The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 889: The Boss of All Fishing Records

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with Jason Schratwieser. Topics discussed: the history of IGFA and world of fish record keeping; conservation efforts for bluefin tuna and billfish; innovative satellite tagging technology; IGFA record validation process transforming our understanding of marine life; species identification techniques; conservation and sustainable fishing practices; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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No. We're going to run with it. Boss of all fishing records. Jason Schratweiser, who is the president of the IGFA or international game fish association. So if you're sitting at home wondering why that matters or what that means, we're going to talk about it. But one of the ways to connect it is when you hear of someone saying, they have a new line class record, or they caught a record this or a record that you guys are the record holders. We are the world's keeper of records, yeah.

There are a lot of entities out there that keep records, whether to be state or, you know, there's freshwater fishing hall of fame. But, you know, in terms of the world's keeper of records, it's the IGFA for sure. Yeah. And you guys traditionally were saltwater, but you now do the freshwater too. We were. So we were founded in 1939. And really the genesis of our organization is at that point, there were a couple of other big time angling clubs out there. But there was no universal code of angling rules, so to speak. So if you're fishing in Australia and I'm fishing in New Zealand or wherever and we're fishing for the same fish, you catch a fish one size. I catch one another. There was no really way to compare performance. And so that led into us becoming a record keeping body. And like you said, we were salt. for a long time. But what would happen over time, we transitioned into freshwater and fly fishing as well. We picked up the freshwater records from Field and Stream in the 1970s. Yeah, what part of, because, you know, Field and Stream is a weird deal where all these different

entities own all these different rights to the name, right? When you, so if you had, if Field and Stream had the record, what portion of Field and Stream held freshwater records? I don't know. This is a for my time. This is, I think, 1970, or something like that. I can't remember exactly. It was a year I was born, man. Two years before me. I mean, I was born in 72, but anyways, we took

them over. Field and Stream said, hey, we have a deal for you. We've been keeping these since 1800s. Our oldest record, I think, on the books is a yellow perch caught in 1880-something in New Jersey. Oh, so that must have been like Field and Stream the magazine at the time. Because, you know, if you go into some store

and you see like a Field and Stream canoe. It's not the man. You know what I mean? Exactly. They just they've sold off over the years all these different rights to the name. And so I didn't know if where the fact, I didn't know that even had freshwater records at the time. We took it over from Field and Stream. They like handed you the papers. They said here, do it. And we must have done some kind of vetting process on the records there. And then that included freshwater fly fishing as well. And then the, two years later, there's salty fly rodders, which was an entity that was, you know, really on the cusp of this emerging new sport, you know, catching saltwater fish and big saltwater fish on fly.

Yeah. They had started to create their own set of rules. Mark Sosan and Stuap, two luminaries there, they came to the IGFA and we subsequently took over those records and modified our rules as well. So what is like where do the records live? I mean, a lot of the stuff probably hasn't been digitized. A lot of it has. Okay. So you've gone through it.

So like a lot of those field and stream records have been entered, especially the ones that are still valid. They're in our database, but we're undertaking a massive digitization process for, we've got what we call our EK Harry Library of Fishers. It's massive. We've got over 17,000 books, millions of photographs, et cetera, but that's where those old records lie. But then, you know, everything that's been fairly modern is already in our world record database. We've got photos that have been, you know, digitized out of the record application. So a lot of that has been done already. You know, I feel like a lot of, a lot of listeners are going to be, I don't mean this as a, I don't mean this as an insult to you guys, but a lot of our listeners are going to be more aware of Boone and Crocket.

Sure. 100% than they would be of IGFA. And I want to ask you a question, but I want to set up kind of like how, why Boone and Crocket exists, right? So Boone and Crocket was a, what began and remains a conservation organization. as part of their conservation work a long time ago, they wanted to have a way of sort of how do you measure the health of herds, right? How do we know what what hunters are getting?

What's coming off the land? What is big? What is little? They had an idea and it wasn't entirely wrong that you could tell the health of a population of wild animals by whether or not it was producing large specimens, right? Like all the things need to be happening properly. for a, for a, you know, whatever, for a patch of ground in North Carolina to produce seven, eight-year-old big white tails, like a lot of good things need to be happening. You need to be taking the right steps to do that.

So they felt, and I'm simplifying something, but the genesis of the idea was by keeping track of the size of animals coming off, the landscape, we might be able to gauge the health of the ecosystem, right? even before some of those words were being used. So to do that, they established this scoring system. And the scoring system kind of went on to have, it still serves its purpose, but it went on to have a life of its own. And so a lot of guys now might look and they might say, oh, Boone and Crockett,

and in their head, they're not thinking wildlife conservation. They're thinking, it's the people that made the scoring system. Right. Right. With that context or understanding that history, can you explain, are there, is there a parallel story with IGFA or was it sort of reverse engineered that it was all about the numbers and became about the conservation? That was a great slow pitch, Ben. Thanks for that quite a bit.

So the guy that founded the IGFA was a gentleman named Michael Lerner. He was a man of means in the late 30s. He had department stores in New York. But he was very philanthropic to the American Museum of Natural History. You know, he was big into that. And even before he founded the IGFA, he would go on these expeditions, you know, around the world, Chile, New Zealand, wherever. And he would take not only photographers, but send photographers to take movies, but also scientists from the American Museum of Natural History. Because he wanted to make sure that they were cataloguing whatever he was seeing, catching, etc.

And when IGFA was founded, we were originally housed in the American Museum of Natural History. and our original president was a curator of fishist, Dr. William King Gregory. So right away, you had this tie with science and conservation. And our first motto, I believe, was for ethical sport and productive science. So we always had that tie in. So, you know, our rules led into records, like I said, and you know, you can kind of look at that as a proxy for health. I don't think it's as good as probably as what you can do with Boone and Crocket because I think terrestrial systems are a lot easier to gauge. abundance of animals, health of animal, size of animals.

Records are a little bit different because, you know, people say, hey, can't we just use your records per se, you know, to see how fish have changed over time? I'm like, yes and no, because records depend on a couple of things. Obviously, you need to have a fish for a particular size out there to be beaten if one already exists. But you also have to have interests. So it's not this kind of ideal redistribution of people that are pursuing these things all the time. You know, it's a really rarefied universe. And so say the all tackle record for a fish is, I don't know, just for sake of example, 400 pounds. Okay.

You know, there may be dozens, hundreds of fish that are 380 pounds that are caught this year, but are not entered because they know they won't break the record. Yeah. So, you know, when I talk to people. Yeah, I wouldn't get, I'd have to know. Yeah. I wouldn't tell anyone, like if there's some fish I like a lot. I wouldn't tell anyone if I caught one that was close but not over. Yeah, but I mean, as far as the conservation goes, you know, that really kind of ramped up over the years and we really, really got strong.

You know, certainly in the 2000s, but before then as well, we really started weighing in on fisheries issues. Okay. Around the world, we used to have a monthly publication called the International. It was called the Marine International Angler. Actually, this is before we took over freshwater stuff. And on the cover, I had this old edition of it, and it says, you know, IGFA is asking ICAT, which is the international body that manages bluefin tuna to take measures to protect the stock. And that's just when the stock started to go down. But were you take that example of bluefin tuna.

What was your awareness? Like, what was the alarm bell for you? During my time. When bluefin tuna started to drop off, what year was that? when they really started to drop off? I think they started to really fall off the clips in the 50s and the 60s, but long long,

big time. Yeah. And, and what, like, how did you, like, how did that become,

oh, did you guys become aware of that? Well, that was, that was a pet fish of our organization. So a lot of the presidents at time really like to compete at these international tuna tournaments. They were like a big deal,

like a wedge port and Canada and stuff like that. Um, there was a really historical bluefin tuna fishery and cat Kaye, when those fish were coming, back and forth from spawning in the Gulf of Mexico. Okay. And they saw these numbers going down, the size of these fish going down. So, you know, that was an obvious thing that said, hey, we should, we should be doing

something for this. Yeah. Got it. Got it. And so then the org went and petitioned or talked with the group that sort of oversaw and managed that fish and said, we have a problem. Yeah, along with some other groups. But, I mean, you know, we're probably one of the first recreational groups, certainly

international groups to kind of take that stance with things, you know, and we've done it from that time on on a variety of different species, you know. We leaned really heavily into billfish. We've done a lot of work to conserve. Bill of fish, we passed two laws in the United States that prohibit the importation and sale of Marlin, sailfish, and spearfish. Before that, I bet you didn't know this. We were the world's biggest importer of those. No. Can you believe? For what taxidermy? No, no, for food. So we had a, we had a board member. It was. we were having a lunch at headquarters one day. It was a social thing.

And he sat down, he says, do you know who's importing the most, exporting the most, killing the most bill of fish? I said, I really don't, but if we had some money,

I know the guy that could commission a study. I had a friend that was an economist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. And he had just gone private. He put the money, he should give you the money for it. So he went through, did all the date.

He's like, I guess who's important the most. I'm like, I don't know, China, Brazil, I don't know. No, we are. But importing Marlin from where and for what?

Oh, places like Central America, big time, Vietnam. Food. You would be surprised at the time people would be like, where do you see this? All you would have to do is Google Marlin Stakes. You know, Wegman's had it for a while. They got on the campaign and they kicked it out. But you didn't, there was. You can still walk into, you can walk into gas stations in Hawaii and get Marlon.

Marlon. Absolutely. We had to, I'll get into that. We had to do a carve out for that. But there were, I think, at least three sushi joints within 10 to 15 minutes from where I live where I could find Marlin. Okay. So it was there. Yeah.

You just had to look for it. Yeah. And we started off with this public awareness campaign, you know, telling people, hey, look, you know, there's not that many of these things out there. They've got an important use in the ecosystem. And they're a big economic driver for recreational anguish that spend a lot of money on boots and tackle to largely catch and release these fish, you know. So killing them in large numbers to bring them in for, you know, a low, low value product doesn't mean a lot of sense, you know. But finally, we knew that we'd have to take kind of legislative steps. So the first round we went in and we thought we were all smart.

We just wanted an all-out prohibition and sale and importation in all 50 states. Well, back then, Inouye was in power. What's that? Senator Inouye. Oh, okay. And that was dead on arrival, you know. And, you know, we, I'm not familiar with the name. Tell me who that is.

I think he was in charge of appropriations, but he was a very powerful congressperson then. So, you know, if he didn't like a particular bill, you know, he had the ability to cut it, especially in his home, you know, in Hawaii. Oh, okay. Yep. So that's, I was wondering why I had relevance to him, but he was in Hawaii. And truthfully speaking, there is this culture of significance with Bill Fish in Hawaii. I mean, you've been there.

You know, fish is very, very important to them. So we went back to the drawing. board and in 2012 we got a law pass that banned the importation and sale of those species in the continental United States Hawaii and what they call other Pacific insular areas you know American territories like Guam, Samoa they were still allowed you know to harvest it but were you okay this is a little bit maybe problematic for me but you can walk me through it was that coming because people were seeing a decline oh god okay billfish stocks around the world are not being managed good i mean you can only point to i think one or two that have enough data that

state that they're abundant but you know if you look in the alantic okay um alantic and blue alanic uh blue marlin and white marlin they've been in alternating positions of either being overfished experiencing overfishing or the combination of the two for like over 30 years okay oh absolutely because the point i was going to make if if you couldn't demonstrate that the point i was I know guys that will be that fish all the time. Yeah. Every fish they catch, they're adamant that it be let go, but they go to restaurants and buy fish. Sure.

So I'm like, well, how are you deciding what, how are you deciding what fish, like, do you know where that fish came from? Yeah. Like, if you don't want to damage your home fishery, how do you know you're not damaging a different fishery? Like, like, how are you making these decisions? Like, what are your decision process based on? So if with the billfish thing, if someone could go and say, Yeah, we had to do. Well, no, we're in, we're in crisis mode.

That's why we should take emphasis off of this fish, knowing that it's going to be placed upon the next fish down the line. Well, yeah, I mean, you have to look at it from a couple different lenses. Number one, you know, especially blue and black, well, and they're kind of apex predators, you know, the thousands of pounds. But, you know, we had data that's shown that their abundance had declined. And, Stephen, there are a number of species that we don't have enough data. there's never been a stock assessment so we can accurately determine how depleted or not they are. Think about Central America. You know, their iconic billfish area is sailfish.

If you want to take somebody to catch your first sailfish, you're going to Costa Rica, you're going to Guatemala. Sure, yeah. There has never been a stock assessment done on Pacific sailfish. Really? Yeah. How would you do that? You've got to have a lot of baseline parameters. You've got to have things like growth.

So you have to have an. idea of how fast they grow, how long they grow over time, age of first maturity, things like that. Then you have to have some good indices of abundance, you know, where you're getting, you know, historical and current catch, you know, in effort rate. So you can see how, you know, the catch of things fluctuate over time. And it's a very sophisticated thing, you know. With some of that involved, like Mark and Recapture, like if guys start tag and tagging, a little bit, but really a lot of the abundancies come from long line boats, you know, because the data is so good.

You know, there are some recreational indices of abundance that are used in the U.S. for stock assessments, but a lot of it comes from long-line data. Got it. And no one's been able to do that? No. Is it because of lack of money, lack of interest, because it's scientifically too difficult? I think it's a couple. It will be difficult to do.

It's not impossible to do. But if you look at highly migratory species, and they're managed by four major, what they call regional fisheries organizations around the world, You've got one in the Atlantic. You've got two in the Pacific, one in the Indian Ocean. They are the red-headed stepchildren of all highly migratory species because they don't fetch the market value of that big eye tuna or a elephant tuna or bluefin. None of the billfish. Okay.

You know, so they'll be harvested because they're large in size and there are worth something, but they don't get the money that, you know, market value that these other species do. So they take a back seat from a management perspective. Oh, I got what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why we undertake a giant effort to start satellite tagging these things all over the world. Like you mean because you could catch a bluefin tuna that might feasibly worth, you might tell me, but $30,000, $40,000. Oh man, there's been bluefin tuna that have been sold for every a million.

Yeah. So that fish is going to have, from the market perspective, that fish is going to have greater scrutiny just because it's going to have added scrutiny just because of its commercial value. Yeah. And we really don't, we're starting to know more now, but we still don't. don't know a whole lot about bellfish. You know, we undertook a joint venture with Dr. Barber Block in 2011. This was when something called pop-up satellite archival tags were coming on the scene. And what these are kind of essentially many computers that you deploy on fish, like you would with a conventional tag. But he's got to break surface to make a ping or, oh, no, no, it's not true. So let's go back to what,

you know, conventional tagging look like. You know, you would catch a fish in Kona, Hawaii, and maybe somebody, luckily, if ever, might catch that fish some other location. The data you got from that was minimum, days at large, okay? How long has that fish been swimming since it was caught and it was recaptured? And then you would get a linear distance from point A to point B. You don't know what that fish did in that period of time, you know? And you didn't know anything about its diving behavior. You know, starting in the...

Yeah, he could have went a lot far. They'd been on his way home when he got caught. Yeah, absolutely. You know, in the late 90s 2000s, you know, these Psats, as they're called, started to come on the scene. And they collect a wealth of data. You know, every 30 seconds, you're getting information on temperature, depth. You're able to get an algorithm based on light to determine a daily fix of these fish. So you're able to get a track of where these fish go?

Just, just, I don't want to bog you down in technical details. But that fish has to be a, there can't be a benthic fish, right? It has to be like a plagic fish that's hanging out near the surface. Like, how is it getting that signal out through the water? It doesn't. It can't. So what happens is you program that tag to stay on that tether for a predetermined amount of time. Usually between 180 and 240 days.

Okay. And when that happens, a signal comes from the computer on the tag and it corrods the pen. The tag pops up and then starts beaming information to orbiting satellites. Really? Yeah. So you never got to go recover it. You don't have. If you do recover, it's great because you get every single data point.

You're getting daily summaries, you know, from the from the burst transmission. No kidding. That thing comes off, floats up and then start sending a signal. And the beauty about that is two things. Number one, the quality of the data that you get is just enormous. I mean, like I say, you get tracks, but you're also getting information on diving behavior. Yeah. And we're looking at, you know, how does that change in different areas and different oceanographic conditions and things like that?

Habitat preferences and things like that. But you never have to recapture that fish to get any data. I feel like I've heard stories about those. And it's when you see that one of your fish has been eaten by another fish. we've got we've got to get it happens and we've got a good story about that so uh we were doing i think this was a lizard island black marlin tournament in austria and black marlin got tagged and we could tell it got eaten by a shark because the tag was intact but you had no light level it was in shark's stomach okay got and you know the shark puked it out and the diving behaviors

were different we were not only able to tell that it was a shark but it was probably either a maco or a great white probably a maker most likely in that area because the temperature of that tag in the gut of that fish we know was higher than the ambient water temperature at that depth where that fish was swimming okay yeah no kidding yeah i feel it maybe maybe that was the example i heard up i heard of that before yeah so it's cool we've learned a lot of stuff and when we started this so but hold on because that's the thing i didn't know too the shark's gut is warmer and some sharks that are slightly endothermic okay yeah he runs warmer yeah so that's not a feeling ever have is reaching into into a fish and feeling warm.

No, no, no. So MAKES is Port Beagles and white sharks that have the ability to have, you know, maintain a body temperature that's higher than the ambient watershed. I didn't, I had no idea. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we started this project and, you know, since we started it in 2011, we've deployed over 700

tags in 25 locations around the world. And Stephen, these are expensive pieces of equipment. These range from $3,500 to $4,500 a piece. Really? This whole project has only been able to work because it's born on the benevolence of recreational billfish anglers. They're the one sponsoring these tags and deploying these tags. Got it. So it's a beautiful thing.

We've been able to provide the data that, you know, other managers didn't have the money to be able to do. Yeah. But we're also showing that recreational billfish anglers or conservationists, they're not only putting forth their money to sponsor these tags, but they're also part of the science. They're deploying these tags as well. Yeah. So it's been great. So we've got a ton of data. And one of the other things we do is we make it all open access.

So this is not proprietary to just us or our partners at Stanford. We encourage, you know, other partners, managers to use it whatsoever. You know, it's open access, which is an anomaly, typically. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IAR Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride, Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers.

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doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Let's talk from him about the record stuff. And I think a fun way to introduce and how the records work and what the rules are. Because you guys have rules that, how would you express the rule? You have fishing rules that tournaments will abide by, right? We have rules that were developed to establish ethics and fair play.

Okay. So you wanted to be ethical, and you also wanted to have a sense of fair place so the fish would have a chance of, you know, getting away from some of times. Yeah. So the story that I've read about and written about and we've talked about is this guy, Frank Mundus. Mundus, people will recognize, listeners might not recognize Frank Mundus, but they'll recognize a character inspired by Frank Mundus, which is this, the Quint from Jaws. is in some way Benchley, right? Peter Benchley.

In some way he modeled his shark hunter off this dude who was named Frank Mundus. Frank Mundus was a fisherman who fished out of Montauk, Long Island. So in New York State. And he was around

in an era when you were starting to see declines in some of the traditional fish that people went after off Long Island. So we talked about bluefin decline. Swardfish declines. Other things were in decline, and Mundus was kind of an opportunist. And he built this business where he called himself Monster Man, he had necklaces full of shark teeth.

He would drag home these giant sharks, big tigers, big macos, whatever he'd get his hands on. He'd hang them up on the dock, you know, by a chain from a hoist. Tourists would see these big fish, and he would sell trips. to go for sharks. And he built this whole persona around the big shark hunter. Right. At one point in time, it,

let me back that up. Mundus had developed a sort of fishing secret where he would tether off to dead whales. He could always, he had a, he had black belt for finding dead whales. I mean, that's just what we heard about Frank.

He just, he could find them. Found black, so he would find whales. Find them. Now, rumors, and I'm not,

I, he's gone and I don't have firsthand experience I haven't talked to people who had firsthand experience with Mundus

but there were rumors that Mundus his knack for finding dead whales sort of defied belief

and it was it was speculated by individuals that he can't be that he's just able to find these whales

he must be generating dead whales he's generating dead whales in order to tether off on these whales and fish sharks that are coming to feed on whales. That was a, that was a rumor. You can go search online and you will find that rumor. You said it way more diplomatic than I would. I just always said, you know, this guy could just find a dead whale

like nobody else could. If you needed to find a dead whale, he was your man. Yeah, he'll find it for you. He'll find one this morning. I know where it is. So Mundus goes, I don't even remember what year this was. I think it was 86 or 83. Well, the one he harpooned. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes off, he has a dead whale. He ties up on it. And he's out there and he harpoons a, I believe it was a white shark in the 4,000 pound range. And he's criticized and people are like, well, yeah, you harpooned it.

You didn't catch it. So then he goes out and with rod and reel. And he goes out and catches one that I believe was into 3,000 pound range. and he felt as though he would be now the holder of the IGFA, it would be the biggest fish ever caught on rod and reel would be this great white shark. That's right. But it wasn't. No, and I'll let you take over from there.

This goes back to something I'll always say is that there's a lot more to catching an IGFA record or getting an IJFA record than catching a big damn fish, which he caught a big damn fish. So as I was told, and I went back to the archives, I talked to, I'm president number eight. You know, we've been around since 1939. There's been eight chairman, eight presidents. I'm president number eight. I went back to president number five, who I worked with a little bit when I first came to IGFA in 2003. And, you know, he was worked with president number four, E.K. Harry, you know, and so he knew a lot of backstory on this.

He was around him. So I just shot him an email. I said, Mike, I remember you telling me about this, you know, and I think I have a right, give me the detail. So this is what I was told. Yeah, any part I got wrong, go ahead. No, I think you've got it. But I think it was either 83 or 86. I think it's 86.

He had a charter party out. And Frank found a dead whale. There was like three or four great whites. He's like, good Lord. You know, feeding off this thing. But he had a charter party. And they didn't want to assume purportedly didn't want to fish for these things. So he took them back.

They didn't want to fish for great whites. They didn't want to fish for the great whites from what I'm understanding. So either. after he took them back that day or the next day, he went out there and they were having trouble, you know, baiting these fish because they were, you know, gorge down whale, yeah. But what he did, admittedly, is that he tethered off, like you said, to the whale so they could stay with the floating whale. They hooked one. Not the biggest one, allegedly, though, out of the group.

They said one was way bigger than the 3,500, whatever it was. So catches a fish and I think they have to tow it back behind the boat I don't think they ever got it in the boat They get it back and we had a trustee in New York Stephen Sloan okay he had heard about this from the radio chatter Race to the spot Talk to to Mundus in the in the crew there You know asked what kind of tackle they were used

And he says that we were using a 180 pound test And just so you know for IGFA records The max we accept is 130 pound Oh I didn't know that nope Anything ever that not sportsmanlike. Okay. So,

so cables out. No, you can use cable for leader. As long as it has a tensile strength of, yeah. Well, no, no, no, no. You know,

for tackle over 30 pounds, you're allowed 30 feet of leader. It can be made at a chain if you want it. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I got you.

I got you. The main line on the rod. It's going to dictate where that, where that breaks. 130 cut off. Cut off. So heard 180. And then we also heard,

you know, tied off to the whale. And we have a rule that says that chumming with the flesh or using it for bait of mammals is prohibited. Oh. So we didn't expect to see an application. An application came in and Mike said, sure enough, it said they used 130 pound line,

even though they were on the record. I've never heard this part of the story. So the short story was rejected kind of on two grounds. One is, you know, they said they used 180, even though they sent in a sample of 130. So that was suspect. But they also admitted to tying off on that whale. So it wasn't there see that's funny because my understanding of the story was one of the problems there was several but one of the problems as well is they were trading the rod back and forth. Yeah, I didn't hear that but that's definitely a no-no.

I mean, because the cardinal rule of IGFA once the fish strikes rod real or strikes a bait or lure, nobody but the angler can touch rod real line. Got it. You know, no assistance. I mean, if you're walking by and you glance the rod with your shoulder, that's not an infraction or anything like that. but, you know, assisting with the drag or certainly, here, let me hold the rod for a minute while you get a cold beer or something like that. Yeah. That doesn't fly.

Yeah. But when you do that kind of stuff, like, so if you, if the records, sorry, let me approach this a different way. If you go look at back to the Boone and Crockett parallel, there's an aspect of this that I feel like would be interesting to you guys. Is it, the Boone and Crockett parallel would be that. They're interested in what we call it deadhead, right? So if someone just fine, it could get hit by a damn train. Right.

Right. There's a place for that in the records. Right. Okay. I think that a handful of the record keeping organizations when it comes to mammals, there's a place for, well, this was according to our fair chase rules. Right. So a deer, you know, if a guy spotlighted a deer.

at night and kills it and he goes to submit it but he gets busted by the game warden first later he's like well i'm still going to submit he's just out yeah he's not going in the hunter records right but let's say it was some unheard of ungodly giant you know whatever it's like a 250 inch typical buck right some crazy number i'm just pulling out of nowhere it would still find a way it would still be codified within right? Yep. Because there's an interest in sort of like that the landscape at least produced it. So it would be cataloged in some way.

Yeah. Right. And so for that reason you will see for that for that reason you will see that for instance, the biggest, I think it's the biggest non-typical. I think it still stands. The biggest non-typical white tail is a deadhead. Really? That's interesting.

The biggest typical white tail, I believe the big. biggest typical White Tail's Hunter killed. I could be messing that up. But for a while it was the biggest non-typical was a deadhead. So within the system, like, why would you guys not be keeping track of stuff that came in off long lines or stuff that came in on Frank Mundus's boat just as a way of saying, hey, the ocean in 1986 was capable of producing a 3,500 Great White? Is it anymore? Yeah. So, I mean, our rules specifically dictate to the act of fishing, which we define by the act of using rod, reel, and line.

I understand exactly what you're saying, because you want to know how big these things get out there, you know, no matter how they're done. So even for records that were rejected or for fish that are bigger that are never sent and we know about that and we have cataloged that, they don't show up in our record. So, for example, you know, the. The Pacific Blue Marlin record, I'm probably going to butcher this, I think, is like 1,400 or 1,300 and change. There's a really famous story about something called Choi's Monster. It was like an 1,800-pound blue marlin that was caught in Hawaii. Okay. It was on a charter boat operation.

And if I understand this, correct, it was a father and daughter duo, okay? The father was captain in the boat. The daughter was the mate. And they hook up to this giant thing. You know, I think it, I think it inhaled. I think they were, I could have this wrong, but I think they, they were fighting like a 150 pound tuna and this thing just piled right on it. What?

Yeah. And just sitting there gagging itself on this, you know, so. But, you know, they've got this inexperienced charter, you know, it's just out there. They had a Marlin eat 150 pound tuna. Yeah. I mean, it might not have been 150, but it was like a big damn tuna. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, a football like that.

You know, these things that big have them all like. Huh. Yeah. So the rod gets passed around, this and that and the other. So it was, it wasn't an IGFA record, but it was brought in and weighed on a certified scale. And there's a great picture of it. You know, it looks like a rectangle. Giant rectangle is so big.

Yeah. But we know about these things. You know, we can say, well, you know, for our rules in terms of what we consider sporting and ethical, you know, the biggest black marlin ever killed is, you know, 1,560, you know, in Cabo Blanco. We know that there have others been caught in long lines or in nets and things like that that are better. Yeah.

So those kind of, those freaks that fall outside of angling rules would still in some way be captured. Oh, we want to know. So that at some point in time, someone could refer back and be like, man, whatever was going on then, one, A, this is the optimistic view. we're somehow now producing bigger fish than we've ever known to be produced, or more likely, we just are not seeing that happen anymore. Yeah.

The difference, I think, with the Boone and Croc is that probably shows up somewhere on their website or on their, if they do a yearbook or whatever. Those other fish aren't going to show up, but we know and we have records of them. So when somebody says, well, that's the biggest fish blue more than ever caught, we say, well, with the caveat, according to IGFA rules, there have been X number of fish that been caught either by commercial gear or not compliant with IGFA rules, because, no,

I think there is value in terms of knowing, you know, the size or quality of animals, you know, in the water and online, for sure. How often do you guys find a record that you later learn to be fraudulent or illegitimate?

Like, I remember, and it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be crookedness. Like, I remember, I can't remember if this is IGFA or a state thing. I don't remember what state it was, but there had been this long-standing,

there's this long-standing Channelcat record. And there's an old photo of this guy standing there with a Channel Cat. Well, someone, some brilliant person a couple years ago, had the idea why not count the rays on its fins, which you could see in the image. Was it a Blue Cat? It was a Blue Cat. Yeah.

So all along, the state record Channel Cat was just because a guy caught it and said it was a channel cat and then only later did someone go like you know one two three four five i can't remember what the numbers are well like one is like eight to nine fins and one is 12 to 14 fins or something like that and some other indicators and like we had it all wrong um and then it was kind of funny because the race started all over again yeah and so people were breaking channel cat records monthly or whatever because they had to build it back up like a guy comes and he's got a four pounder that's the record five pounder and then it built back up to some you know realistically hits that plateau. Yeah, it built back up to some realistic measure. But how often in your

own things do you get where someone, like Mundus, submits as legitimate, and then your investigation finds that it's not? Or you in time realize that there was a misunderstanding and an old record falls away? So in terms of rescinding old records, several of those things happened to me very early on my career at IDFA. I was hired in 2003. and I'm a fly angler. I like the saltwater fly fish. And, you know, there were people on staff that did it a little bit, but not really like me. And we got this application from, I think, Veracruz, Mexico, or somewhere in Mexico for a new tarpurn record on, I can't remember the tip.

It's six pound, 12 pound. I forget what it was. But the line sample came in. The bite tip, it was, there wasn't a scuff on it. And the fly looked like you plucked it out of a fly shop. and just tied it on. And anybody that's ever caught a tarp and their mouths are rougher than hell. I mean, they just wear through a leader, tear up flies.

And I said, you know, guys, I've got hesitations with this. And I'm not going to mention who it was, but one of the people on the review staff said, well, you know, you can hook it up at the very corner of the top of the jaw and not have it rub. I'm like, maybe. Maybe not. So I was new. So Jason overrode, I'm keeping my mouth shut. we found out a year later that this guy had submitted this record erroneously or falsely.

It was a commercially captured fish, and he wanted to impress one of the staff members working at IGFA. What? Yes. That was the motivation? That was the motivation. Because there's no money in it, right? No money in it, but so he was a representative. So we have an international committee of representatives.

Before we ever, we didn't have members until the 70s. We were in a membership organization. Good. But when we were first founded, we had what we called scientific affiliate groups like American Museum of Natural History, Chicago Field Museum, things like that, obviously going to our scientific roots. But we had this international committee of representatives, men and women from different parts of the world that were really dialed in in their different locations. So if our record catch came in and they were able to go over and kind of help validate it, they could do that. they could give us news of what's going on with their fishing, etc. So this guy was a rep, if I remember correctly, and I'm almost positive, it was.

And the woman that would manage the record, record, or a rep program was a very nice person. And apparently, you know, he became enamored. And he thought that submitting was going to help him, like, get a date with her. I don't know. I don't know. But what a weird. That's kind of a roundabout way to get a date. It was, it was like, first step, got to catch a big tarpon.

Yeah. And then, you know, but then you have. have you have things that happen that are kind of like your blue cat. So forever up until like 2006, there was this mystery out there. Is there another species of Marlin, the hatchet Marlin out there? These guys were saying, what's it called? A hatchet Marlin they were saying. It looks like a white, but it doesn't look like a white, but it looks a lot like a white Marlin.

Yeah. And what happened around that time through genetic analyses and being able to go through kind of morphometrics, you know, looking at, you know, counts of different things. We were able to definitively determine that, you know, it was a different species that had been previously described, called roundscale spearfish. The holotype, which is the first organism that I ever caught in catalog, actually burnt up, so when they never had it. And for a long time, scientists actually questioned the validity of that species. But through different techniques, primarily genetic, we were able to determine that they are indeed a valid species, and they look a hell of a lot like white marlin. You can tell a couple of different ways.

If you can look at the underside of the fish, the distance of the vent or the anus is well forward to the antelfin compared to Marlins, all spearfish are quite far forward. And then also if you look at kind of the bony elements underneath the gill, they're called brachiosicles, they go back a lot further. So once you've looked at this a little bit, you can tell. But obviously when this happened, we were like, oh, crap, we need to go back through our records. And we were able to go back and determine that a couple of the,

the existing white marlin records were actually round-scale spearfish records. Oh. Yeah. And there's another cool story. So if the guy's not dead, do you notify him? We notify them. Yeah, absolutely. Like, hey, you know that record fish you got?

Yeah, sorry. Sorry. You got to quit telling you. We didn't know. We didn't know at the time. But then there's other kind of cool things where people don't know. So another great story is there was a girl. We have junior angler records.

She caught a white marlin in. I believe Madeira submitted it. And this was, you know, post-2006 when we're able to kind of dial in. And I started making kind of a personal mission of mine to be able to identify these fish. But this fish was laying on the deck of the boat. You could see the underside of it completely well. So you could see where the anus was in relation to the anal fin. You could see the length of the branky obstacles.

And I was like, dang, this poor girl is not going to get a white marlin record. Well, she ended up getting three records. I think she got the all tackle. round scale spearfish record. Oh. She got a line class record for Atlantic spearfish, which encompasses round scale, long bill, and Mediterranean. And she also got a junior record.

Oh, okay. So instead of, she got one record rejected, but ended up getting three out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about the line, the line class deal.

Like, how do you break that down? So, because you got, so you just had a minute ago, you got all tackle and then line class things. Yeah. Is all tackle the one people really watch?

No, I mean, all tackle is, you know, any fit, an all tackle record is any species of validated fish. It's got to be scientifically validated. It's got to weigh at least one pound. But there's a caveat to that. It's also got to be within the upper 50% of its maximum recorded weight or size. And it can be caught on any size tackle up to 130. Back up on that last thing. It's got to be what now? The upper 50% of its maximum known size. So if you catch. some obscure fish out there, and it's only a two-pounder, but we know from the scientific literature that, you know, it grows to 50 pounds. Because some dead one that washed up on the beach or something like that.

We won't accept that. I see. So, and that's for a line that breaks up to 130 pounds. Then you have line class. You get 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130, 130, 1.30. Okay. And so that way you're able to T, catches based on the breaking strength of the line same way we have it with with fly fishing as well

you get two four six eight 12 16 and 20 we don't acknowledge anything ever 20 for so there's a record snook yep for four pound yep there's a record snook for six pound yep okay yep and then on up to 130 pound potential no no um so historically what we did was we kind of we kind of we kind of place the the maximum line class at kind of the maximum known size for a fish. So let's say, I think snook back in the day, I think might have been an 80 pound line or something, but others. But what we did over a decade ago is we retooled the way we accept records for line and tippic class. New Zealand, Australia, so the game fishing association of Australia, which predates the IGFA by two years. founded in 1937.

They've had a rule in the books forever that the fish has got away, I believe, at least as much as a line breaking strength. Okay, so if you catch a six-pound fish, you know, it's got to be on six-pound line. You know, you can't catch a three-pound fish on a six-pound line. We went through because we were, we, it was our fault at the IGFA. We had started kind of a recognition program for, you know, who could catch the most records in a year or over time. And we thought about it and like, this is great, you know, getting people interested.

But what we found is that people were actually going out and purposely trying to, you know, just high-grade fish over time. You're only allowed one record per line class per day. But you would see people that were, you know, the 20-pound line class is vacant, let's say, for, I don't know, large-mount bass, something like that. You know, you see a record come in for a pound and a half large-mouth bass on 20-pound line. Because no one had submitted. Yeah. You know, and that large amount bass is probably a bad one because that's a very popular category. You know, we started to get a lot of flack, you know, because you'd see it, you know, in the monthly publications, you know, like, these people are, but no fault to their own because, you know, we created the system, you know, we were, we were awarding people based on number of records.

So what we started to see was really a numbers game rather than a quality game and something that would, you know, denote more kind of, um, angler achievement, you know, out of the catch. So we instituted it now so that the weight of the catch has to be at least half of the breaking strength of either the line class or the typical class you use. So you got to have, though, there's got to be almost, this is a very improper use of the word infinite, but it's got to be almost like what, like an infinite number of IGFA records. Gosh, I wish I had the exact numbers off the top of my head because there's only a select number of species that are eligible for line and type of class records.

So you can't go out and catch some obscure fish and say, I want it to be the line class record. It's only for, you know, a certain suite of species. So you spell out what it is. Yeah. What would be the dude, like, who's the dude that has the most IGFA records? Or what is the number for the person with the most? Marty Orozegi, who is a trustee emeritus, really, really great guy. I think he's got well over 400.

one individual is 400 yeah yeah yeah yeah be hard to keep track of he's well he was a doctor in his former life so he's very methodical about things so okay so he so he's got a bunch of these line class things and presumably he's got line class typical typical you know he was we just unrolled a new angler recognition program called our master angler program so we've got different things at the IGFA that you know people can go after to acknowledge angling skills so obviously you got your records so you've got all tackle records. We got length records. You got line class, typical class records. But we also have slam and trophy clubs. So in our trophy clubs, it's either trying to get, you know, um, or trophy clubs is instead of, you know, a record that builds over time and size, we establish a benchmark. Okay.

Let's say a mahi. We say is a trophy size fish. If you catch a, uh, uh, uh, uh, a mahi, that size, uh, that weight or corresponding length, you get to be in that trophy club. Okay. And you've got Grand and Royal Slam Club. So Grand Slam Club, you know, the big one down in Florida, is an insured Grand Slam, bonefish sharpened permit, or if you're lucky enough to catch a snuck, that's an insured super glan slam. And we've got a variety of these for around the world.

So now we have a metric or a way to compile these things all together to create what we call the Master Angler Program. So it's over, I believe, seven different categories. So you've got All Tackle Records, Line Class records, Tippett Class records, and I'll tackle length records, and then you've got slams and trophy clubs, okay? And then you've got bronze, silver, and gold in each one of those categories.

You get three in any one of those categories, you're bronze. If you get six, you're silver, nine year gold. Once you achieve gold in five of those seven categories, you achieve Master Angler. Got us. You guys should open up like a redneck slam, man,

where it's like cats, you know, Like you gotta get all your catfish You gotta get some red horse suckers We get people saying that from time to time too And yeah there's nothing wrong with that I mean sometimes when we're out fishing You know I do a lot of you know stuff in the Everglades And like you know

We got the lady fish We need Jack Carvel and let's see a Gafftop catfish And we'll have the slam today The news yeah The less The less desirable slam Yeah exactly

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and enter to win. Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. scouting hanging cameras cutting lanes fixing fences packing practice prep the stuff that doesn't get noticed but that makes the difference that's what first light fieldware is designed for fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends

every piece is built for real use no shortcuts hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. On the record book thing, if an angler's out, just walk through someone that has never done this before. You're out fishing and you catch, um, can we do fresh water? Sure. Okay, you're out fishing and you catch what you think has got to be like the biggest northern pike anyone's ever laid eyes on. And you get it up. It's alongside the boat. It hasn't been touched. It's still in the water. You having to be fishing for whatever reason with two pound test. You know, and here's some, you know, 50 inch northern or whatever. And you're like, man, I feel like this has got to be something. What do you do? Walk me through.

what you do. How do you do it proper? Well, first of all, you're way ahead of the game, if you know, at least a little bit about our angling rules of what denotes a legal catch versus an illegal catch. Okay. And then what you need to do is document it properly. So get that fish out of the water. You know, we encourage live release if you can, you know, that, you know, that'd be a big fish for reliable. Some boats might have it. You know, take that fish to a place. it's got to be weighed on terra firma. So that's one of our rules. You don't have to kill a fish for an IGFA record.

In fact, over half of our records that we get every year are released alive. I want to pause on that because we covered this pretty heavily one time. The terra firma. Yeah. Okay. We had a musky expert on the show. And we were kind of talking about the musky wars, which is.

Oh, God. Don't let me talk about that. We don't need to go down the musky rabbit hole. But we had a guy here to go down the musky rabble hole. And basically he was a he was a gentleman who had made it his life's passion. I think I know this gentleman probably to track down all the old crazy musky photos right all of the whatever

the the 80 inch musky you know what I mean he was kind of like how many of these are actually out there can I find the people that caught him can I find out what the situation how did they actually weigh it right and he was going through the historic record of the real famous giants

where it's some picture of an old man standing there and on the Polaroid somewhere wrote, you know, when someone wrote like 60 pounds or whatever, right? And he's like, who caught that? What really happened? How was it weighed? Okay. Yeah. And we put that question to him about why the Terra Firma. So when you got your old rusty Zevko scale and you lifted up in the boat, like, why that doesn't count, you know, can you, can you touch on that? The only thing, it's, it's been time immemorial since certainly since my tenure there, but I think before. that too. The only cabot, we do allow juniors

to do that. Junior angler records to weigh their fish on the boat. Presumably, just because the rocking back and forth of it on the boat and you can't dictate. And you know, sure, if you're on a lake and it's a still day and it's just glad, I mean, there's no variation whatsoever,

but you know, you could also be out in three to six footers offshore. And you can't, you got to have a definable act. Yeah, and that scale, spring. is going like this on the waves. So getting back to it, you need to document your fish. So photographs of the fish to make sure we can determine it's the right species. Most of time, it's not a big deal, but oftentimes...

Do you have to have someone with you? No, you don't. It's helpful to have somebody there as a witness, a dissentress of witness, or just a witness period, if we have questions, if we can go back to it. Because if what we see in the application isn't satisfied and we can't go back and query other people, we're probably going to disqualify it. But document it.

So get pictures of the fish, you with the fish, the scale that was used to weigh the fish. And the scale has to be certified within 12 months, okay, with the catch. So if,

Oh, it can be certified after the fact. It can be. Oh, it can be. Then the very important thing to do here is to, um,

cut, um, five meters of your main line off and leave that attached to your entire leader setup and send that in. because that allows us to test the line and determine its true breaking strength if it's a line class record. And we also are able to measure the leader itself to make sure it's compliant. We also need to make sure the hook sets compliant. And don't mess with how you got your terminal, your jighead or Rapala or whatever, just leave it all tied on and send it.

You can leave it tied on. I mean, you know, sometimes if it's like something super heavy, you know, if we have a picture of it still on there, you know, we're fine. but typically the best thing is to send it all in together. Yep. Do that. So I caught my northern. Get it out of the water. I go up.

I see some dude walking down the beach. I'm like, sir, would you mind taking a gander at this fish? Absolutely. Can I get your name and number? You take a cell phone photo up. I want to get your name and number. Yep. I go to a scale.

I can't find a certified scale. I go to a scale. I get the best measurement I can get. I take note that I need to then get that. certified. Yeah. Um, and then I, I, I, I, I go on your website. Go on our website. You can, um, you can, um, apply digitally. Um, we've got two great people on our angular, England recognition department. People ask questions all the time. I encourage people, if they have any questions on remotely going out, you know, take a look at our record or at our rules. But if you're,

if you've got questions, call us. That's what we're here for. We'll walk you through it. So documenting that fish well and submitting it in time. So within, I think within the continental United States, you got to submit it within 60 days and it's 90 days outside of the continental United States for lying class records to do that. But it's also important to know, again, ahead of time, what constitutes a legal catch. I mean, your terminal tackle may be fine, but you may have done something egregious. For example, let's say you and I are trout fishing. And, you know, you're hooked into what we're sure is going to be the new six-pound tibbitt brook trout or whatever and this thing is giving you a hell of a time and you know i'm like okay this thing is like

heading head and head and for the hills let's stop it over there so i run you know 20 yards ahead of you and i get ahead of it and i net that fish that's not legal you have to be within a rod's length of the angler before assisting in landing the that's in the rules yeah it's in the rules and we had to do that because we were seeing videos of, you know, guys that were fighting fish, and the guy is like way the hell downstream netting this fish. This fish has not been brought to hand by the angler yet. You can get help in landing the fish from other people, but they've got to be there with you. You know, we see the same thing, you know, in Belize, you know, in permit fishing.

You know, typically on these penguins, you've got a senior guy that's polling, and you've got the more junior guy that's kind of sitting amid ships kind of chirping in your ear about how to strip and stuff like that. And, uh, you know, here's an example I'll bring up that, you know, you'll see, you know, two errors happen at one time, you know, um, you know, he calls out a fish and you make a cash and you get hooked up. But the mate has noticed that the 20 knot wind is turn your line into a piece of abstract art. So he frantically is undoing it.

So there'll be no knots and he's able to clear the line, you know, before, you know, fish takes off. That's a no, no. Okay. number one because once the fish takes the fly, bait, lure, whatever, nobody, but the angler can touch rod, reel of the line. But then what you also see quite a bit in video. So your body can't, like you said, your body can't tighten your drag. No. Can't do anything like that. But what you'll also see is the same well-intentioned guy because

he wants to catch fish for these people. He just said no. He'll jump out the secondary guide and go and walkabout with his net and net this permit, you know. Any which way he can do it. Any which way he can do it. Any which way you can do it. Not legal. Okay. Yeah. And then do you have, let's say the state considers a rule that you don't consider, it has to conform to state law.

What do you mean? Like, give me. For instance, like, these people are all dead now, so they're not going to get in trouble. My old man and his buddies had, they used to buy this, almost like a catch pole, a cable, like a dock. Picture a dog catcher cable catch pole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They would, when they were fighting salmon, uh, they would hook it with that cable grabber.

Like a tail snare. Yeah. Tail snare. Yeah. You could, those against state law. Uh, tail snares were illegal. Yeah, so. But they would hook all their fish, not all them.

They had those tail snares, and they were always hauling fish out with the tail snare, rather than trying to get them on a net. So let's say you don't contemplate tail snares, but state law contemplates tail snares. I use a tail snare. Am I thrown out? because I broke my... Absolutely.

So our rules are very explicit in that any catch that's at variance with state, federal, whatever laws governing that body of water or that fishery cannot be submitted for an IGFA record. Yeah. Yeah. Can't do it. Now, I got a question about the line stuff. And I bring this up only because my buddy Seth, who I work with, he was just turning me on to this new braid. In terms of the fishing line arms race, there's this new braid that I can't remember what he's telling me.

man we were looking at it there's braid it's got basically the diameter of of eight like traditional eight pound power pro let's say but the stuff's 21 pound oh easily yeah now and remember um we used to use maxima when we used to fish a lot of salmon and steelhead in the great lakes and the rivers we would always use four pound maximum mono yeah four pound for tip it material we use we use maximum mono and guys would point out you'd be like well maximum mono is so strong guys like you ever measure it because four pound isn't four pound maximum mono is like it says four but it's thicker yeah it's like it's like it's like so and so six yeah the strongest four pound it really it's the thinest 10 pound out there or something

like that exactly so do you ever take your stuff and do you take your line and put it on a machine oh 100% okay so so when you calculate the breaking strength it's not what the spool says we've got a commercial grade materials tester that when we bought this back like 99 costs like 50,000 dollars like it's commercial grade you know stuff so yeah we we we test every liner tippet sample that comes in for the liner tip of sample and what we do is you soak it we have a protocol you soak it for a minimum of two hours because those people don't realize this but monofilament absorbs water okay okay and that actually weakens the breaking stream and so we want to give a good soak and makes it worse and a good soaking makes it yeah a little bit

weaker. So we want to give, you know, a benefit of a doubt, you know, and, you know, and kind of simulate what, you know, it's like when people are having line in the water all the time. And then we'll break the line. Typically, we'll do five breaks with a line class sample because it allows we have plenty of line to work with. And we'll get the average standard deviation out of that. And then with tippets, because tippets don't have to be any longer than 15 inches. That allows us normally to get three breaks out of it. We'll do that. But the other thing that we'll do, too, You know, sometimes we'll see people that are doing things called line class shopping. Okay. You know, they're out for, say, the 12-pound record. Sure. They catch a fish. It's not big enough for the 12-pound record, but they're like, this is bigger than the 16 record. I'm going to submit it for that.

You can't do that. Oh, really? No. No, no, no, no. You can't do that. So what we'll do. They'll state, yes, I use 12-pound line and we'll break it in, you know, or 16-pound line. And we'll break it.

And sure enough, it's consistently 12, but they said they're used 12. We're like, okay, we break out micrometers. And we know we can go through the internet and we can find out the diameter for just about every line out there. So we can ground truth. Now that said, if you're fishing and you're unlucky enough because you're using that maximum and you're a four pound over Tesla, let's say into the eight and that fish is big enough to beat the fish in this and eight, we do allow that to happen.

Got it. But you can't shop down. What brand, and maybe you can't do this, whose line is most consistently off? God, I don't. It's been so long since I've been at the hell of that, and I wouldn't want to throw anybody on the bus. But what I'll say is there, there are not a lot of line manufacturers out there that are really purposely making line that is true to what the stated breaking strength is. Okay. You know, there's only a few out there that do it.

Yeah. You know, I never thought of it as like, I never thought of this just outright dishonesty. I just, whatever. I didn't really think about it too much, but it was just pointed out to me. But this new braid stuff, man, it's expensive by it's bought enough to spool a couple reels in it.

Well, yeah. I'm excited about it. I mean, how long are you being using braid for? Long, long time. Okay, so when it first came out. I remember when it came out. And I remember, like,

the one argument I could hear against it was dudes. I was still living in. Braid came out. We were fishing tons of salmon and steelhead in the, in the tributaries to the Great, lakes. And I remember one guy, it was early enough that some guy was saying, if you get hung up, if you get your boot hung up in that braid, you know, you're basically going to die.

I know. People were deathly afraid of it. It's actually, it's actually going to hang out. It's going to saw into your spool, you know, things like that. You tangle your waiters up and that braid and you basically just had to resign yourself to slow death in the river. And I remember like, it was that early. Yeah. And we started running. The other thing people were just complaining about, oh, my God, can you see what a spool of braid costs?

But in the meantime, if you were fishing a lot, like for me doing flats fishing or backcountry fishing, mono, the life of it. It doesn't go bad. No, it would twist up and stuff like that. So, like, I would change out a given reel, a spool of mono on a given reel on a rod three or four times a year. How many times you go to like your grandma and grandpa's house? He lasts forever.

Yeah, you go to your grandma and grandpa's house and you go in there looking for a ride and the mono is just like crumbling off the school. Oh, it's just opaque. Yeah. It's just opaque. Yeah. You know, it's crazy. There's a bird nest right here that my buddy Brody.

He was telling me it's killing him. He wants to drag it out of the nest. He says there's a bird nest against our building that is full of braid. Oh, wow. Yeah. We're talking about whether that bird's going to get wrapped up in that braid or not. He's thinking about he's trying. He was the other day, he's trying to weigh up.

out like do you meddle and get the braid out of there or do you let him be and just have his braid? Yeah. Yeah. Which makes me curious where that braid even came from. I don't know. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, we're really adamant about it. I mean, we've got this excellent education program that we have, you know, that we use fishing really as a carrot to teach kids about the outdoors, get their hands wet. Yeah.

Teach them about the natural world around them. You know, why aquatic habitats need to be healthy, why we have regulations for fisheries, why it's important to follow them, why there's safety. And we've got a variety of different curricula, but one of the things that no matter what we're doing, whether it's a school event, summer camp, is making sure you dispose of your line properly. You know, that's just 101 right there. Do you even, I guess probably in saltwater you find more applications for it, but, and maybe

this is more of a testament to the fact. that I'm, uh, that I'm not broke all the time anymore, but I only ever use, I use braid and floral, man, I never touch monofilament.

You know, monofilament is still the, the line of choice for offshore fishing, you know, for Marlin and stuff like that because it's got scratch. Um, historically, um,

you know, not the entire reel. Um, you know, normally it's a top shot of several hundred yards. Um, beneath it is normally either Dacron or, guys now really have gotten into kind of the modern jail spun, you know, braid,

you know, Dachron's braided line, but you know, the modern braid stuff. But there's still, you know, a lot of utility for that because that line's got a lot of forgiveness and stretch, you know, if there's bigger fish. I fish with a guide in the Everglades. He's probably the most famous fishing guide from Biskeme Bay, the Keys, Everglades. His name's Steve Huff. You know, he's the guide of guides. He's won, you know, so many bonefish, tarp in tournaments.

He's got records, et cetera. To this day, he still fishes on his bait casters, monofilament. And even if he's fly fishing, you know, we all think that, you know, fluorocarbone is more abrasion resistant and certainly a little bit thinner in diameter than mono. So maybe you're fooling the fish a little bit better. He won't use anything but 50 monofilament for his bite tippet when he's fishing for snow. Yeah.

I come there with 40 floor carbon and he looks at me sideways like, you know. Doesn't like it? No, he's like, he's 50. Dude, I do a lot of vertical jigging, you know? A lot of vertical jig. And you're like in a hundred feet of water, you're like interviewing the bottom of the ocean. Oh, 100%. Oh, there's a rock.

There's mud. Oh, yeah. There's like a little ledge. That feels like some coral. That was a game changer. It transmits. It transmits information. I used to love to, you know, jig for stuff like Amberjacks and bottom fish and

stuff like that. And I remember doing it back in the, the mono days, 15 or 20 mono and you're just like, maybe that's bottom. Yeah. You know, or, you know, I do have a bite. You know, and you switch to braid and like every little thing, it was just. Oh, yeah. You're like, dude, I hooked him in the right side of his mouth.

Yeah. Yeah. I can tell through the braid. Total, total game changer. Yeah. You know, the one thing I would like to see, and I think there are some companies that are doing it, it would be cool to see braid. Because the thing that I like about braid the most is that um it's it's it's it's it's the diameter it doesn't stretch and it holds up well cast well and stuff like that but i don't need you know so i'm using predominantly my insured fishing i'm using say a power pro 15 pound braid

i don't know what the diameter that is like six pound or whatever i don't need 15 pounds because it breaks probably closer to 20 or 30 but once you get thinner it makes it harder to tie knots and i'm just in the getting cuts in my hands and stuff like that. But what I'd like to see is, you know, manufacturers that are creating braid that is true to what the breaking string stated is because you get that benefit of, you know, the no stretch and things like that. But, you know, you're fishing by, you know, what, what they say it is. Yeah. You know, I just remember back before braid, I'd be fishing for snuck in the mangroves. I'd be using, you know, eight to 12 pound monofilament and you get a lower hung up in the mangroves and it's like, wow. It's just like trying to pull it out with the rubber band. Now with braid, duck your head and just pull back, it's coming back at you.

I can't tell you how many scars I got up and down my fingers from braided fishing line, though, man. Yeah, it's like there's a little bit of occupational hazard using that stuff. Yeah, and then, you know, a lot of the fly guys too,

you know, the evolution for backing for fly stuff, you had DACRON, and you had something called Micron, which was thinner. I remember that, yeah. And it was softer, but now a lot of guys are just using straight up gel-spun polyethylene

the same stuff that's, I use PowerPro, you know, a lot of times, you know, 30. And man, if you're fishing a lot, you know, bone fishing or whatever, and you've had a lot of fish getting to the backing and you're level one, you're back at the end of the day, you're like, ooh. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what have I not asked you about that I wish I'd asked you about with IGFA? Well, you covered the thing that we're most known for is, is,

obviously our history with record keeping rules and stuff like that. But what I tell people is that IGFA is so much more. Okay. It really comes down to three solid pillars. We've talked about one, which is kind of the angle recognition, records, slams, trophy clubs, things like that. We do a tremendous amount of work in conservation around the world.

And we're doing work on everything from Mullet to Marlin. You know, we've got extensive programs that we're doing for Billfish. I've mentioned, you know, our IGFA great Marlin satellite tax. program biggest of its kind in the world open access we have co-chaired the last two international billfish symposia we did a three-year deep dive with the FAO in the Caribbean looking at the value of billfish resources there we're constantly weighing in on these regional fisheries bodies for billfish you know around the world because nobody else is really doing it you know are very few people there are other people doing as well but we're

doing a lot for billfish we've got some cool stuff coming down the pipe on strike strife. But we're also at the other end of the food chain as well. You know, so forage fish is really this emerging paradigm and fishery management. I actually wanted to ask you about that. Yeah. So, um, you know, doing, we've got something called the forage fish, um, research program. Um, actually I'm missing that workshop to be here, um, for this right now. So, yeah. Um, and what we did, we started this in 2016 is we've, FWC, our state agency is, is just phenomenally well-run, and they've got a great research arm.

And they have a tremendous amount of what they call Fisheries Independent Monitoring Program, you know, capturing fish with sains and things like that from, I think, seven different estuaries around the state for like over 20 years. And they've got just this amazing backlog of data, especially on forage fish species. So we put together this public-private program

where we invite grad students and their major professors to sit down once a year with the people from the fish, Wildlife Research Institute. They talk about the data that they have in terms of forage fish and what their research priorities are. And then we fund two fellowships at $20,000 apiece for them to do work for 12 months with these scientists to really gen out some incredible research on forage fish that actually

several of them have had direct management applications. And the other cool thing about it, there's been probably three or four of these grad students that have gone on to have now promising. careers in state and federal fisheries work. So we do that. We've been working on a number of other species. We finished up a study about a year ago with Golden Dorado in South America. You know about the fish there.

I mean, that species has gone through the roof in terms of popularity with visiting English, but we don't know anything about them. So we did an end-deck genetic study. The results will be out on that soon, trying to look at the population units. And then we said, we did kind of the same thing with rooster fish in Central America. That's their iconic inshore fish. And again, nobody knew anything about their population structure. You can find them from Cabo, San Lucas, you know, down to Peru.

Are they one contemporaneous unit, you know, where you have a lot of mixing? Are there basically subpopulations, et cetera? And we're able to find that indeed, there are distinct units. And, you know, the management application to that is, if you deplete a specific unit, you're not getting influx from other areas. So, you know, you can do that. Might not refill. Yep. So we do a lot of the conservation. And the other thing that I'm just incredibly proud of is our education team in the last 15 years has just done some amazing things in terms of taking these programs that we've defined that we're basically housed only in our HQ

in South Florida and now exporting that to the world. They've got something called a passports to fishing program. And it's super cool. It's, uh, it's been trained. translated into 17 different languages. We've got it in 50 different countries, every continent except Antarctica. Maybe you can help us with that one. But basically what it is is a fishing kit in a box, 25 rods and reels. And then educational mats, you know, translated to talk about the importance of aquatic habitats, why regulations are important, how to know if a fish is legal, different types of tackle, safety, whatever.

And they go around with a little passport, and they got to go through each one of these stations to get checked off. Then they get a rod and reel. allowed to fish for a couple hours. Okay. And we're able to repeat that around the world. And that's been so cool. So our reach in terms of being able to do, you know, not only get the next generation of anglers on board, but these are our next generation of environmental stewards as well.

Yeah. So exceptionally proud of the work that the education is doing our education department. So the thing I always saw people about the IGFA, you know, we're known for records, but really, if you're remotely into fishing, there's something for you. You know, we've got education. We've got conservation. We've obviously got the records and rule scene. You know, we're the Angling Historian.

You know, we've got the world's biggest repository of angling related, you know, works in the world with books and videos and photos. We're doing a massive undertaking with that, you know, right now to modernize that. So there's a lot to it, you know, when it comes to the IGFA. And you guys are a membership. You know what we keep saying IGFA. I don't know that we've, that I have said. It's the international.

You did in the very beginning. I did. Yeah. Yeah. We're the International Game Fish Association. We're a membership organization. We've got a variety of membership levels from, you know, a $20 digital level to, I think a $50 annual level where you get the world record book, a lifetime membership level. But, you know, take a look. Come to our website, take a look at what we do and get involved. Break some records. Break some records. Get involved. What I tell people, I don't care what you like to fish for. If it's trout, if it's bonefish, if it's billfish, if it's whatever, you're going to be able to find an organization out there that is doing good work to ensure that you've got fish out there for yourself and for future generations.

I just tell people to get involved, whether it's IGFA or another group. Get involved. Be part of helping ensure that recreational anglers have a voice in terms of advocating and getting policies that are beneficial for recreational anglers and our resources at the same time. Yeah, and I'm not suggesting, like, I don't want to act like they have to be at odds, but they don't have to be at odds. But the commercial fishing industry has a political arm. I mean, the commercial fishing industry has lobbyists, and they make campaign contributions. We do now, too, though. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah. But, I mean, historically, the commercial fishery has been politically more powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Not that they need to be at odds of recreational anglers, but it would make sense that recreational anglers look at how do we play the political game and how do we sort of stand up for our interests in the future of our sport, the same way that other people who rely on healthy fisheries do.

It's an important voice to have in there. Absolutely. So two things. I'm glad you brought that. First of all, IGFA is not an anti-commercial organization. We understand that people need to be able to get fish to consume. We just want sustainable practices out there. We've actually worked with commercial interests on projects before, you know, that we had in shoe alliance.

But you're absolutely right. You know, 20 years ago, recreational anglers, there were groups out there. Obviously, there were powerhouses out there like Coastal Conservation Association, American Sport Fishing Association. You know, the IGFA was just starting to get into the conservation stuff. But a number of groups that were out there and had a voice, but we were fragmented. Okay. Meanwhile, the commercial interests were so well coalesced.

You know, they had their lobbyists. They had. And what was developed, I think, a little over 20 years ago, was what's now called the Center for Sport Fishing Policy. And this is the leadership in the recreational fishing and boating space in the United States. So you've got groups like the IGFA, CCA, ASA. And then you've got major manufacturers like National Marine Manufacturers Association, Yamaha, etc. and we meet and we prioritize policies and we speak off one sheet now and we have the activists and the lobbyists to go to the hill and get what we need, you know, and it's been fruitful,

you know, where we're starting to see a change. Well, thanks for the work. And once again, Jason Schratweiser, I keep afraid I'm going to mess it up. As you point out, it's just like the end just like Budweiser. You nailed it. With the international president of the international game fish association. Association eight number eight president number eight yeah you don't do like number eight shirts and stuff like no it's funny though because like I said there's been eight presidents and eight chairman

my chairman's eight number eight and I'm number eight so okay yeah and you've been in that role how long uh 2020 I joined IGFA in 2003 as conservation director okay so once again international game fishing or fish I'm sorry? International game fish association when you catch a giant follow the rules get hold of these boys, they'll get you done. They'll get you a plaque, right? Yeah, you get a certificate. Get our publications.

And if you want to catch, who's the dude you got to catch? If you want to get the most, he's got 400. What's his name? Marty Yaroski. Yeah, you got to catch Marty. I want to hear from some listener who passes up Marty with more than 400 new records on the books. All right, thanks guys.

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