The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 151: Body of Water

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with the author and poet Chris Dombrowski, along with Ryan Callaghan, April Vokey, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: MeatEater's first poet; rowing Jim Harrison down the river; one nasty poacher and Alaska’s aggressive fines; the saga of Steve Kendrot's stolen deer antler; fornication; the bonefish of the prairie and partridge poop groups; how the bonefish became a celebrity; the importance of the Bahamian freshwater lens; loving nature to death; fish tales; 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. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Me and the lab in Eagle here did a little duck hunting this morning.

Does that make you jealous, Chris Dombrowski? It does. It does. I did a little driving this morning. Did you? Well, did a little duck hunting this morning. Does that make you jealous, Chris Dombrowski? It does. It does. I did a little driving this morning. Did you? Well, we're out enjoying the wilds. Chris, do you mind if we run through a couple of news points? I'd love that.

Let's do introductions. All right. I'll introduce you. Okay, sounds good. Author. I don't get to say this very often. Author and poet. Do you know Saddam Hussein had books of poetry?

Come on, don't start with that. You don't believe me? No, I'm kidding. He had multiple works of poetry. And when the Iraq war was going on, I would often catch myself saying the novelist and poet Saddam Hussein. Because he had published novels and published books of poetry. Wow.

Yeah. So similar to Saddam, Chris Dombrowski has, no, you don't have any novels. No novels, not yet. Books of poetry. I think that you're probably the first poet, the first actual real live publishing poet that we've had on the show.

That's fantastic. I mean, there's only three of you. Yeah. Harrison's dead. Right. That's show. That's fantastic. I mean, there's only three of you. Yeah. Harrison's dead. Right. That's true. That's true. It was his birthday yesterday, by the way.

Oh, it was? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chris, you used to guide. You were like a guide for Jim Harrison. Yeah, I rode Jim down the river. Guiding is probably not quite an accurate word. Was there an exchange of money? No, no. Oh, so you guys were just hanging out. Yeah. And every

time I would have an idea, he would say, go to the other bank. So if anything, he was guiding, but not rowing. I got you. So you were just like a facilitator. A facilitator, a wine opener, dispenser of chicken thighs. You got a lot of, as a guide, right? You've seen a thousand people cast, right? Is he a good fisherman? He was an exceptionally good caster. Absolutely. I remember being so thrilled

when the first time I saw him cast and I realized that he could actually cast, because I grew up in Michigan. I worked for this. As did he. As did he, as did you, as did so many Mishitanans. But I can remember I worked at this lodge up in Grayling as a kid and the experts,

the so-called experts would come through and you'd always be so disappointed when you actually saw them cast. They were so bad compared to your buddies and whatnot. So the first time I saw Jim cast, I thought, ah, all is well. Oh, really? Yeah.

That is a relief. I know. As a guide, when you see a client cast and they're good and you've never seen it before, it's definitely just like, ah. Yeah. But then you hope that that doesn't come with some real shitty expectations.

Yeah, it usually reverses the karma, right? You know? Yanni, if you're telling me that your mic is two fingers off your lip. Yeah. He's got really big hands. April Volke, are you familiar with, have you ever met Chris before?

No, we haven't met. We met about five minutes ago. Oh, okay. Had you seen his book around? I saw it this afternoon. Sorry, Chris, but I'm excited to learn more about it. We sprang this on April. We didn't give April the long lead time

in order to go read up on Body of Water. Ryan actually sprung it on me last night because I was podcasting Ryan this morning or this afternoon. And I said, I'll glad you did. In order to go read up on Body of Water. Ryan actually sprung it on me last night because I was podcasting Ryan this morning or this afternoon. And I said, I'll see you tomorrow. He goes, oh yeah, for the Chris podcast. And I went, who, what? So, but what a pleasure.

I'm thrilled to be here. I'm glad I didn't know. I would have been nervous. You guys share professional connections though because of the whole, you know, fishing world. Are you a guide still? I still guide about 80 days a year. I'd count that as still being a guide.

Dude, we have at this table right now are four people who have at some point in their life been professional fly fishing guides. Are you the only one who hasn't? I'm the one that hasn't. The smart one with the thriving business so that meaning there's four people

at this table who whore themselves out and one who's don't open that can one who's pure as the driven snow I think it's real good for recruitment purposes that you never guided anybody that's the voice of ryan callahan who's also here and then um and then uh yanni chimani hello so we talked about that oh i was

asking you a couple news items oh yeah yeah um a dude okay a guy in Alaska, check this out. A guy in Alaska just got jail time in a $100,000 fine for poaching some moose. Man, those guys do not mess around in Alaska. What do you mean some moose? Because he killed and ditched three moose. Why? Here's what they think. Okay, we've talked about this before.

Like in Alaska, depending on where you are, there's always exceptions, but generally, like generally, for a bull moose to be legal in Alaska, it has to be either, depending where you are, has to be either have three brow tines on one side or be 50 inches tip to tip antler spread. Or you might be in a unit that's

what you'd call a four brow tine unit where it has to have four brow tines on one side or and or be 50 inch tip to tip and then there's other units that are like any bull whatever but but typically you're either it's either a three brow tine or four brow tine area. And when we're hunting moose, it's real nice to see the brow tines because gauging 50-inch tip-to-tip is some tricky shit. It's nerve-wracking. Like to shoot, there's a lot of guys, like my brother Danny's a very experienced moose hunter.

He is not, it makes him very uncomfortable to shoot a bull on spread and to not shoot a bull on brow time count. But it seems like this feller was just real bad at, seems like real bad at judging. And he'd kind of check them once they were down to see if they're legal. Three of them, $100,000 fine.

I like that, man. I was going to say, so be it. I mean, that's pretty ignorant. Because now and then you hear some dude doing some like egregious stuff and he winds up with a misdemeanor and has to do like a day of community service. They don't mess around, man.

Like Alaska does not mess around on game and fish violations. They treat it like business. Is there not some sort of calculation that you can make from afar? Yeah. So that's where the stuff gets tricky. Let's say he's broadside and turns his head to look at you. There's all these little tricks.

Like if that outside swoop hits the midpoint on his hump, or you know that a standard run-of-the-mill bowl is 20 ear to ear i can't remember i can't either but it's out there's a measurement of like hey like your typical mature bowl is x inches ear to ear might be 30 10 per year and plus 10 in between yeah so you got like that and then you imagine does it go you know a percentage of that that way all this stuff but what you arrive at is unless like a friend of mine who's a guide is like unless you look at and you're like you know it blow like you you feel that your heart's going to stop because it's obviously 80 inches. Don't shoot.

Don't mess around. So wait, did they count? Did they measure then? Did it come in at like 49? One was, I read the article. I can't remember the other ones, but one, the biggest one was around 45. Okay.

Did he take any part of the animal? It says most of all three went to waste. Most? So was he stripping back straps and stuff? You know, you're asking a lot of great questions. I'm so curious about this. I think that we'd have to do a little more reading. BodyMind just sent me the article,

so I'm a little bit guilty of having not done a ton of research, but the outline of it, I have a sense of the outline, but that, it said like left most to rot. Sounds like a hundred thousands fair. That's big. Yeah, and I do, I was wondering if there's a little more to the story

because I can see that price tag climbing. If I can see that fine being less, if it was like guy was caught with three moose that were fully processed going to feed his family versus oh the ditching the ditching of definitely probably colors that man didn't do any favors past violations probably covered yeah some states have a thing where if it's a trophy animal, then your fines go through the roof. Yeah.

Poaching a trophy class animal costs you a lot more money than if you're like a pot hunter. Then they slap you down harder. What are a couple other things I want to talk about? Oh, guy had some feedback on something. Cal, you were here for this conversation where our buddy Steve Kendrott, this is tricky.

Check this out, Chris. Our buddy Steve Kendrott shoots a sea kadeer down in Maryland and it's missing a tine, an antler tine. His buddy shoots a sea kadeer and he's skinning it. And there, lo and behold, is Steve Kendrott's antler tine embedded in the buck. So these are pugnacious little fighters, you know? And he snaps his antler tine off in the buck. And so the guy kept the antler tine. Steve was able to take the antler tine and match it up. And I was saying how I felt that if that friend of his

was an honorable friend, he'd have given Steve Kendra out the antler time. He didn't? Oh, see? I'm glad you said that. Because everybody that wrote in was saying like- We took a vote that day at the table. And I think, Cal, you said you made a good point

that, well, maybe the story, because I agree with you, like he should have just given it to him. But Cal said, well, the story is just as good if the antler tine's hanging like near that trophy, that head, because he's like, this is what I had in my neck and I was still alive, right? But go ahead.

Well, one of the guys, one of the many guys that wrote in about it was looking at it like this. He says, contrary to my personal opinion, he says, contrary to my Steve's opinion, he's like, the fight between these two things happened outside the realm of man. The fight was the fight,

and it didn't involve people, and there's no room to weigh in on the people perspective. They had a fight. And he likens it to this. Let's say you got in a knife fight or let's say someone came up and stabs you in the leg and in the scuffle the his knife blade snaps off in your leg whose knife blade is that now that's a good i i no way later would that guy say oh hey i need my knife blade back you would like what would your response

to that be fair enough that knife blade would go in my shelf absolutely and when people came over i'd be like see that knife blade but would you feel differently if in this fantastical world it was his finger that he had jabbed into your thigh, broken his finger. I would dry his finger and I would have it on my shelf. And when people came over and I caught him looking at it, I'd be like, you see that? And I would tell them about it.

I don't think it's a great comparison. I'm sorry. I think that's a horrible comparison. So the tine was in the animal or in the animal's antlers? Oh, you know what? Because you missed. It was in the animal, right?

It was ingrained in the animal. Yeah, so like. In the hide. So there's buck A, like buck A and buck B. Yeah. They get in a fight and buck A's antler

ends up snapping off into buck B. That's what I thought. My buddy shoots A, who's missing its antler and his buddy shoots B and finds embedded in its body and the buddy

keeps B buck. No, no, I got all this. Oh, you do? Yeah, I got this. I thought maybe I wasn't explaining it. No, no, no, you've explained it. But my thing is, what is that buddy going to do with it? I mean, it's one thing.

If it was wedged into the antler somewhere and it told the story, like what you're talking about, that makes sense. That's a piece of art. You know, you're putting the story up to mount on your wall but it was ingrained in the shoulder you can't just hang it on it's like that's like having a fish sculpture and hanging a fly out of it he's got some stupid chunk antler laying it's ridiculous give it to your buddy so he can super glue it onto his you know his mount we thought he should hang it from it in a deck with some decorative oh that's so no just set it next to it your guys' decor is a lot different in my opinion,

but okay. I don't think bringing a knife to it is necessarily the same analogy, a great analogy. Okay, one more quick one. And then we're gonna talk about other stuff. I know how to really attack this one. Not long ago, we were talking about this. We were talking about that

when you're sitting in a tree stand and it's cold out and a big buck comes through and you get all excited and then the big buck wanders off about his business unscathed. And then I personally all of a sudden feel like I'm cold. Like it left me,

like I then I'm like, God, am I cold? And that guy was talking about how my brother, when he goes, he calls going off to take a growler, going off to take a heater, right? A guy wrote in about a doctor writes in to explain these two things. He says, you have an autonomic nervous system

of the human body and has two parts, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system of the human body, and it has two parts, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system releases epinephrine and other stress hormones to prepare for what is often referred to as fight or flight response. Some of these things, like effects of these hormones increase heart rate dilate pupils vasoconstrict blood vessels it shunts blood to the core vital organs the skin becomes pale cool and diaphoretic the vasoconstriction of peripheral vessels is why a person might feel cold after a stressful encounter with game animals. Dragon.

On the other side, the parasympathetic nervous system is known as the rest and digest nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is active when the body is not under stress, i.e. eating, fornicating. Now, poor word choice on his part because fornicating means having sex outside of marriage i didn't know that yes there could be probably only if you're married

yeah but i'm saying you could be having like some serious stressful let's say you a fellow was a woman let's say a woman was married and the old man's off at work. I feel like right now he's got a little bit of bad word choice with fornicating because he's saying when the body is not under stress, i.e. eating, fornicating. Eating, yes. Fornicating isn't just synonymous with lovemaking.

Fornicating means marriage outside of, or sex outside of marriage. So a woman could be in a situation where she's, you know, like nervous about being discovered by her old man. You tracking? Which could make it stressful. Which would then involve the other side of the nervous system.

Yeah. Where there's like, you've got the fight and flight going on because you're foreign. I think he should have said lovemaking, which is, that word just makes people uncomfortable. So the parasympathetic nervous system is active when the body is not under stress i.e eating love making or in this case pushing out a grumpy the act of bearing down to defecate stimulates the vagus nerve which is part of the parasympathetic nervous system when the

parasympathetic nervous system is stim the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated, you get vasodilation to peripheral blood vessels, therefore increased blood flow to the skin, resulting in a warmer sensation. Therefore, bearing out my brother's observation that when he goes off in the woods on a cold morning to turn over a rock, so to speak, he feels warmed up by it all. That's all. And can you confirm that you do feel cooler or colder when a big deer walks by? And what's the difference? Where does adrenaline fall into all of this? I think it's what he's saying is that when a big buck comes by, you get the adrenaline spike and then it drops and that's when I become cold. Right. And I do feel that you get warmed up going off and rolling over a rock.

Definitely. You guys have a lot of strange ways of saying taking a poop. I've heard three different ways in like two minutes. Because- That's what you're saying though, right? Because you know, like the term, like the term I was saying earlier that makes people uncomfortable? Growler?

No, growler doesn't make you feel uncomfortable. Love making. Oh, love making, yeah. Yeah, going poop. It just sounds so personal. I love it. I think it's great. Pooping sounds fantastic.

We use that, like, that's what our, with our kids. Pooping? Yeah, they need to poop. They're pooping. It's just like, I feel like it's very family, a family term. Well, it is. But taking a growler, a family term. Well, it is. But taking a growler is a hunting term.

Okay. Thank you. I'm enlightened. I've learned a lot so far. Oh, well, that's interesting. That's a very wordy way of saying, you know. But I'm so happy that that's explained. It just like, it makes sense, right?

Chris, you seem like not not engaged no i've been thinking about poop a lot this fall because i've been um i've been hunting hungarian partridge a lot so i'm just uh you know they like a covey of partridge huns will roost together and they roost tails together yeah so you when you find their roost you actually find this neat little pile of poop. And they're a tough to find bird. I have a great bird dog, but a lot of times you're just walking around looking for sign,

which are these little white tip droppings. Yeah. Quill do the same thing. They come in, they back into each other and make a little circle. Right. And make a little collective like poop group. Yeah. No, I was- We'll do the same thing. They come in, they back into each other and make a little circle. Right. And make a little collective like poop group. Yeah.

No, I was not disinterested. I was lost in thought, you know, doing my poet thing. How do we, getting out of that, how best to get to our subject matter at hand? Well, I could tell you why I think Huns are the- No, not that. Oh. What is our subject matter at hand? Well, I could tell you why I think huns are the- No, not that. Oh, what is our subject? I want to talk about your book, of course,

and bone fishing in general. Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say. I could tell you about how huns are the- Oh, you're going to segue? Bone fish of the prairie, yeah. Oh, that's good. That's good.

Do that. Do that. Oh, I have been thinking about them a lot this fall. And there is something to the seemingly mundane habitat that the Huns live in. You know, grassy hillsides. They're mostly seed eaters. They don't need a whole lot of agriculture to survive. They're reallyy hillsides. They're mostly seed eaters. They don't need a whole lot of agriculture to survive. They're really hardy birds.

And they covey up. They group up. A lot of times, you know, bonefish will school up as well. You're doing a very good job, man. For the most part, the reason why I enjoy traversing that wide, wide country, it reminds me of being on the flats. There are these, what McGuane called these long silences between where do you actually find a covey of birds when your dog goes on point.

It's usually right about when you think nothing's going to happen and then suddenly it does. I found some, I shot some huns one time. My late buddy, Eric, that had, their crops were full of grasshoppers. Oh yeah, that's their chief food in the early fall. And then they go to cheatgrass after the hoppers, you know, die off for the,

my buddy told me he found one, a clean one last year and the hun had in its crop a grasshopper that was still kicking when he cleaned it. That doesn't surprise me. It upsets me a little bit, but it doesn't surprise me. For the grasshopper? No, just like it'd be like a little bit startling, I guess, cleaning a bird and there's a live grasshopper in there.

But no, I wouldn't feel bad for him. You guys have all, I imagine you've caught a whole pile of bonefish, right, April? Yeah, I think I've caught a few. Cal? Never. Really? Yep. Yeah, I always kind of poo-pooed those things.

Caught a lot of whitefish in my day. You can go if you guys have something else to do because we thought you caught bonefish so oh really yeah no i've seen them i took a couple of bad casts oh you did one time yeah you caught them a few though only a few 15 years ago i was down in belize for i don't know a couple weeks and i maybe landed a half dozen okay nice so your book chris yes steven explains how that fish went from being it does a lot of things but explains how like how that how the bone fish became a celebrity fish right when it used to just be a what well they threw it into piles that went into making dog food back in the day.

You know, the commercial netters would, if bonefish ended up in their catch, they would basically throw it into a pile that went to Purina or some other, you know, undesirable pile of fish, right? And that, the evolution of that is really what, as you say, the book is about, at least on the surface level.

Boy, 1951 was when the first Bahamian bonefish lodge was erected. This guy named- 51? Yeah, 51. See, I read the book, but I don't even remember being that early. Really?

So people in 1951 were thinking like, oh, this is a cool fish to catch. Yeah. Well, not very many people. There was one guy, wealthy Floridian guy named Gil Drake who had bone fished in the Keys. There were a few guys that had bone fished in the Keys.

Now, most people, the kind of famed Bahamian bone fish guy, there's a guy named Crazy Charlie Smith. You know, the crazy Charlie. The crazy Charlie fly. Sure, he's the fly everyone knows about. I got a small problem. Yes?

What's the guy's name again? Because here's the guy, it got me thinking. The guy that shot the moose and got in trouble, guess what his name is? Gil Drake? No, he's got the perfect, no, Rusty Counts. Yeah, Rusty Counts. name is gil drake no he's got the perfect no rusty counts yeah rusty counts that sounds like a moose poacher three counts of poaching yeah rusty counts okay so gil drake okay so gil drake in about 1951 i actually had to listen to this book on audiobook to remind myself of a few things your own book yeah i hadn't read it in a couple of years, so I had to reacquaint myself.

But 51 sounds right. Gil Drake was this wealthy Floridian guy. He lived in Palm Beach and his wife basically fronted him the money to go down to the Bahamas and build a lodge. And he, you know, the flight from Palm Beach to the East end of Grand Bahama is really 35, 40 minutes, right?

So he found this at the far East end of the archipelago, this little island that was, that came to be called Deepwater Key. And after a few months of being down there, he hired a man named David Pinder, who he hired to basically clean the island of mangroves and help them lug rock and rudimentary construction projects.

But soon he found out that Pinder, who had been born and raised on this tiny little island, knew a lot about where the bonefish lived, right? For what reason? Just be, I mean, he grew up foraging. He was a shore forager. His father had been a sponger, you know, and had drifted kind of island to island to island.

Pinder says in the book- A sponger, like a guy that collects sponges for the- Sea sponges. Yep, exactly. And that's not ornamenter, like a guy that collects sponges for the- Sea sponges. Yep, exactly. And that's not ornamental, right? That's for sponges. No, they were selling them for sponges. Pinder contends that the sponges

were over-harvested at one point. And so he was basically a sponger's son who had spent an inordinate amount of time on this tiny little island at the east end of grand bahama and so he knew where the bonefish lived he was basically bemused when uh drake said do you think you could show us where to catch them because of you know of what use was a bonefish right they were uh tedious to eat at best you know and there were snapper plentiful and lobsters and whatnot. Yeah.

We talked about this. In Hawaii, they make a ground up patty. Yeah, that does sound good. And they call bonefish oil. They're not bad. I've eaten one. Yeah, me too. I mean, but regardless.

One thing we got to do. Yeah. Someone needs to explain like what a bonefish is and where it lives. I can do it. Go for it. All right. Well, so it's, you know, the bonefish is a sport fish now.

It's really averages about three to five pounds. It's a fish that lives in deep water, looks to the western eye or even the midwestern eye like a whitefish. Basically, if you caught Lake Superior whitefish in Michigan or you caught Rocky Mountain whitefish, the bonefish looks very, very similar. It can travel at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour. So it's a super sporty fish when hooked, right? Strong. Strong, kind of straight ahead, laser sharp runs, not real, doesn't make a whole lot of buckling.

Like rockets. When you hook them to line going through the water, I came up with this somewhere else did. I don't know. Maybe I stole it from someone. That when that fish takes off and your line's caught in the water, it sounds like someone ripping newsprint. Yeah, that is exactly what it sounds like.

If you did steal that, that's a good theft. Actually, in the chapter where I'm kind of describing the physicality of the bonefish i i quote a bit from meat eater the book you you have a great line where you say their nose looks like the uh working end of a rechargeable vacuum i think it's got that same pitch to it like it's all like your ma's back your mom's the kind of vacuum like sticking the wall. What the hell are those? Oh, I forget what those are called, but yeah.

Everybody knows what they look like. Dust something and- Dust busters. Dust busters, dust busters, yeah. Anyway, so they live for the most part in deep water where they're rarely caught, but they come onto the flats to feed. So the saltwater flats being ankle to knee deep really

and exceptionally clear. They eat crabs, they eat shrimp, they eat little benthic worms, they eat sea urchins, they eat small perch. They even eat small bonefish. There's a great story in here where this old guy, David Pinder, who I mentioned, just catches a bonefish that has a small,

a 12 pound bonefish that has a one pound bonefish actually still alive in its belly. It's the only fish you can, maybe not the only one, but one of the very few fish you can track down. Oh, sure, yeah. Because they root. Or like that leaves sign right they do they leave

sign they leave mud sure they leave because they go they go up and go into the mud and make a little looks like a looks like someone like kind of jammed a golf ball down into the ground and pulled it back out again yep and if you're like oh they've been through here yeah you'll see like dark gray patches they've got muds everywhere yeah Yeah, and then those little, I don't know what you call it, the little divot. Rootings, yeah. Yeah, little rootings. But they don't, you know, they don't jump.

I think they are certainly fast, but they're probably best renowned for their speed, right? And their strength for their size. Sure, and I think at the time when Gil Drake, this Floridian was thinking he could make a fishing lodge based on this bonefish, it was their fickleness, the difficulty of pursuit that kind of made them a target as a sport fish. I'm assuming he never fished permit at that point.

He would have chanced upon them in the Keys. His wife actually became an, actually his son's wife, Linda Drake became an incredible Keys guide. In fact, Harrison used to fish with her. Do you recognize that name, Linda Drake? No, but I'd like to. Yeah. She, she was, she was, she also guided for this lodge where most of the book takes place called Deepwater Key. Oh, yeah, Deepwater Key. Yeah, so anyway, this old man, David Pinder, started guiding basically for $5 a day in 51. Yeah.

Five bucks a day. Five bucks a day, right? And he had been working at a, uh, some kind of a missile detection site near Freeport, you know, making probably five bucks a month. So five bucks a day was this incredible raise for him and opportunity. Um, and over the course of, you know, I interrupt because there's a great story where he's like working there and he must just be doing hard labor too and it's him and two other dudes and that's when uh Drake comes up and he's looking for a strong healthy worker and he's literally he doesn't know anything about these

three men except just he's just sizing them up and Pinder gets picked. And he's like, that was the day of all my days. Yeah. That was the moment. That was when life changed. Right. It's an amazing, it's a really a beautiful moment. I think it was, I want to say it was whatever Ruination Day is, the same day the Titanic sank.

The Titanic sinking has a name? Yeah, Ruination Day. And it's based off the Titanic sinking well I had this argument with my editor actually because she said it was it was a Gillian Welch phrase or invention but whatever same day

Lincoln was assassinated right in the Titanic anyway so the guy that shot Lincoln what a nut job that guy was man i didn't realize i recently was uh watching something that i mean you're obviously nut job right oh man but i mean just like you know just kind of like a drunken derelict you know total loser you can't believe it even besides like how bad you are to kill a man let alone kill the president but in addition was just like a drunken yeah just walked into the playhouse like a total dare like

yeah drunken theater guy go ahead though all right um i will see if anybody had any doubts as to whether or not the assassin... I could be like, now there's a fine specimen of a gentleman. What'd you find? Did you... Yeah, so it's Abraham Lincoln's assassination,

the Titanic sinking, and the Black Sunday dust storm of 1935. Oh, wow. Adds up to ruination. There you go. And everybody's saying bad things happen in threes.

And then Gillian first brought attention to this historical confluence on her 2001 album, Time. Good. Okay. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com. OnXMaps.com. Welcome to the OnXx club y'all now remind me remind me the guy that goes down and he opens the thing up to try to establish a fishery right gil drake is does he need to because he's trying to take a fish that no one cares about and make people begin part of his job is to market the fish he needs like manufacture a clientele yeah but he's still decades really away ahead of himself as far as that's concerned i mean this is the 50s so um he's really just putting up a cool place for he and his

buds to go hang out okay right um and he thinks it's fun and doesn't care if you think it's fun or not exactly he's he's fronted his wife's fronted in the money he's he's to go hang out. Okay. Right. So he thinks it's fun and doesn't care if you think it's fun or not. Exactly. He's fronted, his wife's fronted in the money. He's going to go down and enjoy himself. And then the fishery kind of begins to take off. And some crazy things coincide timing wise. So as the rise of fly fishing for bonefish starts to happen, we're also looking at the height

of the Colombian drug cartel, right? So, you know, Deepwater Key becomes this destination probably next to Charlie Smith's Bang Bang Club, the great Bahamian bonefish destination at the time, right? What's Charlie Smith's Bang Bang Club? That's over on Andros. Yeah, that's over on Andros. And Charlie Smith is probably the real famed,

if you ask people who started bonefishing, who was the first Bahamian bonefish guide, almost everybody will say Charlie Smith. They won't say David Pinder, who is at the center of this book and actually was the first Bahamian bonefish guide? Almost everybody will say Charlie Smith. They won't say David Pinder, who is at the center of this book and actually was the first guide, but there's really- Pinder has, that's a generational family, right?

You bet. Because I was guided by a Pinder when I was there. Awesome. Yeah. You might've been guided by William. You might've been guided by Joseph, his two sons, David Jr. and Jeffrey guide up out of Freeport.

They're all incredible. And then third generation is a guy named Miko Glinton, who's people know from his YouTube world and his, I mean, Miko's- He's the showboat, right? He is the showboat, yeah. I think he and I fished, yeah, we fished for a day and he would do this, like he does the Michael Jackson turn. Yes, he does. He'll do a cast and in between casts, he'll do this Michael Jackson he does the Michael Jackson turn. Yeah. He'll do a cast in the, in between casts,

he'll do this, you know, Michael Jackson turn on the bow of the boat and complete his cast. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. He can throw his, he can throw the whole line with just his hands,

you know? So yeah, Miko is third generation and you know, the book I'm, I'm getting ahead of myself, but if we go back to the 70s, Gil Drake's son comes around, becomes this also a great young guide in the area. And bonefish is, the bonefish is like a viable sport fish now. Suddenly people are traveling to the Bahamas to catch this fish, right? Meantime, the Bahamian economy is in the tank, right?

Oh yeah, we're just getting to the drug cartels. Yeah. So we're still, I mean, some people like Prime Minister Lyndon Pendling are getting exceptionally rich, taking bribes from the cartel, but everybody else is floundering. And about that time, someone discovers that the bonefish is the reason people are coming to, we didn't use the term ecotourism back then, but someone had the good sense to say, look, we can keep giving the Colombians all this money

or all this play in the islands, or we can kick them out all together and see if our economy can actually be based on this fish. So as it would turn out in 2010, that same fish that Pinder guided toward for five bucks a day in the fifties, the bonefish is $151 million industry, tourism wise per year in the Bahamas.

So it's in the Bahamas alone. So, and that's, you know, 800,000 people, maybe 900,000 now, but it's the crux of their ecotourism industry. And what's one day of flats fishing out there right now? I want to say it's 795, 795 bucks now, maybe 700. There's a friend of mine who did a little- That's what it costs to go fish.

That's what it costs to go up and stay at a lodge and fish in Alaska. Right? BC is similar? It's on par with the rest of the lodges. They do a lot of, you know, week long packages. So it's great for the entire economy there. Yeah. Can you still do,

I don't know why you wouldn't be able to. Like in 1996, in 96, me and my brother flew to Cancun, took a bus to Playa del Carmen and then bought shit loads of beans and rice and a bunch of water and just walked and slept on the beach and fished bonefish.

And you'd like now and then run into a dude who was doing it, but it wasn't like a thing people were doing. Oh, just DIY on the beach? Yeah. For a month.

The Bahamian's complicated that a couple of years ago. I mean, you can still do it in Mexico. You can still do it in Belize. Yes, Belize is where my buddy's doing it. Yeah, so if we take that $5 a day in the 50s and we compare it to the $7.95 per guide day today. $795.

$795 per day. According to this econ guy that I talked to, nothing but gold has appreciated more in that span of time. So you take this fish that was basically thrown away, discarded into piles for dog food, whatnot. And it literally becomes the crux of this whole country's economy. Gets them out from under the drug cartels, the shadow of the drug cartel. And really now that we're talking

the third generation of Bahamian guides helps a country become self-sufficient. This guy Prescott Smith, who's, go ahead. You can take this on later if you want. Is the money flowing to Bahamians or is it all flowing to Americans? Good question because- Take that out when you want. Well, I'll take it on now. It's about where I was going to go. So Prescott Smith is the son of Charlie Smith,

the crazy Charlie guy, right? And what's Prescott Smith- Is he a bohemian or- He's a bohemian, yep. And he- Bohemian, bohemian. That's funny, a lot of people- I didn't want to be the one to say it. I was correct. Oliver White recently corrected me. I said, oh, is your wife bohemian? He said, bohemian. I've been saying it wrong. Right. It's easy to confuse it to a fact. When I was working on this book, I must've said bohemian a few times

and people thought like, God, this guy, I knew this guy was weird, but I didn't think he was that weird to write a book about bohemians. What was your question, Yanni? Sorry, Yanni. I missed the whole damn question. If Crazy Charlie was a local.

Yeah, so Crazy Charlie, he has a famous lodge over on Andros and his son Prescott has become the voice of this second, third generation of guides, basically saying we have to get these lodges out from under the ownership of these wealthy Floridian dudes or wherever they're from.

And we need to own these lodges because only if we own them will the necessary choices in conservation be made, right? He talks- That's a bold statement. It is, man. And he's a hated dude in a lot of ways. You asked about the,

can you just get a bag of beans and rice and go kind of dirt bag it? In the last couple of years, the Bahamas passed a law that basically said you can't do that anymore. See, that's new. When I was in the Bahamas, I mean, I did a lot of DIY. I knew that when I was going there, you still couldn't guide there if you weren't from there, but you could do it yourself. So they've changed that in the last few years. In the last few years. My brother breaks the law

down. I shouldn't say this. Well, that's the thing. It's not, I was actually down there. We went down as a family to celebrate the book with this whole town, this little town of maybe 300 people, it's called McLean's Town, and that's where David Pinder lives. We went down to celebrate the publication of it, and I wanted to take Luca, our son, bone fishing. So I had to get him a license,

but no one thought you needed to have a license. They thought the old rules were still in place. So to find the actual license was a classic hijinks of like, you know, island time. Well, you should go over and see Steve. Well, Steve told me to go over and see April, you know, blah, blah, blah. So no one appears to be monitoring it. Yeah. We had an argument in the Bahamas. I don't want to say where, because it's kind of a place not many people go to. We had an argument in the Bahamas

with the guy we were renting a house from where he was insulted when we suggested the need for a fishing license and was especially insulted when we mentioned that there is distances from the land where you cannot spearfish. And he's like, not that he didn't like the law, was like insulted that we would be so stupid

as to bring up the idea that someone could possibly even make a law. Yes, I had the same conversation with a gentleman who thought that going to try to buy a license was the stupidest thing but you know he's like you're telling me that there's no way it could be true that you can't use spearfish where you want man that's great uh anyway so prescott smith has become a kind of a controversial figure, but what he talks a lot about conservation-wise, the Bahamian archipelago is a fascinating

geological specimen, if you will, right? If you want to forego your Ambien tonight, just pick up a book on Bahamian geology. It's a real sleeper, but every- Because nothing happens? No, but every like 500 pages or something, you discover some really cool things. For one, slavery didn't really take in the Bahamas.

The Bahamas had a way different narrative in terms of colonialism than most of the Caribbean. Didn't take because culturally or wasn't suitable ground to grow cane both but the latter for the most part so for the same reason that cane didn't grow there the limestone right um we we get this thing called a freshwater lens. So obviously the islands exist in saltwater, but rain falls onto limestone and basically percolates through the tiny holes in limestone and then spreads out

and makes what's called a freshwater lens. It's like a meniscus of freshwater that allow the mangroves to flourish. Floats on top of the saltwater. It floats on top of it, yep. Is that why when we were catching baby tarpon, they were saying it was, I mean, I knew it was brackish. Yeah, that's exactly why.

I was wondering how they could have brackish water in that area, so that's how. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense until you see this gigantic map of, so Prescott Smith is a huge proponent of preserving these freshwater lenses because they are the places where mangroves can flourish. And if you can get mangroves to flourish, you can get the bait fish to flourish, the lobsters, which they commercially fish for, to flourish, all of these things. When that freshwater lens is destroyed,

basically, according to Prescott, and really this other biologist named Andy Danilchuk, who works at UMass, do you know him? Yeah. So he was a great contact. That study that they did, he and his wife, right? They did that incredible study. Right, I mean, he's probably one of the people I talk to scientifically the most

while working on this book. And he helped establish the value of these. I read the whole paper. It was fascinating. Yeah, it is. You should start saying body of water instead of the book so it burns into people's heads. Thank you.

What the name of the story is. Body of water. Okay, two things about the freshwater lens. Body of water. I have often, yeah, in body of water, you mentioned the freshwater lens. Dude, I spent I have often, yeah, in body of water, you mentioned the freshwater lens. Dude, I spent a lot of time puzzling over how in the hell, like let's say you see a little island

and it's got mangroves on it, but there's no fresh water. There's no pond, there's no creek. I've often been like, how in the world does that thing survive? That's what I'm wondering. So is that a lens there? It's possible that there is one, but mangroves are really like the most hardy plant

you'll ever come across. I mean, they can live basically underwater. Their roots poke up and kind of snorkel for air. They can store salt water and shed it basically through dead leaves. So they're an incredible survivor. I don't know the direct answer to that question, but I would say the kind of tenacity of mangroves

has something to do with it. But can they collect all their fresh water from just the simple rain? I think so. It's gotta be that, right? The second point is, you talk about saltwater, how freshwater will float on saltwater.

I dove in a body of water in the Philippines where there are freshwater species and then you dive down and there are saltwater species because it's like, it's a freshwater lake that has like a cave entrance that leads out into the ocean. Right. and you dive down and there are saltwater species because it's like, it's a freshwater lake that has like a cave entrance that leads out into the ocean.

And so there's these like cichlids that are up in the freshwater portion, but then down in the saltwater portion, you'll run into barracuda and other stuff that come in and out of that. That is awesome. So you can dive down through and the temperature change is unbelievable.

Do they have blue holes down there? It was like one, It was one of those. They didn't call it that, but it was like a blue hole setup. Right. There's a few of those around. Somehow, these freshwater fish got established in that. These freshwater fish somehow got established in there and formed a little population. You dive down, the water's warm, and you dive down in there, and all of a sudden, the water's frigid.

It was that open ocean saltwater, but somehow that body of water, fresh water on top of there. But go on. Well, so, I mean, if you imagine this table here is an island in the Bahamas. Whenever a piece of ground is developed and infrastructure is put in, they basically have to cut into that limestone. And when they do that, they destroy that freshwater lens. So if you look at places like Exuma, where the fisheries kind of been destroyed by resorts and such. That's what guys like Prescott Smith are trying to stop from happening

and really are loud in the guiding community because they want to take this Bahamian resource and keep it a Bahamian resource. They don't want what has happened for generations. Someone comes in, builds something, messes something up, leaves it, goes somewhere else, messes something up. You know, they don't want that same process.

But are bone fishing resorts doing that level of development? Like when I think of a bone fishing place, I think of them being real chill. Well, how long does it take for that? So when you dig up the flats bottom, I mean, I heard it takes an astronomical amount of time for it to get all of its nutrients back. That's right, yeah. How long does it take for that? So when you dig up the flats bottom, I mean, I heard it takes an astronomical amount of time for it to get all of its nutrients back.

That's right, yeah. How long does it take to do that? Well, I mean, I would say exponentially longer than it takes to destroy it. So a little tiny island like Deepwater Key, sorry, that's like a two square mile island, I think, they proposed the economic wellbeing of the Island is, it was for a long time owned by a guy that, you know,

we talked about this, but, um, own the Island and, and, um, they proposed putting in, I think a hundred houses. So that would, that would do it. I mean, that would, um, a hundred houses would So that would do it. I mean, a hundred houses would on a two mile island basically damage significantly that habitat nearest the island. Now- Everyone wants a dock, right? Everyone wants a dock. And if you look at the damage that all of those docks do, it is unbelievable. And then you get the outboard, you ever seen all the scrapes?

Oh yeah, man. It's a mess. Yeah. Especially when you're flying over that. You ever seen all the scrapes? Oh, yeah, man. It's a mess. Yeah, especially when you're flying over that kind of, when you're flying over those flats, you see all those engine scars on it. And those take forever to repair, I saw recently. So the guys that want to build a house, they want to do like a golf course model.

Yeah, yeah, basically. You can come down, but instead of to play golf, you fish bonefish. Right. I mean, the notion that a small island could support kind of an ocean reef club size development is crazy, but over and over and over, the management of this small island changed hands. And as it changed hands,

suddenly somebody needed to make more money in the endeavor than the last guy did, right? And so essentially, as we find it in the book, Body of Water, the island itself is at an impasse and the community is about to be damaged by what might transpire, right? So David Pinder, who was the original guide,

he goes basically through, he becomes famous, if you will, as a guide. He guides like A.J. McClain and Joe Brooks and all the famed magazine stars of the day. And they come down and they write about him. And he makes Deepwater Key what it is, the great destination of Bahamian bonefish lodges. But there's kind of a caveat

as he's working all these decades, he's not wearing polarized glasses. So he's developing severe cataracts on his eyes. And as the lodge itself grows kind of into fame, his sight declines and he's eventually, you know, shit canned by the lodge and given a severance of, I want to say $18,000 is the amount they gave him for 40 or so years of service, which-

That's a severance package? That was an extra $1.25 a day, basically. We should point out here that these fish, and you can talk about this as well, the preferred way of catching them is to see them. Yes. See them, stalk them, and cast them. I mean, I've caught them out just like dicking around too. Right.

But one's vision, I'm just saying, one's eyesight is quite important. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, apparently Pinder was so skilled at finding these fish that one lodge owner said, he hears the fish, he doesn't need to see them. But you know- There's a knack to it for sure, man.

Right. Spotting fish, it's huge talent. Yeah, there's like people, you can be like, no, right there. No, no, no, no, right there, right there, right there. It's like spotting mule deer. But it's not the preferred, I just want to say, like it's not the, as fly fishermen too,

people, you know, think we're just trying to make it harder. It's not the preferred method. It's the most efficient method. So if you could, you could blind cast all day and don't get me wrong. When you find a whole school of bonefish and they're mudding up, you can cast into that enormous mess of fish

and you'll catch a bunch of little ones. I mean, catch them out of channels because they travel the channels. Yeah, but you're going to be blind casting all day long. You're going to be much more productive if you start pulling the flats and you're sighting them. But it's still preferred. Preferred because it's more productive.

Because it's the most effective. No, because if I said it's more productive to blow them up with dynamite, that doesn't mean you're going to blow them up with dynamite. I would actually argue because it's more productive. Because it's the most effective. No, because if I said it's more productive to blow them up with dynamite, that doesn't mean you're going to blow them up with dynamite. I would actually argue that it's more, that it's still more productive to fly fish for them than blowing them up with dynamite. Okay.

He's like, no. No, I disagree. The fishery is what it is, is because people want to go down and sight fish for the fish. They're not like, I want to catch a bonefish and I don't care if I'm out in a hundred feet of water with a pound of lead and a live fish. They're not like, I want to catch a bonefish and I don't care if I'm out in a hundred feet of water with a pound of lead and a live shrimp.

They're not. They want to come down and they want to see that fish. Sure. Preferably. If you were elk hunting- They prefer- Damn it. To come down and see that fish and stalk that fish and present a fly, whatever,

four feet off the end of its nose, whereas you're not going to scare the shit out of it and have it pick it up. Like, that's a thing. If you were elk hunting and it was a tough day and I said I'm going to give you a heat-seeking bullet and you can safely shoot it onto that mountainside

and it will find the shoulder. I like to think I wouldn't do it. I know. How big we talking? Is it a big bull? Is it a big huge bull? it a big, huge bowl? So yeah, my only point, I don't mean to derail the conversation,

but I'm just saying like when the dude loses his, eyesight wanes, you're kind of, you're out of the game. But his eyesight wanes according to the ownership of this lodge. And this is the, you know, this is the point in the book where he becomes kind of the, that, you know, the classic archetypal figure

that was cast aside, right? He helped basically, he literally built the place with his hands. And then when he becomes a little less useful, he's cast aside. So he takes on a little bit of this mythic quality. And as I would discover, he actually, he didn't lose his sight altogether.

We fished together quite a few times and he was just as good at spotting bonefish as you or I would be. Because he could hear them. Well, I don't know. He could sense them somehow or his eyes healed up. He got cataract surgery and didn't tell anyone. You know, there are a few kind of mysterious missing pieces in the, in the narrative. Not missing because I didn't research them, but missing because I got different answers from, you know, different people. What even brought you down there in the first place? Were you trying to work down there?

No, I, my original trip down there was on a how-to or a where-to piece for, you know, Outside Magazine. And I had an old friend, an old client. I'm sure you, how long have you been guiding or were you guiding before you? I guided 10 years. 10 years. 15 years. So you probably have a large group of people you would consider your friends, right? From my clientele? Yeah, from your clientele. For sure. So I had this awesome client, a guy named Jeff Miller,

who grew up in St. Louis and had fished at Deepwater Key from the late 70s, early 80s. And when I went down there, he said, you've got to meet this guy, David Pinder. He's the guy that started it all. If you really want to write about bone fishing in the Bahamas, you need guy, David Pinder. He's the guy that started it all. If you really want to write about bone fishing in the Bahamas, you need to know David Pinder. Of course, I went down with the hopes of dashing off an article

and fishing the rest of the time myself, right? But on subsequent trips, I would bring groups of clients down. On subsequent trips, I met Pinder and spent a lot more time with him and realized that he was one of those kind of singular dudes. I mean, a person who has spent his entire life on a two mile island. I mean, he grew up foraging for snails and crabs and whatever he could find.

Lived on the same plot of land that entire time. So the more time I spend down there, the more time I realized that he was the subject of whatever this book might be. And when you say you brought people down, you're like you were a promoter? No, I was a host. I just hosted a group of my clients

who wanted to go down and bonefish at this lodge. What's that relationship look like? It looks good if you get it for free. I mean- And plus your 15%. Yeah, so if you get eight people, then you get to go for free and they cut you a check for whatever the-

Yeah, April used to do that, right? But I also, well, no, and I used to do, I've done trips to the Bahamas and Belize and various other- Like you organize it. Yeah, and I'd get a 15% check, but I also would sit there and I wouldn't fish. A commission.

Yeah, that's right. But I would host these trips and unless my client caught a permit, for example, I'd be sitting on the boat being like, oh my God. And I don't know about you, but my clients are great steelhead fishermen. They're not all great in a flats boat. So I did a lot of just sitting and watching.

What do you mean? You would be like anxious about them being successful? No, yes, no. I couldn't catch a fish. in a flats boat. So I did a lot of just sitting and watching. What do you mean? You'd be like anxious about them being successful? No, no, yes, no. I couldn't catch a fish. Professionally, I didn't feel comfortable fishing until my clients had caught a fish. I see. I mean, there are two different kinds of hosts.

There are some hosts that don't have that same consideration. I felt it would be a professional courtesy to take a back seat. What are they asking of you though? To talk to them and just give them advice. So these would be people, like in your case, you guide steelhead clients. You become professional friendly with the clients.

And they say, man, I would love to go fish bonefish, but I'm not comfortable just going down there and cold rolling in. Yeah, let's do it. I would like you to be- My host. So that I have a familiar face when I arrive. Yeah, and I go, yeah, let's do it. I would like you to be. My host. So that I have a familiar face when I arrive. Yeah, and when we arrange everything.

So April is going, I'm going to make sure we're going with the right operation. They got the right boats. We're going to be set up for success. We're going to make sure that we got an in with the right tides and the right guides. And when something goes wrong, it's kind of on you. Kind of, yeah. I got you. And you've been there before, right?

You sussed it out. You know how to get from the plane to the shuttle to the lodge and all that. Have you done this, Giannis? It's something I no longer do. I find it really exhausting. It's a lot of work. Like a long week. Yeah.

Well, it depends. I mean, a lot of my clients are amazing for their friends. It's a lot of work. Like a long week. Yeah, well, it depends. I mean, a lot of my clients are amazing for their friends, you know, it's a great time, but you still have to be on and I don't know. Did you take a backseat? No, I hated it. You didn't like it either? No, no, no. I wouldn't do it again.

So it's not a great business. No, no, I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't do it again. How many times did you do it? A lot, enough. A dozen? Yeah. You? No, half a dozen. I think as a young fly fishing guide, though, boy, it was something you dreamed about, man. Because you get to that point. Oh, yeah.

You'd hear senior guides talking about doing these trips. You're like, that sounds like paradise. Right, right. Oh, yeah. But you end up, your commission gets put towards airfare and stuff. And yeah, you don't make any money off of it. And you get to a point as you get older, I think where you're like,

I would rather pay to not have to take a backseat. Sure. Yeah, I mean, by the time I stopped doing it, our family was growing. I didn't want to be gone from the family. At its best, it's a free week of fishing. At its best. Right.

Yeah. So just so I'm understanding the business right it's more of a way because like guiding I appreciate that guiding can be lucrative but I gather from the guides I know that it's a pretty it's like a bootstrap

it's seasonal it can be a tough way to make a living did you see my 2002 Sequoia out there? Is that what you're saying, man? No, no. I wasn't referring to anyone's particular thing, but my sense of it is,

is that as a guide, it's like a great lifestyle that people want to do, but when it comes, it's not like, you know, there's a lot of guides out there that aren't minting money. No. So is the hosting, just so I understand the business, right?

The hosting is the thing you do because you want to go down in your position. I would love to go down. No way I'm going to spend the money on that. All I need to do to make it that I can go is to assemble this trip. Bring people down. It's usually I can't afford to pay that money

to go on that trip. Here's what I'll do to make it happen. There are a number of booking agencies that that's their whole business, right? Their entire business. It's also something that's like it's another service that you can provide

to your stable of clients that keeps them hanging out with you also, right? Have you done this, Cal? I mean, I've done it on the hunt side. And I mean, really, it's, I mean, Giannis is doing something very, very similar every time he sets up a meat eater shoot, right? And you get a taste of it

when you invite somebody out to hunt with you. And there's that kind of like gnawing feeling in the back of your head where you're like, I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I really want these guys to have success. I hope everything goes well this trip. I hope we at least see something. And it's not just total goat rope the whole time. Yeah. Goat rope.

The difference is, is if you bring one guest on the show, you have to deal with one person. But if you have 10 guests, there's usually a sour apple in there somewhere. So it can make things interesting. Yeah, the lodge, the post-fishing lodge dynamic does not always show people at their best, you know. April caught a 12 pounder. My biggest fish was five.

Cal caught a permit. What? Everyone's disappointed. Did you see any permit? It turns into pretty much dribble pretty quickly, I think. Or even, well, I wish they would have told me to bring that fly. Or why is the host always getting the best guides? That's a big one too. I've heard nightmare stories from different, like of or about different hosts. There's some great hosts and there's some real shitty hosts out there. As we all know. I won't mention them, but yeah, there's some shitty ones.

They're just selfishly trying to get that free trip. But there are other hosts who really care about your quality experience. And a lot of people who host trips own fly shops. So for them, it's an opportunity for them to sell gear, right? Oh, no shit. Okay. Man, such a neat little business you guys all got involved in there's a word you know you're talking about like i think he almost said scam no no there's a i was gonna name i want to name my daughter after my mother but i wanted to name my daughter uh zinnia and Zinnia is a word,

it's a word that has to do with the guest host bond, the bond that forms between a guest and the host. And I believe it's somehow related to or comes from the action of a flower and a pollinator. Point being, I'm interested in this guest host situation. Don't get too interested. It's really not that great, I promise you. No, it's really not.

So it was a way for me to get down, to get back down there. I had a good buddy who, he kind of was a fixer of sorts for destination lodges, right? And you could hire him and he would go hang out at your lodge and help kind of ferret out the usual crap that happens at those things right a little bit of theft a little bit of like not you know taking

cash under the table instead of running it through the books type of stuff and and he had quite the experience out there in the bahamas and and uh just taught he's like man i he's like, man, I, he's like, I had, he's like, I, part of the deal is like, I could take a boat out and go fish. And I, he's like, but I didn't get to enjoy any of it because there was so much animosity between me, the white dude and the staff, right? The, the local guides um and he said the friction was like nothing he had ever experienced and and but that's really what it was it was during that time

of like hey we got to make sure that we control this industry and and because nobody's going to take care of it the way we want it to be taken care of. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I, I saw that dynamic at work too. And yeah, I think, you know, it's funny because it's funny you bring that up. Of all the things that reviewers talked about in regard to this book, Body of Water, no one would touch race, even though it's definitely a subject in the book. So you write about race,

but the reviewers didn't want to talk about how it talks about race? I, yeah. Even sitting here right now, I don't want to talk about it. I mean, I've got stories for days, but I'm just like, no, I'm going to leave that. I got more.

Tell me about, I mean. like, no, I'm going to leave that. I got more. Tell me about. It's not surprising to me to hear that there's a little racial tension between. There is in every recreational economy. It's not necessarily black, white, brown, white, whatever.

You're from here, you're not from here. And even though I'm making my living off of this industry, it is totally, totally hyper-focused on people not from here. Yeah, come open a lodge in BC as an American and you're going to feel it. It's got nothing to do with color. So it's more insider, outsider,

but it happens to be overlaid with race rather than being black versus white right i mean according to prescott smith the guy mentioned earlier he all he says is different really island island he says you know on on andros race relations are far more evolved than they are on say the east end of grand bahama which i would gather after spending a lot of time there, is a lot more in the wilderness, if you will, right? But that kind of racial tension though, man, it does, there's a lot of it in Hawaii. Right. And there's an inside, it's insider outsider, but it's also not.

Because look at the derogatory term for an outsider is like a Howley. Right. Right. So ghost, you presume like white, ghost-like. So like it's us, them, we, they, inside, outside, but it's overlaid by racial shame. So there's a moment in the book, it's probably two thirds of the way through.

There's this guy, Walter Reckley, who's guiding me on a given day. And Walter did an interesting thing after guiding for this prestigious lodge, Deepwater Key, for 25 years or so. He, along with another local guide from McLeanstown, got together with a couple investors and said, we want to build our own lodge. Will you front us the money for this? And the investors who had fished with them for 30 years or so said, yeah, let's do it. You know, we'll build it across the channel from Deepwater Key. It'll be within eye shot, but, and it won't have its own Island, but you know, you'll

have your own boats, you'll have your own dock, everything. And this is a place called East End Lodge, which is still in existence and still like Yellow Dog takes people down there. But for a couple of years, it was floundering. And so Walter had to go back to work for the lodge that he had turned his back on. And of course, you fall in at the bottom of the totem pole. So we're sitting at lunch one day and we're talking about this and I'm trying to dig a little bit out of him from a research standpoint. I kind of play this conspicuous role in the book. Am I a poet?

Am I a fishing guide? Am I a nonfiction writer? What am I doing down here? But he finally caves and says like, how would you feel? He says, how would you feel if, where are you from again? Manitoba?

That's what he says. And I say Montana. And he says, well, how would you feel if someone opened up a lodge in Montana or if you worked for a lodge and you worked your entire life, but you could never own the boats, you could never own the equipment,

you could never really get ahead, right? And that's a moment in the book where I, an epiphany, if you will, where I begin to see far deeper into the lens of these local Bahamians because the answer is obvious, right? You feel like shit. I understand exactly where they're coming from.

Look at Belize now compared to what it used to be when you Americans went and bought up everything or San Pedro, right? Yeah, you guys, you too. You two are the culprits. But yeah, I get where they're coming from. I mean, it's a limited resource. Do you see this up in BC?

I mean, BC is a lot more controlled in some ways, right? It is. But yeah, there's always going to be that little bit of, I mean, you can be an American and have a lot, but we want to see that you've put your time into, you know, be one of us. Because it's just like, why are you here taking from the resource? What are you giving back? That's the big question. What are you giving back? So that's, you know, the same question. This guy, Prescott Smith has same question. Walter asks. All right. So by the end

of the book, we, um, body of water, body of water. We see this lodge called North Riding Point, also kind of an old prestigious lodge in the Bahamas, which becomes managed by this guy named Paul Adams, who had grown up on Deepwater Key, had grown up with David Pinder as a friend, as a mentor. His parents had managed the lodge. And then he goes off to prep school and college, whatever, ends up back at this lodge called North Riding Point.

Their model is far different. They want, you know, we talked about Miko earlier, Miko Glinton. They hired Miko away from Deepwater Key and said, we want to groom you to be the manager of this place. In the meantime, we're going to send your three kids to school, private school in Freeport. We're going to give your wife a job as assistant manager. Samantha's also a masseuse, you know.

And so that old kind of antiquated post-colonial model that Deepwater Key had been following for so long is beginning to be usurped, if you will, or bettered by some newer lodges. So they're giving back, even though the money's presumably coming from somewhere up here. I don't know exactly.

What makes it tricky is that the industry is driven by outsiders. Right? Right. It's like, it's not like there's this economy going on and then outsiders come in and they're like, oh, what a cute thing you've created here. We're going to grab it from you. It's like, well, no shit.

There's a lot of outside interest in the economics of it because it's fueled by outside interest. If it wasn't for outsiders coming to fish those jobs wouldn't exist so what it's not it's not it's clean right right but i mean eventually it's the same discussion we're having here in montana what is sustainable and what isn't, right? What is erecting 50 or 100 houses on a two mile island sustainable to the environment? Probably not. Could this economy support it?

Probably not. Would people continue to go there after years and years? No, so you'd end up with something that's not sustainable. And does it, and it's one of those things that yeah yeah the cliche loving something to death right yeah it's one of those things that in in pursuit of an ideal you wreck the entire right you wreck the entire point of it all yeah i mean i i i see the statistics in Montana. The outdoor recreation industry is bringing in billions, literally billions of dollars. 7.1 billion is the last stat that I saw.

And outfitting and guiding is third in the outdoor rec tier of things, behind lodging and gas. So we're also contributing to those as well. But yeah, there's a breaking point for sure, I think. And these are good examples, right? It's like, well, I was in Belize when it was really good and it wasn't bought up. And so I don't even want to go there anymore. So then you move on to the next spot and ruin that, like you said before. Do you guys get any of that? Like when you go around, you're kind of rolling loud at this point, right? I mean, we try to roll real quiet and we typically do roll real quiet.

And if we don't roll real quiet, it's not good. Right. So people, we try to be discreet, man. Right. People don't know where Right. People don't know we're somewhere unless they hear it from a neighbor. Until the episode airs. Yeah. And then do you hear it? We kind of blew up a place. Is that what you're getting at?

No, I'm not accusing you of that. I'm just saying, when you go and do that amazing caribou hunt where you see that 50-mile string of caribou coming through. Are your email inboxes getting lit up every week? You know the thing that we get asked about most? We get asked by a factor of 10. We get asked most about a particular antelope unit.

No kidding. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. 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. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

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OnX Club, y'all. Wow. Some things are self-limiting. Okay? Because of inaccessibility, because of needing to draw limited entry permit lotteries for tags, where there's only a set number of participants that can engage anyways because they have a cap.

You could be caribou hunting in a place that has a quota. So the quota gets filled every year right um you could make it you could make you could blow it up and that you make it participation become harder because there's increased interest and so therefore getting one of those permits becomes more difficult but in a lot of places, including the place that we would never in a million years divulge, the antelope unit we would never divulge, you can't blow it up because there's that limiting thing.

There's going to be set number of people that are engaged in the activity every year and that's capped by law. Other things, yeah, you could blow it up up and i think that that happens to some extent but a lot i think that a lot of the people that watch the show are like honestly just interested in seeing the experience a lot of it's not something that people it's not something that a ton of people really want to go do always um in cases where we are up front about it sure i have absolutely no doubt that it that it that it does a negative to it um and there's all kinds of arguments to be made about

to what uh to the extent that awareness and advocacy and people's engagement with the resources is beneficial it's got it is i think. I think 100%. There's two really good arguments. There's two really good arguments, and I can articulate them both, and I vacillate between the two. And the one is that there's this great stuff out there. I don't want anyone to know about it. I just want it for me. And the other argument is that that mindset

will sink you in the end. You just had this discussion earlier today. It's a balancing act. Yeah, my old boss, this guy, Rusty Gates, he owned a lodge on the Au Sable up in Grayling, Michigan and was one of the first fierce conservationists in that area. He-

Not a lot of them. No, he fought off like Nestle and some big oil wells from going in. And he amassed this group of doctors and lawyers who were his clientele and basically said, "'Look, they're going to screw this river up if we don't fight them.'" And so he started this thing called

the Anglers of the Au Sable. But- You say, in fact, I quit throwing my refrigerators and old washing machines in there. Exactly. But I remember when I started bird hunting, he said, you know, CD, that's not a sport you want to get too many people into. So there is that feeling. But I read an amazing book. I was asked to write a blurb for an amazing book by a writer named Dean Kuypers called The Deer Camp, which takes place in Michigan. And Kuypers, he wrote for Spin Magazine forever and has written a lot of kind of environmental justice pieces. But he talks a

lot about Aldo Leopold's philosophy and basically that notion that I'm going to write, I'm going to read this note I wrote. He says something like, we can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, or otherwise have faith in, you know? So that idea that, yeah, you want to keep something to yourself, but if you keep it really all to yourself, the next generation ceases to have the ability to that direct contact, you know, that thing that inspires stewardship and conservation and whatnot. And that's the razor's edge that you walk, right? It's, I want to influence people. And you got a book like Body Water here, that's going to be very influential to who reads it. But you want to inspire folks just enough

to where if they get asked if, hey, just by chance, would you care if we ended fishing in the state of Montana? They'd be like, boy, you know, I don't fish there personally, but I don't think that's a good idea. Right? But you don't necessarily want them out good idea right yeah but you don't necessarily

want them out there on the on the river you no doubt know the fishing writer john geerick yeah and then his uh he's got a fly tying body aka bass sure no it wasn't aka best to set it yanni who's the guy that had the quote about, what are you doing over there? Texting Brody. You know what? I'll bring this. I'll help you sell people on why you're doing that. And I'll bring it full circle and say,

Brody's a fishing guide too. That's right. In Colorado. And he used to do quite a few of these hosted trips. I'm just keeping your little side activity and making it seem like it's in. I have many side activities going during these conversations. Help me out though.

It wasn't AK Best who said the roll casting quote that I'm going to quote. Yeah. We even asked John about this, didn't we? Some fishing writer, some fishing writer whom John Geerick admires was saying, I won't write about any river that I can roll cast across.

And I can roll cast a long way. That's a great, I think that's a really, really great rule. That's awesome. Sure, it's okay to write about the Missouri. It's like bigger than I-90, right? Yeah, what are you gonna, like, you're gonna keep that secret? Yeah. Yeah, this Missouri you speak of. But in body water, right? Yeah, what are you going to, like, you're going to keep that secret? Yeah. Yeah, this Missouri you speak of.

But in body water, right, you're walking the line, dude. Absolutely. Because there's no doubt, like, I read it. I've done that, I've done that, I've fly fish for bonefish in Mexico. I've fly fish for bonefish in Belize. I've fly fish for bonefish in the Bahamas, okay? But kind of like, yeah, whatever. Did it, moved on to other things. But reading it,

I'm like, damn, that is pretty cool, man. I do. It's like, makes me want to go back because you write about it. We haven't talked about this, but you write about it very beautifully. I can tell, I can see you struggle as a poet and a writer because you're trying to mix, you're putting a poetic sensibility into certain passages, but also there's a journalist sensibility. And those two things are not always dancing nice. They're not always like dancing nice. They're dirty dancing. They're dancing dirty. But the point, let me finish this thing and then take the writing out. But I just want to finish the point here. You're sending people down there by writing beautifully about a place that you feel could potentially be destroyed

by people going down there. I know. You're setting up a real conundrum. It's the thin edge of the wedge, right? Yeah, I know. I think a place like Deepwater Key has been developed to the extent that it can be developed. And it sounds like the money was pulled.

No one's going to be able to build 50 houses anymore. That's kind of a pipe dream. But I do think about that. I've never written one fishing piece on Montana that even remotely refers to a body of water that you could locate. In fact, I try to obscure it as best as possible, right? I try to obscure it as best as possible, right? I try to,

super cute. You know, I'll obscure it as best possible, hunting pieces in the same way. But back to your notion of that kind of poeticized journalism or whatnot, when I showed David James Duncan an early draft of this, who's a real good friend of mine and probably one of my first readers, the manuscript came back and every now and then he would write this acronym, which stood for poet colon,

write prose exclamation point. So it did take me a long time to try to weed myself out of the impulse to poeticize something that really didn't need to be poeticized. Are you bitter because you just can't make poetry pay? Oh no, that took me, you know, a minute or two. Are you bitter because one cannot make poetry pay?

No, that's why poetry, there's a great Guy Clark song about that, right? That's what keeps the poet free. I forget what the actual line is, but yeah, no, poetry is not supposed to pay. It's below money. It's above money. It hovers in the ether.

It's romantics. It's lovemaking. Yeah. That pays. Yeah. money it hovers in the ether it's romantics is love making yeah that pays yeah in the right field i haven't found a way to make a pay but matter of fact it's cost me quite some money but um so you don't uh do you still write poems yeah i have a new book of poems coming out in march called ragged anthem it actually has there's actually has, there's three hunting poems in it. I can't, I'm trying to remember. Yeah, because you were once telling me

that you didn't like the mix fishing and poem writing. Nope, nope. And I actually went back and looked. There's one poem in there, the last poem in the book. It's not a fishing poem, but it is a poem that has a brook trout in it that's actually grabbed by hand and eaten over a stick fire. It's, you know, what can you say about poetry?

Everybody's going to just turn their phones off. No, let me rip out a line of poetry and then you tell me who said it. Okay. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. It's pop service. Robert Service. Cremation of Sam McGee. Okay. All right. You got me. Can I rip out another one? Sure. This is the only poem I know. Okay.

How was the hunting, Hunter Bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold. Bob Service? No, it's Kipling. Okay. Group on the line of poetry. Oh man. You know, yesterday was Harrison's birthday. He has a great line from a poem called Cabbage. If only I had the genius of a cabbage or even an onion to grow myself in their laminate from the holy core that bespeaks the final shape.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Gives me a little choke. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you mentioned Girok. He was sweet to this book. He I'd never met him before. I'd grown up reading him, you know, I read everything I

could. And then my publicist called me up in November, right after the book came out and said, you know, a guy named John Gyrich? I said, what? Some writer, John Gyrich? I said, John Gyrich. She said, yeah, you better check the Wall Street Journal.

He just wrote a review on Body of Water. So yeah, he had, he'd written a beauty. This quote on the back of the book, you didn't know he was putting that in there in advance? No, that's the paperback. So he wrote the review about the hardback and I had no idea. No, I just saw the literal paper, which was fantastic.

It was the first thing I saw when I, well, I mean, obviously it's the top quote, but it definitely stuck out to me when I saw the body of water. But he came up to Missoula last year to give a reading. It was a fantastic crowd out there. And we had a nice dinner and he said,

you know, he said, you wrote a good book. I said, well, thanks. You know, it's really humbling to hear it. And he said, but you can only write one bad one. So, you know, get back to work. Of the book, he says, Chris Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again

and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. Aw. Sweet. That is amazing. Yeah, it is. I'm excited to read it, but I'm kind of scared.

I don't want to get sucked into wanting to fish for bonefish again. You know what's funny? I have such little desire to fish for bonefish at this point. After all that? I know, yeah. Why? What I don't miss, what I don't think I'll ever not want to do

is the hunt, the visual hunt for the fish. And we were talking about this earlier, you know. The preferred way. The preferred way. I think it's preferred because it does, it takes us back, way back into that, like Pleistocene brain that has really not been missing from our world for too long.

It's, you know, our new brain hasn't been in existence. It's not up to date. No, it's not. So we desire that, we crave that language of, that visual language. And it's that adrenaline that that doctor was talking about. I mean, I would imagine if it got cold out there, which it does, you know, you heat up in that moment.

And then if it's cold, you get cold again. You gotta chill. If you gotta take a heater. So I've been thinking about something you said, April, and you're right. Dynamite is not the most, no, I'm just kidding. You're right about this if one found themselves in bonefish country and someone and uh put a gun to your head and they're like you catch one as fast as possible or i'll shoot you um yeah man that's probably what

you would set out to do is go look for one. Yeah. You wouldn't go out and just start wailing away out. Or go find a big mud ball. A big mud ball. And look, you and April, you guys are probably more of an expert on this than I, but I know people that guide bonefish in the Keys. And I think that if you put that question

to at least two of my buddies down there and what tool they would use, they'd say a very noodley spin casting rod with a shrimp on it. But I wasn't necessarily saying that the fly is the most productive. I'm saying sight fishing for them and casting to them.

Like a live crab in the flats, that's going to clean up everywhere. So it doesn't matter if it's fly or bait, but it's the sight fishing and specifically tracking that fish rather than just blind casting over and over again and hoping one goes by. And the likelihood that you're going to spook one if you're just casting over and over and over. You know what book sent me down to want to go catch one real bad?

You remember a dude, I don't know if he's on the scene anymore, Randall Kaufman? Yeah. He was kind of big out like Oregon and shit like that and sold fly tying equipment and whatnot. Kaufman. He had a book. Yeah. Kaufman's stream born. Right. He had a bonefish book. It's big. It's hardback. Great photos. I remember that. It's a beautiful book. And then my brother Danny had one of those. My brother Danny's a fisheries biologist. I think you know this. He's a big fly pole fisherman. He, to this day, he had one of those calendars where it's like 365 cool fishing pictures.

I think I had this too. Yeah, and every third one was a bonefish picture or some dude on the flats or some dude doing some thing like that. And every third day you're like, damn, that looks cool. And that's what, like, I was being inspired not by people, I didn't know anybody that had ever done it.

Wasn't being inspired by people who did it, it was being inspired by art. I feel like art, it's one of those things that art sends you to do it. Art doesn't send you to fish through the ice. Something else sends you to fish through the ice. Something else sends you to fish through the ice. It's not art, but art propels one, you know. Madness sends you to the ice.

Madness. And hunger. Madness and hunger or a buzz. Yeah. But you know, it's just so easy to catch a lot of bonefish in a lot of places. I mean, not always. I always say to people that, you know, it's just so easy to catch a lot of bonefish in a lot of places. I mean, not always. I always say to people that, you know,

especially people who are new to fishing salt, bonefish are an excellent way to hone up your skills. I don't want to take you permit fishing if you haven't gone bonefishing. Because then you're just going to be like miserable. Well, and they can be difficult, especially those big ones. I mean, they are just a whole new world, right?

And if you see someone get nervous in front of a bonefish, you know they're just going to freak when they see a permit. But I think there's a lot of opportunity for this art because it is pretty. I mean, you can go to Belize and catch 50 bonefish. Really? Especially if you're casting into like a big mud. Over a day or you mean over a trip?

That depends, but definitely easy over a trip. Easy over. I mean, they'll be in a big mud pile, right? So you're literally just casting your fly in and stripping and anything's going to bite. Man, it makes me feel like I was going about it all wrong, man. We do really kick an ass to catch a few of them. Well, that's what it should be like.

Yeah, the purest frown upon throwing into the muds. But if you're a guide or a host and it's day six or day five, day six. It's tasteless to throw into a mud? I think it'd be like the pinnacle of the trip. It depends who you're talking to. Personally, I really don't care. But for some people, yeah, it can be deemed tasteless. No, the muds are really cool.

You see this kind of dense cloud of milky water and then you just see a little flash or two up the top. Yeah, little tails wagging around. I do have to kind of disagree with you though. Your earlier comment, April. Is this the one I don't have a background to agree with? The why bonefish?

Hadn't he ever heard of permit? Oh, you mean in the 50s? Or why him? Yeah, because I mean you just think of all the species. That was a bit of tongue in cheek. These things come in and out of fashion too. Like the fly fishing and or fishing in general is, you know, it's like driven by what's cool,

not exactly the fish. And I know a lot of people, Ryan, who love bone fishing and do not like to go fishing for permit or even tarpon. I know a lot of people who are into that. But a lot of this also has to do with like in the 50s, I don't know, we don't have enough time to jump into the history of like Joe Brooks

and a lot of those guys. But a lot of that, like you're saying, it was fashionable or a lot of people knew at that time that they could catch bonefish, but they didn't know that you could catch permit. So it wasn't necessarily that, I mean, a lot of it could have just been that he didn't know that he could catch permit.

Yeah, pure ignorance. Right. Yeah, but it's just like nobody fishes, you know, five years ago, nobody threw flies at triggerfish and like everybody wants to catch triggerfish now, right? Well, they did five years ago, but it's really trendy. Yeah, now it's the hip.

You're right. It goes through, it goes, it ebbs and flows. Here's my picture of my trigger fit. Well, I was going to get to that. I mean, I think even 10, 15 years ago, people thought you couldn't catch permit. Now we think they're tough. Late in the book, this guy, David Pinder,

this amazing human being and one of the great guides and anglers in the Caribbean, tells this story. We're at Alma's Diner, this tiny little shack of a diner in McLeanstown. He sells the conch fritters. Conch fritters, lobsters, peas and rice. I always get it wrong, peas and rice. And somehow one of his sons winds him into this glory story of having guided

back in the 80s, a man, a Coca-Cola executive into a double on permit. He and his partner doubled on permit and landed them simultaneously. So it's a story that is told in great detail and it's like an amazing, one fish goes east and peels into the backing and leaves just a couple of cranks left on the reel. And the other fish goes north and does the same thing. And Pinder has to make these incredible adjustments to land both of these fish. And they do.

I remember going home after hearing that story and thinking, maybe, you know, we'd fallen over into the edge of myth and lore and this didn't actually happen. But at this point in the book, I was gonna give Pinder his own voice, right? He earned it. And so I just, I left it as is own voice, right? He earned it. And so I just, I left it as is.

You know, he told the story, it happened. But in the back of my mind, I was always thinking was, you know, was that a little bit of a fishtail? So the book had been out maybe three, four, five months. And I get this private message on my Facebook author page. And it's a picture, an old black and white picture of this old dude they called the Coca-Cola man and Pinder sitting on the dock with these two permit. And yeah, the picture had been sent by this guy who basically captains a yacht for the Coca-Cola man, and they go all over the world and fish.

And he said, I was reading your book and I got to this passage about the double on permit. And I said, oh my God, hey boss, come here. You got to take a look at this or whatever. So he procured a picture, it was down in the lodge or the bar of of the yacht and he took a picture of it and sent it to me and that's great yeah it was cool i've already told this before but on the difficulty of permit uh i was with i was down with my brother one time we were in the bahamas my brother danny

and he was out wandering around looking for bonefish and i was taking some we had been spearfishing and I was taking some snapper heads and catching some little sharks and uh I hook a big ray you know permits like to follow rays around these do too so the ray goes along and the ray just goes along and he's moving along and he's silting out he's stirring up the silt and spooking up stuff. And so Permit and Bonefish were just getting the habit of following behind them to see what they kick up. So here I have a big ray on the end of my line, okay? And after a couple of seconds, there's two Permit in mudding behind the ray

because he's raising the real ruckus because I got him on my line. So I motioned frantically for Danny to come over because here, what better scenario you have two permit that you know are feeding they're like looking for food because they're following behind the ray and the ray is kicking up so much silt that there's like dust in the air dust in the water so it would presumably like impair the permit's vision in some way. And he is able to just take cast after cast,

because I can reel the ray in and then let him back out again, let the drag loosen. He goes back out and the permit and the ray go out, the permit and the ray come in, the permit. And meanwhile, he's like cast after cast, after cast, after cast. Sons of bitches would not. Never hooked it. No, because they're like so picky.

They like to run up and they want to, I'm going to kill that thing. No, I'm going to stop and smell it. Look at the size of their eyes. Did you hook that ray on purpose? No, I was trying to catch sharks and the ray picked it up. Gotcha.

That ray lives today. Well, that's something else killed. A hammerhead shark might've come and killed it. I don't know. I didn't mess with it. Chris Dombrowski, body, not the body, but body of water. Awesome, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah. People should go read the book, man. Please do. It's got like a real uh it tells a cool story and it tells you and it tells you what to do about it there's a bunch of good guiding david guiding stories in there another one pops into into the head where he's got the investor and the original owner sure in the boat and i'm not going to give it away because you got to go get and read Body of Water to get this story. But that's a good one.

Like there's a fish on and then all hope is lost. But then the guide says, you know what? Let's try this. And yeah. And this is coming from a former guide, right? Yeah. Yeah, I could go on. I know we're short on time,

but I was just thinking about the times where rowing a boat, you know, you got two fish on and they're not just like any two fish where you're like, yeah, just skip that thing across the surface. But these things are like bowing a rod over there on the bottom of the river. And you're like, okay, what am I going to do? How's this going to work? Oh, there's a rapid coming up. Holy shit.

And then somehow you're at the bottom of the rapid and you got two fish in one net and it's just, everybody's. Yeah. Those are good times good stories chris nebrowski body of water folks can go buy it on amazon right you bet and you gotta know that you have uh influenced at least one more dirty bum fishing guide to pursue his writing dreams. And my buddy Colin Scott, he wanted me to be sure to let you know that he really looks up to you and you let him know that it is in fact possible.

So he's still bumming it in AKA and writing screenplays. Nice. So not only are you ruining Bonefish. I'm ruining people. By clouding it up, you're ruining and writing it. Yeah. Bringing in all kinds of writers now.

I know it. Competing for precious limited resources. Pretty soon they're all going to have TV shows too. Come on now. Oh, it's great to be here. You guys are fantastic. Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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