Ep. 366: Big Conching by the Lobster Condo

call your freshman effort? Is that what you call it? Like your first album when you're rock band? Yeah, it sounds very sophomore album is your second one nos debut And then so our debut calendar was funked up old dear stands and that was so much fun. This year we're doing up old tax army. We got a lot of it. Kind of went different this year. You can't really mail a deer stand in no, especially the big permanent ones, you know, but this year we how many

did you dig through steth? I think liked or soissions We got a lot out of there. But then we did something that I thought we should do the whole time. Yeah, but the suits kept the suits kept trying to prevent me from doing it. Well, I kept being like, why don't we have the ones that were it's a great specimen of fun up old tax army that the photos not that great. Have him mail us the item and You're like, you can't crate up all that, you can't

create up all that. Well, we're gonna start creating it all shipping crates of right. You kind of got your way though, Well, yeah, and no, it's great. It took a while, and I had I made a commise. I'm okay, I'm like, okay, if the word crate is so offensive, we'll but we'll have stuff that fits in what would be called a box. So we had stuff boxed and I was like, okay, I'll never say the word crate.

I didn't introduce the word create anyways, someone else introduced the word crate woman, and I'm like, we should have him sending that s up in the next nit. Now they're going to create the boxed some of our favorites. And Seth like, we have a little We had a great beaver. Yeah, the who's for whatever he'son missing his hands, He's fucked the whole tax SERVI. He's missing his hands, and Seth took him out and set him next to

a beaver chew tree and photographed him. We have like a mink and his natural habitat, but if you look at it's like just something not right with that mink under a bridge right where you catch him. Yep, it's a great calendar. Seth did the cover photo. What else we had a squirrel I'd set up in a tree and to picture just where you find them, not sitting in some guy's yard. It's a bad squirrel, funked up old taxidermy in its uh place in nature. Yeah, someone would be kind of hard to do. I think it's

our sophomore talent. As things go, a sophomore effort doesn't do as well as the debut, no matter how many people watched Godfather too right, ain't as much as they watch Godfather. I think this one will perform. Oh it'll do good. Yeah, it'll do good. I was just setting that up as a challenge for listeners to feel like they should go buy it to prove me wrong. That might not be effective, maybe not if you. But here's the thing, it's more relatable. More people in this world

owned funked up old taxidermy, then old fund up old deerstand. Yeah. What I learned going through all those photos is there's a lot of fund up old taxidermy in this world. And just being in bars and whatnot working on this project made me like recognize, appreciate it more. Yeah. Yeah, there's a little I wrote a little intro and there's a little essay in there about the stuff the material.

So that's available now. Um. As they point out in the description, it covers all twelve months, as calendars do. Covers all twelve months of the year, all three and sixty five days. We didn't well, you know a lot of your calendars they'll get to late December, they'll peter off. This one sticks it out to the bitter end, sticks it out to the thirty first, just in case you have, you know, something going on. They get bored and all

of a sudden, it's like they fade out. You know this one, you can stick six with you until New Year's even calendar funked up old tax during the available now wonderful photography seth Photography dominates the calendar. Thank you dominates the calendar. So I'll check it out now. The meat Eater Dot com and I think there's gonna be a lot of things like last year we did stuff you know, you bought certain like would we ship it with certain items and all that. One thing I like

about the calendar. The last thing I'll say about it is last year, if you looked at how many orders there were for the calendar, there were more calendars sold than orders, which means people wanted multiple calendars. Yeah, if you're buying good, I either steth. Okay, So so take a minute and buy that calendar. Uh, we'll wait for you. Okay. Now that you've got your calendar, I want to point

out something here we have. If you subscribe to the show, you know this um, this show releases every week, right and then and then you know everyone, every Monday, this show releases. You leten do it on Mondays. On Wednesdays, you get to listen to the trivia show. We're gonna do a whole special episode, so it's not in the normal Monday cadence. We're doing a whole special drop of the Meat Eater podcast. And if you want to get married,

I want to stay married. Any of this kind of stuff, and you like to hunting fish, you have to listen to this podcast because it will be a bunch of the people you know from this show in with their spouses to talk about. There are particular bits of advice or pain points that come from, you know, the lifestyle. So if you wake up one day and you're wondering why you see this mysterious drop of the Meat Eater

podcast on an unexpected day, that's what that is. Gather around your you know, your loved ones, especially if you're married to one and listening. This gives me occasion to quote my favorite quote, which I like to quote at least every two weeks on this show, and it's from my friend Pat Durkin, who said of his area in Wisconsin, if you're not a deer hunter, you sleep with one. And uh yeah, for all those people getting slept with two and in all right, where are we at? All right?

I'm gonna set the scene. Here we are. We're in the Bahamas, and we're departing from a small island with you know, like a few permanent residents and a bunch of vacation homes and and things on them, but just like a small remote island. We're headed out to go do some spear fishing. We're in a like a pretty souped up forty ft boats got twin outboards triple what am I saying? Triple outboards on it? And we're headed out.

Everything around here is pretty shallow, you know. There's a lot of water ranging from you know, three ft deep to sixties seventy ft deep in this area, with a lot of reefs, um, sandy shallowerias, you know which which which flats fishermen will call flats, a lot of those around here. But we're gonna be going out into kind of that mid depth water and we're gonna be looking for were whole hunting for grouper in the reefs. We're looking for hog fish um, which I've never gotten before.

We're gonna keep our eyes open for conk so to die for conqu's a big salt water snail that lays on the bottom, and also checking the ledges and holes and whatnot for spiny lobster, so a clawless lobster. And what's cool about the Bahamas is you can spear form. Now you are not allowed to use a spear gun here, so we're gonna be using slings, you know, nothing with

a trigger mechanism. So we're gonna use the thing that people who aren't from a Hawaii call a Hawaiian sling, and people who are from Hawaii will generally call a three prong or a poll spear. We're using those. But like I said, you can actually shoot lobster with him. In a lot of places you can only hand grab lobsters, but you can shoot him here, which makes it easier.

So we're keeping eyes off for all this stuff. And there's also a chance of like various plagic fish coming through and joined by some people you should be familiar with, Uh, Kimmy Werner, who I do a lot of stuff with and she's been on the show of Mediather, been in the podcast before. And Cameron kirk Connell. If that name rings the belts, because Cameron told a great story at the end of a recent podcast episode which was a

teaser for our meters camp fire stories. Narrowness is more close calls he's the guy that saved his friend's life by shooting him. If you want to know what I mean, you gotta go in and listen to that story. There it goes Steve Man. That water feels good, all right, Cam, Steve, Kimmy and parent are in the water. I think they see something. They're still at the surface. Cam just shout to Steve and said that there are two hugs. It looks like Jimmy got something sweet. What kind of fish

is that fish? Can we got a hog fish? Oh? Man, look at that thing Karen's holding. Tell me so, this is my very very first hog fish. Apparently she's a female and actually missed my first shot, but me and both missed. And then I think I'm getting the hang of it a little more. Now. Look at how delicious and beautiful she looks. You want to describing it? Oh my god, it's like this quarrel corn colored, beautiful fish with like a spangled face, such an interesting nose, crazy

shirt tea. And these streamers, these fins that are like absolute streamers, just like any other fish I've ever seen, so clear. Thank you. Steve's pulling the boat in when you come back with conk, have our vessel in it? Of eight count was very well developed. What do you call them? Fair? Beautiful? And they were in high current. That might be one way to explain. Remember how years were very covered in like a little dirty. These are like polished. Man, He's like, get ready for the gift shop.

Ready for a key West gift shop shell shop. All right, So we're getting in the water we're at we have uh, we're being approached by warmer, dirty water, water from the flats and the dropping tide. We got a dropping tide all day. Unfortunately we're on a bit of a flat and were where it drops off. So we're sandwich between a like a tideline, an allege, an allege that drops from and it's going to force every fish in the Bahamas into this little pocket. And what are you hoping

a spirit there, bunch of fish? Hog? No, a hog fill because yesterday yesterday, I well, yeah, I mean you know, yeah, I do, I blew, I blew molten too good to give hand me down hand Me's what am I trying to say? Give me? I blew two gimmes yesterday layoffs. So the other thing about this tideline coming is on the flats is so much food, shrimp, crabs of stuff. So as this comes, there's a lot of fish feeding

on that drop. So we're gonna use the float lines here with the poll spears that way, with this a little bit deeper water. It goes from like thirty five to about sixty. We can shoot the plagics that are coming by. You should see big yellow jack's here and

Max and also the bottom fish. Like you can shoot those bottom fish and keep pressure on them heading up to the surface, because if not, I mean it's it's a tough die for anybody, you think, like chasing a fish, and even a small hog fish wraps around one little thing and you're attached to the bottom. Okay, I'm sitting in the boat with Captain Brandon Um and they're all in the water filming, and he's telling you what people,

this is happening, sir. Right now, Cameron's following a big block right now, I'm assuming just he's swimming faster than everybody else, splashing on the surface, which sometimes will cause him though shoot off into hole if they feel really threatened. But right now he's just swimming and most likely swimming back to where you get his hole is now. It might be in fifty water, it might be in water. He's don't really he's not really showing no signs of

slowing down. But it like that. See what he's doing now, he's trying to see He's just he just dove down. He's going down to try and chase him into hold, because the closer you get to them, the more threatened they feel, especially after that already started to swim away from you. So they're really kind of teaming up. Everyone's almost got a roll, right, yes, So like stuff like that,

you want to keep an eye on him. Like if one person goes down to try run him, he could go in a hole and shoot a totally different direction. So it's always going to have multiple eyes in the water. See like how he's coming back towards as now he's swimming them in a big circle. He probably doesn't want to go. Oh, he's like splashing about. He's causing a lot of ripple. And first he was going out towards

the deeper water. Now he's coming back in. He's gonna probably keep going around in a circle until they get there and until he gets tired or he feels safe enough in a certain hole. But he's going to go in. But most of the time they will ah they're going the hole, or they'll swimming until you tie it and you just give up. That's all that's all they do. Cam swimming real fast, okay, yeah, real caton mouse. You gotta you gotta keep up with that that's the biggest thing.

Because the big group was like that, they could outswume you. And we're talking how big. I don't know. I could be anywhere from what to what a man to be all what I would call a big what I call big as a sixty seventy bond, fifty six seventy bonds, that's a big one, and you get over seventy that's a month. We did sprint marathon. We did the fish equivalent of tracking a bish. That's a lot like shooting a tracking him and then he jumps up and he

runs again and you gotta wait. But in this case we have to like sprint, swim for a couple of hundred yards between each time rest up, and every time he went deeper too. It was like fifty sixty back into fifty. And every time we went down and had a chance, like we had one little thing off for one of us spooked him or something, and he'd do it again. The more you follow him, the more you want someone to shoot him. He gets bigger and bigger.

It's real personal. I'm thinking the goods was and for me it was so importing to have you guys sprinting because I come up from those deeper dives, barely wiped out, and just like have the assurance I can swim slow, breathe out, recover, I get ready while you guys are checking it. Steve and I were swimming as hard as could chasing it, and Kimmy would just like take your dime, come up rolling gaging multiple times, like every one of

us was like fin deep in the holes. Like I don't know how many videos we have of it, but at one point you were getting somebody's fish out of a hole and I had you by the belt and pulled you out because you're so far in there. Yeah, because I kept trying to back out on my own and go up and I wasn't out yet. And finally I just felt you talking about like like the hole as being like a little like a cave. Like Okay, basically a lot of the hunting we're doing today, we're

going down. We're looking at these ledges that look like this little ledges. But the minute you get down there, you can actually something will lure you to creeping further and further in, and you can actually get pretty deep within those some emergence, you know, the holes the size of a tent some are like flat and deep. Sorry on a child. What are you holding, Steve, I'm holding two yellow yellow? What yellow? Finn, Drew Ber, what's your I don't know. Over ten pounds? How long is that? Yeah,

I mean it's longer than your arm, bigger than your arm? Yeah, time pound fish can We caught a ginormous huge hog fish first, one fish. I feel absolutely elated like that about the fact that I missed him before you got him. I mean that I feel like that tarnish dumber made him cool because I actually I missed one first and then you missed, and so it made me feel better. But they didn't make the victory that much sweeter for sure. But man, it's such cool thing. They really are. This

later looks like an alien. It's cool to have. Like when you look at all these fish up close, all the different details on him, like stuff that you don't think about when they're far away, but like all this like paint. It looks like he's got painted up on his forehead. It's like pink yellow, these little blue lines. A friend of mine recently pointed out an irony of sort of an irony of duck hunting, or he's like you don't really get to see what they really look like.

And I really appreciate their beauty till you kill one, you know, and then you get then you get in your hands. You're like, holy shit, man, you know that's the only way to really really study them hands. And that's what that looks worth. They're like colors before they all fade away and change. I just can't even believe it's cooler we're looking at. Yeah, that's what one sixty and it's full to the top. Yeah, welcome to the fish market, all right, everybody. Uh so join the day

by me of course, mean asshole Kimmy Werner. Huh, but that's not a good answer. Touching well listen, man, oh my god, you yeah, he's real, super sensitive. My wife wrote me a mean email. I did see the email. Really, she singing an email. It was brutal. She's down on me, but I appreciate it. But it's just basically because you asked Jimmy for her opinion and my wife wrote me an me, an email. You know what. I'm still mad at my wife. But how she wouldn't change her name

to my name. But Jimmy was saying when she met she met Katie just randomly, and Katie introduced herself as Katie Ronella. Uh. Probably because she knew that we knew each other. You knew it would ring a bell. Yeah, that's cute. Uh. Brandon Aubrey first time on the show. Ye go ahead and say, go and tell people where you're from. So I'm I'm from the Obama's what the islands called Abacote. It's got a small keys off of it called green Turtle Key. That's why I'm OBRIGENNI from.

That's where you're brought up. That's why I was brought up. A long line of commercial, long line of commercial fisherman. Yes, got it, my father, my ground thought and Karen and then parent James, parent James, Yes, sir, here, I am damn it. Uh So, when I was going through the names, Cameron Kirkconnell might ring a bell to y'all because he's

kind of long story. I became acquainted with Cameron because Cameron was a part of our Campfire Stories audio book number two and which was Narrow Misss and more close Calls, and in keeping with tradition, when we came out with that audio series, we uh we teased y'all titilated y'all by playing like one of our favorite joints off it. You get that reference as they call a song a

track on on contemporary albums. He called joint one of the joints off that One of the joints off that album was Cameron kirk Connell talking about the time he saved his body and you know, and many of you have heard this story now time he saved his body spear fishing by shooting him in the finn shooting him in the flipper what we used to call him we

were kids. Uh. So we're gonna hear a little more because that's like, there's a couple more I want to get a couple more questions into him about the back story and and this is also in keeping the tradition, Crint, because with number one, one of our favorite stories, they're all great. One of the favorite stories was Sam Lowry's story about the sociopathic Elk Poacher, and then he later came on the show and gave us a little story.

So we're in keeping with tradition here. So we're gonna hear a little more from Cameron on that and a little bit about his career, which is a which is a very interesting um knee. She's carved off for himself and this and this uh global life that he lives. But uh companies, we got hit off right off the bat. We're in the Bahamas, do we know? Go ahead, Cameron,

explain where we are. We're in the Bahamas. There you go. Yeah, that's more exact than saying the Atlantic or Caribbean surrounded by a lot of shallow water, which is in proximity to some extremely deep water, which makes it a very verdant environment around here, like a like a life rich environment. Yep. That that having that shallow water in the proximity to deep water, but a large area of connecting shallow water creates a a nursery, you know, an ecosystem that you

know can constantly you know, resupply itself. You know, we had talked about it kind of on the way over here. Initially, you know, as a kid, I thought, I need to go to the most remote islands that are out there by themselves, because that's got to be the best spot. But it's such a finite area of like divable and fish double bottom before it drops off to infinity. That's a pretty small group of fish that's going to live there.

So come to find out that a lot of these areas that are just connected for a hundred miles by five or ten or twenty ft of water, those are by far the best because they just have that gigantic area to grow more fish. And you just, you know, it's pretty wild to to see, you know, a spot like this. You think, holy cow, there's so many people coming here. But you're talking to hold up. Yeah, it just holds up, you know, Yeah, because I just need to keep in tradition and set the scene. You're all

about the scene. Set people need to know, you know where we are. Can I get into our needs now? This is a sensitive issue. Speaking to my wife, she told me just to drop it, but I can't drop it. Yeah. We had a fish heist in our office. In our office, we had a fish heist. We came home with a bunch of fish. One of the coolers of fish. It was a styrofoam cooler we had like we brought some soft sided coolers filled our soft sided coolers up in Louisiana had extra fish. A dude and dude next door

gave us one of them thick styrofoam coolers. Chester. I know this for a fact. Chester loaded all that fish into the star foam cooler, taped it up, got back to the office and went into the freezer by my office and placed that cooler in the freezer. Had kobia had um a thing that I've seen what seems to me would be of low interest. Which is which? Which

is my Barracouta flats and had a bunch of snapper flats. Later, I go to get it with my neighbor, pottery Pat, and we go down and I'm like, I gotta stop in here and grab my fish. A couple of weeks, A couple of weeks, A couple of weeks go by. I go in there. It's like a Sunday. We go down there. It's not in there. I go check the other freezer, it's not in there. I go check the freezer in the lunch room area. It's not in there. We put out all company, where's the fish? That's stupid.

I'm not on it, but slack I don't use it. So put out of all companies. I offered twenty reward another company. My wife's enough already with a stupid fish. If it was missing electronics, right, if it was missing electronics. We wouldn't just wouldn't just sweep it under the rug. And it's like if someone took it by accident, someone took it by accident accident, yeah, or like there's all this free or if I like stuff around, wasn't thinking and gave it to him, they'd be like, dude, you

gave me that fish. But it's not true. No one will come forward. So Steve wants another part of the story because then after you put out the all company emails, didn't the cooler we found the cooler with the dang talon in one of our one of our equipment guys who manages equipment um and many other things, says, oh, I found that cooler with a towel in it. Empty cooler with a towel in it in like the cardboard

box area. No one will come forward. So what we're trying to find is we're trying to find a polygraph examiner who can come into the studio. But in Montana, polygraphs are not admissible. We've done a little bit of research actually, so it's not like we don't have a shipload of polygraph examiners running around because polygraph evidence isn't admissible in court in Montana, but they use it on sex offenders. So we need someone that's got the damn

polygraph machine knows how to run it. They're gonna come into the studio and we're gonna start with Chester and work out from there and polygraph exam as part of a podcast episode. I'll just say this as a disclaimer. It probably is illegal to force our colleagues to take a polygraph test. So we're gonna ask them to step forward and if they won't do it, and I'd be like, also, where's the fish. If someone's like, I'm not doing app like they give me the fish bag, Because if you

won't do it, that's the best way. It's like coming to do a polygraph. I'm not doing a polygraph. Then you know they're guilty. It's like, what do they do with the Baracuda plays? The other way I'm gonna catch them. The other way i'm gonna catch him is I'm gonna start talking about man, I've never tried barracuda, and someone's gonna be like, I'm like, how would you go? And then I'll know they stole the fish? Said guys, Stay tuned. Part two of the saga, Yeah, you and your machine

will just come to the office. CRD will fly you out with your machine. I don't know, they look like it really looks some people up. I'm looking set up. I'm hooking Chester up, and I'm just gonna start hooking random people up from the office. Kylie sent out that she's my lead suspect because because she's the one that's so hot to find the person. It's like us, like ston't smelled her first, you know what I mean, she is truly the last person ever. So, oh, here's the

other big need. And this is more complicated than Spencer's being a pain in my ass right now about it. We bought that punt gun. We bought a punt gun at auction for not a small amount of money. Uh, to the point where it's like a little bit controversial in the office. Is the punt gun? Um, what we're really having a hard time finding is we're having a hard time finding shells for it. Someone that can make the shells for it. So I think when we estimated

it out, it's a it's a Holland and Holland. It's an H and H punt gun from the late eighteen hundreds, I think we estimated it. They don't go by gauges, but it's like a two gauge huge chee. We have like one or two casings. We have one or two casings for it. There's all this stuff too, like you can't use, so we need someone that can load the shells for us. We've been checking around with some shell makers, but people it seems that people don't really want to

go near it. The guy we bought it from said quote, I'm a little hesitant to just forward the info because it basically amounts to pack a whole bunch of black powder and lead shot and do a really big cartridge based on info from a guy in another country that you've never met, related to you through two other guys you've never met. So he goes on, so please check into all this all that, he says, But I know

you guys are professional, so you'll figure it out. To ounces twenty DRAMs of course black powder, ten ounces a shot, two mini camera, Yeah, two ounces of course black powder.

And there's something like you got to use like an old timey black powder because the integrity the barrel and it's ten ounces shot or one point five ounces of fifteen DRAMs or or one point five ounces or fifteen DRAMs of course black powder and eight ounces a shot phil case with powder, measure out shot, fill space between powder and shot, making sure no air gap overshot card wad to keep shot in place, using scotch tape to

secure primer. It'll be either a thirty eight or thirty two pistol blank or you can figure out a way to rig a standard shotgun and primer in it. I gotta find a way to get him made. Someone out there has to have a whole pile of old punt gun casing or know someone who does. And well, how our safety glasses on? Please write us at meat Eater at the meat eator dot com. I'm gonna put a safety glasses and maybe like a cut and torch thing

on clear you know, you know I'm talking about. That was one of the funniest things about the pandemic because you know, everybody the face shields. It look like a welder that they all said face shield on him. It's like, not many products say what you know? I mean, so a few products say what the product is. It's like, oh, okay,

all right. Those are the two primary needs I want to follow up on one quick thing before we get back into what we're talking about, is, at one point we're discussing scrolled them injuries and I don't know where how did you rEFInd this from? You didn't rEFInd this? The guy emailed me like a couple of days ago. We hadn't heard from him since January of That's when we talked about it on the pod and he yeah, um,

he just he just emailed me back out of the blue. Okay, So so I'm gonna revisit what happened, so so damn long. It was one of the better scroll of him stories that came in. He was riding horses down his family lives in West Texas, UM, but they were down in the Chiuahuan Desert of Old Mexico. He came across what he now believes was a rattlesnake, and the horse freaked out. Um. He fell off the horse and thought he was okay,

but then looked. I was surprised to see that one of his testicles was actually out of it, out of the scroll, hanging on by its cord. It's like you want to talk about freeballing, okay, hanging out of his jeans and out of the scroll. They had the wherewithal to pack it. Ice still hooked to the court kind of looked like that conk you're cleaning yesterday. Packed it nice and headed for the border, got stopped by federalis. One of the kids had a air soft pistol spray

painted black so it looked like a real gun. The FEDERALI see this, he says. There's lots of shouting and waving the guns. Someone notices the scroll, the testicle starts yelling vominals, fominals and waves of groups. He gets sixteen stitches in his leg and twelve stitches. They talked. They tucked the nut back in and twelve stitches to the scroll to put it back in there. Doctor said ice was the best thing that could have done. Now, he writes back in, just got to thinking about it, thinking

about it, and he wanted to add some details. He wanted us to know that the cord is called the epididymus unsevered that the medical professional said it was a good move that he packed in ice, especially because it's so hot and dry down there. The main follow up possess his uncle worked in a prison for years. His uncle said that this is one of the most common self inflicted wounds that inmates used to get themselves sent to the hospital. It's called a d glove to testicle

and they do it with a sharpened pencil. For what that's worth. Oh, one other thing we gott get into this. This is gonna be put bad after this. The fish heightst is just getting started. But this is gonna be put the bad. Uh. White tailed. So so as everybody knows the proper way to say, like the scientifically accepted way to say the white tailed deer, the dear we all know and love America's dear. If you're ever writing a letter to someone, you're supposed to say, you're supposed

to write white dash tailed deer, not white tails. I was saying how heffle Finger is stupid for believing this, and I also, in that same conversation regular guest heffle Finger also who's set to come on pretty soon. I also said that he's nipple deep and jaguar stuff. He wrote in to say I'm also nipple deep and dear stuff he's saying. Despite anding I've said, white tailed deer isn't an old version, It isn't something from Pat's world. It is the official and correct name of that species.

It is common to use the colloquial form white tail or white tails. I use that cont this heffle finger. I use that constantly to mix it up and not sounds so stiff and formal as one does using the correct full name all the time. Then he goes on to say it is uncommon among knowledgeable people to use white tailed deer or white tails. Pat goes on, this is a group email, calls me a thing that I can't repeat. On error, he says, you ignorant, it's words

is not even in my vocabulary. I clearly said that white tailed deer is wrong and white tailed deer is right. Changing it now on one man's personal preference, long after the proper name is established in science and literature, as shown in the Deer books. I referenced earlier as a kin to Fox News calling the Democratic Party it's official name, the Democrat Party. Okay, back to cleaning bluegills from Pat,

I'm done, Okay, go ahead, but then we're done. Pat used a Saturday Night Live reference and called Steve an ignorant slut. Okay, because man, when I came back from New Zealand, I had a very bad word that got into my vocabulary and speaking to my wife again, I used it one time who had not go I was like, I don't know why you're being sua uh alright, So first off, Cameron, I want a little more, like a little more detail around the story you told about, uh

saving the your friend. First off, explain your professional occupation, Like in the story you say like you were in were out of can't may where you were somewhere in Florida. We're on the west coast Flordia, and you were doing you were doing tarban guiding. So I worked at the time, I got a school and started working on ships. That's what I went to college for. Him, to the Merchant

Marine Academy. Yeah, you're you're qualified for anything that floats. Yeah, and if it's not floating, we decided I don't want anything to do with it. But like you can pilot any ship, yes, or drive any whatever the hell you call it? What do you call it ships? Yeah? So I have an unlimited tonnage captain's license basically like trans oceanic stuff we're involved in. So, as you've noticed this week, I have major fomo you know, for like whatever the

best thing is going on at the time. So I would work for four months at a time and travel around the world, um, you know, working on the ships. And during that time, I had unlimited resources for charts. So I would look at charts like all day long, and as the places I would go would be like, this looks like it would work because it you know,

they're blah blah blah. So I would just plan the places I was gonna be for my four months off for surfing, fishing, spear fishing, and I just traveled around the world, just immersed myself in each of these places. So like a place like the West coast of Florida, Um, I had a buddy that was a Tarpen guide there. He's like, you know, we knew the spear fishing was great there. He's like, you know, on our days off,

we can go, you know, spear fish. I was like, all right, I'll come mate for you make two hundred bucks a day, you know cash and get to go fish for Tarpen every day. So that's when you guys were taking you guys were like taking chartering clients to fish Tarpen correct and then on a day off. I remember like trying to smooth that out, and we were editing the the project is uh, you're like you very quickly said, I was helping people, You were helping people

catch tarpen. Yeah. Yeah, So I was working as a mate, like on a charter boat there if I do like two months at a time with him. But at that same time, you were merchant marine and doing the ship work, right, So that was in you're done with that, now done with that. So that was during my four months you know vacations, because you usually you worked for four months and then you had four months off. So I knew that,

you know, Indonesia was good that time of year. So I'd go to Indonesia for two or three months and like, you know, just basically go as far as I could and listen to story after story that was gonna link me to the next spot to check out, you know, and see a picture of a fish in one place and figure out where that was and go to the next one, and just just kind of grew my you know, knowledge base, you know, by traveling, traveling and like really

being there, you know, not going for two or three days, but going for months and then coming back again for months. And that's how I like you know, really obviously got good at what I do now, but um yeah, fell in love with with being at the edge of the earth all the time, and and hit real quick, I know you're you got your like. You do a handful of things, but talking about your like, that's sort of

like guiding into your business. So my core thing was about Um, I guess ten or twelve years ago, somebody asked me, hey, will you take me spear fishing? I was like, sure, okay, um and they said, what are you gonna charge? Was like, I don't know because there's no real spear fishing guide at the time. Long story short. Halfway through the first day, he's like, you're really good at this. This is what you need to do for work. There's a niche for this. It's okay. And he's like, well,

i'll read book you. I want you to find me. Uh you know a boat in the Bahamas. Um, take my son and his buddies and you know, do a trip with them. I'm like, okay. By the time I got home from that trip, he had told too of his buddies and they called me and from there at man, it just blew up. And you know, I always you can get the boat, operate the boat. Yeah, so we take care all the paperwork. Mostly what I do is I am hired to go and basically captain other people's boats,

you know, around the world and mate and guide. So my core knowledge base is where and when to go and the way my mind has always worked. If I'm gonna spend my own money to be on the edge of the earth, I want to be at the best place at the right time and the right moon tied everything to have a chance to world record, and that's

been one of the hardest things for me. Two shift, too is expectations for people might not be there, you know, like you know, to go and just get enough fish for dinner is what we're doing nine nine percent of the days. You know. The record thing is such a small part of it. But coming to terms with that myself has been tough because my drive is so hard, like to go and get records, and personally, I think

I've had fifteen or eighteen records. I've had a bunch, but I've I've guided clients even if it's their first week ever spear fishing, to a total of like I think twenty or twenty five. It's been a bunch. So Kim and I were talking about this. What I take the most pride in now and enjoy the most is being able to convey that knowledge to other people to get them enjoy you know, what we're doing and enjoy it.

So now where that's taking my business is I have myself and a couple other guys that work with me, and people hire us to take him all over the world too, you know, hunt different fish. How do you get their boats there? Usually I have connections for boats in different countries. Um and a lot of guys have have the means with these really big, badass boats that

we can take all over the world. So I've got some groups that we've got stuff planned two years out, Like we know that we're gonna go to this island group in Tahiti this part of the year, and then the boat's gonna shift Fiji. Then it's gonna go to Tonga and go here, here, and here. So we plan like there are tenneries as well, like all over the world and they fly in and out. Okay, So now let's get on with the guy. The guy who pulled the bottle of the bottom. He wasn't near the bottom

of deep thank God, he wouldn't hear the bottom. We're like eight foot, so that that's what happens to him, if I mean his ear drum's gotta be cooked, right, oh man. So when he came up, like Steve's got a kind of blue colored on with a it's a meat eator shirt with some muskie or something eating another fish eating another fish. That color blue on that color blue on your shirt is what he was, like, his

whole face and everything. Like when Karin was c sick the other day, she was pretty green, literally turned green. He was. He was even more passed. I didn't know he he was blue like for all intensive purposes, I thought he was dead. And then he had blood coming

out of everything. You think how hard it is to go to the bottom of your pool without equalizing your ears that pressure you feel in your ears, imagine going like when I pulled the trigger on him, I I think I was in seventy ft or eighty foot by the time I got to the surface. By the time they started pulling him up. God knows how deep he was, oh, because he would have kept sinking that he kept sinking, because you figure from the depth I was at, it

would have taken. He's talk about a guy that passed out in the water and just started to sink, and you have like the this is the I think you get into this too. There's like a reflex I didn't know. I don't really know about this. You want to like, if you pass out under water, why don't you just instantly drown? Right, there's like a like a reflex probably the dates back to when you're in your mother's womb that you don't breathe. It shuts off, like you just

don't breathe. Your body is doing everything and it's power to survive for you doing some dumb ship move that kept it from getting ops oxygen. Basically, it's so weird to your body just says, right, take a big old sucking a big old gold water, so you're your vocal courts close and lock down your throat so you're not taking any water in and basically you go. You're passed out unless you have your snarkle in your mouth exactly.

So that's one of the reasons we take o. If you have your snarkle in your mouth, then you pass out. It'll actually funnel water straight down your throat and you've drown. Faster, you will actually drown instead of it instead of locking up, it'll just like a straw. Before I did, I had to learn and later you're supposed to take that thing out. We're kids, man, we always kept the right in. There's a good reason to take you think about it's like whoop.

You know that that pressure to because you and any there could be like an air pocket there which you think you're gonna sip air, right, and so the your body shuts down, you're you know totally, you know out basically, and you've got these sensors on your face. So when you when you come up to the surface, that's what your body is waiting for is to feel air because you're the sensors on your face can feel that you're in the water, and your body is just saying, hey,

we need to go in total survival mode. We're gonna slow down to heart, We're gonna stop breathing, We're gonna we're gonna close or track you like we're I'm sorry, close our our vocal cords, like we're just gonna survive as long as we can until we feel air again. So if you don't feel air, eventually, your body is gonna be like, hey man, we're about to run out of all fuel all together. We gotta do a last ditch effort, and that's called terminal gap ASP and that

does eventually happen. Eventually happen. So when you pull someone a drowning victim up, who like a who blacked out underwater? Now who drowned at the surface. So you gotta you gotta really differentiate drowning and blackout. They're totally two. You're at the surface golden water when you're drowning, correct, So a blackout victim is way easier to deal with than than a drown But that blackout victim will eventually inhale water. Correct.

And you hear about like little Timmy that fell through the ice and survived thirty minutes or whatever, age, temperature of the water, like all the conditions everything determine how long before the terminal gas exactly. So like Timmy falls through the ice or whatever, it's basically putting him in the refrigerator and slowing him down. Her name for the episode the terminal gas. Yeah, that's that's about big What

about Big Conkin? Though, we need to get a bunch of Timmy might survive thirty minutes, you know, and they pull him out, and that's such a common store, Yeah, Timmy from Minnesota, the ice, uh, but like in warm water like that, realistically, you've got four or five six minutes maybe, you know, and then you're gonna do that terminal gap. And when you do that, then you're in deep ship because then you've taken a huge mouthful water

and you're you're you're really in deep ship. So our goal is obviously get your get ahold of them as fast as you can, close their airway, get them safe for the surface, lay them on the back, get their mask off, blow tap and talk. So you blow across their cheeks, you tap on their face and you tell them breathe, breathe, breathe. And in the I mean ten people that I've saved and parents been there, four of them. Um, almost every one of them has come back with that

first breath, that first breath across their face. They go and take a breath because your body is just like waiting for that air. As soon as they feel it, it's ready to roll again. And then they're normally like, get off me, I'm fine. Yeah. So they have you have short term amnesia when you black out, or they're crying hysterically, or they're laughing hysterically. You never know what the first time I saved someone, he was like I was also dancing. So this the he came up and

how was he? Like, we didn't really get into this, like what was his sort of litany of health problems after the fact, So he went into he went in intensive care unit for like three days because they were worried about he had so much fluid in his lungs because the aviola and your lungs or whatever, they just burst and like you have all that's what all that orange foam is that you had, Like he was spitting out and all that. So he had so much fluid

in his lungs. They were worried about pneumonia, you know, secondary drowning, all that kind of stuff. So try to they treat the ear problem. I don't even know when he's bleeding out his ears. Yeah, ears, I mean I want to say I remember him bleeding out of his eyes. I mean there was blood everywhere. Like if you if you had a picture of him right when he came up and be like that guy, there's no way, like he's got to have so much stuff going on, but

and he got back in the water after that. Yeah, he actually had a samba about a year later when we were together and I grabbed him when he was soombing, you know, that's when he's like close to blacking out. I was like, Steve, his name is Steve, Steve, don't funk with me on this. It's like, don't do this ever again. You know. And he's an avid diver. Yea, I told you he's my insurance guy. Yeah, right, what are the chances of that? Yeah, I like something happened,

you'll understand. Uh so you guys, you guys do a little business together. Yeah, yeah, mostly he does business for me. I guess now, did he come out of that super cautious? I think so. I think it was an eye opener.

And honestly, like I've gotten so many messages over the years from like the next morning after that happened, I just wrote the story down, you know, no filter, just exactly how it happened, and um, it was most it was mostly like cathartic for me, just to kind of get it off my chest because it was so traumatic for me. But I can't tell you how many you know, dozens and dozens of people's over the years have said that made me conscious enough to be watching my buddy

to save their life. You know. Thank you for sharing that, because it's such a I don't want to say it's taboo, but it's like a ma cheesy, mooth thing that like people don't talk about in diving because they're usually embarrassed, you know, because like people aren't gonna think that I'm that good of a diver or whatever, but like you gotta be aware, like that's more dangerous than any shark, you know, is blacking out your own drive to not survive. Basically,

it's so true. It really, It is something that when it happens, everyone just kinda keeps quiet, you know, and um, you don't want to embarrass somebody. But when when that article, because what you wrote got published in What You Skin Diver magazine, And when that came out and I read it like it, I was grateful for it, Like it definitely made me that much more careful to always like watch the person, like even after they come up, because sometimes you're so eager to die that you see them

take a breath and then you go down. But it's like you got to actually wait you know, because sometimes people can come up, breathe even talk and then pass out what you were recognized by the coast Guard. Yeah, so what was that? So the coast Guard met us like as soon as we got him up, like I was like the Tasmanian devilill run around the boat when we got in. Um, you know, cut the anchor on and get on the radio called coast card blah blah blah.

So we start running in. We're like sixty miles off shore. The coast Guard met us about forty miles out, put him in the basket in the helicopter and took him in. Um. So about six months later I got a call from the Coastguard and you're like, hey, this is you know Officer so and so. Um, you know we're doing investigation into you know, this thing that happened with Steve off shore blah blah blah. And I'm like ship man and

told hi. Us was like, hey man, look I've been through a lot with this, Like I didn't do anything wrong. They're like no, no, no, no, no, Like it's actually a good thing. Um, the Coastguard wants to recognize you for uh possibly getting an award. Was like Okay, so

it did this investigation. Doing a long story short, the Coastguard gives out two life saving awards, a silver and a gold, and the um they awarded me the silver life Saving Award, which is the basic premise behind it is someone that basically completely forgets about their own safety puts themselves in in total peril to save someone else. Um. And when they gave me the award, the Admiral Um, the head of the Coastguard, was there and I think you know, all the senators, can or spends and all

the military people. It was a big deal. Um. He told the story, and I mean, it's hard for me to tell a story like having it on the audiobook is the best thing ever for me because I never have to tell it again. That's what you're saying. Now you can just people like you can refer people to the link because it's tough to tell. Um. But you know, everybody like started standing up in there and everything. It was.

It was pretty cool. But he said, in my you know, forty years of being in the Coast Guard, I've only given this award two other times and it was posthumously. Uh, like the people died saving somebody else. If So it was the the award that I would least want to have for the reason I would least want to have it, if that makes sense, you know, because it's something you never want to do and you could never plan, you know.

But in all the years of spear fishing with people around the world and being in remote places, we had always said, you know, if you can't get me, or you're thinking you can't get me, shoot me, because at least you'll be rigidly attached. Because if I'm already gonna die, shoot me in the leg, you know, don't shoot me in the chest from whatever, you know, shoot me in the leg. But that was that would have been My original goal was to shoot him in the calf, but

he turned. I met a guy just recently who was recovering a victim, and he was on tanks and he dove down to the base of an oil rig found the victim. I couldn't get him up, and decided to drag him over and tie him to the foot of the rig so that he wouldn't have to worry about trying to find him again later, and then tying the guy's body to the foot of the rig. He got so messed up, he wound up ape, he lost track of time, and he wound up one of those decompression

chambers because he had to bomb up to the surface. Yeah, it's the diving thing. Honestly. I I personally think free diving, with having been trained for it, is way safer than the scuba because you can take any person off the street street, give him a scuba tank it, you know, wherever, and then go down as deep as they want, because

all they gotta do is breathe, you know. Whereas free diving, your body is telling you, hey, you need to go up, you know, like you if if you have that self preservation gene you know which everybody in this room has just from spending time with you. You know, we all want to come home. We know we're gonna be able to get fish, but we all want to come home. There's people that just don't have that synapse in their brain. You know, They're they're gonna push it as hard as

they can every time. And parent I call it like the the race car driver, you know, thing like if they're on a motorcycle, they're gonna pin it every time. They're gonna go as fast as they can. If in the class. They could do a d FT free dive every dive. That's how deep they think they can go. And you think about even when we're diving in t you know, for the lobsters, it's not every time you can even you know, spend more than ten seconds down there.

Sometimes you didn't get to good breath or whatever. Imagine trying to do that super deep. Here's asking for trouble. Okay, back to the Bahamas. I want to I want to get into a little bit about like the sort of regulatory structure in the Bahamas. And the reason I bring it up is the only place I've ever been where size limits on fish is expressed in pounds. Have you ever heard of that anywhere? I think in the Mediterranean they do that. And the boat limit is in pounds

as well. The other thing to note is for a Bahamian registered boat with Bahamians on board, the regulations are different than for us because we're a foreign flagged vessel. Oh there's not at all. Yeah, for them, there's nothing, none at all, no lot, no size limit for lobsters. You still got your size limit, philpsters, your group and stuff like that. But we can get as much as we want got it, So give me hit me with

a couple of these like size things. It's weird because like a lobster, for for a foreign vessel, a lobster tail, it's not the lobster, it's how long his tail is. And that's expressed in regular old inches, so five and a half inches, right, So it's five and a half inches, which for the area that we are, and for the number that we're allowed to get, which is ten, you're never even gonna come, you know, worry about that because most of the ones we got were like five pounds.

I mean they were big. Well I'll point out that in my um very juvenile efforts in the Bahamas some a few years ago, we couldn't find one of the five half We're like, you know, right out like kind of like out in front of where they lived, right along Long Island. Couldn't you know, You'd think it looks huge and you bring it up like in different areas

of the Bahamas have general different sizes. I don't know what it is about here and a couple other spots in the Bahamas, but the access to deep water or the temperature or whatever, these big giant ones off the wall and come up in shallow um, but other places you go, you'll you'll just never find one in all your time, you know, looking um, they're all going to

be those little ones that are just barely legal. So you can take them by hand by a hook, which I think we probably have some video Brandon hooking him. What is it called hook hooking? Hook and joke? Hook and joke? So what's the word hook and joke? Like a j j Okay, so tell them so like the bottom when you kill him, that's the joking pot joking, hook and joke. Do you use the word joke for other things or does it just mean like specific to lobsters,

that means stab stop? Okay? So, uh, you can shoot them with a pulse bear or sling, which the regulations for underwater hunting here is just something triggerless. You can't have a way of resting, you know, or how how of this hit so basically loaded power that you don't have to you know, touch or whatever you can like let go and then shorthand you can't use a spear gun, correct, You have to use the thing where you like hand, your hand is holding it and it's triggered, not triggered,

you release your hand and let it go. There's no way to store the energy. Right, So for the rest of the world, what they call a Hawaiian sling, the rest of the world does is a hand spirit what we call poll spear, in which Hawaiians call not a Hawaiian sling three prong or there is a Hawaiian sling, it's just a it's a little different. I think that normally has like a free flying shaft, and so what we use on this chip we just call it pull spears.

But then it has a three prong on it, then we just don't even call it a pul spear, just call it a three prong, right, And the local go to is a true Hawaiian sling, which is basically a piece of cylinder would with a hole through the middle of it and a piece of and tied to it, and they'll put like a notch in the back of a spear gun looking spear with no um you know, rests on it or whatever, and they shoot it like

a bow arrow and it just goes free. So for most that's used here, that's the traditional way to do it. That's why I like in those holes where we found the grouper, there's multiple shafts in there because you shoot a fish and they haul butt with it. We would never have gotten a yellow jack like if we'd been using those because they just take off with it. Oh, so that's what the shafts were. That's all makeing sense now.

And then uh, a little more on regulatory who like who is the governing regulatory body in the Bahamas for fisheries, the defense false defense force? That sounds real hardcore and yeah, and how would like how often is it that? And I'm not trying to say this as a way to promote any kind of like derelict behavior, but how often do they patrol? Yeah? Well the main places a Nassa, that's where the base is, but they also send boats to different islands the station now for a short period

of time, and their patrol these areas. But an avocode I barely see him. Okay. Another regulatory thing, like we're talking about the weight things, so certain grouper need to be three pounds. It's not an inch thing. So I think that's the reason that's so tricky is like take take something that you know what it weighs. Like let's say you have like a certified three pound weight and then go grab a whole bunch of scales, right and wait, a bunch of times you're gonna get two pounds fifty

ances you're gonna get three pounds two. It's like with by measuring of fish, it's like it takes out some level of debate. It's like that fish is blank long. It just seems like I'm into it. It just seems like a strange thing to enforce. Yeah, it's a shot in the dark. And it's weird because that's the only isn't that the only fish there's actually but they're actually and um talking about slot sizes nobly it would probably be a good thing. The other thing is like, so

that's Brandon making that. But the other problem is you gotta have somebody to enveloce agreed, agreed, and from a foreigner, you know, coming here and seeing all the dere look people that do bad stuff here, you know, Um, sadly it's it's mostly people visiting, you know that don't follow

the regulations. And you know it's unfortunate because there's such an unbelievable resource here and um, you know, you want to protect this, you want this to be able to you know, keep going for our kids to be able to do it, obviously, but the the the different regulations they have are wild. So they've got it's ten lobsters per boat. For foreign vessel, it's eight conk with a developed lip lip which we've got in the bucket here

and we'll clean those in a it. Oh yeah. People get frustrated when we're doing stuff on the show, like we had a guy making Clovis points and people are really annoy because they couldn't see it. This can be one of those things that really annoys people. Well, video it to listen to someone clean account it's no. Yeah, it's a noisy process though, right, kept off film it and we'll put on Instagram. There we go. So even for logic's different as well. So it's eighteen is read

Gosh that what I sent you? You read it? So I think during COVID they've updated some regulations because they had some time. Um. But it used to be you're allowed eighteen polagic fish. It can be a combination of dolphin, wahoo, tuna, um. And I think that's their main ones are worried about. There's no billfish landing in the Bahamas unless it's for

a tournament. So for a tournament, they'll say, hey, if you get a fish over five pounds or whatever the size limit is for that specific tournament, they can kill it, which is a very strange. That's real weird, real weird. So you asked about swordfish here, Well, that's kind of like a money talk sort of thing that right, Like you're bringing like a massive amount of economic activity down. But the thing is not many get killed during tournaments. Surprisingly,

which is now fifty and twenty years ago. That's a different story. It's a lot more bigger maleins in. Sharks are totally off limits in the Bahamas? Is that true now? Yes, so it's totally closed. They're not allowed to kill him. You can catch them, you just gotta release it. And what about turtles, you're not allowed to kill them? No, Unfortunately in your lifetime where turtles ever open, they had a season just like um they used to open and

closed the same time as crossing season. Oh, how long ago, like when you're six years ago, seven years ago? Doing at the most? Yeah, for a commercial market, personal personal and what ones were you after? Green turtles? And how would that go down? It's kind of violent, but I mean we used to use fifteen foot pole and I had a pair of grains on the entire to rope and a gallon bottle and just strike them with it and they'll take it and run with it and just

pull them back up. Strike them with what pair of grains? What it is? It's uh you well, like two barbs, Like they're probably about that why they go in and they can't come out and you drive it with what a pole? Yeah? Just straight through the shell? Well, typically we like to do it down towards the back end, that little striple just shell, so you don't damage the insides, the guts and all that. But me's started when I first started doing it, I got cursed out many times

from my phone. He's sending up shoving it straight through the top end bottom, No, because you mess up all insides. And he used to eat the bottom pot as well, like calop that's traditionally in the camant. Can't stand that. I don't like what is that is that? It's like a it's like a gelatine. What's the yield on a turtle? So a lot of people actually just when they kill turtles, they just take the two front flippers, that's the biggest. But when you get turtles. The best size they eat

is anywhere from fifty pounds. Anything above that is it starts to get a little tougher, Like I've gotten some hundred and fifty hundred and sixty pounds, and you will taste the difference the taste of the turtle and the texture of the main meat is in the front flippers. That's where the most is. That's where the most that's the biggest muscle mass. I noticed that checking them out when they're just when they decided kicking in high gear.

The back feet don't do ship. Yeah, they're talking go man, I had no idea they could go that fast. Oh. Then things sometimes like when we chase them, if they don't just stay there on the bottom, we'll have to get on playing and chase them around until they come on fire. Then you stick them. Man, that's gotta be like a good time. That is a very good I enjoyed it. They have a lot of guts. Huh. I heard that cleaning them can be pretty stinky. No, I

mean to me, I'm kind of used it. But yes, another interesting thing with them, like you know we're used to like fish blood where you when you shoot a fish in a hole. You see the blood coming out just kind of disperses or whatever looks green even on the surface of blood kind of comes out. Man, when you clean the turtle, it's like leshmon blood, it's got so much oxygen in it. Like I hit one with the boat accidentally many years ago, and I looked behind me.

I was like, what the hell did I hit like a red tarp and went back and it was a turtle, and I mean it had an area the size of this room full of blood. And I was like, jeeze, I was in the US, Like I felt so horrible, but like, you know, what are you gonna do? Like they come up and the such a big animal. Man. There. One of the most surprising things I have been countered eating turtles is I was in South America and they were, uh,

preparing turtle eggs. And you know, when you take a regular chicken egg right and cook it, the yolk solidifies obviously, it's like the white part or sorry, not the yolk. The white solidifies like the yolk does its thing, and

the white does its thing. When you cook turtle eggs, the yoke, like the orange part turns into what you'd imagine it would like a very intense it's like a it's like a chicken egg times ten intense flavored yolk nous, but the white doesn't solidify, so you'd bit out of there.

It was a hard thing to get into. The most sought out, like a lot of people have died side, so the most sought after, like when I was a kid, you know, for getting soft shell turtles, and then you know, our family down at the Cayman Islands for the turtles was the undeveloped eggs still inside of turtle, like when you ever those ones that are still yellow and they're

all they're like a pink membrane around him. And those were the best ones because then you just cook that whole thing whole, really cooking in a pan, like next time you catch like a soft sheller. But I can't remember, to be honest, like we only did it when I was a little kid. No, I can't do all that speaking almost dying, Krian, I didn't, uh, I didn't know that. You're so susceptible, dude to the seasickness. You're like Janice, Really, he's that bad? Is so bad? We were one time.

Not we're on like a twenty two ft boat was so seasick. He didn't realize we were fighting a swordfish, and there's no like cabin like a boat was steering wheel in the middle. Came under the realization that we were fighting a swordfish seasick. So maybe I could have been a little bit better prepared. It's been a long time since I got in seasick. But growing up, I was one of those kids on the big yellow school bus who always was carrying like a brown paper bag

in case I bombed. So, Um, you were green. You were actually green yesterday. God, I never picture of me. I would have wanted to see that, but yeah, no, just day one minus drama. Men. I didn't take anything for it. I thought it would be great, and I was fine for for a number of hours. Um, and you guys were all in the water and I was hanging I was brandon on the boat, and at some point it just hit me. I think I was maybe mid sentence with you, and I just was like, excuse me,

gotta go, and nothing, nothing came out. But I went to yeah, a little bit of a dry heave, and a went went to the to the pit of the boat and just kind of like rolled into a little ball uh and was like that for a while, and then I thankfully was able to I got some drama mean in me I slept, but then I was still sick. I probably took the drama mean too late. It was terrible. I mean, it's it's insane. For anyone who's ever been

seasick before, it's almost like there's nothing worse. You just totally You're disoriented, everything hurts, you're don't it's just bad. I was surprised. I'll ask Brandon about this too, because whenever I'm was someone who's getting sea sick, we tell not to go down out of sight, but to stay up and walk, like concentrate on something that's not moving,

like try to look off at the horizon. Didn't work for me, But you suggested that she go down because because of the because there was air conditions to keep you. There was a c it was in the center of the boat down below, and I was moving less. That somewhat therapeutic. So it was somewhat therapeutic. And I also hadn't like slept that much the past couple of days, but that I was the fact that I was able to get like just a tiny bit more comfortable and then you got some drugs in me, and then I

was able to pass out. And then I woke up hours later and I'm like I have to record them coming up with this fish. And he's like that that already happened like four times over. He missed half the day, sweetheart, and then you got deserted. You got so then I thought I felt better. When you guys came back on the boat, I was a little bit better. And then it happened all over again. I guess that's when I

turned green again. And uh, and they all they brought me to a deserted island and left me there like castaway, a beautiful island. It was beautiful. She had a little volley what was that little volleyball on castle that they got? Pack of dogs ever come there? That I was. No pack of dogs didn't come. They just they left me

to the dogs, guys. But no, as soon as I was ashore, I mean, that was the whole point, right, Like Steve, you were like, you're gonna feel better in just like five minutes, and it's probably three minutes and I felt totally normal again. You guys took off and I'm like, screw this. I'm not the type of person who just like lies down in the sand and sun basee. I was like, I'm gonna go hunt. So then I went and got conk for the first time. So that

was my first getting conk out of the water. And you were fine, like you found the proper, proper I mean, the next couple of days you found the proper little cocktailer meds yeah, totally yeah, non drowsy drama means, my friend, it was great. Yet the rest of the trip, I had absolutely no problem with zero zero issue, zero issue, day two, day three, etcetera. You're gonna have a lot of people writing you, um folk remedies. My neighbor in Alaska,

Ron Layton, here's what he told me. I mean, he was like a professional longliner, right, like he's like a man of the sea. And he said, there's one way to cure seasickness. He told me that they made him do it when he was a kid. Every time you start getting seasick, you drink. They make you drink a big mug of salt water and so you puke. And he said that's how you cure it. I mean, but he half the stuff that guy tells me, it's like everything he tells me, where he tells me, I'm like,

there's no way that's true. Now ever, sent the things he tells me, my initial thing is that can't be true. Fifty of the time it is, so now you can't ignore I can't ignore anything he tells me because I'm like, there's a like half half the time he tells me something, I'm like, it is true. I mean, I can see that as kind of like a miserable lead up to a lot of relief because if you throw up, you'll

feel better. But I don't. I mean, with that really like carrier, then I feel like you'd be on round two. That cures. That's what he had to do. And that's if you're if that's if you want to get serious about solving your six problem, you had drink big things of salt. It seems so miserable, dude, when you're like to be like, I don't know, do drink a picture of salt water that'll feel great. I'm somehow not convinced, But okay, um, what is the story with what's the

story with a lot? Like? What? What? What? What y'all call a lobster condo lobster trap in the States, they call it a condo, which is they're illegal. Now they've they've outlawed being able to put out artificial structures for lobsters. There was a big hubbub about it. She was probably fifteen years ago now in Florida, UM, and they just did away with it completely. Um. But in the Bahamas, the commercial lobster guys, you want to talk about dedicated

people to working year round, to making their living. It's pretty unbelievable. But I'll let Brandon tell kind of how it's done. So for like lobster, and it's a lot of money involved in it just to make it. So you'll buy it's basically roof and tent, but it's treated with I think it's um galvanized tent a lost long ago. So what you'll do You get a stock a tent that comes with a hundred sheets in it. Then you'll

get some two by sexes cement blocks. Then you need uh the Cuban rope, the block we call it trap rope. So you're your blocks dof yes, you're tied it blocks to the tin. Nail it off then off. That's for the setting. Them describe the structure like how you make a structure like where where the positioning or the wood and all that stuff. Okay, so the would would be length wigs of the tent, so to be I think that's six by three would be the measurement of the

drop when you finished. So you're making you're making an artificial ledge for lobsters, basically a hole that's the perfect height six inches off the bottom and six ft deep three ft wide, and you put it out where there there's no other real structure. Um it can be in proximity rocks or whatever, but the majority and they put up in the grass, so it's not even near where

people are normally gonna go. Look, but the lobsters are out there feeding in the grass, so like you know, feeding and they're like, oh yeah, there's a great place to live, and they stay there. And each lobster boat will have thousands of these. They'll set thousands of the big thousands, big commercial boats they set thousands, tens of thousands waiting matt let Let's imagine like this, some people can understand. Imagine that you took a sheet apply wood,

and I'm just make it understandable as possible. He took a sheet apply would and bolted or nailed a couple four by fours to it, and set the four by fours on the bottom of the sea so that the sheet apply would is sitting how many inches off the bottom six inches? And then all manners ship can crawl under that sheet apply wood and fit between the bottom and the sheet apply would and they just so what

the crawfish does as well. If you ever noticed the traps, then they more than six inches deep, So what the craw fish should do when they go in, they'll dig it out. And if you ever noticed in front of the traps you see them shells, they eat them. They dig it out the bottom and eat it, and they come and go as they So what are called spiny lobsters you guys called croes. Yeah, it's a claw that's just folks on. It's a clawless lobster, which has an

enormous range. I mean they're everywhere. But like Americans, when Americans visualized lobster, always thinking of the main lobster, the claude lobster. Uh. And when you set one of those out, when you when you were doing this professionally, you set one of those out, like what kind of volume of lobsters would turn up under one of those. So the most way've ever I would say I've gotten from one that's about sixty pounds of tails, So that's probably under

one of those. I've seen it sometimes when crawfish move off at a heavy cold front com I've seen crawlfish as so many they can't fit under it. They just stocked all on the outside. When you get there, you can see the big dog spot on the bottom. It's so much around it and on top it's like opening like a condo cabinet in New York City shining a flashlight and the cockroaches scatter out. So when you notice one time when you were going down to check one, you went down and kind of knocked on it. What

were you doing? So what happens like that's just me personally doing it. But if you knock on it to come today edges and stick to antenna's out interesting taking and just knock it buying it and you can see him they come out, stick to antenna's out a little bit and you kind of get an assessment what's going on in there? Yeah, I thought you were gonna say it's because of the more it is, Because the more it will come back. I don't even check for all

that stuff. So then you went down and you got your You got a hook basically got three and a half foot Dowell. So what it is, it's actually uh Hawaiian sling shaft. I cut it in half. That's six ft shaft, so it's three ft long. You take a paint bush brush roller the handle off of that, use that uh brass fitting for it's the al adopter for you dry gas tanks. You put that on the end

of the spill and you're shopping at top point. Then how it's got the thread, You could screw it into the handle of the print brush roller, drop through it, put a little pin in it. Then you fill the handle up with fiberglass resent to give it more wait wait, and also the whole it long ago that the top piece is just I think it's a ten old fishing hook, and just shave the little bed off so they can't get stuck on it. The barb the barb, and you screw it on, put a little screw through it, tighten

it down. Then over it you slide a big crimp, take it to hydraulic press and they press it and that's your hook made up compared to what they sell four hundred dollars. And then you go down and it surprised me. I don't know if you just reach none of their hook in the mouth, but you go out down and just flip the whole damn thing over while they go all over the That wasn't intentional. Oh you weren't trying to do I don't. I don't flip it over for that same reason. They just I like the

lift up. I thought maybe you were showing me what was going on, or I could tell what you're doing. So that's not normally. Normally when when we do it, we have a shot piece of PVC pipe, Okay, we've propped one side up on it when you're doing like industrial grade. So what I'm doing when I was doing a commercial and just rake out all you could hook from it down, but I like to rake out a certain amount. Look through it. See what's big enough, what's

not big enough? Hook whatever, say is big enough? Let the raskill go back, rak out some of the next side opposite side what you just did, because all the dust and mud and everything, so you can see on the side. Just go from side to side, and you always do when you're doing this commercially, you're doing it tankless right with a compressor, or you do do okay, so you're down there just working away commercially. If you want to do it on a commercial scale, free divan

is in the way to go. I see that's too much. And watch up and down because you yeah, and you hook it, and you take the hook and you're basically hooking it under his right where his tail meets his head. Oh, which, what do you call it? Carapist? So it's interesting to note, like it's even hard to get a video this most

of the time. But when they're hooking him, they're hooking them there and you hook and then your other hand is here, Oh my other hands like just sitting to the side, and I bring it to me, hold it like this, same time I grab it, I push up.

What I'm trying to say is like when you hook him, you're hooking them and they're normal, they're like feet around the bottom, but you hook him and their tail flips, they flip upside down and he's catching their tail now facing towards him, and then in one motion he's joking it, killing it right in the center of the carapace. Underknee, tossing that the side and doing it again. And it's kind of like if you're holding a fry pan and

you're flipping it. I'm just trying to give the audience a visual like you're just kind of like flipping it towards you pretty much. And it's the efficiency with which they do it is unbelievable. Like on a I don't know how to gauge like how many can be done in a certain period of time, but saying a in a in a free dive, in a one minute free dive, a free dive like where he was the other day. If it was just me, I probably could oak six or seven at a time, and you just kind of

scared them around on the bottom. I just throw him out from under the trap. If you kill them, yeah, I don't lost like when you were stopping to pick them up. I don't like other people picking oak a little track. Then I'll sit up around. I didn't know what you were doing because I thought you lost him. No, I kept I always keep accounting. So then I went and put him in your little pile because I didn't realize you were putting them there on purpose. I thought

you dropped it something. I'm just trying to figure it out. And you do not like what you do that you can't hear what you're saying. You're underwater something like pieces together and you guys would sometimes do five hundred pounds in a day of tails. Tales, just tales. It's working your ass off. The most I've ever done with my father was almost eight hundred and one day. That's a big like, that's a big day financially, right, that's a

huge day. Depending on the price too. Sometimes little average normally to start like seven eight dollars aupong, but last year was I think it was last year. Last year was the highest it's been for a very long time. It started at fourteen and to the end of the season, I think it ended off like twenty two or how Now this year it started off as ten dollars. Have you done commercial conk isshing? No too much work involved For the price of cong what is it? What? What

would be the price of cock? I think it's like to the wholesale place, what we're setting the two would be like three dollars a pound, god dollars clean clean, cleaned, no no shell, nothing, no skin on it, everything cleaned, it's too much work for the price. You guys will find out why soon because we're going to clean the conck on areas. It's not gonna get that from your normal podcast. But the way this season is going so far and Abago, my father said he's just gonna set

fish pots. He can make more money really just because the markets. It's no girlfish. Oh there's none really. The first day he had he got a hundred and eleven pounds compared to average of four to five hundred pounds the first day. So what do you think makes a difference from year to you as to whether there's a good season or not out of season fishing? Really you think so? You don't think it's environmental conditions or hurricanes or current or any of that. Interesting. Oh yeah, all yeah,

all summer long. My father said that there's small boats down neckar official and what the first day is to be. Now, I'm not gonna stock at a point of patrol, and I'm not gonna throw any nations under the bus. But there's a lot of other nations that are historically blamed here for invading Bohemian waters. And there is a which is true hatred, I mean a solid hatred for good reason for them coming and stealing the resource because they

kill everything. They kill everything. They go out there and dive on compressors in two of water because there's just not the enforcement for it. And it's interesting because the from from my understanding of the Behaming Devins Force and whatever,

they do have a fair number of boats. The problem is they don't have the funding for like fuel, so like we're always asking like, what where the hell are you guys at the dock, Like we don't have any money for fuel to go out and actually patrol, because you think in one day they could go and confiscate all the boats they would ever need for patrolling, you know, because there's all these big old boats coming over from all over that don't have I have not checked into

the US or whatever, because you gotta check in and do customs in immigration, pay your your um you know, entry fees, and get your licenses before you can go and do anything. You're not allowed to take anything until you've landed in the Bahamas and done that. And people do day trips that come over here and they hammer the place and they run back so famous pla man. It's it's really unfortunate coming from Miami. Yeah, there's just not enforcement. They just don't have the money for fuel.

It's not allocated for it, unfortunately. And hopefully that changes here in the next ten years as they you know, just make it better. Let's talk about whole hunting for a minute. We've covered various aspects of of of spear fishing, but we haven't talked about whole hunting for big grouper. It would be I could see how someone would look and think that it was like naughty because someone made the comment about shooting fish in a barrel. Explain the

basic like why are the rules different underwater in what way? Explain? How explain how you go a whole hunting for grouper um, So a grouper and most of these reef fish that we're hunting there on the reef, so somewhere is going to be there at home, and they live in holes. They live in hole, so you're eventually gonna go in a hole. So like as kids and growing up, and I mean honestly, until about fifteen years ago, I'd never

really used a light except for lobsters. And you know, you know, you said that to be handful of times about lights. You're like, if we'd have had these lights and we were kids, dude, have been a whole different programs. Huge. So like you know, we you know, would follow a group when we were kids, and you go in a hole and you look in there and just black. You're like, all right, let's go find something else. Yeah, let me

let me spend a couple seconds on these holes. It might be that that um like when we're saying a hole, it's I want you to people to understand like how like what exactly we're talking about. It might be that you have a hole. I mean, there's all kinds of configurations, but it wouldn't be unusual to find a hole that would be big enough for you to get your head and shoulders into the mouth. I mean, it's like a

hole in the rocks. They're a little cave opening. You could get your head and shoulders into it or not. Or it might be that you can just look under it and you couldn't get any party you in there, but you shine a light in there, you realize you're looking into the space that could be the size of

a five gallon bucket. It could be the size of a household refrigerator in these cavities, and then and then off of that is all these other little pockets and ledges and holes like a coffee can, and that like a hole the diameter of a coffee can that goes back in three ft and you wonder how the hell that form? Right, But like like holes of all makes and sizes Swiss cheese. A good way to think of it, A good way to describe it so people can visualize it is think of your house. Then think of five

of your friends houses. All of them are shaped differently. You think about being able to come through the front door, walk into the first room, then go into a hallway, then it opens up into another's, then there's a bathroom, and there's all these different spaces and they turn and all that, and they got upstairs and downstairs, and that's how it is. So you shrunk a house down to the size of a car, that would be like a

grouper hole. And every single one is different. So there was one towards the end of the day yesterday were instead of like kind of prefering prepping you on it, I was like, just go go look at it and tell me what you think the approach is for let's focus it on that fish for minute, because this fish had a this has had uncertain fate. Who you found the fish? Yeah, so you found it out and about doing his business. And I chased him man as fast as I could swim for probably two fifty yards. Yeah.

When you take off after one, you're gone. Yeah. I can't Like a lot of times I can't find I like kick to try to look around, and I'll oh, ship there he is way over there. Yeah, you like stay on top of him. Yeah, So I haul asked after him because I know he's going to a hole and that one had the choice of heading to the right and going out off the drop off and going into a hundred foot of water and it's but instead he turned and went shallow, so he actually went in

to about thirty water. So I followed him. He went a hole, and looking at the hole, I could tell by the way it was swept out, you know, with sand and stuff, that was his spot. So I waited for you guys to come, and I knew it was

like a twenty pound yellophin grouper. And I went down and put the light on him and put a camera in there to record actually in the hole while he was in there, and you can tell when you look in there on a hole like that, he's not leaving, like that's where he knows, the absolute safest place within

whatever proximity, Like that's the spot. So the challenge with that hole is he had swept it out so that the entrance, which was like if you make if you make a circle with your arms right now towards your chest and kind of bring it in a little bit of it's kind of oblong shape, and you had to go down a little bit and then up into it, if that makes sense. Because he swept out the sand,

you can't get a spear in there. If you put a spear in the whole, you're it's blow him, Yeah, because of the lip of the ledge is basically pushing your spear down, and you couldn't excavate anything to make room for the butt end of the spear because it was all just rock coral, hard coral. So you tried and you never even could get the angle, and so you're like, hey, whoever wants to try it. Parent was giving me all kind of advice behind to do it.

I said, then you go do it, And I tried, and he got in there with his with his spear and got it all lined up. That notice that he had to get his body back out and take a blind shot, trying to configure the spirit at the angle of what you think it needs to be, because you can actually be up in the hole while you shoot. Then Cameron went back down. Who don't, don't steal all

his glory here. So you pulled the trigger and you can hear I at least for me, it was one of the most satisfying noises ever, was to hear you hit solid rock that was rock, solid rock. So then you did not clear the lip. So of course we give shipped to parentesses surveys like all right, will you go catch him with your hands? Then I was like,

all right, I think I can do it. So I went down there and blocked the whole hole with my shoulders, put my head in there, and I had him like I had him in my hands multiple times in the hole. He just wouldn't open his mouth. The trick is to get him to bite you so that you can get your hands in his mouth and then you can get your hands in his gills and it's basically noodling, which I've I've done plenty of times, but man, that was a noodle. Yeah. So I had a pretty good battle

with him. And during this, you know, all of us mucking around down there, we had two sharks that had come up, and one of them just as I came to the surface after a noodle him and all that hell was breaking loose, was like right there at the mouth of the hole, and that grouper came out like, you know, like a guy that had almost got knocked out.

Here's the things, like nothing had actually happened to him, but he had just had the most harrowing he had had probably the most harrowing minutes he's ever had in his whole life. And the way that shark is like something is with that fish. What I mean, he had his number. Yeah, So the grouper just came out of the hole, and you know, it's like he's been in a dark room for forty five minutes. He walked out of the sunlight and right there is a six ft

shark like, something's wrong with you. I couldn't believe with that shark recognized that. He's like, I don't know what it is, but you're not right. And man, they both took off like a bat out of hell and they were instantly gone. If I had to bet money, I think the group was not alive. I think so too, because here's what I think what happened to him. He's he can't go to his main hide out, and he's gonna go into like he's got to know exactly where

he's going. And if he goes into any place that we're a dead ends or there's another grouper, he's gonna pause. That dud's on him. Man. Yeah, bad for him. I think he survived. It would be surprised. The group was a tough fish, especially a shop on him. I can't believe that was wild to fit himself in a small little but you don't think he could fit him so and that I hope he's alive. That's something interesting to say for both the grouper and the shark. Like the

fish are amazingly hardy. Like the grouper that uh that we got with Kimmy, that one had an old scar in it from where he had been shot and had ripped out, you know, and he had healed over and you actually pointed it out. Oh yeah, I mean he was playing it like the plane his day. Yeah, and a lot of those big old warriors like that, they're

going to have that. And then on the on the other end of the spectrum, the sharks, like how fast that shark went, Like we're always like yeah, you know, like look at the shark, or Al Roker said, you know, redirect the shark, you know, when they're coming at you or whatever. Seeing how fast that shark goes, there is nothing you can do. If they want you, if they want to bite you, you're getting bit. There's no way to stop them. They're just so fast. I was really

impressed by how fast that shark swam. I normally would would put money on the grouper, but seeing that shark just chase that grouper and just how much he gained on him, I would put my money on this shark. What a little more, what a morsel man, a big meal dude. And so let's let's talk about the let's come around on a whole hunt that went right. You saw him out mine in his own business. Yeah, Like, I'm gonna take you with me every time we go for groupers, because as soon as you and I jump

in the water, the bubbles clear, we see one. Yeah, so we jumped in that spot and um. As soon as bubbles cleared, like, I kicked towards the reef and I saw a big one, like the biggest grouper we've seen the whole trip. And he started hauling butt um up the reef and I took off like about out of hell. Yeah. How far did he go before he went into his hole? Probably forty yards fifty yards um, And we're talking about we're talking about a forty pound fish. Yeah.

And it's tough in that shallow stuff because you're like your neck is so craned. Think about laying flat on the floor on your stomach and having a crane to look in front of you along the floor. That's a weird position. And like in the shallows, they're like straight front of you. It's not like looking down, so they're

already on the edge of visibility. So I'm hauling but after him, and he went up into a section of the reef that um Zach Brown and I actually found together um And in fact, I call that that spot. I think Zach Hole or Zach black or something Zack black black. Yeah. And he went in the same hole that Zach and I had gotten a big yellopin grouper in and I mean you said it was like the most happy you see me a long time. Like I was just like, yes, yes, because I knew the hole.

And the only way to figure those holes out is to have an experience like we did yesterday. Is like you gotta just spend a ton of time in there and figure out I can get my body into this hole by twisting this way. Then I got to bring the pulse spirit in this way. But once they go in these dark holes where they think they're safe, for the most part, those groupers like to have an exit. That particular hole does not have an exit, but it has enough space in there that he can go in

and turn around. So their m O is to go in those holes, go way back up in the dark, and just lay up against the back of it so that anybody looking in there is just going to think it's the back of the hole. Because their camouflage and their coloring they can change, you know, like a chameleon, they can change to match whatever they're doing. So when they're they're usually just jet black. So I went in

there and looked with the light. Once kind of the you know, the dust settled, and then we started having to strategize like how how can we get in that hole with a spear short enough to get in the hole and then shoot him. Yeah, because you actually said, even though you knew that hole and you found that whole, you guys weren't successful because it was too small for zax body and it was a tricky hole. Like it

was great, it was a wonderful opportunity. And of course having you put all those spotlights on the fish so we could see it was everything, because Steve and I couldn't even see it at first. But then trying to figure out because you really had to go deep into that hole because he was way in the back and and it's like a narrow little thing that's like just enough to fit my body. But trying to then figure out how to get a spear in there at the right angle and how to have it loaded in there,

that was a lot. And for reference, the hole that we're talking about was probably just wide enough that Steve or I or Kimmy's shoulders could get in, so we could sneak our body in there. But then you had to go easy six ft just you your feet are sticking out, just your feet are sticking out, so you're and it's not like it's straight down, so you're going probably down two ft and then immediately turning and going to the left five ft six ft and the fishes

back there about nine he's way in there. So it's it's wild. It's like a weird like kind of side shaped chimney, and it's it's just it's weird to squeeze yourself in this like twisted tunnel that's just enough to fit your body, knowing that there's no possible way when you're in all the way to your ankles and you know that you can't turn around. That's a weird feeling, really weird, because going backwards is not the easiest thing to And how and how many feet were you guys underwater?

I was And this is on a breath, you know, on a single breath. So and this is one of the things that I love about the whole hunting is the strategy behind it because all of us are you know, we're students of whatever sport it is, you know, hunting, diving, fishing, and for each one of these situations, you have to draw on every experience you had leading up to that

to make it happen. Because like general people would have like a big long pulse fore we've been using the whole time and be like this, it's not gonna happen. You just can't get the thing in there, or you know he's around the corner, blah blah blah, We're not gonna be able to get it. Yea, we kicked around, harpooning it. Yeah, just pushing into him. So in my mind, and there's there's usually a way that you can figure

it out. Um, it's just being patient, you know, because once you touch him that one time, he's gonna blow out of there. So making that first shot count and not just taking a pot shot is really important. What you gotta wait for the sand to settle. It's got to be clear enough you can see him. You know. Steve was backing you out, and I think I told you, you know, like if she starts getting stuck, you know, pull her out. Um. And I told Cammy, I was like, when you do go and shoot him, if you don't

have the perfect shot, don't don't let it go. But when you do shoot him, just let go of everything. All you need to focus on is getting out of that hole because there's not enough space for both of you guys to be in that hole at the same time at the entrance because it's so narrow, and then you've got a spear coming back at you too. So the danger factor in the complexity of all is is what makes it very challenging, very dangerous, and and you know awesome as well. Yeah, I just want to illuminate

the picture. It's like I was on the top watching this all go down. It's like multiple dives down from all of you, sometimes one of you, sometimes a couple of you guys two together, checking it out, seeing it coming back up, readjusting the plan, thinking of different, you know, ways to get him out. Who was going to do what, who was gonna you know. It was just kind of this battle plan unfolding as you'd go and lay eyes on him, or at one point maybe he was like

further back in the hole you couldn't see him. I mean, it's just like your your team coming together to try to figure out whose job, who's doing what, how to get this and then to see it all come together from the surface was comple I mean it was insane to see, like Kimmy jam that spearing Steve was behind her went in and I mean immediately, like Camerin said, Cameron just looked me in the eye. I was like, after your spirit, do not even try to horse it out.

Get out of there. You came up with a smile on your face. I knew, I knew I got him good. Like I said, when he came up, was that on the work exactly? Who knew? You hit him solid fist camera on the way up, and then said, I said, I think it's gonna work. And then when he started talking to me, I just happened to put my face back in the water, and Steve was already going down

there to retrieve it. I'm like, oh, Steve's already in it, so tell us from from your side, because I mean, I know, like, at least in my mind, I think that's the first time you realized how strong fish can be. Oh yeah, I mean the first thing that surprised me is when I put my arm and I couldn't find the shaft and that thing's long. I was like, damn, that thing isn't there far. And I've actually reached up in there pretty good and got ahold of shaft and

started to pull him. I was surprised that I could actually pull him a little bit, but then he come out. Did he come out and head first? Tail man? I was, I was, I had no idea that fishes that big Steve was whipped and it was just nothing. But like I just like I could see his just tail. No, no, he came out head first, but somehow that there was so much silt sediments ship and I just saw like what I thought, like a hall of it tail, you know, just tail. His tail is probably easily two hands fans

like your hands, yeah, your hands easily. Oh wait, did we did we say how big this grouper was? Yeah, like I feel like forty pounds, Brandon feels like upper third. It was. It was like a man and they were getting dragged around in circles. He got me like, so you got it coming out, and like what was kind of your plan? Like I'm just gonna take him the surface. I don't know. I was like, I don't know what

I thought. I had to hurry because I thought if he just came out, so I kept taking if he comes out and just slims away with the whole kit and caboodle, which yeah, so I thought it was like I thought it was like an essence of like and that's weary. And you know because if he came out and for all the serpent, he just like swam off after he just swam off. So I thought you had to kind of be like Johnny out the spot. I

was gonna pull him out of the hole. I don't know, you guys are eyes hanging around making sure nothing bad happens to be so sure I got him out of the whole. Someone else to do something just from from as soon as I looked down. I was just trying to be helpful. You pull you pulled him out, and you're kind of facing the hole. You pulled him out, and in the video you can see he comes out like a bad comes to life and spins you around.

I was crazy at least, and you had made a comment about you like the kind of fish where you gotta dig your heels in try to drag him out of the hole, which is hard with a fin on. But I actually when he went under that next ledge, I had like I was trying to brace myself like I was gonna do a dead list. I was like getting set up for a dead list. And then once he was free of the hole, and Kimmy was down there and then I was like, holy ship, that fish

is big. Man. It just seems like in that I don't know why, but like in that because most of fish are looking there aren't big. You know, you're looking at all kinds of fish, like you know, two three four pounds, I mean, just aw the reef fish. And I just didn't know that something like that was around when I went and looked at it, because you are looking at like there's like a portion of a fish when you put a light. Now you like, just look where the light is. I'm like, fish, I don't know.

Hear what about this? He says, like thirty forty something pounds When you're looking at in the cooler, what's its dimensions? It filled a YETI one, It's lips and tail are touching, yeah, and just fat and chubby in between those those big blacks. Um, we can always tell, like they're over thirty five when they get that big bottom jaw, Like you can see the big shoulders, but that big bottom jaw. As they get bigger, it just gets bigger and bigger, and you're like,

that's a real one, you know. But less than that, I still think it's kind of not a juvenile I mean they're good fish, but that's a stud like that, a big one. You know. A thing I've learned from I think I'll learn from spear fisherman that I had to put together for like after a whole life of rod and reel and fish. Is that like grip Like that if you get your hand up in his throat, so your thumb is under one gill plate and your four fingers go on to the other guilt plate, and

you're basically like grabbing his trachia. You're grabbing the base of his gills, pushing all of his gills together too, closing it. Man, you can manage a hell of a big fish like that, and it's so much easier to swim them and turn them by their head. You got them. You're thinking, you're they shut right down. You're not letting water go through their gills. They're like, oh jeez, I mean this is difference, Like it puts you in the driver's seat in a way, the holding his tail and ship.

It just makes them that much more. I mean, that's how they're shaped to be hydrodynamic. So oh yeah, that was like I couldn't believe the first time I did. I did it on a on a yellow tail and it was like he was just like very hard to man, it's wrapping all over, beat me inside of the head and I met you got him like that and he's just like okay, Uh, if you curious what all this looks like all the whole hunting parent as a camera,

as a underwater cameraman, how would you rank coverage. It's one of those difficult things to shoot ever, because you guys are disappearing inside of a cave, and it does make it doesn't create certain complexities. It well, it's dark and you have a flashlight and they're silt everywhere. So honestly, the camera rigs like we can barely get them inside

the holes. UM. Having go pros and things rigged up in the cave like camera setting up is super helpful for us, UM because the grouper and stuff they just disappeared into the dark. So it's not the easiest thing to shoot. And one thing people forget is that the camera guys have to keep up with you athletes or divers, and uh, that's that's gonna be hard. Sometimes we have this great, great stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, if you were too great, like the footage that we've been getting recently.

I mean it's it's it's as good as it gets for the Bahamas UM, and there's a lot of team we're involved in that with you guys hunting, but also like Kimmy and and Cameron, I've been diving with them for almost a decade now. So when we're all diving together is the most fun for me because we don't

even have conversations. We just look at each other and all of us know exactly what to do at all times in the water, and it's like this unspoken communication when we're hunting and filming, that's just like everything is seamless, and creating with professionals and and getting it all on camera. It's just what we've created this past week is going to be one of those badass Bahamas shows I've ever seen.

So I'm excited about it. That's not I'm talking about and they'll be able to see it where Kimmy on meat Eater YouTube. I think it's going to release in October and um yeah, I'm gonna have my own little series on meat Eater what other what other places are on there? So this is our our travel episode. It is UM currently a four part series and so we have Maui my origins, um, and we have other places

in Hawaii Big Island and this is the travel episode Bahamas. Yeah, but paren Um and my husband Justin have been filming all the underwater stuff and I think it's just it's so damn cool to have like people who are not just really really good cameraman, but they're also they're also holding their breath with us. I don't think a lot

of people understand that. And they're also just that their knowledge and understanding of spear fishing, Like like they're not just Okay, we're gonna work our cameras and then be done. Like any break they get, they're out there poking fish too. And that's what makes it so cool, is it? Like when we say it's teamwork, I mean it is such teamwork.

Half the times when we're diving, like it's even our camera guys like grunting or getting our attention to show us like a fish that we're not seeing and you guys are capturing it, but you're you're hunting it with us. And that's what I think like makes the filming of the whole thing so fun. Definitely my heart. The problem I have with the way they grunt when they see something. It first takes me five minutes figure out where they all are at because it never just like automatically occurs

to me there behind me. I always start looking like in front of me because you're like underwater noise, it just no direction to it. But every time I hear him grunt and I start looking in front of me, I'm like, the one place I know he's not is there, But I still like where is he? They'm like, oh, that's right somewhere behind when you got a fish or just what like, what are you talking about? Going idiot? Idiot,

idiot right there? I only had grant you a few times, teams so much if we could talk underwater, little underwater chokboards, He's like, look to your right, there is a large hog fish staring at you. Cute cards. No, it was so cool is that you guys put each other on so many different fish species so you were able to experience, like what it was catching gellow jack, black grouper, a lot of you know, and just to to have that

different experience with each species. And I love I love seeing the learning curve because I mean I said it yesterday, like Kimmy is arguably one of the best female and male spiritfish period in the world. Like she's phenomenal. She just has that way in the water. Um, but even still like nerves using different rig and you know, the water the first day, like you kind of worked out the kinks and same thing with Steve, you know, by

the end of the trip. I mean we still made some mistakes, but night and day different than you know the first day, like your guys learning curves like this, Like it was pretty incredible. That's the fun part. Okay, So, uh got one A couple of things left. One major thing. Uh, A conk is a large marine snail. What's a big conk? Way, it's gonna be a few pounds, right, I've had something

with the actual meat itself. Way is up to two pounds, all the meat itself and the whole damn shells weigh heavier than that, probably a foot long, and tastes real good paint and the as to clean. Oh but you don't. Let's I want to cover an oar thing. You don't like lobster anymore? You got burned out. You're like someone who gets the job at of ice cream play pretty much and they pretty eat an ice cream. I mean, I'll still eat it, but I really lost a taste

for it. Handled too many of them, seeing too much, smelled it, eating it too much. But you still like conk? Yeah, I love conk. It's not cleaning. Conk is not um intuitive count No, you like, Well, I'll back some, but we're gonna go. We're gonna clean. You're gonna clean one for us again. I think I told you to store. I'm gonna tell it again. The first time we tried to clean one one. We're in the southern yuk Tam Peninsula and we were kind of camping in this old

bombed out house. Was like the roof had burned off. It was sort of like just a structure and the windows were gone, but it had the window frames. And we had a rental car, and we took the bottle jack out of the rental car and we put the conk up against the top of the window frame and put the bottle jack on the bottom of the window frame, and put a two by four between the conk and the window frame, so it's like from going from it's like the window frame a bottle jack or two by

four on top of the bottle jack. Then the conk sandwich between the two by four and the roof of the window frame of a house, and then start working the jack. There's a bottle jack didn't make that noise, but you get the noise. And then we'd like pick crush it and then pick all the chunks of shell and ship out of there and try to start out what was edible. And then one day we found where someone had been cleaning some ages ago, and we're like,

why do they all have that little hole? And then it began to occur how one breaks into a con But I still had really ever figured it out till now. I say, people completely destroyed the shell to get it out. Take a big hama or sledge holm and just completely explode the shell and like you said, picked the pieces off. Okay, we're gonna deal with that real quick. We gotta step outside the right because it's a messy business, all right, blocked up. So we got you got the conk in

your hand, what's he wait? Two three pounds, three pounds, two pounds snail in your hand, and he can and he's he lookal and he comes to a point and those are like his growth rings. And you're gonna chisel into that snail shell where the end of his body curls all the way around. So we had a special hammer. Is that made for that? Yeah? Actually it is. It's like imagine, um, it's like two I can't what the blade is called, like a yeah, like two hatchet blades

set at ninety degree angle. So one side's got a one side's got a vertical, and one side's got a horizontal depending on your stroke. Right, different strokes for different folks, that's right. So you're gonna take that, you're gonna bore into that shell. Yeah, So what you're gonna do is count. I know they typically count up instead of counting down practically the same. So I'll count two up. So you stop from this one where it's more defined one two

in between the second and the third. Well, how do you know where to start accounting? Yeah, that's immediate argument because you go to where it so the first role is well defined. But that's someone's preference, so that you'd count. He'd be the one count and you count that one right there. Yeah, that would be one that would be too okay, then bullshit with with but right, come come to from the sef you could get and that's a

funny thing because I guarantee you would never get him up. No, because that's not technically that's not horns one too, and you break that, you get So this goes to show that it's it's almost by it's like common sense that that's gonna be where it's gonna be, you know, like that's where you gotta crack it. Yes and no. But I'm saying like for us, like you look at it,

that makes total sense. It's gonna be there. For me, it makes total sense, it's gonna be he you know what he said to me A handful of times he said to me something about how he was trained or how he was taught. He's got like a yeah, an allegiance to what I'm saying. Three four, five, seven, that's between the seventh and eight. Let's do it, guys. If you want to count all the sorry, and how do you know where you're gonna whack it? I count the notches. So you go, you count too, not just one too.

And it's in between the second and third, but you're you're counting the first match that has texture, Yes, the one really defined you know, defined, horny little growth ring, Yes, And you just count up too. In between the second and third is where you're going to crack them. And the goal is that you're going to break a little teeny hole in there and then sever his mooring because he's like curled inside there and just the muscles stuck to the shed itself. That's what it touches him. So

he's only attached him one little spot inside there. You're not really cutting nothing off to say, detouch it. You just removing it. It, just trying it free pretty much, loosening his grip on his shell. Yes, got it, and that's it. What Yeah, there's a little whole third inch by an inch Now that's onny one though, I don't snakes a bendy dexter flame knife and air and you're just freeing up so the flexi blades billiam corn Huh To be honest, no, I prefer to use um but

a knife. Yeah, And then you grab his foot, Wow, comes right out of there. You never guess. That's just slides right out. He's got a little dinosaur claw for a hook. Orange section of black, second brown section in a big old white section. So what all this is edible? All of it really and truthfully all of it is edible besides the spur, the gut and the mouth dies and everything. It looks like a little alien. And then you gotta get the rubbery skin off there. You don't

have to. You don't have to, like yments, No, mony, they won't cut it off, really, the skin and everything. So Steve cut it off for us because we're not behaving. I mean that probably we had you all out, and yeah, let's probably have a different point of view on it. If it's got the skin on, people say it makes it tough all but not really. So what come out of there is like a big I mean what your leftover was, I would say you left over like a

big Hamburger patty of meat pretty much. Yes, And so Steve, what's your hot tip take away from con cleaning? Don't use a bottle jack? Okay, So one last thing, speaking of conk. The other day we had this is where your listeners get involved. The other day we had h conk fritters at a restaurant. That is just it's crazy. I gues stop thinking about the guy in the restaurant. It's amazing. There's a guy, his family has been on this island for out and how long hundred fifty years

something crazy. He lives alone for the most part, lives alone on an island, collects rain water and has a brackish water well, completely off the grid, and if all things, he runs a restaurant that he used to run with his mother who grew up there. His siblings were like born on the island. He likes to point out that he wasn't. He was born in a hospital and take

him back to the island. Family dates back over a century and like the stude named Chester has his restaurant and you need to call and tell him you're coming, and you pull a boat up. I mean he's many miles from the nearest road. You pull a boat up and he makes fried fish count fritters and during season

he cooks you lobster. Cameron's friends with him, and it's like it's not it's hard to explain the like, nohemer you think of a restaurant, you think of someone like he's just like he's just trying to get by in a way that makes sense to him, right and provide like like a really nice service. It's like it's like a restaurant, but it's that no one's getting rich at this restaurant. It's just like he like lives the way that makes sense to him and the way he's been

there and is a restaurant. It brings about a tremendous amount of goodwill. You call him, you come in, you park your boat, you walk up, and he makes crying fritters and fried fish and sells beer. It's a great place and like slamming rump. But for him to get fuel is a real pain in the assid and Cameron can explain the fuel situation. So he had he's always run on generator. It's not like there's power out there.

And I think in a thirty mile stretch there might be five other people that live like he's just right smack in the middle of no man's land. So he's got a diesel generator that he had for the last ten years or whatever that died just after this past hurricane. So about ten miles away on another island, we had heard that there was another generator that had been up in the woods in the bush for like fifteen years left like and the guy who owns that island said,

you guys can have that if you want. So him and two other guys went and got that old generator has just been overgrown or whatever. Put it on a boat and drug it back to the island, and we drug it up the hill and put it back in there, and somehow a mechanic got it going after you know,

a week. So now he's got this dilapidated old generator, and to get fuel for that, he's got to get in his boat and go fifteen miles get deesel, put it in jerry cans and bring it back to that and hump it up the hill and refill that generator constantly. So just before COVID, I got a guy to he then got weirdly, he got shut down for nine months during talk about brutal, like a place that would no one even know about. He's like restaurants gotta showed down.

I closed so weird, Like I would have been like, I'm just gonna keep staying open because we're gonna know who's gonna know. Um. So he's always he's always said, you know, if you can get me a generator, you know, that'd be great. So a while back I went there and looked in the generator shed man, there's like five generators in there, Like a diesel generator is just not the way to go. They're just gonna keep dying. Yeah, they die and just live there, and he's gonna moves

over and put another one in him. So I was like, why not do solar? You know? So I was like, started looking into getting quotes for solar. Howd a guy go out there and figure out the amount of power he needed and give us a quote and a game plan for doing solar. And that's where I got Steve involved, you know. I said, you know, if if you can give back anything for this trip, it would be to help him, to get him solar, just because he has done such a service for everyone that has ever visited

that place will never forget it. That's one of the coolest spots on the planet. And just to take one aspect of us giving back to him and this worldwide community that loves that place so much and putting solar that's going to help the environment and help that island. I would love to do that. And we are rolling right now. We're with Chester. Can you introduce yourself and

where we are right now? All I'm chest Advil. Yeah, it flows kunk Shack and Little Habba and the Barry Islands, Bahamas and how big is this island that we're standing on and who inhabits it? The island is about two and a half miles long and about a quarter mile wide. Current population. Current population right now is too well, usually there's one. So years ago, I was down here in the Bahamas and we've been fishing up in the Northern

Barres Islands. We're running back down south and we ran past this island and I was like, man, who lives on that island? There's like two little houses, and a buddy's like, man, that's that restaurant. It's called Flows. It's like, well, how in the heck do they get anything there? But let's go check. We gotta go check this out. So we pull in running ground a couple of times trying to get in here, and finally get in here to the dock and walk up and I was like, hey,

can we have lunch? Chester was like, do you have lunch tomorrow? And just segued into the next fifteen years of getting a no Chester and just what he has to go through day to day to live on an island by himself and run a restaurant which is arguably the best kunk and fresh fish, fried fish I've ever had my life anywhere in the world. It's so good, so good. Thank you very much for that game. I mean, it's gotta be wild for you seeing this every day.

But you know every little bit of history because your family has been here for more than a hundred years. Yeah, what basically what got me started with this? When I was in school, My mom told me that this was our father's dream before you pass So in school I used to think about it all the time. And what I'm doing here right now is just trying to fulfill his dream because he's not here, So I took it upon myself to make it my dream. And what's your

family's history here? You're telling me about your great or great great grandmother. Her name was Agnes Johnson. I think she was born in eighteen fourteen, if I'm not mistaken, And she was the founder of this island, Little Harbor under the keys around it, and it's been in our family ever since. It's generation property. You said she used to what did she used to do on this island. She used to cook for the pirates before she bought

this island. She did Insistent Key, which is opposite Great Harbor, and she's to cook for the pirates, and they used to pay and go. She was a slave and that's why she made her fortune. And she overheard the pirates talking about purchasing the harbor, so when they went out to see she went in asa and purchase it. And when they came back and they met her. Yeah, that's how she got this island. How did that go over the pirates, Well, they didn't have a choice in about it.

She already paid for it. That's pretty wild. And they when you as soon as you pull up here, you see generations and generation pile the biggest colle pile kunk shells I've ever seen. You're looking at over as a conkin. I mean it's literally close to a million conk. Well, what you got to look at, what you're looking at is only half or what used to be here because the shell it rots after a while and it turns into sign. Hm. That's why you're saying so pretty good

from all that conk. I guess. So, so you run a restaurant, you live on this island. There are needs for power electricity to keep things running. What's what's your current situation with this now? Well, right now, I'm just skating on nice right now. That's what's going on with me right now, and you know I need help. If

whoever can help me, I'd appreciate it very much. What's the what's the back story for the The major challenge here is Chester lives fifteen miles from any other civilization, So to get even fuel for the generator, he's got to go down getting his boat if the weather allows, and then run another fifteen miles up to gas cans up, get him filled with diesel, hop back in the boat, run back here, and then hump him up this hill and then back another hundred fifty yards back into the

bush to a generator that is probably thirty or forty years old, you know, and it's been it's I mean, you're just hanging on by a thread keeping that thing running. And how how hot was it today? About nine degrees? Having even a fan is helpful here, So you know, having that generator there's a big deal. But I had had the idea just before COVID to try to get your solar. He's got a perfect piece of land here

that's kind of protected from you know, the hurricanes. There's a good spot to put the solar kind of out of the way, Um, it's gonna save you know, moving diesel and not having to rely on fossil fuels period um. And just you know, you think about the things we do day to day just to survive, you know, at home, and how many people we have helping us. He doesn't

have anybody help him. He's just him. So you're having an off day, and you know it's the however many how many how many days you run on diesel before you got to refill? Uh? Well, the tank I have is about uh about every three three days. I usually put in about fifteen gallons roughly m So it's a lot of work. Yea, Let's get some solar on this island. So personally, I couldn't fund it, and I wanted to get some friends together to help do it. And everyone

I talked to had offered to help. But you know Steve and talking to him, and you know, a group of friends with here is like, let's do this, you know, let's really help him out. We can use our reach, you know to help a good guy in a cool place, you know, to be able to keep you doing what you're doing so more people can come and enjoy this. And this is there's not enough places like this on

the planet with people like you. We spent we spent um number of hours over a couple of days here at Chester's and this was the base camp for part of the film shoot. He fed us from the restaurant. It was a scene for Um, we used his kitchen and his restaurant for a cooking scene for the show. And um, yeah, I mean it's something that anyone who's in this area like needs to come and experience. It

is something that you really I can't imagine finding anywhere else. Um. So it's just kind of preservation of history and and continuing that. Yes, you can say that again. He also makes a slam and rum punch by it as flows famous rum punch flows cock check right flows called check Solar. Yeah. Um, that's that's what I've put together on camer instead of a goal fund me to help. He might be sitting there thinking like, um, why would I give a shit

about this place? I don't think I can't explain to you. It's a cool place. It's a really cool project. He's a great guy, that's a nice guy, and it's like it'd just be fun to to do that. I feel like, you know, I feel like a lot of listeners would kick in a few bucks. Yeah, I'm gonna kick in

some money. Yeah, any I mean anything helps, you know, And if it takes us five years, you know, to do it, you think about how many thousands and thousands of gallons of diesel burned that that'll save, you know, in one of the most pristine spots in the world. To be able to do it solar and to take that, you know, out of it, those fossil fuels out of it, would be pretty amazing. It's just such a nice and usual guy. You just want that place and what he's

doing to exist in this world. I mean he has, like you said, over hunt, over a century of history there. He said to himself, like I'm never leaving this island. That's what he wants to do for the rest of his life. But it's like not exactly like fitted for today's world, you know, and so but to me, it's like those are the little gems, a little splashes of like awesome unique diversity that makes the world that much

more interesting. So if we all could help it out just so it can exist, Like what a better place history floes conk Shack Solar, Yeah, you can have it all set up. Ye, flows conk shack solar. One thing he mentioned as it being his dad's dream. I feel like it was like a couple of generations back. Was it Cam his great great great great grandmother Flow she uh. He told us a story about how she used to

serve food on that island to the pirates. She was she was born a slave, but yeah, but got into feeding the pirates when they would come in and would get collect goals. Made a little fortune off of that and not to stand them on the island for a while. And had heard the pirates like that island. So when the pirates went out to do their thing, she went to Nassau and bought the island. So they were a little bitter about that, That's what I asked. I was like,

so what did the pirates do? They must have been passed. So let's keep that history up into the president. It's fun. It's a fun project. We'll talk more about it. You're also gonna put a get We also got a little video of showing the place. Sweet. Maybe sweet people could, like I said, kick in a couple of bucks and we'll pull that whole thing together to be fun. Yeah, it's where it's where Kimmy did her cooking second or the three of us, I should say, did our cooking

segment um for her show in the series. And Chester's on it, Chesters on it all right, not to be confused the Chester the divester different, Chester, polygraph Chester, yeah line Chester al right, everybuddy, thanks a lot,