs off and then do it see that's how that's how i've always seen it done and that's how we

always do it well i'll show you another way to do it but if you know the way i'm trying to explain if you cut it pull the pants down past his feet and then reach up in his belly and you can actually just pull you know the little muscle and you know around his belly and just pull the gut out and everything will be attached to his head and you just snap his head you know just spin his head and it'll pop right off then you got a clean set of leg and you guys leave the feet the fingers yeah attached to leg. That's the best part. There's pros and cons, but there's pros and cons. The pro being, I'm with you, the little toes, the fried up toes are good. It's just like you equated it, one of you guys equated it to fish fins, catfish fins, right?

Yeah, like when you fry a small bluegill or whatever and leave his tail on there. But appearance-wise, I could see that some people might, some people who were sort of on the fence about frog eating might see the toes, especially a whole basket full of them, and it would tip them in the other direction. Yeah. I mean, if we got some ladies around

and they're wanting to eat froggies a lot of times we'll cut the feet off you find that ladies are less inclined to want the toes on there yeah it looks like it looks like freddy krueger it's like ugly brother on the yeah it does that's a good way of putting it yeah it's like a little a little basket of Freddy Krueger's little brother fried. After frog digging, we set out to do a little bow fishing. And I have, if people, if like people where I grew up, bow fishermen where I grew up, they wouldn't know how to begin comprehending the number and size of gar down here. It's unbelievable.

We never even flung an arrow at a gar, though. But, like, I'm trying to get to this. In most parts of the world, most parts of the country, bow fishermen are not generally shooting, I'm speaking generally, bow fishermen are not generally shooting fish that are that good to eat, right? Like people shoot a lot of common carp. Like common carp's the main thing people go after. And of course, like common carp were introduced into this country, into many waterways

as a food source. Like people thought that as native fisheries collapsed from overfishing and habitat destruction, it's like well here's this very durable, fecund fish that gets big, people will eat it, will sort of replace the fisheries that we ruined with carp,

and then everybody would be happy. But carp have never, even though they raise them and eat them in Asia, they're just not popular here. So where I grew up, people fished carp, bowfish for carp, and would often just discard the fish because now they're considered like a deleterious non-native and people would like to see, it's never going to happen, would like to get rid of the carp.

But the one fish that has a fairly good reputation is long-nosed gar. These are long-nosed gar. But these gar

are shaped like footballs. Yeah, they're fat. Yeah, like I'm used to gars that look like gars. Yeah, well, they're feeding good right now. Dude, these gars are unbelievable. It's like Yanni said, it's like a football with a swordfish's nose coming out of them. Huge gars. But you guys don't mess with them.

You don't eat them. No, we don't really mess with them. Do you you guys don't mess with them you know we don't we don't you know we don't really mess with them do you know guys that like to eat them i mean i've heard of god you know certain people what they'll do with them is like you know they'll actually like scale them and then boil the meat out of them and they'll make like a patty out you know put some onion pepper and you know make almost like a little patty well like garballs yeah i mean but we don't you know we haven't messed with them you guys have so much other stuff to eat yeah i'd rather eat a frog when i've done them like you take like you take 10 snips if you ever maybe you never tried this

you take 10 snips and just cut up the back all the way up the back and then you cut so you got like a picture of the whole guard laid out like like your arm right and you cut a big long strip up what would be like his dorsal fin the whole length of the fish and then you snip the ends of that long strip and just peel the the top part away peel the hide off to the right and off to the left and just remove the back straps which is where all the meat is on a gar and you got these big long cigars of meat and people will make gar balls out of those or you just you just chunk them up and fry them it's not that bad but that was the that was like in in michigan that's like the best fish that

you're allowed to shoot with a bow will be a gar but here you can bow fish for fish that people buy in restaurants yeah tilapia you got tilapia and then we also have in some of our canals which we you know last night where we were bow fishing we i mean there's we've seen a few but not many um and a lot of our more of the urban canals they'll have uh bullseye snakehead which is you know actually becoming a highly targeted fishery you know a lot of guys are you know they're big into catching them rod and reel but we actually got into shooting them which matt's been with us on that we've had some you know incredible snakehead shoots a lot i mean you know load the box tilapia snakeheads and and they get pretty sizable you know they look like a little mini kobe is what i always say kind of like yeah what is a big snakehead nine eight nine

pounds you know and they'll get you know two and a half three feet long and a big tilapia is what two yeah two two you know like the you know a couple that you would kill last night those are pretty sizable fish yeah no, they're really substantial. It's just weird to be able to shoot, not weird because I've done it in South America, but where you can shoot great table fare fish. To be able to go out and bow fish for tilapia, even though tilapia are non-native fish, do you know how long they've been in these waters, tilapia? I've seen them around since I was a kid.

Oh, so they've been here. So it's not a new thing. They've been here for quite a while, yeah. And they dig a nest, like, I'm trying to think of the closest example that, like, most guys would know. Picture, like, a bluegill nest, a bluegill bed, but they dig it where it's almost deeper than it is wide. Yeah, it's like a boat, like a crater.

A crater is a good way of putting it. They dig a crater and guard that crater. But the problem for bow fishing is a lot of those craters, like there's a, when you're trying to hit fish with a bow, you're like dealing with refraction. I'm not telling you this. I'm just telling like Joe Blow listener that you're dealing with refraction. Like if you telling you this. I'm just telling Joe Blow listener that you're dealing with refraction. If you ever stuck a stick in the water,

the stick looks curved. When you're aiming at a fish, you don't aim at the fish. You aim below and generally you don't aim low enough. It gets worse and worse and worse the deeper, deeper you go. These craters are four feet down, three feet down, four feet down,

and it gets to be very hard to hit the fish down there because the arrow slows down so bad you know yeah and then the thing's too deep but we caught some up in the shallows where they're just a few inches under the surface yeah we caught them slipping and then you wind up with like you know one and a half two pound fish that's like a restaurant like a restaurant grade fish yep yeah people are buying them in the every day you know down here you go into publics or you know local supermarkets that are down here and they sell them all you know probably one of the most popular fish that people go and buy you know every day so is it unusual that we didn't see anyone bow fishing last night uh no you don't see a whole lot you know it's it's not you know down here in south

florida yeah i mean there's guys that do it you know there's a handful of guys i know a few but it hasn't really taken off to the point that you when you go out that you actually see other people you know i i've been doing it now for i don't for what's what we've been doing seven eight years because actually Matt you know I hadn't really gotten into it until Matt came down and we he funny story is we were out fishing we were snakehead fishing is what we were doing and Matt had brought some bows and he come up with the idea and I said oh well I know a place where I know there's fish there we go do it we went out that night and I mean we you know they shot till their fingers were so you know it was just that the first night we did it was you know we kind of found a little canal and they hadn't been fished

you know bow fish before so it was just you know as fast as you can shoot as fast as they can get arrows back on there and you know and then from as you can shoot, as fast as they can get arrows back on there. And, you know, and then from there, he was the one who kind of really got me into it. I've always, you know, been had interest and it messed around a little bit, but it wasn't like go out and do it. And then he got me into it. And I started, Ryan and I, buddies of ours. I mean, we started, it was a great time to go, you know, summertime, you know, we all, we like to deer hunt, bow hunt. And it was a great time to go you know summertime you know we all we like to deer hunt bow hunt and it was a great time to go past time in the summer and we start go out there get some beer and

go out get on the john boat and go bow fishing and i mean we were doing it all the time you know so i think i feel like it'd be like a i probably shouldn't be saying this but i feel like it'd be like a bow fishing destination place well because there's endless water yeah i think the logistics are complicated too in some of the areas i mean it's not there's not a lot of places are not necessarily the best places are near a boat launch like we went last night off the airboat you know that's uh you know it's tricky to get over there so i think that can't be underestimated some of it's tricky do you hey matt can I interrupt you? I want you to ask yourself is my microphone really

just two fingers off my upper lip? It is exactly two fingers off your upper lip. I've been admiring it. What he's saying is yours might be just a little far, but see the thing is Matt, he's got... He sounds good. Are you saying I have fat fingers?

No, I'm saying your mic is poorly placed. It is. I think your ear is farther away from your mouth than the rest of us. That's absolutely possible. Is that better? A little closer. A little closer?

Okay, now we're one and a half fingers. You're good. Okay. Yeah, no, I like it now. Logistics. It's complicated down here. You know, with the camps, obviously, it's only accessible by the airboat. And so between that and getting into the canals, when the water level,

and we'll talk a little bit, the water level changes quite a bit here. So you really got to know the area. You got to have a local that can kind of put you on the right spots and that's how josh and i came together around bow fishing down here yeah do yeah you just rolled in cold here it'd be tough it'd be a tough years it'd be tough yeah years it's you mean hold on rolled in cold and be years for what? To just kind of figure it out. Oh, figure everything out. Yep.

Bow fishing, I disagree. Because bow fishing is bow fishing. If you got a good bow fishing boat and you got all these canals, anyone's going to find the canals. That's true. I guess they are in the canals, really, more than out in the grass where you've been running, right? Oh, yeah.

That would be difficult for people to figure out. But to go hunt the big primary, big canals. Yeah. Pretty much down here, if you've got any freshwater canal, and that is what's kind of gold about it is you can, in South Florida, if it's public water you got a public boat ramp and any of these canals you can go put in and you're gonna see fish that you can you know non you know obviously it's got to be a non-game fish so you can't shoot largemouth yeah no bass um you know no bluegills that kind of you know you can shoot catfish uh you know you got down here if you you know if you go like i say you get a little bit east of here you go to some of the you know where you guys drove in down that road that canal that

there you can go in there and shoot tilapia uh and snakeheads catfish and oscars oscars yep and which is a native fish um isn't it i don't think an oscar native. Oh, so that's another non-native. So the snakeheads are introduced non-native. Yeah, you have snakehead. The tilapia are introduced non-native. The Oscars, that's some kind of crazy South American cichlid or something. And then you have a Mayan cichlid. Mayan cichlid.

And then we also have peacock bass, which the... Can you shoot those? No, see, the state... Regards those as game fish? What's crazy is the state has actually got a tougher regulation. Like, if you were to go fishing, rod and reel, you can only keep two peacock bass. Even though they're non-native. And they're non-native, but you can kill five largemouth bass.

So that's how they've, you know, I guess it's kind of a. That's pretty, that's interesting. Yeah, which, you know know obviously a peacock bass is in the cichlid family you know a cichlid and mine cichlid peacock bass are related so you can't go shoot a peacock bass it's considered a game fish here i'd like to hear the logic on that besides the people really like them and have you ever eaten one of those that's a good fish man and we. And we were down, we were in South America. They have a smaller, they have peacock bass, but they're not like the giants.

Like it'd be like four or five pounds. And man, they grilled some of those one time and unbelievably good fish. Like one of the best, like almost as good as like snook, you know, like a very good fish. I got a pretty good story on a peacock bass. Please. So when I was little, little little guy we used to live on c14 which is in in town here in margate florida and my dad's having you know i grew up my dad's a gladesman airboater that's who i've learned everything he's you know everything i've known

and he was a avid bass fisherman well he was fishing c14 like fall mouth bass large mouth large mouth bass you know so he was in c14 which is pretty good for peacock bass fisherman well he was fishing c14 like foul mouth bass large mouth large mouth bass you know so he was in c14 which is pretty good for peacock bass fish and he catches like a close seven pound peacock which is pardon me what is c14 it's a canal canal system it's also an explosive so he it's c4 is it c4 yeah that's right that's right c4 he catches this you know trophy peacock you know seven pound class and i actually uh growing up we had a nanny and she was from south america and my dad had put the fish and he was taxing my dad was taxidermist at one time so he'd put the fish in the freezer and was keeping it that he wanted to get it mounted and i come home from school and i'm something i mean just the smell of

the house i'm like man it's you know i guess she's cooking fish or something tonight and i walk in there and look in the pot and there's this peacock bass in there it's boiling my dad ain't home yet and i'm looking in there i'm'm like, her name is Vera. I said, Vera, where'd you get that fish? Oh, it was in the freezer. I said, ooh, this ain't going to go good. Needless to say, she won her nanny no more after that. Oh, no.

She lost her job over a bass. Hey, you know, a trophy's a trophy. Yeah, she, we, none of us, we all went out. I think we went to Checkers that night because it was pretty gnarly looking. We're always hearing about snakeheads because snakeheads keep turning up in new locations because it's a fish. People buy it for their aquariums. i think that's like tightly regulated now or more regulated than

it was people buy snakeheads for their aquariums the snakeheads get bigger bigger bigger bigger bigger they're hard to feed hard to take care of they outpace the size of their tank and people decide to get rid of them so they keep popping up in new places um like if you follow if you like read about wildlife news you'll always be reading stories about some new drainage that that people have found snakeheads in but then when you go talk to people who are in a snakehead area it doesn't seem like it's very often that they're like that they reach like the levels that carp have reached like do you see is it still like kind of a rarity or do you ever see places where it's just nothing but snakeheads

oh when they get it which we have a bullseye snakehead and you know they're asia from asia and when they get into a um yeah i used to work on a golf course and i at you know earlier years great bass fishing and whatnot and we started you know caught one on a top water plug and you know when i first seen it i'm like what the heck's this thing i you know start figuring it out and once we've seen the first one it just from there it exploded and then you know and like i said before it's like gotten to like this crazy little colt that goes and chases these things they love fishing for them and you know that which it was in coral springs for just west or just east of here i'm sorry but the that it's when they show up they're so aggressive you know i i would say like peacock we used to

complain about we don't i don't necessarily i'm not fond of the peacock bass because they get into a bass. I'm a largemouth bass guy. And when a peacock gets in there, they're, you know, twice, at least twice as aggressive as our largemouth. And they kill the largemouths. Well, they'll hammer the bait fish. So that kind of, you know, it'll, you know, they can't, a largemouth just can't compete with a peacock as far as aggressiveness. Yeah. can't compete with a peacock as far as aggressiveness yeah and the bullseye snake as i'll say is is even more aggressive you know a great fish to catch i mean some of the most explosive

top water you know what's neat about is you got a fish you fish like a frog bait and fish it as close to the bank as you could possibly get it without touching the bank and that's how they'll eat it and you know so once you see it once they showed up i mean they've exploded and once they get into a lake or a canal system it's almost like they'll overrun it you know so you do see that happen yeah okay because that's certainly like the story you hear but i haven't heard but i haven't heard a lot of cases where people had like seen it reach those proportions yeah yeah you Yeah. You had a thought, Yanni? Well, it was just interesting that we were in Maryland this fall

and on this coast, but still a long ways from here, and they were into catching snakeheads up there. And he, a guy, we met a guy. I don't want to say his name. You don't know his name? I know what he goes by. Oh, that's right. You did have a big sign on the side of his truck. No, he I know what he goes by. Oh, that's right. You did have a big sign on the side of his truck.

No, he told us what he goes by. He told us they call me the... Whisperer? The X, the Whisperer. So, he gets to telling us how... Listen, this is like so many layers of like no you know what we okay we heard it from a man who supposedly witnessed it he knew some guys who were doing are you familiar with selling glass eels so do you guys have the american eel around here? Do you have a freshwater eel?

Yeah, we got freshwater. Freshwater eel. Yeah. It's called the American eel. Now, American eels, like a salmon is anadromous, meaning it goes from the ocean and runs up a river to spawn. That's an anadromous fish. The American eel is catadronous. It goes from the rivers out into the ocean to spawn.

There's not a lot of fish that do that. American eels go all the way to the Sargasso Sea, and they congregate and spawn in the Sargasso Sea. Where's that? Like out off from the Caribbean. A very deep area, like a very deep area of the ocean. Without looking at the map, it's hard to explain. But if you shot from here,

if you shot from here kind of like through the Caribbean off that away, it's like where everything gets deep. Basically, everything that drifts down, down, down, winds up in this place called the Sargasso Sea. All the eels from all these rivers congregate there and spawn. And then they have a larva that just free floats. And eventually, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And when they go back into the rivers and start going up,

I think at that point they call them a glass eel. And eels are very popular in Asian restaurants. So if you go to a sushi joint here, you're always eating eel. Unagi, which is smoked eel. Now, aquaculture, they can raise the eels in aquaculture facilities, but you can't successfully spawn the eels out there. You need to start with a wild-caught, they need to start with wild-caught glass eels or wild-caught juvenile eels.

So there's a market for these wild-caught juvenile eels, which people net up and sell for shitloads of money, and a lot of people poach them. And then they go into these aquaculture facilities and you can raise the eels up. So this dude's telling us that he knew a dude who was in the business of marketing and raising eels. And one day he looks in this guy's eel tank.

This is a dude telling me and Yanni this at a gun range. Remember this? He says he peers down into the eel tank and lo and behold, it's not eels. And he says, the hell is that? He goes, oh, that's a fish called a snakehead.

I've been raised, this is what the guy tells us, I've been raising them and letting them go. Why would you do that? And he says, well, and he kind of walks through. This is a waterman in Chesapeake Bay. And he walks through his family's history with fisheries that have collapsed and become overregulated. So he's like, we used to be able to catch X blue crabs.

Now we're screwed. We used to be able to do X with clams. Now we're screwed. We to catch x blue crabs now we're screwed we used to be able to do x with clams now we're screwed we used to do this now we're screwed here's one fish that no one's ever going to tell me not to catch as many as i want and that's where he in this waterway that's where this feller claimed that that was how this is happening. It wasn't from the aquarium trade. It wasn't from people throwing out onesies, twosies here and there. That it was a concerted effort on behalf of some gentleman to... Introduce it. Yeah.

Because, and it already does. It already has commercial outlets and commercial value. Because the feller we met actually sells the things to a restaurant. Is it under that name at restaurants? Or is there a different? Yeah. And I don't want to name who. See, this story starts to make its own gravy.

Because, yeah, so a guy started selling it. And he got really good reviews, and it was a hot ticket item, and now this guy can't get enough of it. And he's buying it for $7 a pound, isn't he? It was something like that. It was high, yeah. $7 a pound. So that's what this guy says is driving this whole snakehead thing.

Now, this could just be like a crazy guy at a gun club, which there are plenty of, or it could be like the real dope. But, Ryan, you're right. I've been telling you you're going to be in the hot seat. He did tell us. I want to finish on that. He did tell us, and it would be interesting to try, especially since we've been talking a little bit about live bait this last couple days.

But he was saying that the thing not to do is roll into a spot where you know there's a few and just start chucking a lure or two in but just pitch out a handful and get a little frenzy going and then he said he said you can just sit there and fish every single one out of the hole yeah so like the sargasso sea i'm looking at a it would be it's eastern its western edge would be due east of here about like beyond the bahamas it's yeah it's just like apparently like as things go down like eels go down down down down down down down they they eventually wind up in the deep spot. And then they free cast this larva, which winds its way all up and down. And these eels have a wide distribution.

But back to you. Now, this is something I had. Listen, I knew all about shooting fish with bows. I knew all about all this kind of stuff. But I had no idea. Until I came down here, until last night, I was unaware of the type of swordfish fishing

that you do. Can you explain, Ryan, can you explain commercial swordfishing, how it's practiced here? Well, start by saying how it's practiced north of here north of here a long line which they'll set anywhere from 10 20 30 miles a long line and varies on how many

hooks they want to fish or whatever they i mean i know some of them they're fishing up to thousand hooks or something like that farther north of there they harpoon them i guess it's up in nova scotia or something like that where they actually get on the surface and they have you know spotter planes and towers on the boats and big pulpits and they actually go out and that's how they catch them just yeah i've talked to guys who've done that with spotter planes like harpooning like this is up in montauk montauk new york blue fins too okay but then there's a line south of which you can't long line yeah i'm pretty sure the line's like 200 something miles east of port canaveral okay you got to be north of that and so so many miles east and you can long on but once you get south of there you can hand gear fish so basically you got a buoy with a

strobe light hold up because here's the other part of this i need you to explain um swordfish are down in the daytime at what depth i mean they could be anywhere from as long as it's dark i guess seven eight hundred feet of water all the way out to i don't know two three thousand feet we fish them around you know anywhere from 1400 to 1800. Fishing them in the daytime? The daytime. But at night, they must just spiral upward and come up to the surface. Did something just happen?

The generator, I think. I don't know what that noise was. Sorry. But at nighttime, they must just spiral upward and come up how close to the surface? I mean, we've seen them on the surface, but most of the stuff we're fishing is around 100, 200 feet of water. Okay.

So explain your commercial swordfish gear. Basically, they call it a Jap ball, which is just a hard plastic ball with a 10-pound lead on the bottom. So it keeps it upright then it's got a stem that's probably i don't know about a foot and a half long then it's got a strobe light that takes two d batteries and he put that on the top so it's a buoy with a like a like yeah like i said like a buoy with a strobe light sticking up out of it right so you can see it at night okay and then normally you'll put another light on there in case the strobe light breaks or you know just easier to see it and then from the buoy you'll have i use like 150 foot of

they call it um tar line which is basically like a just a cheap kind of rope that goes to a long line clip which is basically some kind of a swivel then you put a leader which is about 100 foot then in between there you got another swivel and i clip my light onto there that goes to as an attractant yeah then you can fish you know any kind of bait you want i I like using a lot of squids or mackerel. Spanish mackerel, Boston mackerel, tanker mackerel, something like that. And then you go out and basically you're jug fishing. You go out and start throwing these buoys overboard. And they're not connected to each other.

So if you can't find one, she's probably gone. Like gone, gone. Yeah, if your lights break or whatever. Sometimes we've had some of the leads get ripped out of the balls and the ball flip upside down, and you'll never find them again. Gotcha. But you go out and set how many of these? So you're driving out to 1,500 feet of water.

We go a little deeper because we'll set from the east to the west. So it'll be anywhere from 2,000, 1,800, then set all the way in to about 900 foot, maybe. Depends on the current. Sometimes the current pushes you. It'll always push you north, but sometimes it'll push you east or west. And how many of the buoys do you throw out with the hooks on them? I fish 32. 32 rigs.

Stretched out over what distance? It's probably close to five miles. Why so far apart? I mean, they're really only about a tenth of a mile apart. So we got, I don't know covering more water so when you okay this is like so you start out your furthest one is 20 miles offshore and your closest one to shore is 15 miles offshore and between those two points you have strung out 32 buoys with line a leader and bait

and a j hook on the end and they got lights on top when you're at any particular buoy can you look and see the buoys in either direction if you're in the middle you can almost see your inside if you're on that now you can't really see it all but you can usually see whatever one's next right okay yeah i mean you could see probably 10 or 15 in a row something like that oh okay so you're seeing like a considerable distance yeah it depends on if it's calm or not too you know if there's if they're you know the moon's full you can't really see as many as far you know you might only see a few but and you set this rig out there or this big collection of rigs you set it out there after dark

yeah we'll start like right at sunset you know it takes about hour hour and a half to get them all in the water and then you're drifting at what speed it varies in the golf stream i mean some nights you'll have you know two knots of tide some nights you know the tide will be raging will be you know four or five knots almost i mean that's fast but i've seen it and are you just cruising up and down keeping an eye on all the buoys yeah yeah you gotta normally we'll go and throw all the buoys hang out eat a sandwich and then we'll kind of start going out to the end whatever fish we got we'll go and throw all the buoys, hang out, eat a sandwich, and then we'll kind of start going out to the end, whatever fish we got. We'll catch them, throw them in the boat, clean them, and then pack them with ice.

And then we'll go out and start checking them from the outside in. So how do you, what tells you when one of these buoys hits a fish? They'll go east, west, north, south. I mean, most of them somewhat, they'll kind of have a line. You know, definitely have different currents where stuff just goes everywhere. So you knowing that a swordfish has hit one of them is not based on that it's bobbing, but just that it's traveling in a weird direction. Right.

Or you'll pull up to them. They'll be half, you know, buoy will buoy be halfway underwater you'll see it spinning like sometimes you know you have fish on there that are dead and they're not really pulling so you won't see like a wake behind it the buoy will just kind of sit there and spin real slow as you're driving past it okay and then you'll know like there's something on there and what's a big swordfish five six hundred and what's a small swordfish um i mean i caught one the other night i don't think it weighed five pounds oh that you find them that small yeah i mean not often i was the smallest one i ever seen yeah it was tiny and at night do the sharks tear the swordfish up or is it not as bad at night yeah i've had it happen a couple maybe

five or six times but not too not too often it's not as bad as it being the daylight yeah i've never had one really messed with in the daytime okay so here's it's not that much of an issue no because you're talking about fishing yellowfin that they'll sometimes you'll lose fish to sharks oh yeah those sharks are on the elephant and they got like a feeding frenzy going and those tunas they'll pull off so much line you're pumping them up and they're kind of in a circle like you know spiraling up real slow and the sharks will get on real bad got you but they don't hit the swordfish that bad not too much and like what's it so when you're out doing commercial

swordfishing like this what is like what's what's a bad like, what's a – so when you're out doing commercial sword fishing like this, what is – like, what's a bad night and what's a good night? Bad night is obviously when you catch nothing. So that can happen? It's happened. I mean, a good night, you catch anything over 500, 600, it's good. I mean, you catch over 1,000, real good. But you're talking dressed weight.

Yeah, all dressed out. Yeah. Can you explain to people like how you dress the swordfish basically they're gutted all the fins come off the head comes off and then they're gutted and every you know heart everything on the inside comes out and then there's a bloodline that goes from all the way to the head all the way to as far back as like the gut cavity goes you just take a knife and run it down there then there's a little bloodline you can kind of stick your finger and pop that up yeah use a little wire brush and just clean it out and then pack it and crushed ice yeah and just pack it with ice and like what's uh so when you talk about the weight that you're selling,

you're talking about that weight. Yeah. You had a word for what you call those things. Cord, we call them, just say it's cord out. Cord out. And you fill your coolers up. And you're not, like, in what would strike people as a commercial vessel. I mean, you're in a 27, basically like a sport fishing boat like a 27 foot sport

fishing boat right yeah because i fish tournaments and i charter fish i mean it's kind of like a you know do all everything kind of but but you can pack a thousand pounds of cord out a thousand pounds of swordfish core on a boat yeah and that's a good night out that's a real good night yeah like the other night we caught 1500 pounds i mean we had all fish packed there anywhere you can have a box and ice in it we had fish in it and that's a really good night that's the best night i ever had and then you take them in and how do you sell them basically just pull up at the fish market i obviously i'll leave all the fish in my boat it makes it a lot easier you ain't gotta touch them two three times but you pull up there you pull your boat out of the water and put it on a trailer

yeah i just drive it over to the fish market and then um and do you know the price before you go out and do this no sometimes you get screwed a little bit but i mean if you got a lot of fish there's it's hard to get rid of them other places or you don't have a wholesale retail license or whatever so i just sell all my fish at the same spot makes it easy drop them off and you're done and there's you don't have a contract about what the price is going to be no basically you go in you you um pull all the fish out of your boat and then you know they got like a little scale or whatever it's a big scale they go and they put the fish on there they'll cut the tail see if it's got color or whatever and check

the bloodline and then they'll grade it what do you mean to see if it's got color um well you have some fish that'll be like like a white fish which obviously that's kind of like a little bit lesser per pound oh the white or less yeah okay the more they call it peach or you know they'll say light peach peach orange orange obviously being the best whatever it because they eat those world red shrimp, that fish we caught today. It dyes the flesh? Yeah, it dyes it that color.

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I wonder if it makes for a fattier fish, and that's why maybe it's more expensive when the color is in it i don't know i think it's more of like a sweeter taste or something i mean you don't really see too much fat not like a tuna you know how you have like fat content in the meat yeah or there is and you just can't really see it i mean i don't really know what they all look for for that but but it's just the guy's judgment call when he's buying your fish yeah and he grades every fish Or there is, and you just can't really see it. I mean, I don't really know what they all look for for that. But it's just the guy's judgment call when he's buying your fish. Yeah. And he grades every fish.

Yeah. Especially, like, on the skin color. If you threw a harpoon through the side, you know, because you did ruin some kind of meat right there because you put a hole in it, then the harpoon turned sideways. Yeah, we should probably back up and talk about that because I meant to cover that a little bit. So you're cruising along, and here's a buoy booking off in some weird direction. What do you do?

Just pull up on the ball and you'll have a basket of rope with a clip on it. And you'll actually clip the basket onto the line and pull the buoy off. So then basically... Okay, so to get the buoy out of the way yeah that's basically like your rod and reel because you're hand fishing you know everything's with your hands that's basically like your reel and your extra line you know fish wants to take line and that's kind of how that works so the first thing is ditch the buoy and get the whole thing attached to another long line right that's a thick enough rope to handle yeah it's pretty much it's the same as

um what the we call it a drop you know the tar line that comes off the ball yep it's just a giant basket of that so then you got them and you start to try to jack them up pulling them and they put up a tussle when you start pulling on them yeah i mean sometimes you know you can't get around to them fast enough and they're dead i mean we've pulled up on 200 pounders dead and it makes it real nice and easy because he just i mean he hasn't been dead that long no i mean just you know sometimes i mean you you know you hook them kind of deep or whatever oh i got you yeah you know sometimes they get wrapped up you know tail hooked and you know they do Yeah, but he's still marketable because it's only been so long, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I got you. So the ones that are still frisky, you bring them up and then gaff them or harpoon them depending on his temperament and size. Yeah, I mean, if it's a big fish, I mean, most of all the big fish, we harpoon them just kind of like an insurance thing, you know? And try to hit them up in of like an insurance thing you know and try to hit them up in the head yeah you try i mean if it's a big fish you try to get it wherever you can just for insurance okay or if you know sometimes fish will be swimming around the boat never

ate anything and sometimes you get an opportunity to you know throw a harpoon at a free swimmer hold on i mean so you'll just be looking in the light and you'll see swordfish for whatever reason what are they drawn to the light uh i think it's more you know you'll have other fish on you know you'll sometimes you'll have a smaller fish and a bigger fish or you got a bigger fish on the line you'll have a little bit smaller fish with them you know because it's like a male female thing you know normally the bigger fish is your female than your smaller fish is the male okay so you'll just all of a sudden realize here's a swordfish swimming by right and you'll grab your harpoon and stick them with the harpoon

sometimes when you get lucky yeah like how often does that happen a few times a year okay not all the time but it happens and you throw in the harpoon or jabbing it? If they're close enough, you can just jab them. I mean, if they're a little deep or far or whatever, you know, you just throw it. Just see if you can get them. Yeah, and you got another basket with, I mean, I got like a thousand foot of rope in a basket too. Yeah, because then he's not played out at all. So he's just going to run.

Yeah, depends where you hit him. I mean, if you hit him kind of far back or something like that you know you're gonna they'll be pulling on him for a while and eventually drag him up yeah and then you put a gaff in the drag motor side of the boat right then we picked up all the cleaning so to move us back into the future where we belong you go down this fish guy comes in and takes each fish and says, like, he wants to judge the color on it. Right. The general condition.

Mm-hmm. And then what does he do? Then they just, they have a giant floor, basically, and it's just, actually, it's kind of like plastic pallets. Yep. And they have all, you know, laid laid out and then they just stack fish on there where there's ice under them and they you know cover them with ice they put like a you know whatever your boat name is they have like a little tag and a number for however much the fish weighed you know they're calling and trying to sell the fish and they're going there pick it and

put ice in a box and ship it off or and they're selling fish at the same time yeah like the other night we were we were catching fish and we had a couple nice fish that you know they're pumpkin and they were pumpkin colored yeah and i mean most people want those so they sell real quick for you know a little more money they were already taking them and pack them in boxes get rid of them shipping them. We didn't even offload all our fish yet. So it's that fast to turn around. Sometimes.

And then he rates every fish, weighs every fish and then he just cuts you a check. Yeah, in like two weeks. Oh. That's all you want to catch. So you don't have a 1500 pound night and then just go out and just walk out of there with a check in your pocket no which would make it seem kind of nice

it'd be too nice yeah way too nice no normally it's like a week and by the time they you know put it in the mail you got it normally in about two weeks so how much will the price fluctuate from day to day like is it moving all the time? Is it like most commodity trading where it's just like up and down, up and down? Mostly swords. I mean, it's kind of, it stays pretty level around like September, October. I mean, it gets a little low. I mean, then.

And you're saying when the guys start harpooning in the north, it drives the price down. Yeah, it drives the price down huge and plus i know there's a bunch of long line boats fishing up there too like on the grand banks or whatever i mean they're catching a lot of fish too so now that like this winter time in the north your prices are good there's not a lot of fish coming out of the north yeah normally right around like thanksgiving time the price goes back to like normal or you know depending on the weather if it's been rough for a long time you know wherever then they'll uh you know the price goes up a little higher i forget whatever that holiday is where everybody eats fish lent or something like that yeah yeah

like the fish just goes through the roof around that does it yeah so if you got fish i mean definitely making some extra money off them there's enough people observing lent to drive up swordfish prices i mean all fish yeah just fish cross any whatever is biting at that time fish prices just go through the roof and this is some of the you're saying today this is some of the best swordfish you've ever seen right now. Yeah, the last couple weeks. Perhaps because the weather up north. Yeah. Has pushed fish down.

So today we went out, so we go out to fish today. That's what you're doing at night when you're out commercial fishing. And we went out today and went out to about 1,500 feet of water. And explain the rig we fished today. Like how you rigged up and how we fished it basically a fish electric reel it's called an lp that's just it's an lps 1200 that's the type of electric reel it is loaded with 2500 feet 2500 yards i'm sorry 2500 yards of 65 pound braid right which is a shitload of money worth of

braided line yeah it's a couple hundred bucks yeah and then um from there whatever kind of rod some people like a long rod some people like a short one some like stiff soft i mean it's whatever they like but um you got a rod you got a 65 pound test do like a little bimini twist which is the knot makes a loop and then you put a wind on leader use a the knots call like a cat's paw and when you say a wind on it used to be like a big long lead it's a hundred foot lead right right yeah but there's no swivel from your braided line to your wind on leader so you'll tie a bimini twist and at that wind on leader it'll have a loop and the knot you tie it's called cat's paw okay and then uh why do you not want oh you don't want because you need to be able to reel the whole thing it's got to come on

the reel i got you i got you and uh so wind on leader means you don't need to stop at a big barrel swivel no you just you gotta stop you gotta stop at the lead yeah and pull the lead off yeah basically from that knot it's whatever three or four feet and then you gotta um use wax line make a little loop on there to put your lead which you'll use a long line clip and whatever pound ball you want to use yeah and you got a 10 pound lead and from that 10 pound lead so like in simple terms it's like you got the reel and the rod and then you got 65 pound test braided line down to 10 pounds of lead and then 100 feet of leader yeah i think it's about 150 is what was on there today

and then the bait it's a standard it's like a j hook with a skirt and then piece of bonito on it yeah it's just like a they call it like a panama strip it's kind of what kind of bait it was cut cut as you know sometimes you'll say a belly strip some people say some people actually just cut a strip but that's called like a panama strip gotcha and you're sending this thing down 1500 feet down because you wanted like 100 feet off the bottom right because you got 150 feet of leader the lead's 150 feet off the bottom right the lead's 150 feet i'd imagine your hooks you know where your bait is it's a little under it yeah it's a picture like these guys want this rig to lay out flat you can't just like open the bail

on the reel and send the whole thing down because it's going to be a mess right it'll tangle yeah because the lead's going to be leading the way and that whole leader's just going to spiral around the main line and be screwed right so they lay the rig they lay the leader out get the lead in the water and then motor and run 1500 feet meanwhile the lead's, but they're driving away from the lead until they get the right amount of line out. Then you swing the boat around and come back at the point you started at. Right. So that that whole thing falls smooth and doesn't get all wrapped up.

Right. And then there you are, five football fields of line out dangling around somewhere down at the bottom of the ocean. Right. And the swordfish hits, and it looks like there's a bluegill messing with it. Yeah. Today, them things barely even tapped it. You would think, so how big was the biggest? We had an 85-pound swordfish.

Yeah, we had one about 85, another one like 65. You would think that thing would take that thing out of the rod holder. Thanks. But we're staring at it. You guys are staring at it debating whether there was a hit or not. It is just like so much gets lost in that amount of line even though braid is so like sensitive and like like transmits signals so well i always think like like if we're jigging halibut 250 feet of water you can take a you can take a 12 ounce lead ball and hit the bottom i can tell you what the bottom

is like right rocky soft right it's like it transmits it transmits that well but when you get that much line out it's an 85 pound fish down there hitting a bait that must weigh half a pound right and it's barely registers on that rod yeah that's a pretty stiff rod too i mean if you used a little something a little bit lighter i, you'll see a little more of like a tip bounce or something. You know, I like a little bit, you know, longer, heavier rod. Okay. And then when that thing hits, you don't take it out of the rod holder.

No. You throw the switch and it takes about what? How many minutes? I don't know. Probably about 10 minutes or so. i think it's more than that man 10 12 minutes 20 minutes this is kills you it really don't even take that long oh you think that's what it is i think so because you throw that switch like you're 1500 feet of water but there's like some scope and belly like there's some scope in the line or some belly in

the line so the readout on that reel says 2,500 feet. Yeah. And you got to sit there and watch that thing count down. That's what it takes for so long. If you just look away, eventually it would come a lot quicker. I would, like, do a look, and I'd be like, oh, it's 1,700 feet. Look, and then a while later. But then pretty soon it gets to, like, 300 feet,

and then you start getting excited. At 100 feet, here comes the lead. Right. I have personal experience with looking away. Because of my day. I'm the second fish today. How long do you think it was? I wasn't looking at my watch, but it still felt like a long time. I was hanging off the T-top going, there's Fort Lauderdale, there's Fort Lauderdale.

I look over my shoulder and be like, man, that thing still hasn't come up. Back to Fort lauderdale there's port lauderdale i look over my shoulder like man that thing still hasn't come up back to port lauderdale i wasn't going to return to me like having of me like sort of like slowly falling out of love with the honest and he um couldn't find it in himself to take interest in our fish that we were had that i can't say we were fighting it but that we were that we were watching the the thing play out a lot of people would hate that kind of fishing yeah it's like i was trying to tell you it is kind of boring you know there's not i would say that those people aren't very smart i mean i like it especially when you see a big one you know you see one come up you know three four five hundred pounds and it's it's pretty cool that's what it's like going deer hunting you know you go somewhere where

you can go shoot a bunch of little ones or you go you know spend the time trying to kill big ones kind of the same yeah to me it's like it's like um it's like you're transmitting signals into outer space when you're fishing that deep do you know i mean it's like it's like you're transmitting signals into outer space when you're fishing that deep. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's hard to even imagine yourself being on the same planet as the fish when you're fishing for a fish 1,500 feet away. Some people like, and I like the immediacy too. I like sight casting the fish, which is fun.

But I also like when you're sort of it's like talking to et man right like when you're when you're like got that much line out and you can't even picture what it looks like down there i mean no one they're in another world man they're in the black they really are nearly black it's like but you're up here in the sunshine watching Giannis, and down there is like, yeah, and then 1,500 feet away at the bottom of like an ocean. You can't go down there with scuba tanks. He's just down in some other planet.

Then all of a sudden you throw that switch, and all of a sudden here he is back up in your world. I love it. it's cool when they come up too they're all silver and purple then they hit the deck and they're just like brown looking it's like crazy how they change colors that fast too yeah it's it's pretty remarkable i liked it and we had one like i don't know how long do you think we had the first set out for i don't know you're watching your watch was about 20 30 minutes how far did we drift i don't even think it was a mile we didn't even drift a mile

and then the second time we sat down i mean the minute it got down yeah i told us i'll make a short drift for you i'm like we got to drop one more time though it took longer to get it down yeah than it did for the fish to be on there yeah and blam another swordfish i thought i was i thought i was tripping i thought i seen something i'm like maybe and then it really was it it plays tricks on you too especially when you sit there for a couple hours you're like oh that was a bite no it wasn't yeah because what you're watching like there's wave action so as you're riding up on a swell that the rod loads and then you get to the top of the swell and the rod sort of the rod sort of relaxes and goes

straight and then you and then it loads then you start to drop down and the rod goes sort of slack and falls then repeats itself and you kind of memorize the cycle and you're looking for like an interruption in the cycle right and the interruption could be on the ride up there's like a a pause as the swell brings you up or on the drop down it's like a like a stutter right and that's all you're really looking for yep sometimes you don't see it all you look over the rod just buckled over and you're like oh got him on hit the road you're like oh that's cool yeah caught me sleeping but got caught him sleeping you know like you guys like to fish crappies right yeah that's cool yeah but it's

like i like i fish a lot of small fish but i also like to fish for big fish like we like to catch halibut but when you spend all that time fishing small fish and then you catch a swordfish that big which isn't even huge but like it's a swordfish and they're kind of like all meat they have a high yield i start picturing if i was going to take all that meat and make a pile and then start flaying yellow perch and i had to flay enough yellow perch to match that pile it makes me feel like small fish don't make sense don't it's about a bite of filet it's like yeah if someone said okay you clean perch until you've matched those piles up or clean crappie until you make me a pile of meat the size of the pile of meat we got off the small

swordfish that'd be a couple hundred a few hundred hundreds it'd be hundreds of crappie we've we spec fish all season and probably won't even amount to one fish one swordfish yeah oh one of the things too like you know i and i'm a freshwater guy you know the you know i've been out ryan you're a gladesman i'm a gladesman and uh but i will say that my other the passion for me in saltwater and is going with him and buoy fishing the night time because when you you know i've been with him a few times and then i i went with him just me and him and got the you know i made it for him and you when you grab that line on a big fish and you're you grab you know and i fought gate you know hunt gators you know fought gators and that but when

you grab a swordfish and you're pulling that line you you know and i'm pretty big guy when i grab you know when you grab a hold of them and you actually feel the power that that fish has you you don't got nothing for him yeah there you know and that's what he you know when when i went out with him he's like look you know i was trying he says look when he wants to go let him go because you ain't gonna stop him you know when they they are they're pretty gnarly fish when they want to go they go you know powerful that's what oh there's something like really shocking about him yeah it's like a prehistoric fish kind of and he comes up with that blade yeah sticking out of his nose yeah and then when you got you know when we went you

you know even we harpooned them and then gaffed them and get them in the boat and they go you know nuts in the boat and that bill gets going it's just i don't know that's you know if i would say i like to go i'm like total opposite i'll either like to go bass fishing or i want to go swordfish and i don't have no interest in the troll and the you know sailfish and nothing like that i want to go pull hand gear yeah you don't want to finesse a large mouth and let them go or or go catch stick a harpoon into a 500 pound swordfish pretty much you know they're it's just something like you were saying like et it's at something like out of the world when you even with the buoys you know you're pulling on them you don't see him and then all of a sudden when he lights up in the light of the boat and you see him it's like you know it's like when you see a big buck your heart like yeah it skips a beat

for a minute yeah you know i know exactly what you're talking about man yeah watching a big fish come out of the depths is is like kind of awe-inspiring and like surprising yeah has has that go away now that you've done it so long i mean as long as you could be doing it now because i was plugging you guys as being single fellers mid-20s you're both in your mid-20s yeah yeah i'm 29 late 20s no more than that what's uh i should ask um what's your window right like i always, I always figured my window, personally, like, whatever, if I imagine, like, my window, I was always being like,

generally, I would be imagining that it would be within five years of my age. Like, when I was, before I was married, before I met my wife, if you had to guess how old would this potential spouse be, I would say I bet she's, you know, not going to be younger than five years younger me but probably not older than five years older if you say it is a substantial window that's a 10-year

window right there's 360 million americans 51 are female and then you got a 10-year window to catch them all. There are tens of millions of potential mates in this country. And that's not even talking about other countries. Like Crappie. She's got to be able to clean fish. You're going to have to do a fish analogy to bring this all back together. So at 29, you're cool going back to're 29. You're cool going back to 24. Are you okay to hop ahead to 34? Yeah, heck yeah, man.

Okay, so that's a big window. Order the berry sweet or the juice. Yeah, it's a slot limit. We got about 20 to 50. So, all right, so there's two. Yeah, so women in this area, if you're looking for, both gainfully employed, avid outdoorsmen, prone to getting in airboat crashes, but not their fault. These guys have both been run over by other less experienced boaters yeah wrong uh you know what they say in the wrong place at the wrong time pretty much and you guys both know how to cook yeah because

i said you cooked us alligator you cooked us bullfrog you cooked us frozen french fries um how'd you guys cook your frog legs they were good uh we just battered them you know like a little cajun cajun batter it was a fine not even it was like a breading yeah like a fine bread yeah i don't like to get crazy you know a lot of people like to get crazy with the bread and i feel like it takes away from your meat you know um i like to use a little lighter you know a little more cornmeal base you know and then we'll put like a little you know so it was a little lighter, you know, a little more cornmeal base, you know. And then we'll put like a little, you know. So it wasn't breading.

You guys didn't actually, it wasn't like a. It wasn't wet. It didn't go on wet. It wasn't a wet batter, right? No, it's just like you don't even got, we don't, we actually don't even use like an egg batter with it. It's just you wet, you know, just make sure it's moist. Yeah. And then we put a little Creole seasoning in it. In the flour. Tony's. In the then we put a little creole seasoning in it and in the flour tony's creole seasoning um i noticed on the window still you got some yeah i think it's

the tony's is what it is yeah either tony's or zataran's one of the two i know zataran's yeah yeah i've always been a tony's man i mean i like a lot of stuff i like tony's yeah and then uh you make a secret sauce yeah what is the secret sauce it wouldn't be secret and we told you the secret okay like give me a rough sketch on the secret sauce it's have you been to like bonefish grill you ever been to a bonefish grill oh yeah bonefish grill yeah they do like a bang bang shrimp you know i'm talking about yeah i know what you're talking about it's kind of like a like a spinoff of their version you know it's it's you know sriracha some red chili you know like the chili pepper sauce

a little ketchup other things they're all on the kitchen counter over there gotta milk a couple frogs well it was good man this has been like a really educational couple days for me and like a handful of different activities and then the swordfish and stuff was just kind of shocking to me

I think I'll be talking about that for a long time that's pretty cool especially when you catch them that quick yeah I think I'll be talking about that for a long time. That's pretty cool. Especially when you're catching that quick. Yeah. Makes it nice. When we leave the dock at 9, we're already running home by, what, 1150? Yeah. Caught two.

Two big, huge fish laying in the bottom of the boat. Two monsters. Yeah. Yanni, concluding thoughts? Any final questions? Big eye on those uh swordfish you like that eyeball huh right well i mean it makes sense right where they live but uh you don't catch fish that have an eye that i mean that they might be bigger in your eye two definitely two to three

inches that's a good point big round as a copenhagen can there you go r Ryan, your mate that was out with us was talking about when you bring a he's talking about bringing a Mako up in the boat and he says when you're walking around the boat that Mako watches and follows you. He does. Sketchy. You can see him following you

with his eyeball as you walk around the boat. He does, waiting to bite you. Yeah, we killed a couple of those well i did have one other final question please where airboat culture outside of southern florida like where else do you find it um nebraska the platte river they they actually have um uh they have pretty big event up there every year they call it thunder on the loop they do like races that you know which they that's like a that's like car motorboat territory you know they run a lot of what's down here too you know there's a lot but um you know louisiana louisiana texas um mexico you know a lot of the duck hunting you know they got a lot of the duck hunting operations down there they use them alaska alaska caribou moose hunters using airboats and

you see guys even fishing salmon out of airboats i mean even um you know illinois um there's start you know there is some airboat in there that i've you know heard about through conversations and that um but i would say as far as recreational airboat use south florida central florida is like the mecca for it you know we have multiple actual manufacturers here uh diamondback airboats cto stossel Airboats, um, actually classic, um, Lumatech, like actual places where you can go get a production built boat. You know, I've been in the, which we were up what last year at Diamondbacks plant, uh, pretty cool operation to see how they actually, I mean, you go from where our boats were built, where it's kind of a one-man shop, hand-built, halls, aircraft riveted, you know, everything's done with hand jigs.

Where Diamondback, everything's done by, they have actual jigs built. They have, it's like a line, you know, guys weld in halls. They're cranking them out. Yeah, they crank them out you know more like your um agencies you know fwc you know they go as far as louisiana and that you know they buy more from them now um and that's you know on that touching on that you know so there there is actually it's a pretty decent size industry here for that so we're in ground zero of air bolt culture yeah i would say um our friend i keep thinking my concluding thought i'm gonna do it right now is our

guy we work with garrett dirt myth he'd like it down here because people like to chew tobacco and he loves chewing but none of us will chew with him he'd come down here drive around in air bolts having to chew like dude be in the man. And he likes to turn a wrench. He likes to fix shit. And, yeah, he likes motor sports. Likes chewing tobacco, motor sports. He'd be all over this, man. He'd fit in in South Florida.

You know what's interesting about all this? Is that just the other day we were driving around, and I don't know what we were doing. We were at the airport maybe getting those immigration not the immigration the customs forms for guns going to mexico anyways we were early and the guy wouldn't see us early we had to show up on time so we went to get a beer and uh it was snowing and it was kind of cold and he's like yanni you know i'm kind of getting over the winter really yeah so we might have just found us you know this new place he likes the ice climb though this guy's so into motors that when he sees a like he's i've seen

him be almost moved to tears by super cubs yeah moved to tears by it just like just like strikes him somewhere down deep uh matt cook you know i was just talking about ryan and josh you know the reason i come down here is they really uh represent kind of the essence of south florida where i mean as far as you got commercial fishing and it's fun to see how that whole thing plays out obviously josh uh amateur trying to be professional bass fishermen on okajobi etc it's just fun to see also their passion for the outdoors i didn't know this i know you like to fish bass but you want to become a tournament bass fisher i've fished a lot of tournaments um fished some amateur event you know a lot of amateur obviously we have you know tons of turn you know amateur event team tournaments here um fish some flw outdoors

events and you know got some aspirations to go pro you know one day you know sooner or later i i like specializing in what we do because our style of fishing is you know unique in its own you know they just had a tour level event on the lake with on okachobee which is you know, unique in its own, you know, uh, they just had a tour level event on the lake with, on Okeechobee, which is, you know, they travel throughout the country and it's neat because, you know, what's got, it's hand in hand when the Florida guys go North Alabama, Tennessee, river Valley lakes, you know, Guntersville, real popular bass fishing. We tend to struggle a little bit because we're so shallow-minded. I mean, I don't ever use a depth finder. Shallow-minded meaning shallow water.

Shallow water. Yeah, I'm with you. You know what I mean? Like you were talking sight fishing. Yeah, you don't know about like. We don't fish ledges here and there, but we don't fish deep water, clear water. We're used to fishing, you know, punching is what we call it, which is using a one-ounce.

I know about punching. Yeah, punching mats. You've probably heard of him. He's an amateur bass angler out of Oregon. Matt Elliott. I'm joking. You wouldn't have heard of him. He's an amateur bass angler out of Oregon. Matt Elliott. I'm joking. You wouldn't have heard of him. But, yeah, he told me.

He broke the whole world of bass fishing down. And he also talks about all the different bass cultures. But he's from fishing smallmouth and moving water in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. Very different. I'd be lost. That's more like fishing. That'd be like, from your perspective, that'd be more like fishing for sword Northwest. Yeah. Very different. I'd be lost. That's more like fishing. That'd be like, from your perspective, that'd be more like fishing for swordfish.

Yeah. You know, that's, you know, on our side, we're fishing heavy cover, you know, thick vegetation. That's kind of, that's my specialty. And, you know, where a lot of guys are more into the finesse. Yeah. You know, I mean mean when i go bass fishing i'm fishing with a 7 11 7 and 11 inch rod almost eight foot rod extra heavy action 65 pound

braid like it's you got to get him out of the junk because when you flip in there you know the glory of fish in florida is any flip can be a 10 pound fish you know um on lake okachobee when the when when it's when the lake is producing at its top um depending on conditions and uh you know obviously we had a hurricane come through this year and that actually you know changed even the everglades it changed a lot of our landscape if you call it yeah um so that affects things you know it and one of the cool things about florida and our fisheries is in the freshwater world and the bass fishing is it changes a lot so it's always adjusting you know you'll hear guys you know pros guys that fish you know for a living they come down here and they you know

they'll come down and have gps marks from year. And they'll say they just erase everything and start all over because it doesn't, you know, it's constantly changing. So you ever fry up any largemouths? Yeah. Um, not in a long time. I'm kind of, it's like one of those things where now I fit, you know, I have a hard time killing one. Yeah. My dad, my dad's a redneck. I mean, I'm a hard time killing one. But as a kid, you guys ate them. Yeah, my dad's a redneck. I mean, I'm a redneck, but my dad is from the old school. I mean, it's hard for him to put back. You know what I mean? He looks at, you know, we always mess with him.

We go deer hunting. We say he don't see horns. When they walk out, he sees pork chops. You know, so that's kind of, you know, but we, you know, I don't, I really don't like, I could tell you a good story about Matt. Yeah, no, but Matt finish up your concluder though. You conclude and thought.

No, I just, uh, you know, I think people enjoy Florida for the, the beaches, you know, you always hear about Miami and, and, or the West coast Naples. But for me, the essence of Florida is, is kind of the center of the state. And what's fun to come down here in this area is you obviously can freshwater fish. And then, you know, for everyone listening, you're only 10 minutes away, 15, and you can go deepwater fishing. I mean, so. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's it.

We woke up this morning in the swamp house, the swamp stilt house, and fished the offshore. Yeah, people can't conceive of that you can do all of that in a three-day period yeah we had to take an airboat to get into the big boat yeah we almost squeezed in a large mouth on okachobee and and striper hunting you know so it's just a magnificent place for the outdoors you can't you can do so many things in a short period of time so that's the reason i come down these two guys have opened my eyes to it sportsman's paradise gladesman i am a wannabe gladesman which is totally different guest gladesman yeah guest gladesman ryan you got any concluding thoughts just anything you want to stick in there couldn't stick in there no i can't really think of too much.

Yeah. How old do you think you want to be before you get married? What would be like, do you have in your head like a cutoff at which you'd... I think that people should be married, personally. I'm not leaning on you yet about it but i think that people should be married i think it'll do a lot for your fishing yeah i won't have to go anymore no she's got a bunch of money it gives you clarity of mind yeah yeah we'll talk about this later um all right everyone thanks for joining us hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that

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