The Katie C. Sawyer Podcast

Ep.16: Spearfishing the Azores with RIFFE Team Diver Paulo Afonso

Summary
In this conversation, Katie interviews Paulo Afonso, an Azorian freediver and member of the Rife International Spear Fishing Team. They discuss Paulo's background, his upbringing in Pico Island, and his passion for spearfishing and free diving. Paulo shares his experiences and techniques for blue water spearfishing, including how he selects and shoots fish, and the risks involved. He also talks about the importance of preparation, staying calm in high-intensity situations, and the thrill of the pursuit. Paulo emphasizes the need for safety protocols and the impact of having children on his approach to diving. In this part of the conversation, Paulo discusses the importance of having a dive buddy and the role they play in ensuring safety during a dive. He emphasizes the rule of one diver down and one diver up, and how a dive buddy can help in case of emergencies such as a shark approaching or a blackout. Paulo also shares his experience with blackouts and how to react in such situations. The conversation then shifts to the safety protocols for boat captains when divers are in the water, including the importance of staying vigilant and knowing the exact location of the divers. Paulo also talks about the equipment he uses, such as dive computers and fish finders, and how he takes care of his equipment after a dive. The chapter ends with a discussion on reef diving, including the importance of knowing the dive spots, waiting for the fish to come in, and the role of communication between dive buddies. In this final part of the conversation, Paulo discusses his most memorable moment in the ocean, the role of emotions in spearfishing, and his content creation process. He also shares tips for diving with sharks and dealing with challenging situations while spearfishing. Paulo talks about the different species of amberjack and his favorite ways to prepare and eat fish. He provides information on where to find his content on social media.
Instagram and YouTube:  @pauloafonso9268 
Takeaways
Paulo grew up in Pico Island, surrounded by the ocean and a family of spearfishers.
He developed a passion for spearfishing and free diving from a young age and has honed his skills over the years.
Paulo's approach to blue water spearfishing involves chasing bait balls and using birds and dolphins as indicators.
He remains calm and focused in high-intensity situations, relying on his instincts and experience. Safety is a priority for Paulo, and he takes precautions to mitigate risks and ensure a safe diving experience.
Having a dive buddy is crucial for safety during a dive, as they can help in case of emergencies and provide support.
Boat captains should always stay vigilant and know the exact location of the divers to prevent any accidents or loss of divers.
Proper equipment, such as dive computers and fish finders, can enhance the diving experience and improve safety.
Reef diving requires patience and waiting for the fish to come in, and communication between dive buddies is important for success.
Taking care of equipment, including rinsing with fresh water and drying in the shade, is essential for its longevity.
Emotions play a key role in spearfishing, as animals can sense your intentions and energy.
When diving with sharks, it's important to keep your eyes on them at all times and be aware of their behavior.
In challenging situations while spearfishing, it's crucial to stay calm and assess the problems before taking action.
There are different species of amberjack, and the ones in the Azores are highly prized for their taste and quality.
Paulo's favorite way to prepare fish is grilling, as it brings out the flavors and juiciness.
Paulo shares his content on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube under the name @pauloafonso .
Keywords:
freediving, spearfishing, Pico Island, Azores, blue water diving, safety protocols, dive buddy, safety, blackout, boat captain, equipment, reef diving, communication, ocean, memorable moment, emotions, spearfishing, sharks, challenging situations, amberjack, fish preparation, content creation, social media

Ep.15: Billfishing Courses in the Galapagos with Katie and Jamie Melvin

For more information email me at:
Katie@katiecsawyer.com
 
Summary
 
In this episode of the Katie C. Sawyer Podcast, host Katie sits down with Jamie Melvin, a fly fisherman and guide specializing in billfish. They discuss Jamie's journey from fishing in Kenya to guiding in the Galapagos, the unique fishing opportunities available there, and the importance of conservation. The conversation delves into the techniques of fly fishing for billfish, the dynamics of fishing as a team sport, and the incredible biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands. Jamie shares insights on what to expect when booking a fishing trip, the role of a guide, and the overall experience of fishing in such a magical location.
 
The Galapagos is an opportunity you don’t want to miss! Email Katie today to learn how you can partake.  Dates in 2024 still available!
 
Takeaways
 
Jamie Melvin specializes in fly fishing for billfish.
Kenya offers a unique fishing experience with multiple species.
The Galapagos is known for its incredible striped marlin fishery.
Teasing techniques are crucial for successful billfish fishing.
Fishing in the Galapagos combines adventure with conservation efforts.
Guided trips provide opportunities for learning and skill development.
Fishing is a team sport that requires coordination and communication.
The Galapagos Islands are a biodiversity hotspot.
Guests can expect a full-service fishing experience in the Galapagos.
Fishing connects individuals to nature and promotes environmental awareness.

Ep.14: Kelly Dalling Fallon and Giant Black Marlin on the Great Barrier Reef

Sit down with Katie and Kelly as they discuss the incredible fishery off the Great Barrier Reef. With nearly 30 years of professional fishing experience between these two women, it's a conversation filled with offshore information that even the most seasoned fisherman can enjoy.
Kelly Photography: https://www.kelldallfall.com/marlin-photography/
In this episode of the Katie C. Sawyer podcast, host Katie interviews Kelly Dalling Fallonn, a seasoned charter operator and photographer with over two decades of experience fishing the Great Barrier Reef. They discuss the unique aspects of the Australian fishery, particularly for black marlin, and delve into fishing techniques, daily routines, seasonal patterns, and the importance of the fishing vessel KEKOA. Kelly shares her insights on chair fishing, tackle strategies, and the role of the tower in enhancing the fishing experience. In this conversation, Kelly shares her extensive experience in the fishing industry, particularly focusing on the unique challenges and regulations of fishing in Australia. She discusses the different charter options available, the importance of teamwork and crew dynamics, and the evolving role of women in sport fishing. The conversation also delves into practical fishing techniques, the significance of seasonal fishing patterns, and advice for aspiring crew members looking to work on the Great Barrier Reef.
 
Takeaways
 
Kelly has been fishing on the Great Barrier Reef for over 20 years.
The Great Barrier Reef offers a unique fishing experience with large black marlin.
Fishing techniques vary based on the time of day and conditions.
Daily routines include fishing, snorkeling, and socializing on the reef.
The fishing season for black marlin typically runs from September to December.
Using circle hooks enhances the fishing experience and success rate.
The Kikoa is a specially designed fishing vessel for the reef.
Chair fishing requires specific techniques for optimal performance.
The tower provides a significant advantage in spotting fish and managing baits.
Fishing is not just about catching fish, but also about the overall experience. Australia has strict regulations for charter boats.
Fishing requires teamwork and effective communication.
Women are increasingly taking on roles in sport fishing.
Daily routines are crucial during the short fishing season.
Crew dynamics can make or break a fishing trip.
Wiring fish requires specific techniques for success.
Juvenile black marlin fishing is a unique experience.
Networking is essential for finding crew opportunities.
Planning ahead is vital for booking fishing charters.
Fishing is about passion and dedication, not just money.
 

Ep.12: Luke Dusenbury & Big Game Hunting

As a wilderness videographer and photographer capturing the story of big game hunting, Luke Dusenbury has found himself in many challenging situations.
In this conversation, Katie interviews Luke Dusenbury, a videographer and photographer specializing in wilderness content. They discuss Luke's background in photography and filmography, his experiences working on the Sport Fishing Championship Series, and his portfolio of hunting and fishing adventures. They specifically dive into Luke's experience filming a caribou hunt in the Alaskan tundra, highlighting the challenges of extreme weather conditions, power management, and water purification in remote locations. In this part of the conversation, Luke Dusenbury shares advice on preparing for a public lands elk hunt and the challenges of being a camera guy while hunting. He emphasizes the importance of having duplicates of essential items and being mindful of scent control. Luke also discusses the role of thermals in elk hunting and the need to understand wind patterns. He highlights the physical and mental challenges of hunting in high elevation and rugged terrain. Luke provides insights on packing for a day hunt and the essential items to have in a kill kit. He also discusses the importance of safety precautions and recommends wilderness training courses. Finally, Luke shares lessons he has learned from hunting with experienced hunters and the value of being a student of the game. Luke Dusenbury shares a hunting story where he and his team had to hike for miles in the snow to retrieve their backpacks, which they had left behind. They learned the importance of never leaving their backpacks in the mountains and the need to be prepared with enough food and supplies. Luke also discusses the management of predators like cougars and bears, highlighting the importance of proper predator management for the conservation of ungulate species. He emphasizes the need for balance and science-based biology in managing predator populations.
 
Battery charger/solar panel/charging banks: 
Power Bank: https://amzn.to/46qsJVG
Solar Panel:  https://amzn.to/4fegL5t
Kill Bag
Trekking Poles
Luke’s Website: https://lukedusenburyphotography.com/
 
Mountain Lion Book: Beast in the Garden
 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/luke.dusenbury?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
 
Handle: @Luke.dusenbury 

Ep.11: Diving Into The Billfish Foundation with Peter Chaibongsai and Thomas Morrell

Summary
In this episode, Katie sits down with Peter Chaibongsai and TJ Morrell from the Billfish Foundation. They discuss the organization's mission and the importance of research, advocacy, and education in preserving offshore fish populations and supporting the communities that depend on them. They highlight the various programs and resources available to the community, such as membership, newsletters, and youth programs. Peter and TJ also explain their role in representing the recreational fishing community in regulatory matters and their efforts to connect scientists and fishermen to gather valuable data. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the foundation's commitment to preserving the marine environment and passing on the love of fishing to future generations. The conversation covers the technical difficulties experienced during the recording, the importance of The Billfish Foundation's (TBF) regulatory advocacy, the tagging and release program, data collection and socioeconomic information, the importance of recreational fishing, online reporting and incentive programs, the tagging program competition, and the recognition of crew and lifetime achievement awards. The conversation covers the recognition of outstanding individuals in the fishing community, the upcoming awards and gala, membership services and subscriptions, engaging the youth through magazines, the importance of tagging data, international tagging operations, streamlining commercial data collection, and supporting the Billfish Foundation.
 Takeaways
The Billfish Foundation focuses on research, advocacy, and education to preserve offshore fish populations and support the communities that depend on them.
Membership, newsletters, and youth programs are some of the resources available to the community.
The foundation plays a crucial role in representing the recreational fishing community in regulatory matters and connecting scientists and fishermen to gather valuable data.
The ultimate goal is to preserve the marine environment and pass on the love of fishing to future generations. The Billfish Foundation plays a crucial role in advocating for regulations that protect billfish and the recreational fishing community.
The tagging and release program is a cornerstone of TBF's work, providing valuable data for research and conservation efforts.
Data collected through the program helps researchers understand migration patterns, population sizes, and other important information about billfish.
TBF's advocacy efforts ensure that the recreational fishing community has a voice in policy decisions that affect their interests. The Billfish Foundation recognizes individuals who have made a difference in the fishing community.
The annual gala is a fundraising event that brings the community together and celebrates the achievements of individuals in the industry.
Membership services and subscriptions, such as magazines for youth anglers, provide educational resources and promote marine science.
Tagging data is crucial for understanding fish populations and making informed management decisions.
The Billfish Foundation is involved in international tagging operations and offers grants for tagging supplies.
Streamlining commercial data collection can provide valuable information for conservation efforts.
Supporting the Billfish Foundation through membership, donations, or sponsorship helps further their mission of conserving billfish populations.
Membership signup : https://billfish.org/become-a-member/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzIK1BhAuEiwAHQmU3ikMzYodcBAKi7VgwCd7r7qFaIDCq9UPYOxdKGmvaABsbnNCtSpgshoCngAQAvD_BwE
Tag and Release Competition: https://billfish.org/competition/
Tag and Release Kits : https://shop.billfish.org/collections/tbf-tagging-equipment/products/taggingkits
Newsletter Signup : https://billfish.org/newsletter/
TBF Merch: https://shop.billfish.org/
Gala tickets: https://event.auctria.com/32fef710-de8c-42f3-9619-69c87b19b44a/09480e501ee611eaa945bb9e2ddcf87f
Subscription for youth magazines
Billfish: https://billfish.org/magazines/#tab-id-1
Sailfish: https://billfish.org/magazines/#tab-id-2
Spearfish: https://billfish.org/magazines/#tab-id-3
Bluewater: https://billfish.org/magazines/#tab-id-4

Ep.10 Madelyn Motsko and the White Marlin Open

This conversation covers the history, growth, and impact of the White Marlin Open tournament. It explores the involvement of the tournament directors and their dedication to the event. The chapters also discuss the progression of the tournament, the introduction of Calcutta's and prize money, and the point structure for catch and release. The conversation highlights the economic impact of the tournament on the local community and the creation of Marlin Fest as a companion event. It also touches on the conservation efforts and the role of the tournament in preventing the white marlin from being listed as endangered. The chapters conclude with a discussion of the directors' roles and responsibilities in organizing the tournament. The conversation with Madelyne Duffy, the Tournament Director of the White Marlin Open, covered various topics related to running the event and the challenges faced in the fishing industry. The chapters include discussions on running the event as a family, sticking to ethics and integrity, challenges of working with family, the threat of offshore wind, crowded fishing grounds and speed restrictions, dealing with drama and controversy, memorable moments of the White Marlin Open, the impact of sonar technology, the small boat category, the importance of the white marlin category, female involvement in the tournament, and the appeal of the ocean.
 
Takeaways
 
The White Marlin Open is the world's largest and richest billfish tournament, with a significant economic impact on the local community.
The tournament has grown organically over the years, with the addition of Calcutta's and the establishment of Sunset Marina as a game changer.
Conservation efforts, such as the use of circle hooks and length minimums, have been implemented to protect the fishery.
Marlin Fest provides an opportunity for spectators to experience the tournament and support local businesses.
The tournament directors are involved in all aspects of the event, from rule changes to trash collection.

Ep.09 Curtis De Silva: Madeira & Grander Marlin Fishing

Summary
Curtis De Silva, a professional fisherman, shares his experience fishing in Madeira and the Southern Caribbean. He recently caught a grander blue marlin in Madeira and discusses the fishing techniques and spread used. Curtis also talks about his father, Captain Frothy, and their fishing background. He compares the fishing conditions and challenges in Madeira and the Southern Caribbean, including dealing with seaweed in the Caribbean and paperwork in Madeira. Curtis also mentions the differences in migratory patterns and water temperatures that contribute to the size of fish in each region. The conversation with Curtis De Silva focuses on his experiences fishing in Madeira and the Azores. The marine life in these areas is spectacular, with abundant bait, birds, and various sea creatures. The conversation covers topics such as the underwater banks and seamounts in the Azores, the impact of sea surface temperatures on fishing, the decision to pull boats out of the water during the off-season, the challenges of fishing in rough swells, the boatyard in Madeira, and the international fleet in Madeira. Curtis also shares his favorite fishing memories with his father and his passion for billfish.
Fish with Curtis: search @madierasportfishing on facebook or instagram
 
Takeaways
Curtis De Silva caught a grander blue marlin in Madeira, weighing 1048 pounds.
Fishing in Madeira is characterized by calm waters and a close proximity to the shore.
The fishing season in Madeira is from June to September/October.
The Southern Caribbean has tournaments for sailfish and smaller blue marlin.
Challenges in the Southern Caribbean include dealing with seaweed and rough weather.
Fishing in Madeira is relatively easy, with the main challenge being locating blue marlin.
Madeira has a large average size of blue marlin compared to other fishing locations.
Paperwork and documentation are meticulous in Madeira.
The migratory patterns and water temperatures contribute to the size of fish in each region. The marine life in Madeira and the Azores is spectacular, with abundant bait, birds, and various sea creatures.
The Azores have underwater banks and seamounts that attract fish, including blue marlin.
Sea surface temperatures can impact fishing, with extreme high temperatures affecting the Azores and Madeira.
Boats are pulled out of the water during the off-season in Madeira and the Azores due to the slowing down of the marlin migration and the risk of damage from rough swells.
The boatyard in Madeira is situated under the airport runway and provides services for boats.
Madeira has an international fleet with charter boats operated by local and foreign captains.
Curtis De Silva has a passion for billfish and targets big blue marlin in Madeira.
Fishing with his father and catching his first blue marlin are some of Curtis' most cherished fishing memories.
Releasing fish is a common practice in billfishing, and recreational fishermen play a role in understanding fish migration patterns.
Curtis De Silva also runs charters in the Southern Caribbean, specifically in Grenada.
Keywords:
fishing, Madeira, Southern Caribbean, blue marlin, grander, Captain Frothy, techniques, spread, challenges, seaweed, paperwork, migratory patterns, water temperature, fishing, Madeira, Azores, marine life, sea surface temperatures, underwater banks, seamounts, boatyard, fleet, billfish
Transcript:
Katie (00:00.43)Today's guest is my friend Curtis De Silva from Trinidad and Tobago. Curtis has spent his entire professional career fishing between the Southern Caribbean and the island of Madeira. In fact, he has fished the last 15 seasons on the island of Madeira and a few weeks ago, weighed the first and as of July 2nd only grander of the 2024 Blue Marlin season.
In this episode, we're gonna dive into the story about that fish, as well as what it takes to fish the Eastern Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores, how they compare to the fishery of the Southern Caribbean, and looking into a little bit on the relationship between Curtis and his father, legendary Captain Frothy from the Pesca Grossa, as well as why fishing is so important to him.
It's always a pleasure to sit down and talk to Curtis and it's another great episode in the books. You're not going to want to miss it.
Katie (01:06.734)Welcome to the Katie C. Sawyer podcast. Today I'm sitting with my good friend, Curtis De Silva. Curtis, where are you tuning in from? Hello. How are you going, Katie? Good. I'm tuning in from sunny Calheta, Madeira. That's right. Madeira. You guys, Madeira is an autonomous island owned by Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean. Curtis and I met a couple of years ago while we were fishing there with the On Location. Now, Curtis, you
I want to get into your background. I want to get into your story. But first, I can't skip these important details. You had a really good fishing day just recently, just a few days ago. You want to tell us about it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could jump right into that story if you'd like. Yeah, it's a pretty good one. So I think it was Monday this week. We went out on
My dad's fishing boat is called the Pesca Grossa. And we had some clients that flew in from the States. They were on their honeymoon. They were keen to go one day blue marlin fishing. So we were fishing on board, you know, the 30 foot, just a little 30 foot sport fishing boat out here in Madeira And yeah, maybe about four o 'clock or so we hooked up onto a good fish, you know.
it was actually a really interesting play. One of the better ones I've seen in my life. so one, one fish came up on the teaser on our right teaser, really short to the boat, maybe 10 or 15 feet from the back of the, the, the boat. And I threw the pitch out and it did not switch on to the pitch, you know, so it faded off onto our left long. What were you pitching?
Just a mackerel, about a two pound Spanish mackerel, chin weighted, with a 10 o' circle hook. Yeah, so that fish faded off, you know, and hit the left lure and left long. Missed it completely. And about maybe a moment later, maybe five or 10 seconds, another fish came up and just crashed, but the short, the right short, you know?
Katie (03:33.326)Teal off a bunch of line. We got the lady angler in the chair, you know, it may be about a 40 minute fight or so. We had the fish, three sides of the boat. When it was there, we just, we decided to take it. We decided to take it on board. Cause it was, it was a pretty big fish. When I larger ones we've seen both side in a long time. So we decided to take him. Yeah. Pretty big fish. A grander. How much did that fish weigh?
Yes, it was 1048, 170 some kilos. I can't remember exactly in kilos, but it was 1048 pounds. It was really amazing to see that there was actually two of them. The first fish that showed up, how big was that one? Average Madeira size when I was there for the one season was somewhere between five and 700 pounds. A good size fish is 800.
We were looking for the grander ourselves. We never found it. We never, well, Drake saw it. We've talked about that before, but we never found it. So how big was that first fish that showed up? So the first fish was probably very similar in size, you know? Stop. Yeah. So two big girls crashing on your baits. So what is your spread like? I mean, you have short teasers. You said you you're doing a
like a macro pitch with teasers close to the boat. So those don't have hooks in them. And then you have or I don't know what you call them because then you called it the short lure. The right short is where you caught that second fish on. So you have a J hook in that one, right? That's right. So we fish a pretty simple spread over here. You know, we fish one 30s and we would have four four four lures with hooks in them. Any water at all times, you know?
So left short, left, left and right short and left and right long would all have, you know, 10 OJ hooks in them. That's how we target them with 550 pound mono leader. And then you're also pulling teasers? Yeah. So we pull two teasers right up close to the boat. Yeah, that's basically all Madeira spread. That's awesome. What lures did these fish show up on?
Katie (05:55.134)well, they actually showed up on my dad's lure. My dad makes these lovely lures. Now, I'm not sure what the name of this particular one was, but it was one of the Captain Frothy series lures. That's so special. That is so special. Okay, so Curtis, congratulations on your grander. Was that your first grander? I mean... Thank you. That was the first one I weighed on a scale. I believe I caught a couple before.
But we released them, but this is the first one that we scale, Peroni scale and wait. That's amazing. Congratulations. And for your group to be on their honeymoon, like, my gosh, you said they had one day of fishing and it was at 4 PM. I'm assuming that you go into the dock at five. Like that is some good luck for those anglers and to have such a good crew. Now you said you were fishing aboard Pesca Grossa. You guys might've heard of this boat because of
The legendary captain Frothy. Now Frothy is Curtis's dad. Curtis, you want to give us a little bit of background on Frothy as well as yourself, where you guys come from, what your history is, your professional history in the sport of billfishing? Sure, absolutely. I could give you a little background. I'm starting with my dad. So my dad has been a Harvard fisherman since he was a young, since he was a boy. He always was very passionate about it.
He ran a very successful charter operation in Trinidad and Tobago for most of the 80s and 90s and early 2000s having about three or so boats going out quite regularly on a daily basis. He came here, he was fortunate, he came here in the 90s, he fished here in the 90s a bit and he caught, he was well caught on his first day here fishing.
thousand pound blue marlin and brought it to the scale and weighted as well in the 90s. Yeah on his first trip here. So he got he fell in love with Madeira and I think it was somewhere in the early 2000s or so he bought pescagrossa and he started a charter operation out of here in Madeira and we've been coming here since. As you know I work on I captain a boat called the Luna right now here in Madeira.
Katie (08:20.27)and she's just undergoing maintenance in the yard right now. So we just held up on that waiting for that boat to come back and I'll be running that boat this season. You're from Trinidad, Tobago. Do you, what, like what, growing up, what was your seasons like? Cause you've been going to Madeira for a while, but have you been living full time in Madeira for all these years or were you traveling back and forth? How did that look? So yeah, I spent about four months out of the year here.
in Madeira for the Blue Marlin season from about June to September, October. As well as, yeah, I spend the other six months in the Caribbean where I do commercial fishing as well as we do family fishing with my cousin. My cousin has a 46 hat to us in Trinidad and we go to a bunch of the tournaments in the Southern Caribbean, such as Grenada, Barbados, St. Lucia.
and a couple of tournaments in Tobago as well, where I live for the other part of the year. Yeah, that's about my fishing background. I fish the Southern Caribbean a bunch as well as Hey Medaro. What are the seasons for the Southern Caribbean? What are the months and what is the tournament season specifically? And what are you targeting in those various locations? What size fish?
What kind of tackle are you fishing? What does that look like? So we have a few tournaments in the Southern Caribbean. One of them is the Grenada International Bill Fishing Tournament. They have the Barbados International Game Fishing Tournament as well as the Tobago International. We fish for, you know, mainly sailfish and smaller size blue marlin. So we do do the dredge, teaser, circle hook fishing.
for the smaller bellfish in the southern Caribbean. It's been very productive for the last couple of seasons. The fishing has been really well. Right before I came here, we did a three -day tournament. I think it had 30 or so boats, and they had over 130 releases, I believe it was, over three days of fishing. So the fishing back home is pretty good right now in terms of sailfish and smaller blue marlin.
Katie (10:44.91)how we target them, that's the tournaments that I'm accustomed attending. Yeah, that's awesome. So what months of the year are the tournaments? Do they start in February and go through May? How does that work? So they have Grenada in January, which is the first tournament for the Southern Caribbean for the year. My dad actually fished this year and won it. He came first place fishing in...
with the 46 after us, the hopscotch, my cousin, Peter and Grenada. So, that was the first tournament they have, Barbados, I believe is in March. Yes, they have the Barbados international tournament in March and the Tobago tournament is in April. Yep. That's awesome. And the Caribbean has been insane on
fire this year like you touched on. I mean, it's just been really, really good fishing, which is cool because the last few years have they been a little slower than usual or to par like what what has the have the seasons been like over the last few years and have you seen them changing at all? I think the fishing has been more or less productive in the last. You know two or three years. You know it's been really hot. You know before that it's always been fairly good. It's always been decent, you know.
But yeah, it's really been picking up in the last year or two. Been having a lot of, a lot more releases per average, per tournament. So. That's awesome. What are your biggest challenges when fishing the Southern Caribbean? Like, I mean, the waters are so different from what you see in Madeira, like so different already, the tackle spread, the fish you're seeing, it's all very different from each other. What are your biggest challenges in the Southern Caribbean specifically when fishing?
A couple issues we deal with is one mainly seaweed, you know, the seaweed problems getting worse, especially our region. We're learning to work with that, work, you know, a couple of techniques to work with fishing in the seaweed, especially if you find pods of fish that are tangled up in there. So, you know, working on new techniques to actually be able to fish through the seaweed and work with it as opposed to just have to fish somewhere that does not have seaweed. You know, we often find
Katie (13:04.142)large pods of blue marlin and sailfish right wrapped up with that sagasum seaweed, especially where it's stuck. So just working on some techniques on how to effectively fish through seaweed through the tournaments could give us a keen advantage, you know? So we, we're working on that's probably one of the most difficult. I would say that's the most difficult obstacle with fishing in Southern Caribbean right now, as well as, you know, we might get rough weather here and there, but.
Part of Caribbean life for sure. So what are some of these techniques you're talking about? How do you, I love that you talk about how a lot of the fish are under that sargassum because it's an entire ecosystem. And that sargassum, you guys, it's a problem because the grass is getting tangled in the line. It's getting in front of the baits and then the fish aren't going to eat if there's a chunk of grass in front of the bait or it's all up in the dredge.
So these mates are having to constantly get the grass off the line. It can be a real nuisance. But Curtis, tell me, how are you involved? What kind of techniques are you talking about? Because I'm super curious on how you fish around grass. I mean, I'll share as much as I can with you about that topic. But some of our techniques is we have really long outriggers. We have the triple spread of outriggers.
and we have them mounted in a high position on the boat where we could actually run the lines a bit shorter than we normally would as in really short and really high up in the outrigger as to get that barlet who to skip a bit more over the seaweed with the circle hook more or less out the water you know using the correct line and leader material and hooks and whatever to allow for that you know but more or less so it could skip over the seaweed
without actually getting tangled in it. One of the techniques, how we set up our dredges, how we run our dredges and how we set up our leaders on our teasers as well too. Would all play a good role in how much seaweed actually is able to get tangled onto your lures that you're running. Are you...
Katie (15:25.838)Are you allowed to divulge a little bit more on how you set up your dredges to avoid grass? I mean, we can't do. Yeah, we can't do. Or is it top secret? Yeah. I mean, I really would. I don't want to get you in trouble. Yeah. I mean, we do set up our dredges a bit differently. You know, we don't use the spreadable dredges, you know. We set them up a bit differently.
I don't think I could explain it too easily, but I could send some photos of our dredge setups when we run it through sexy weed. I would love that. Yeah, they're a little bit different from conventional dredges. Yeah, but I mean, like trying to, you know, every fishery is different, as you well know, and there's different challenges per fishery and trying to adapt your technique so that you will find success in that fishery is always so vital to your success.
So what kind of like, what size weight are you putting in these balihoo that you're trolling? Like what size weight to allow them to be skipping on the surface? Right. So that's a key part as well too. So you'd be using a half ounce lead, half ounce egg shaped lead as to not have the balihoo weighted much. So it tends to skip out any water. Of course, when you're fishing balihoo, ideally you would want it to be head down.
Tail Flop, Tail Wagon, ideally. But you know, when you're working with pods of sailfish and marlin right under the seaweed, they don't seem to mind if it's skipping a bit on the surface in that motion as opposed to giving you a more real feel. So we'd use the half ounce lead, we'd use maybe up to 50 pound fluorocarbon leader, even 40 pound fluorocarbon leader. Very light swivels, lightweight swivels.
You know, 25 pound test line, 30 pound test line. could even drop a little bit down from that as well to us. They're just all of that helps in keeping the, the angle of the hook and the head just a bit out the water. What size hook are you fishing? I six O VMC circle hook. Yeah. Good hook. I like those. I like those. That's cool. Awesome. I love it. So,
Katie (17:51.15)How many years have you been fishing the tournament season in the Southern Caribbean? maybe 15 years now with my father since I was a young boy. Many, many years. I think the first tournament I did, I'm 25. So I think I did my first tournament when I was probably, it's been more, probably when I was like eight years old, seven years old, I think I did my first fishing tournament with my dad. That's so cool. That is so cool.
And, all right. So how many years have you been fishing the season in Madeira? I've been trying to count that. I believe this is my 14th season or so coming here to Madeira fishing the blue marlin season. So since you were 11. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. Okay. So let's dive into Madeira a little bit. So what are, you know, we talked about in the Southern Caribbean, we're seeing a lot of grass. The weather can be pretty challenging.
in Madeira, there's a very specific season for the fishing primarily because of the winter swell that will hit the island in the winter. But so you're there from June to August, I believe is what you said. And what are, like, what are your biggest challenges in Madeira for the fishing and how does it vary from the Caribbean? So fishing in Madeira.
It's quite an easy fishery I would say here. Mostly we'll be fishing two or three miles from the coast in flat calm waters, very pristine, so not a lot of trash in the water, not a lot of interference. Challenges of fishing here in Madeira is more in terms of trying to locate the blue marlin as opposed to any of the conditions that are naturally occurring.
It's a very safe place to fish and it's very easy to fish. We fish in very close to the shore and the weather conditions are just right for most of the four months that I'm here. So as challenges as fishing in Madeira, I don't think there are that many. The marina facilities are very nice. They have water and fuel, electric, all at the dock. They make it very straightforward and easy for you as well as...
Katie (20:17.006)Living on the island is lovely. Beautiful here. Weather's right. The climate's really nice. So I don't think there's much challenges in terms of fishing. One issue we do have is being very vigorous with our paperwork here. They're very meticulous with all their policies of making sure that you have all the correct documentation to go fishing. Like what kind of documentation?
What are some of the policies out there? How does that look? Is it something you have to submit? Is there a form you have to submit after every trip? How is that? Tell us a little bit more about the documentation. So we would need to just... Everything here is paperwork. So nothing is computerized, only computerized system. So it takes a few days after you submit forms or whatever to receive replies and returns in terms of that.
That's a challenge on its own. As well as, you know, there are a lot of papers you need to get, you know, you need to get a lighthouse license, a fishing license. We would have out of the water inspections, as well as in the water inspections annually on the boats, as well as inspections of all, you know, the safety gear on body boat, which is pretty standard, I think, globally. But we managed to...
We work around that and make sure that we have everything in compliance with it. But sometimes it takes a few days just to get a response from these guys. And that's about it. Yeah, it's hard. It's island time. Like you said, nothing's on the computer. It's all hand form, handwriting. I know that I was I was texting you earlier and you said, yeah, I'm just doing some boat paperwork. Like, let's get on a call. So I'm super into that. That's cool. But what about
You know, we touched on how you're doing light tackle in the Caribbean and heavy tackle 130s. You just got a grander like over in Madeira. I'm just I'm so excited for you because the fact that two fish showed up behind the spread and you got one of them. It's just the coolest story to me. I was so stoked to see that it was the Pescadrosa and that you were on board. Why do you think like why?
Katie (22:33.518)Is Madeira a spot for big fish? And why is the Caribbean a spot for smaller fish? Does it have to do with the sea floor, the bottom, the currents? What's your insight on that? Interesting. So my insight on why the larger fish tend to show up to Madeira as opposed to the Caribbean. It's a lot to do with just their general migratory patterns, as well as, you know,
So the bigger ones would have a different migrational pattern. I believe the smaller fish in the Caribbean. So I think it's a lot to do with that. And in terms of why Madeira might have the biggest size average, the biggest average size blue marlin, I think out of anywhere in the world, you know? I can't tell you specifically that I know for sure, you know? But I do know that they have a...
very large average size blue marlin over here. And I don't see that, you know, very often other places that I fish. But as to why they, why they do come here, not very sure, not very sure entirely. What is the water temp you're fishing there in Madeira? Right now, right now it's about 21, 22 degrees Celsius in between that range. shoot. What is that? That's like,
a 7980 to in Fahrenheit. I could be wrong. It's been a while since I've Celsiused up, but that's probably that's that's pretty. How hot does it get? How hot does the water get? So last year we had a record record breaking sea surface temperatures in Portugal and here Madeira as well. The hottest I saw last year was 26, 27 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but that's very hot.
Okay, so I had to Google it and I looked it up and 21, 22 degrees Celsius is between 70, 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not very warm, especially when you're used to Gulf of Mexico waters. But 26 degrees Celsius is closer to 78, 80 degrees Fahrenheit. And when you're looking at the Eastern Atlantic, as Curtis said, record breaking temperatures, it's very warm, especially for those bigger fish.
Katie (24:55.438)So how was the fishing when it was that warm? The fishing generally, it was slow. It was slow here in Madeira last season, with not too many fish being caught here by the fleet. But right next door, about 550 miles away, they had phenomenal blue marlin fishery in the Azores, you know, with very similar water temperature. Yeah. But I think it's largely to do with
How the bait forms up down there, they have a lot of banks over there and that bait is able to stick to a lot of structure. Whereas opposed to Madeira, just a big shelf, you know, not too many banks fish offshore here. Madeira just drops off. So Madeira is like a really steep island. It's where I learned how to drive stick shift and it was extremely challenging, but it's a very steep island and it continues in its steepness past the water.
Right. So, you know, Curtis talked about how we're fishing anywhere from one to three miles off of out of the Marina. It's because that water just it just the seafloor just drops off. So in the Azores, Curtis, have you have you spent any time fishing the Azores? So last year in October, I did a 10 day trip to the Azores to blue marlin fish and it was very good. It was probably at the peak of the peak of when the bite was red hot and
Yes, I did spend 10 days there last year. So what island were you fishing on? And tell me a little bit about like the banks that you're talking about. Like, does it is it like a gradual does the seafloor decline gradually there for a little while? And the like, what was the depth that the bait was pushing up on? What was the fishing like? Give me a little bit of insight in that. We were fishing, so I was fishing off of Horta.
the Azores which is just a very small island I think the population is 6 ,000 so only 6 ,000 people live on that little island and it was very remote you know they had the bar company operation was there the uno mass port fishing operation was there as well as the charter fleet we did four days fishing raised a couple couple nice
Katie (27:19.022)Blue Marla, I think we caught four from six over that time, as well as hooked onto a really, really big bluefin tuna. I estimated that one to be around 1200 pounds. Yes. Yeah. It looked like somebody dropped a mid -sized bus on top of the lure. And we fought that thing for four hours. my gosh, and the water was that warm? my gosh. Yeah. That's crazy.
Yeah. Interesting. Did y 'all see more than one bluefin or was that just the one bluefin you saw? No, there was a school of them feeding and we drove into the school. Yeah. But it was, it was very large sized bluefin tuna. It was not, it was very, very large. my gosh. That's amazing. That is amazing. Sorry. You threw me for, I was not expecting you to tell me that you caught a bluefin, in October and the Azores. Yeah. As well as some Mako sharks.
Yeah, the marine life out there was spectacular. It was really something special. The water was very alive, you know, baits, birds, just lots of different sea creatures. You could tell that it was coming to life and everything was very alive out there. That's amazing. And was that when the water temp was pretty high or had it already started cooling down a little bit? So I can't recall the exact water temp.
you know, on the days that I fished, but I think Azores was as well affected by similar extreme high sea surface temps as well as Madeira, you know, it was record breaking high for all of Portugal last year. That's amazing. That's crazy. So tell me about these banks you mentioned and that the baits baits pushing up there. So how does that work? OK, so they have they have these banks that are off the so they have the island structure of Porta.
very similar to Madeira they have the shelf shortly after but further offshore that is essentially underwater volcanoes or you know that form the banks that rise up pretty shallow that are far off the island structure you know a bit further off the island structure like the Condor Bank I believe the Princess Alice Bank three banks
Katie (29:47.534)that, pretty close to each other on, on, on in Horta. You know, I can't remember the name of the other one right now, but I definitely remember the Abicondo Bank, Princess Alice Bank. And, How far from Horta and how shallow does it get on those banks or the seamounts? How shallow does it get on the seamounts? Hmm. I think it comes all the way up to.
I'm not sure exactly, you know, I'm not sure exactly, but I think it comes up to about 300, 300 meters deep. So it would come up. Yeah. That is very, yeah, that is nice. And they're close to each other. And how far from Horta are they? So I believe one, one starts at about, I think 12 kilometers and the furthest one is.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm just roughly remembering from my 10 day trip here, so I don't know specifically exactly, but I think it's somewhere around. Right, you're doing so good. You're doing so good. I think it's about 14 kilometers, 20 kilometers, and something like that. They have some more offshore ones as well too that I did not fish while I was there. They have great structure all over the Azores.
Yeah, that sounds like, and again, kilometers and miles, I'm not doing so good with my conversions, but that sounds like they're all like within 15 miles of the island. I believe something like that, right? So that's pretty amazing. Like it's close. It's close. You're not burning a lot of fuel to get out there. I mean, not a terrible amount, but it is rough, especially during October, September, October. It's rough out there.
We are most boats wouldn't be able to fully power up and those kinds of swells, but yeah, there's a fairly, you know, not, not terribly far run. That's cool. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about how the swell changes in that part of the world during that season, because when we were in Madeira, I know I was told that a lot of the boats, like the Luna, you guys go onto the hard in the off season. Can you tell me why? And.
Katie (32:08.782)And and how and that's I'm assuming that those swells affect the Azores as well So I think one of the bigger reasons that we pull the boats out usually in October is because The marlin season tends to slow down. We wouldn't find that the marlin migrate through this area much after that time You know, they they've had years and they've had periods of time where it would be calm here through december january, you know as
as yet a year would change, you know, some years it could be very rough here in October or even May and June could be very rough here, depending on what the global atmosphere is like, you know. Yeah. So I think that's a big reason we pull the boats out here in October is just because the maling migration starts to slow down. But why wouldn't you leave it in the slip? Why? Why do you take the boat out of the water? You don't see that in a lot of other parts of the world. Like you when when it's the off season, the boat just sits in the slip.
You know, like it's not, we're not going to take the boat out of the water in the off season unless it's an outboard. Right. So, why, why do you guys do that? And you see that throughout the entire fleet for the most part, correct? Yeah. Yep. So, a lot of the boats, a lot of the sport fishing boats here would, the captains, the crews would leave. It would leave, you know, go to Latin America, the United States, different parts of Europe and.
You know, it's a risk. It's always a risk because we do have forecasts of what it should be like, you know, maybe two weeks in advance, but it's never, you're never, you're never going to know if it's going to be one of those years where you're going to have a lot of swells coming through and it might, it might damage, the boat might be damaged in the marina with no captain and crew here to check out for these boats and look after these boats. The owners find it's a lot more safe.
to have them out in the water where they can't sink. Truth, truth. I know that when we got to Madeira in 2021, the wall, the bulkhead along the outside of the marina had just recently been redone. You could see where a big wave came in and just tore the seawall of the marina down. Am I right? Like, or did I make that up? Yeah, no, yes.
Katie (34:31.406)So yeah, they do have big swells that come on to the sea wall and definitely knock bits of concrete off of that retaining wall that's protecting the marina. I mean, we lost a cleat. We lost a cleat when we were there from one wave just coming in and just ripping the boat. And that was in the middle of the calm season. And we're fishing in Madeira, you're fishing the lee of the island. So it is like a swimming pool out there.
It's really nice. It's really close to shore. And every now and then you see two granders behind your spread. So, that's so cool. And the hard, so tell us about the boatyard in Madeira because my mind was kind of blown by that as well. We talked about how the Island is super steep. So there's not a lot of places to have a boatyard. Can you get, can you give us a little details on it?
Okay, so the boatyard in Madeira is situated actually under the airport runway. And the airport runway, it's built on stilts. So it's a huge concrete structure. And yeah, they have the lovely company Technovia that has the boatyard service there. And they're always very responsive and helping us out, giving us a hand with whatever we need down there at the outhaul spot.
It's pretty cool. It's an interesting place. That's so cool. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so crazy, you guys. I've never seen an airport runway that is superimposed over the ground. To have a bunch of yachts sitting under it in the boatyard is just like a Twilight Zone type experience. But Madeira is known, the airport's known for its...
lack of a better word, but it's sketchiness. It's a crazy plane landing to get into Madeira. It's like a one -shot, one -shot. You can't miss, you can't miss. Those pilots. Have you flown in and out of Madeira a lot, Curtis? I'm assuming so. You get there by plane. Yes, absolutely. I've been in and out here a bunch of times now. The airport, I feel like it's fairly safe.
Katie (36:51.502)like it's pretty safe you know it does feel sketchy sometimes they do close off the flights quite often they do close off the flights and they reroute them to the smaller island Porto Santo which is a few minutes flight time from here. No it's here in Madeira, it's part of Madeira. Porto Santo yeah okay yes that makes sense yeah south southeast of Madeira right? I believe so yes. Yeah.
Cool. yeah, I never made it over there. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely little Island. Sometimes they do reroute the flights to Azores as well too, just depending on what the local weather conditions are like. Yeah, that's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the fleet in Madeira. You have a super international fleet there. You've got some local teams, but also teams from all sorts of different countries. Can you tell us a little bit about the size of the fleet and where people come from?
So there's a, I consider it to be a small charter fleet, maybe five to eight boats or so that operate out of the, out of Madeira. And yeah, like you said, most of them, I mean, my dad runs the Pesca Grossa, I run the Luna. They have a couple of the boats with Madeira on teams, but not too many foreign people. I think they have a couple of guys from England as well too.
But not that many people actually run charter boats down here. They got a small group of English guys, me and my dad and a couple local guys as well that run charter boats. That's cool. It's a great little marina, you guys. If you have a chance to fish out there, definitely take it. And I'll link Curtis's information in the description below so you can...
Schedule a charter with him because he's a heck of a fisherman as you as you know from this episode He's had all sorts of experience now Curtis Tell me like your favorite day on the water in Madeira My favorite day on the water. I think it was probably this week Monday. It was a pretty good one. I really enjoyed that Yeah, maybe I didn't know going to full detail exactly as to how everything played out, but
Katie (39:11.182)It was, I think that was probably one of my best moments, you know, fishing wise. It's been great. If you want to go into detail now, like let's hear it again. I mean, I'm down to sit through, I want to hear it again. Yeah. I mean, no, just in terms of not what happened, just other terms of the day, you know, like, like you said, it was their honeymoon and there were two fish, you know, so that was quite amazing. That was mind boggling for me, you know.
I've seen big ones here traveling in twos before, as well as schools and pods. But just having two of them and spread like that, very similar size and actually being able to catch one and weigh one, I think, it's definitely one of my favorite experiences. That's so special. That's so special. I had a podcast with a captain, Chris Donato in Kona, and he was telling me that when he sees a big fish,
a lot of times he'll see smaller fish around it. So like a female and most likely males around it. So I find it really interesting that you had two big fish in your spread at the same time. And I just like, I mean, I'm blown away by it, honestly. And y 'all hadn't seen anything the entire day, right? Like that was, those were the first fish you saw. Yeah. The first blue mollins that we saw. Yeah.
We were having quite a day, you know, in terms of mark and bait, you know, and we were checking our satellite imagery, trying to locate where we might find a little bit of warmer water. And yeah, it was, it was, it was really something, you know, I mean. Do you see it in your dreams when you close your eyes at night? I mean, sometimes, yeah, I think back in the memory quite often, especially this week, you know.
Definitely. Of course. It's my memory, memory, know? Yeah, I really enjoyed that. It was pretty good. Would you say that you've been fishing your whole life for that experience? I wouldn't say for that experience, but yeah, that's definitely one of the what you would target to hunt the type of fish that I would be targeting, especially when I come here to Madera, Madeira, know, I tried to target blue mullet over 500 pounds. That being well over that.
Katie (41:37.102)is definitely the size fish that came at the target. Definitely. What does it mean to you to have finally weighed a grander? And Madeira, I mean, you've been fishing there for 14 years. You said you've caught a handful that you think are over the mark, but to have it, to bring it back to the dock, to catch it within 40 minutes, that's amazing. And to bring it back to the dock and weigh it and it's over the mark, it's got to be
just a really proud moment for you. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience is like? Cause I don't know what it feels like and I want to know what it's like and what it means to you specifically. Interesting. So coming back to the doc we did, we went and we were unsure if it would weigh a thousand pounds, you know, we knew it was big. We did not know it was that big, you know, so there was some speculation as to what the weight actually might be on the boat still. So we would
anticipating it to be in the region of 900 to a thousand pounds you know with with our we just had a little a little measuring tape on the boat a little small one 120 inches i believe and we measured the fish the length of the fish and it took up the whole tape you know we weren't able to measure the whole fish because the tail was in the water still as well too so we're actually able to get a proper measurement on the fish until
got it on the crane and off the boat. So it had a pretty big half girth at 39 inches. So we did realize that it was a very girthy fish, very fat fish. So we didn't know it had the girth of a grander, but we weren't sure about the length because the scale, the measuring tape we had didn't let us, but we pulled it off the boat and got it on the scale.
found out it was 1 ,048. So it was in that moment, it was pretty cool to know that it was over ground because you know, those type of fish, like you say, blue marlin fishermen hunt for a lifetime. Yes, I think it is a fish of a lifetime. It is so cool. Now, what made y 'all decide, did the fish come up dead or did you decide to swing the gaff? So it came up tail wrapped on the leader, came up tail wrapped.
Katie (43:59.31)it was pretty docile, but, we saw that the fish was pretty huge, you know, thought it was over the mark. So we decided to on both it. Yeah. It was, you know, it was a, it wasn't a very lively fish because it's been tail wrapped, you know, we were pulling it backwards for I think probably 20 minutes or 30 minutes of the 20 minute fight, but, which you guys.
When that happens, that means that the fish is, it can't breathe. So it's kind of unfortunate. It's super unfortunate when a fish gets tail wrapped. But if it's a fish of that size and you're going to weigh it, it's safer for the team, you know, in these situations for this fish to be docile. They can really, you know, cause some, some havoc and it, it's a precious memory for everyone. The see, killing a fish is never like that fun.
but also these fishermen, we pursue this experience our entire lives. And Curtis, do you think that now that you've achieved this, is it gonna affect the way you hit the water every day? Or do you see any differences in your mindset or your experience? No, not in particular. I don't think I see, I view fishing much differently. I always knew,
you know, situations and they have fish out here that do exist like that. And I don't think it's mentally going to change the way that I approach fishing or I attach myself to fishing. You know, I'm a second generation fisherman, so I always knew fishing is a big part of my life. And I always plan to do fishing trips for the rest of my life. So, you know, I mean, I really do love fishing and I'm passionate about it, but I don't think it's changed the way I view fishing.
What do you think you love so much about fishing? What do you think keeps calling you back to the ocean? Okay. I mean, obviously it's in your blood. Yeah. That's a good question. I'm very passionate about it, marine ecosystems. I love seeing fish in the natural environments. Being out there in the ocean, in Madeira, the ocean's very beautiful, fresh air, very peaceful. All great things I love about my job.
Katie (46:22.158)It beats working in an office or something like this. So I think that's why I'm very passionate about it. You know, just it's a lovely environment out there and a very enjoyable, enjoyable job. I couldn't agree more. I love being on the ocean. It's just the way it makes you feel is so peaceful. And you guys, so you have Big Blue Marlin and Madeira. We've talked about that. What other fish are you catching out?
there? Like, is there another fish that you target when you're fishing those waters? So, we do target big eye tuna when they are around, some large sized big eye tuna. Some of them exceeding 300 pounds, you know, other than that, we try deep dropping some, for different species of group of shark that they have here. you know, we catch all sorts of crazy creatures from the deep without deep drop in equipment. So
We've been trying that as well as the wahoo fish in here is good as well too. They do have decent wahoo fish in here. But while I'm here in Madeira, I try to target my focus around fishing for big blue mollusk. It's definitely where I try to focus most of my thought. Now, why do you think like I find that interesting? Because me too, like I love tuna. I love wahoo. You know, I love eating fish. But my passion is with chasing the billfish.
Like I want the billfish, you want the billfish, even though most of the time it's catch and release. Like why do you think that is? Like what is it about bill fishing? That's a good question. Well, it's visually, visually it's very, it's phenomenal. You know, when you see a mile enabled to trace one of these lures and you know, take multiple hits at it or even just one single hit go airborne or,
whatever they do, you know, it's visually spectacular. So it's breathtaking in that sense.
Katie (48:31.214)I mean, in terms of, you know, I just grew up blue marlin fishing. You know, my dad was always a very avid blue marlin fisherman, you know. And I guess that always seemed to be the targeted species that he would try to catch as well too, you know. So for me, it's also just following along those lines and just being very passionate about that, you know. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
And those big guy, you know, you mentioned that they get really big. We, I mean, we caught a handful of really big, big, big guy when we were in Madeira in the sunset hours. in the summertime, the sunsets really late. I mean, am I right? I feel like 9 PM was when the sun was setting. So those are some really full days on the water. If you're going the whole, the whole sunlight hours, which we did, but I think most people don't. but,
What is, okay, we're gonna wrap it up here pretty soon, but I wanna dive into a little bit with your relationship with Frothy, you know, your dad, who's been passionate about bill fishing his whole life. You have both been fishing the Caribbean and Madeira fisheries for a long time. And what, like as a kid, what is your best memory of fishing with your dad?
Whether it be like on the boat with him or when he came back to the dock, like what's your most impressive, like impressionable is what I meant to say, impressionable memory of your dad at your like early ages of life? Like it could, I could even ask like, what's your first fishing memory? That's a good one. Yeah. So I think a lot of my most prized memories with my dad are some of the earlier fishing experiences, some of the first fishing trips we ever been on, you know, my first blue marlin.
my first fish, you know. In terms of details of exactly what happened on those days and where we were fishing, you know, I can't really remember, but I definitely do remember, you know, fishing with him, you know, in lakes and stuff when I was a young child and, you know, catching different species of lake fish and as well as going offshore and catching blue marlin and tuna. I think I got my first one when I was nine years old or so. And
Katie (50:49.83)That was truly a very good memory with my dad. Fishing here in Madeira, I had some amazing experiences. I think it was in 2015. I was fishing here with my dad on the Pesca Grossa as well too. We had a really amazing day as well too. We were fishing, I think it was similar, it was around four o 'clock in the evening and we were coming in from a long day, no fish. We were just coming in and it was four o 'clock and...
We had a big one take on the left, on the right long I believe it was. Take the lure and dump out a bunch of line. Nobody saw the bite. And I was clearing the spread, I cleared in the spread and I pulled in the left short and about a 700 pound fish or so came and ate that lure as well too. So we had two on at the same time. And we caught the 700 pounder and then we got to the other one and.
We brought it to the boat and we thought that that one was 1 ,100 pounds. You know, so that was probably the best experience I had with my dad in terms of a good fishing day as well too. So it's interesting to know that the bigger ones do travel in twos and multiple. That is so incredible. That's so cool. And I love, my gosh, I loved it. Like one hit.
and then you're clearing the spread. So the speed of the lure changed. There's stuff going on and it enticed another bite from another fish, you know, like already in like going back to your story just a few days ago where you had one hit the short and then go into the long, like it's already aggressively feeding, which might be why a second fish was enticed to come up and hit that right short again. And it's just like, that's so cool. Like it just goes to show
that like making changes in the spread can really play a key role in getting these fish to bite. But the fact that you had that memory, like what were you like 14, 15 years old and you have that memory with your dad on a double big fish double. So did you all release that 1100 pounder? Yes, we did. Yeah. Or that big girl. Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yes, we did. That's amazing. That's so cool. That's so cool, Curtis.
Katie (53:09.606)Yeah, I love it. And like even, you know, and in a lot of places in the world, especially in the summertime, we have a lot of tournaments going on, especially in the Gulf and Eastern Atlantic. And killing this fish, it's part of it, but it's not always part of it. You know, like releasing fish in the bill fishing world is more often than not what happens. And as fishermen, we're so passionate about the conservation.
And I think it's interesting, you know, having this conversation with you, Curtis, you're talking about the seasons, what you're seeing, there's two big fish at the same time. A lot of what we know about these fish, we know from recreational fishermen, charter fishermen that are out there on the water every day. We know their migration patterns a little bit more than we would if we weren't out there on the water every day and every season. I think that's so cool. So Curtis.
Congratulations so much on your grander. I'm so proud of you. I'm so excited for you. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you and where they can book a charter with Luna? Absolutely. Thank you very much. I mean, for having me as well. You could find a Madeira Sportfishing or my Facebook, Curtis De Silva on Facebook or Instagram. And yeah, more than happy to.
to pick you guys especially if you have anybody that is interested. Are you also running charters in Southern Caribbean? Yeah. So my brother owns and operates 43 Beatrum in Grenada. And I work on him as a mate with him during the season over there. Perfect. So I'll make sure to tag those operations in the description below. So you guys
Check those out if you want to book with Curtis. I highly recommend. He's a great time. And Curtis, you know, do you have any last words for the listeners or anything you want to say to close out? No, thank you very much. I appreciate the podcast. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And it's been great. You're so awesome, Curtis. I really appreciate the chat and we'll talk soon. And that's a wrap. If you like this episode, please feel free to share. If you're watching on YouTube,
Katie (55:27.59)feel free to like, share, and subscribe. And if you listen to it, do check out the YouTube video because Curtis has shared some good photo and video content to support our conversation. Y 'all don't stop chasing your wild and we'll be seeing you out there.

Ep.08: Robert ‘Fly’ Navarro and The Blue Marlin World Cup

Summary:
In this conversation, Fly Navarro shares his passion for fishing and media. He discusses his background growing up in Palm Beach County and his experiences fishing in the Caribbean and Hawaii. Fly also talks about his transition to freelancing and creating content, as well as his involvement with the Blue Marlin World Cup. This part of the conversation focuses on the Blue Marlin World Cup and the logistics of the tournament. It also discusses the cost of entry, the minimum weight requirement, and the use of certified scales for weighing the fish. The conversation then delves into the emotional moments and the perspective of fishing. The story of the Apex boat is shared, highlighting the power of stories in the fishing community. The importance of people and the connections made through fishing are emphasized. In this conversation, Fly Navarro shares his passion for fishing and the joy he finds in sharing the sport with others. He emphasizes the importance of enjoying the moment and releasing the death grip on the fishing rod. Fly Navarro also discusses the satisfaction he derives from bringing new anglers into the sport and helping them achieve their fishing goals. He encourages young listeners to pursue their passions and not be afraid to take risks. Overall, Fly Navarro's love for fishing and his desire to promote the sport shine through in this conversation.
 
Takeaways
 
Fly Navarro is a passionate angler and media creator, constantly seeking new fishing experiences and opportunities.
He emphasizes the importance of staying connected through Wi-Fi and using social media to share his fishing adventures and promote the sport.
Fly's background includes fishing in the Caribbean and running a boat in Hawaii, where he gained valuable experience and knowledge.
He is dedicated to introducing fishing to new people and opening doors for others to enjoy the sport. Enjoy the moment and release the death grip on the fishing rod.
Share the joy of fishing with others and help them achieve their fishing goals.
Encourage more women and families to participate in fishing.
Don't be afraid to pursue your passions and take risks.
Transcript:
Katie (00:00.206)Next week is the fourth of July, not only a very important holiday in the United States, but also the day of the Blue Marlin World Cup, the only international blue marlin tournament of its kind where for one day only the biggest fish weighed in any of the oceans around the world takes the win. Today, I'm sitting down with Robert Fly Navarro, the tournament director of the Blue Marlin World Cup. As we discuss the ins and outs of this tournament, what makes it so unique?
his career and the various endeavors and experiences that make Fly who he is.
Katie (00:42.99)Hey, what's up you guys? Welcome to the Katie C Sawyer podcast. I'm your host Katie. And today I'm sitting with the man behind much of the sport fishing media and what we know, Robert Fly Navarro. Fly, thank you so much for being here today. 100 % my pleasure. And thank you so much for your patience while we had all our technical difficulties. And you know, it is what it is. We're here, the content's being produced and that's all that really.
matters because I really like now touch on this because you have some a slogan that you live by and that's why we're both here today. What is it? I got a lot of slogans. Which one? There's a lot of slogans I live by. I only get one. I only get one ticket for this ride, so I make sure I'm having the best fucking time of my life. There you go. Well, my personal favorite, if we're going to go that far, is the one where
If you can expose one person efficient every single day, then then you're living your life. Right. that. Listen, that's that is my that's my business slogan. I wake up every day and my goal is to introduce fishing to one new person every single day. So that, yes, that is my goal. I absolutely love that. And I find it extremely admirable. But before we get into a lot of different things that I'm excited to be talking to you about coming into this big tournament season.
Tell us a little bit about your background. First, where are you tuning in from today? Where did you grow up? You have two parents that are Cuban and I want to hear about Childhood Fly. Okay, so there's certain things about Childhood Fly that I'll share and there's certain things I won't. But yes, I'm the... And this is something I repeat over and over and over. I am the son of two immigrants from a communist country.
And it's one of the reasons why I am such a big fan of America. I do a lot of work with our military. I'm on the board of directors for a nonprofit that gets active and retired veterans out fishing and hunting. So I am a huge pro -America guy. And anybody that's spent time with me understands that.
Katie (03:04.398)But it mainly it comes from my parents and my grandparents because of the fact that I heard how bad communism and socialism is. And unfortunately, I also got a chance to see what socialism does because I was in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez got voted in and I saw a wonderful country literally get destroyed in less than 20 years. So yeah, I'm a big America first kind of guy, a big
freedom of speech kind of guy. A lot of people have died for our freedom. So I do a lot of stuff to make sure they know how much I appreciate what they've done and they being both men and women, cause we got a lot of ladies out on the front line making sure we can sleep at night. So where did you grow up? I grew up right here where I'm at right now. I grew up in Palm beach County. I still live in Palm beach County.
I've fallen, it's a weird thing. If you look at statistics, they say something like 60 % of Americans still live within 10 miles of where they grew up. And that's me. My high school is less than 10 miles away. My first job is less than 10 miles away from where I live. But I spend like 250 days on the road. I travel all over the world. I average about 200 ,000 miles a year.
Freaking flyer mom. Yeah. No. Yeah. You've got all the perks. Yeah. I definitely do. It's pretty bad when I go into the airport and they all know me. My girlfriend thinks it's the funniest thing. I've traveled with some of her friends. We all go and Mr. Navarro, how are you? What's going on? She's like, really? I'm like, yeah. And now it's gotten to the point. I was just flying back from Doha in Qatar. That's a cool airport.
I've never seen anything like it. There's playgrounds everywhere, little like museums. So great. Any of those airports in the Middle East are phenomenal. But I got on my plane as I'm sitting on my seat. The flight attendant walk up to me. She goes, you were on my flight a few weeks ago, weren't you? I'm like, yeah, I know exactly who you are. So that's how much I'm on the planes. I know the flight attendants. That's why I try to be so nice to them.
Katie (05:30.318)because if you're not, they'll remember you on the ride back. Actually, I just try to be nice to everybody. I want people to treat me nice, so I treat them nice. Yeah, I mean, 100%. And that's part of being a part of this community is scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Everyone's out there. We're all fishing.
We're all looking for a good time and especially in the sport fishing space in the recreational angler space, you know, like everyone's got a boat owner. Everyone's working hard to make sure that they do a good job and sharing information out there is so pivotal. How do you feel about that? Did you grow up? Wait, hold up. You're distracting me. Did you grow up fishing the Caribbean? So I didn't start fishing the Caribbean until I took this profession, this road down a profession.
I was in college, I was 18 years old, I was making a whopping $4 an hour and a friend of mine, his dad was a boat captain and he's like, what are you doing this summer? And I said, well, I gotta work, I gotta make some money to pay for college and when I'm not working, I'm gonna go fishing. That's what I did every summer. And he's like, well, I want you to go with me to Mexico. And I'm like, okay. I go, but I don't know anything about working on big boats. He goes, I'll teach you.
But I need somebody that's bilingual. And English is my second language. So once I went down to Mexico and people figured out that I spoke two languages, I was gone. Yeah. I was, I mean, literally, I was gone. They grabbed me and I ended up going through the canal for the first time, going fishing Panama and Penas Bay, went up to Costa Rica. my gosh, chills. That's exactly what happened. Yeah. So and then shortly thereafter, I moved to Venezuela and
I started fishing out of there for four, I lived in Venezuela for four years. And yeah, it was great. I mean, I absolutely loved it and spent 20 years of my career fishing out of central South America, St. Thomas. I know you told me to stop before, because we were starting to talk about St. Thomas. No, now's the time. Bye. And then I got an opportunity to run a boat out in Hawaii. So I flew out to Hawaii and I ran a boat for two years.
Katie (07:45.134)And after that, I came home and I went into business for myself. Question. I have a handful of questions. The first one is, did you ever finish your university degree? I got a two year degree to be a teacher. I wanted to be, what I really wanted to be was a high school guidance counselor. I have this thing and most people know I don't have children, but I have a thing that I want to open doors for as many people as possible, especially our youth. And
I know a few years ago I started a program and we're looking to relaunch it called Kids in the Fly Zone where we give kids the opportunity to learn how to fish, learn how to go hunting, meet other people that like to do it because sometimes your parents don't enjoy it. Maybe your parents don't like to fish and hunt. Or just aren't exposed in that scene. There's plenty of people that didn't grow up in it. Yeah, they just didn't grow up in it and you were interested in it. I was very lucky. On my father's side, everybody was really big into fishing.
I had one cousin that was into hunting and there's so many opportunities nowadays that, you know, especially with social media, there's a lot of young kids that can meet other young kids that like to do it. So you can grow your social circle very quickly now with social media. So I just like to open doors for people. Yeah. And I know you and I had a conversation about that earlier this morning about opening doors for other people.
I'm a very big believer in the Bible says when you get up to a certain level, it's our duty to reach back and help the next person up. And that's something I 100 % wholeheartedly believe in. Yeah, those are beautiful words to live by. A good reminder every single day. I love that. And I think it's super cool that you had this passion as a young man to help guide younger generations. And you're doing that now, but on a global scale. Like, that's incredible.
So 100 % global. So you did finish your degree and then you went and worked in the sport fishing space. How many years from starting? I guess. Did you go to the Yucatan? Was that where you went on your first Mexico trip? Yeah, I went to I went to Cancun and for the people that are old enough to remember, I went to Hacienda Del Mar. Yeah, not me. I'm not old enough to remember, but I do. I have heard of it. I was thinking about my friend Bobby. It was back in the day when
Katie (10:09.87)Whenever you tried to get ahold of a deckhand, you would call Jim at Hacienda Del Mar and say, hey, I'm looking for fly. And then when you come in from fishing, he'd walk down to the boat. Hey, Katie was trying to get ahold of me. That's so cool. Man, those dates. Here's the phone number. Totally different. Yeah. And then, so how much time from then to when you were running a boat in Hawaii? my gosh. That was a solid.
I would say easy 20 if not 23 years. That's easy 20. That's so cool. It's so cool that you fished that Venezuela scene full time for four years. That's just awesome. You know, it's funny because I just got invited to go back down there. Literally a couple of weeks ago, somebody called me up and says, hey, there's a tournament coming up. We really like you to come down. And again, because of the fact that I speak both languages, I made a lot of good friends down there.
I'm trying to decide if I want to go or not. It's still there's a lot of political unrest and I don't even know if I can get a visa. So I really would like to go back down and see what it looks like and take a bunch of pictures and share with everybody, you know, what what's going on down there. Yeah, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of stories to share still. So, yeah, I'd like to do it. We just got to figure out the time and the safety factor. Yeah, for sure. Of course.
Yeah, but I learned a lot that there's something to be said and there's a lot of great young mates nowadays in Venezuela I'm sorry in Costa Rica and Panama and Guatemala There's nothing that can replace repetitive numbers You know, we were getting 40 40 to 50 bites a day on billfish You you can't replace that no, there's no better way to learn
the experience you get because every fish is different, every situation is different and then the dynamic you build with your team when you have that much consistency, you just can't, like you said, you can't replace it. Yeah, you can't replace it. And even though every fish is different, every fish is the same. There are certain things about it that a lot of things are the same. Everything's different. But
Katie (12:28.398)There are a lot of times when you only get one bite a day, everybody's like, my God, don't mess up. Don't mess up. Don't mess up. But when you're getting 50 bites a day, who gives a shit? I'm going to mess up. I'm going to try something. Like I remember my last couple of years living in Venezuela in 99 and 2000, we started playing with circle hooks and my captain at the time, great guy, Captain Billy Boar. He loved the fact. Well, he loved and he let me work with innovating stuff.
We were trying to learn the whole new circle hook thing because Ronnie Hamlin was doing it in Guatemala and he was very successful at it. And we were just trying to find out new ways to make it faster and better and easier. And I was on one flat line with the circle hook. So it was cool. We had a lot of fun with it. That's awesome. We had a lot of fun with it. Yeah. But I mean, like getting to see, because I find fish behavior varies.
And it varies from day to day, but it also varies from fish to fish. And there's things you can see when you see a fish show up on the teaser and it's behaving a certain way. Like you can start differentiating between the mood of that fish when you see it enough times and how you want to pitch that bait out, how you want to present that bait to the fish. Well, it's funny you say because yes, there's a little bit of a, okay, I like the word mood, but the mood is
is always dependent on other surrounding factors. So fish are very reactive. So I remember when I went out to Hawaii, I went out there specifically, my boss wanted to do pitch bait. And everybody out there at that time was just dragging lures. And they're like, you know, well, the fish out here are different. And I'm like, OK, let's go out here and let's see what different really is. And it wasn't that the fish were different. It was people were fishing for them different.
So they would react the way you want them to react. And one thing we're gonna go back to St. Thomas, when you're starting to get so many bites, you're getting two, 300 bites in a season. Yeah, fish, they're, I'm gonna use air quotes for anybody that's not watching this video, they're mood. I like that, it's mood.
Katie (14:44.526)I'm gonna tell my girlfriend about that because she's gonna love you for that because she's like, no, everybody every fit Every animal has their own personality. I'm like no a fish is a fish. But you're you have a no. No you have a What you're saying how it carries a lot of weight So we started noticing like especially early on in the moon when there wasn't a lot of fish on the drop You get a lot of long rigor bites a lot of center rigor bites And then as the fish as it started getting more and more crowded
and there was more competition, we start getting more and more aggressive bridge teaser bites. So the fish would get more aggressive. And as they start getting more aggressive, you're able to do more things with them. Exactly. And on that note, if it is like there's less aggressiveness, if you're seeing them more on the longs, but you do have a fish that shows up on the teaser, you need to, if I'm on that offside long, I'm gonna be like, hmm.
I'm be extra ready and maybe if we don't see it for a second, I'm going to give it a little prospect. Sure enough, almost every time. You know, it's funny you say that. So when we when I was on the real tight, we were very competitive. We had three deckhands at the time and we were very competitive. So our number one thing is if he wasn't on the bridge teaser, we want to get to the to the cockpit teaser first. And if I didn't get to the cockpit teaser.
in time or if I didn't, if it was a bridge teaser bite, I literally would run to the opposite side and I'd wait. And if that fish disappeared, all I would do is I'd start pulling on that cockpit teaser. And sure enough, he would always show up on that cockpit teaser because it was just doing something different. So I get a chance to double dip on it and get the opportunity to get him to come back up on me.
The way I equated a lot to baseball for anybody that's played baseball is knowing where your cutoff man is and situating yourself for, okay, if this fish disappears, where is he most likely to show up? So this goes back to what I was saying. All fish, even though they're different, all fish are the same because if you don't get them on that initial bite, you know where they're going to show up. And that outside, like you said, that outside long rigger, the reason why they're going to show up there is with the boat in the turn, that's going to be your
Katie (17:01.838)your fastest bait and they're they're initially gonna they're always gonna show up on that.
Sure enough. And I want every opportunity to get the bite. It's amazing how many people don't expect the offside bite. I'm like, I'm over here like, I'm just going to smooth this one out. I love it. As soon as I got my cockpit teaser in, I'd run to the opposite side. Just number one, my job is done. Now it's the angler's job. Yeah. So now I'm going to position myself. You don't know how many times I've been able to double tease a fish. It's awesome. Yeah, it's so much fun. And then if it's my turn on the wire.
That's triple dipping. I get to tease him in twice and I get to wire the fish. Yeah, it's triple dipping. That's awesome. That is so good. So how long were you running a boat in Hawaii for? For two years. Awesome. What did you do from there? I ran a boat in Hawaii for two. What did I do from there? That's a great question. So once the job went away, I was 41 years old and lucky for me, I'm not married. I don't have children. I don't have a very big overhead.
So I'm like, man, I could get a job on a boat, not a problem. But is that really what I want to do? I'm 41 years old. What am I going to do? And so I said, you know what? I'm going to freelance until I figure out what I want. And I needed to freelance three days a month to pay my bills. So I had a lot of leeway. So I started freelancing. And at that time,
We were just in the infancy, like within the first five years of Facebook and within the first two years of Instagram. So I'm like, I'm just going to document what I'm doing on social media. So I started posting pictures and posting pictures and posting pictures. And then people start calling me up. They're like, what the hell are you doing? I'm like, I'm freelancing. I need somebody next week for 10 days. Okay. What are you doing? I'm freelance. I need somebody for a month over here. So before you know it, I booked myself out to like 300 days a year.
Katie (19:03.886)and I was making great money, but in my early 40s, I'm like, man, can I keep up with 300 days a year? That's a lot. That's a lot of days. I also knew that I couldn't capture enough pictures or I couldn't capture enough content, so I needed to figure out a way to get more content. How can I get more content? To clarify, you couldn't capture enough content while...
working on a boat. Fishing. Exactly. Well, well I could. I could. So I have a, it's around here somewhere. I have a Pelican case. I have two DSLR cameras and I have eight GoPros. So I was able to capture a lot of con. I had, I got invited once to go fishing in London, Ontario and to go trout fishing and salmon fishing.
The guy's like, hey, bring your team with you. And I showed up with my box and he's like, where's your team? I go, this is my team. You mean everything I see, everything I see is this just you doing? And I go, yeah. but I needed more and I needed some more variety. And especially at that point, videos were just starting to spin up. And because of my passion for educating people in the sport, I started creating how to videos. My first ones were with,
Tyler Beckford, we started rigging baits. And I started pushing those through social media. And I'm like, I still need more. I hate to say it, content is like a drug. You need more constantly. So I'm like, how do I get other people? So I started offering people, hey, listen, I'll help promote your charter boat, whatever, send me pictures. But listen, after a while, people, they're busy, they're doing their thing. They can't give me any pictures.
How do I get people to get me more content? I'm like, ooh, we'll put on a tournament. That way I can hire camera people to take pictures for me, and then I can get people to take videos of the fish that they catch. So I started putting on tournaments to get more content. That is interesting. So what was your first tournament? My first tournament was the golf cup.
Katie (21:26.446)in the Gulf of Mexico. That's my very first one. What year was that? Was it 1984? I think it was 2013. The best part about it is I have the original poster in my hallway here because I literally drove from every way station from Key West all the way to Port Aransas. Hey, hometown. That's where I am right now. PA is where you're from? That's where the original World Golf Cup winner came out of.
It was the mojo with Captain Brad Phillips and I got, I don't know, I have probably about 500 signatures on that thing and I have it in my hallway. That's so cool. It was one of the greatest times. I just drove around introducing myself to people and telling them about this tournament on the same day, 4th of July. And I, in my heart, felt that the Gulf of Mexico can compete on the world stage if there was enough people fishing.
in the Gulf of Mexico. But before I took over the World Cup, they would get maybe one, two was a great year in the Gulf of Mexico. And when you have Hawaii with 50 and Bermuda with 50, it's hard to compete with only two hooks in the water. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. I don't want to get ahead of us because this is really good information, but I want to make sure that the listener really understands if they're not familiar with the cups, what we're talking about. So.
Let's go to the World Cup on the 4th of July of every year. Now the World Cup's been going on since the 80s, right? 1985. Yeah. Okay. So give us a little rundown about the World Cup. Okay. So the Blue Monom World Cup is, Jim Hardy was the original, tournament director and he started it. Still belongs to his family. Jim Hardy and Tech Schramm, who was the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, they were fishing off of Woods Wall down off of Key West.
And between the two of them, they said, you know, what would be really cool if we had a Super Bowl of blue marlin fishing, a world championship where everybody in the world competes against each other. They're like, OK, when do we do it? Well, what other better day than the birthday of the good old US of A. So they started the blue marlin. Jim Hardy started the Blue Marlin World Cup.
Katie (23:52.654)Back in 1985 and he was the tournament director and back then it was it wasn't even fax machines It was phone numbers and old -fashioned snail mail. I heard stories from his Grandchildren because I get to see him every year and his great -grandchildren But from his grandchildren, they tell me stories of sometimes it would take his their grandfather a week to figure out who caught the biggest fish because people had to Call in they had to send in the photo
And you know, it was a big to do. We didn't have what we have today. I can't imagine, like already like wading that like we were in 2021 when that Cape Verde fish was weighed. And then there's still like so much time before Hawaii's done fishing. You know, like even that amount of time is is kind of super high anxiety. And I wasn't even the boat that weighed the fish, you know, so.
But that's the greatest that's the greatest part about it. It's so really And that's one of the things I love so much and Jim Hardy's daughter that I get to talk to you all the time One of the thing I I tell her every year I said number one. Thank you so much for trusting me with your family heirloom Because she does she you know her and her family trust me with representing her family representing her father and getting the opportunity to
talk about what he's done to put all these people together. And the other thing that I love so much about it is for about two and a half to three months every year, I get to talk to every blue marlin fisherman in the world. Literally every single one. Almost every single one. I have made some of the most awesome friends that I would have never a couple of weeks ago.
I went out fishing right here out of Palm Beach with our winner from 2000, from two years ago, Sergi. He caught that 950 or 960 something. He came into Palm Beach to go fishing and speaks no English. She's Russian, but I got to hang out with him for the day, past Blue Marlin World Cup winner. And we got to hang out and I asked him, please, good luck, fish again. I hope you do it again.
Katie (26:15.47)He was pretty neat because there was a couple. So let's rewind a little bit talking about the World Cup. So when I took it over, one of the things I was very, very fortunate, I'm only the third tournament director in the history of the tournament. That's pretty incredible when it's been going on for what is it like 40, 45, 49 years? 40. Yeah, we're going on 30. This is 30 year 39 or year 40s. My math is only there's only been three tournament directors. I'm the third one.
But I had, even though for my age, I was still dealing with all this social media. So I was able to plug it in to my social media business and connect with everybody. And that first year, it was the Blue Makaira that won the tournament with a 987 out of Madeira. And I got the phone call.
They put it in the boat. I knew the mate on it. Antigua Sean, me and Antigua Sean grew up together on the docks of St. Thomas. How cool. He was tied up right behind me on the Marlin Prince. And we were sitting there and Black Bart, big shout out to Jack Tullius at Black Bart's. He's been our sponsor for a long time, well before I was the tournament director. And Mike, Mike Leach, who was a previous tournament director and he was the president of the IGFA, we were all sitting there and he's like, man,
I really wish we knew what lure they caught it on because if it was a black bar, we can give them a shout out. So very quietly, I grabbed my phone and I text Sean on Facebook Messenger. I'm like, hey, what'd you catch it on? And within three minutes, I had a picture of the polokai that he got on. I said, this is what they caught it on. And they're like, how'd you do that? And I'm like, well, I just send them a text. I caught my fingers in a lot of pots. Yeah. And I think it was year number.
Two, where the family's like, man, I've never heard the phone so quiet because they have all these phones set up for people to call in. I'm like, what do you mean quiet? I go, the bite's off and it's going off in Madeira. There's a lot of great fish in Cape Verde. And right now there's been about 35 releases in Bermuda. And it's like, well, we haven't heard the phone ring. How do you know? I go, because it's all coming in on my phone right here. Everybody's texting and WhatsApping. So when Sergi won the tournament,
Katie (28:40.27)I just tell anybody, let me know you're hooked up. I don't require them to call me because I know what it's like when you're trying to deal with a boat, weather, trying to set, shoot me a text, shoot me a WhatsApp, shoot me whatever. Well, Captain Olaf, Greml, he sent me a message, he sent me a DM on Instagram, hey, the My Victoria is hooked up. And they had 16 minutes before lines out. And I go, got you covered.
And but he sent it to me on Instagram. And during, I keep two phones on. I travel with two phones normally. But for the World Cup, I have my laptop and two cell phones. Yeah, that's got to be. I mean, and that's a long day. So how many, like tell the listener, how many countries are fishing? How is the structure of the tournament? Like break down the logistics of it. So you fish from 830 to 430 in your time zone.
And every year is different. Last year we had 152 boats in nine countries. The year before we had 158 in 12 countries. The majority of it starts when Madeira starts. The majority. But a lot of years we get boats, if the weather's right, we get boats out of Australia. We get a lot of boats out of Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea.
The gentleman that fishes out of Papua New Guinea, I think I heard a message that he passed away, older gentleman, but he used to fish it every year. We actually have a map. It's sitting here in my office, not this office, my other office. Every year we break it out and we put all the little Xs of where people fish. That's awesome. For me, it gets most crazy.
I'm not going to throw him under the bus, but there is one guy that loves to call me up at 3 o 'clock in the morning. Any fish on the deck? And I'm like, man, I could have used two more hours of sleep. It's going to be a really long day. Well, it's one of those things that once I try to get up, I know on every average day is I get up around 5 anyway. So getting up at 430, it's not a big deal. And once I get up now, if I have somebody that has a fish on the boat, I'm already putting
Katie (30:59.726)In the last three or four years, I started putting group chats together for everybody in every zone so if they if they need to you can just hey, I'm hooked up put it in the group chat and People can verify you know, so Madeira I got 12 people I put them all together Kate Verde, I do the same thing Hawaii Bermuda. It's these guys. It's they're chatty all day long. We all just chat all day. Yeah telling stupid stories
But it's a great way to communicate. I know last year I had somebody and again, I don't want to throw anybody on the bus somebody Talks and smack about me online as far as a fish getting come coming to the scales because I'm official I don't like announcing anything to the general public until it's official till it gets to the waist scale and
But as far as the fishermen are concerned, I want them to know. They need to know. They've got a vested interest. Hey, somebody's got a fish that's 128 by 72 come to the scale. You need to know you're participating. The general public, I kind of wait until I get some verification, some more verification, get some pictures, get somebody at a waist scale that lets me know. If I give an official update because I give them live on Facebook every three hours, I'll let somebody know that a fish is coming to the scale.
But until I get verification, my word is my word. So I got to be careful what I say. Yeah, of course you do. That's a lot on your shoulders. And there's a lot of money. Yeah. And I know some guys get upset about it, and that's fine. If you want to be upset, be upset. You'll find out. I'll let everybody know. And once something's official, then I put it out. Yeah. Once it's official, it goes out. You've touched on a couple interesting things. So you've said the word releases.
You've said to the scales you've given some measurements and you said they've got a lot invested. So how much does it cost to sign up for the World Cup? World Cup base entry is five thousand. If you want to get into the extra optional category, which is the big blue challenge is another eight. So in across the board is 13 grand and there's only one winner.
Katie (33:20.75)The tournament there's only one winner, but if you're in the extra jackpot we don't play out second place, but There's been a couple of years where the biggest fish that wins the World Cup was not in the optional jackpot So that'll go to another fish, you know Whoever wasn't but again, that's first place in that jackpot, right? So we and we do and we do that to keep killing a fish to a minimum Exactly. So what's your one of the big?
That's one of the biggest reasons why I don't announce fish until it's official because listen, if I put out a number to the general public and people think there's a 500 pounder coming in or let's say they think there's a 700 pounder coming in and they release a fish that was 600 and suddenly they weigh that fish and that fish was 580, you know, it clouded their judgment and I don't want that. But once it's official,
Once something is weighed and it's official, it's 800 pounds, then this is a new benchmark. They're in both categories. Don't kill something that's 500. Yeah. So what's the like, what's your minimum and is it in weight? Is it in length? How do you measure that? That's that's actually a great question. The Blue Monom World Cup is a 500 pound minimum. There is no length measurement. It's just 500 pounds. So.
You can have a long skinny fish or you can have a short fat one kind of like me and that makes that's a qualifier as long as it's a qualifier 500 pounds is qualifying man It still counts exactly so What about like you can't just weigh these fish on any scale? Obviously Drake and I actually when we went over to the eastern Atlantic We took a certified scale with us and that is a hard thing to travel with literally every security will flag it
As this looks like exactly like a bomb. It's in like a yellow Pelican case. You're not allowed to say that word when you're on a plane. You can't say that word. I can't. I won't even say it. Here's the craziest part. When you travel to Central American countries, do you know what the name of a pump is in Spanish? Bomba. Bomba. Bomba. Bomba. The same word as a bomb. Exactly. So if you're traveling with a pump, I'm not telling you.
Katie (35:45.23)I'm not saying it. What is that? Come on, seriously? Do you know how many pumps we've flown to Costa Rica? Yeah, better not say it in Spanish, man. Man, that's hysterical. All right. So what about this? Like the weight, this like taking the weight process? It has to be a certified scale and certified by any governmental agency. So it could be.
It could be IGFA, it could be the local government. What a lot of people don't understand is no matter what country you're in, scales have to be certified if you're selling fish, if you're selling meat, if you're selling vegetables, those are all governmental certified. So, even truck scales. So when you're bringing trucks across, when you're shipping stuff, that's a governmental scale and they have to get certified every year. So it's pretty accessible.
Yeah, it's not as hard as people think now. No, I didn't know that. yeah. That's awesome. That's great information. Why do you think I get to talk to all these marlin fishermen for two to three months every year? These are the kind of questions that they ask me. And anybody that's in remote locations, I require video verification. So when I say video verification, I want to see video of somebody fighting the fish, video of the fish being gaffed.
videos of the fish being brought on the boat. You have to prove that the fish was caught on the 4th of July. What I tell everybody, it is not my responsibility to prove you caught that fish. It is your responsibility. When you're fishing in a location like Madeira or Cape, well Cape Verde is a little bit different, but there's still a lot of people there. If you're fishing in Hawaii, you're fishing in Bermuda. There's a lot of people around.
watching you catch the fish. But I have people that fish in Cameroon, people that fish in Senegal. You're a single boat all by yourself. It's your job to prove that you caught that fish on that day. And what I tell everybody, if you're not the captain and if you're not the angler, you better have a camera in your hand. I don't care what it is. And I want to see videos of GPS's. I want to see videos of
Katie (38:12.846)The TV set show me the TV set show me, you know proved to me that you caught it on the 4th of July You know, it's your responsibility. I know I get a lot of boats. I say a lot I usually get one or two a year that go out of like let's say New York or Massachusetts there's a lot of big fish up out of there, especially where the Labrador currents meet the Gulf Stream and You know I'm trying to think I don't know if
I gotta look back up Massachusetts, but I know from New York, the state of New York, all the way to North Carolina, the state record is a thousand pound in every single one of those states. And I think Massachusetts as well. So they've caught granders all the way up. So there's a lot of big fish up and down the East Coast people don't realize. And then most people, but most of the fishing scene up there is just like tuna, tuna, tuna. We just want tuna. Yeah. Well, because you've got a long way to go to go catch a marlin, man. You gotta go catch a, you gotta go a long way. And
You got to get the right conditions. You got to get the right water. You got to get the weather right. It's not like fishing out of Bermuda where you're running 20 miles. Yeah. Or Madeira where you're putting the lures out as you leave the marina. Yeah. So, you know, I get it. I totally get it. Listen, the Gulf of Mexico is the same thing. If you got bad weather, you know, some of these guys are going 250 miles one way. Yeah, for sure. It's a long way to go.
So tell us about the golf cup blue marlin shootout. That was your first tournament, right? That was my first one and you're allowed to fish. Here's the thing. So Bermuda was able to build the Bermuda blast off the World Cup. The Kona Cup and the firecracker were built off of tapping into the World Cup. So I did the same thing with the golf cup. I just, I started it mainly just to tap into.
The Blue Marlin World Cup, because I knew there was a lot of big fish in the Gulf of Mexico. So tell our listener what you mean by tap in. So the Blue Marlin World Cup last year's winner won $1 .25 million. That's crazy. So you have this giant jackpot that's already there. So last year's World Cup winner, he was fishing the firecracker as well, which is a tournament in Hawaii.
Katie (40:29.006)So he took home 1 .25 from the World Cup, but he also took home 700 ,000 from the firecracker. So he took home $2 million for that fish. And for somebody... And I get a... Listen, I get a lot of tree huggers that yell at me saying I'm not conservation -minded. But I do a lot of stuff to conserve our resources. This is a resource. And if a fish is going to die, if we're going to harvest a fish and take its life, I want it to...
I want to be able to stretch that as much as possible. And I hate to see a fish die for nothing. And the fact that a fish was able to provide $2 million to a crew is amazing. Okay, now I got to tell you a story about that crew. Okay. Because again, this two and a half, three months that I get to talk to people, talk to Marlon Fisher.
The same way we're having a conversation here, I get to do it all year long. And so I talked to the captain of that boat, the Apex. I shouldn't have mentioned his name just to keep the honest people honest, but this is a great story. So I called him up. It was like, I don't know, July 6th, 6th or 7th. Just trying to get the paperwork started so they can get paid. And I'm like, so to...
Tell me about your fish. I want to know about the bite. I want to know about the fish. I want to know about the experience. I mean, I'm still a fisherman. Tell me the full story. So so he's like, well, it's a unique story because one of my crew members, his wife died in September and it was a big blow to him. So right before the World Cup, we shut the boat down. We shut the engines off and flat calm in Hawaii and.
They had her ashes and they sat at them. I don't want to get emotional because it's really a cool story. Yeah, I know. Are you having a hard time handling it? So, and I say it's emotional because we're fishermen. We're all in this together. We understand. And I'm going to give a shout out to my boy Dennis. I don't know if you know Dennis, we're all connected by water. We're all connected by water. And here's this group. They were sitting on the back of the boat. They sprinkled her ashes.
Katie (42:48.622)They threw the flowers in, they're crying and they're hugging each other. They're just having a moment as a crew. And then they said, hey, listen, we got lines are in in two minutes. We got to get going. So they hugged it all out. They gave each other their kisses and OK, we got a job to do. Let's go fishing. So they fire the boat up and put the engines in gear and it's lines in. So they're sliding all the
the lures out and he tells me he goes fly he goes I made the first turn put the boat in a turn and there she was right on the inside just piles in on it and their eyes weren't even dry yet that's what he said their eyes weren't even dry yet so they start getting everything situated and he calls me up and I'll never forget because Bermuda had just weighed a 714 I mean just weighed a 714 I don't think it was
20 minutes into it and I said, hey man, just so you know, Bermuda should just wait at 714. He goes, yeah, I heard it. I'm like, okay, not a problem. So we go in. 714 is a big fish. It's a big fish, man. There's nothing small about a 714. Listen, it's a nice fish. It's a nice, nice fish. And everybody in Bermuda really thought they were going to win it back.
You know, they hadn't won it in a few years. So, he's like, yeah, I know, I know. So I got a phone call from somebody and I'm, I'm, I'm yapping on the phone and he calls me back up and I'm like, listen, I gotta let you go. The boat that's hooked up, you know, just call me in. So I answered, he's like, she's in the boat. And I'm like, Whoa, I'm like, okay, what are the measurements? So the original measurements for the fish in Bermuda,
I mean, I have it written down, but let me see if I can remember. It was 118 by 64, and the fish in Hawaii was 123 by 70. Goodness. And I'm like, holy shit, that's a lot bigger. Holy crap. And I'm like, man, good on you. I said, are you going to continue fishing, or are you going to go in and wear? He's like, no, we're going back in. We're going to wear first, and then we'll come back out fishing. I'm like, OK, good enough.
Katie (45:13.87)So we had to wait and I let everybody know, you know, I let everybody know that was in the tournament that they were coming in. Yeah. And I let the boys in Bermuda know and I let the the boys in in Hawaii know and the boys in Hawaii already knew because they were on that group chat. And and this is the last fishery of essentially this is the last fishery. It's the last time zone. Yeah, it's the last time zone. So
By the time Bermuda is done, Bermuda, the morning for me is crazy because I have Cape Verde, I got Senegal, I got Azores, Canaries, Bermuda, Bahamas, all fishing at the same time. But once we get to Hawaii, everybody else is done. I'm just watching the 50 boats in Hawaii. And as is the rest of the world. As is the rest of the world. And listen, I've been on both ends of it. I have sat in the bar in Bermuda.
waiting to hear what Hawaii is doing and getting all liquored up and waiting to see if Bermuda wins or if Bermuda loses and I've also been in Bermuda. I've also been in Hawaii when I was running the boat now in Hawaii when Stephanie Choate won her fish she hooked that thing up with 30 minutes left in the day and when she boated the fish I remember vividly her fish was 131 inches and
she ended up winning that day. And so I've been on both ends of it. I know what it's like. I know what it feels like. I also know what it feels like at 11 o 'clock at night. You're waiting for somebody to call in, whether they're releasing or killing a fish. And I've been awake for 32 hours. And it's just me.
Jim Hardy's family and cafe bustelo But it's such an awesome feeling because Man, there's nothing and Pride is one of the most deadly sins and I know that but I'm so proud of being part of this community I love it. I really really do
Katie (47:30.35)I love promoting everybody in my industry. I love promoting my industry. Listen, we have bad stuff that happens in the industry. Every industry does. I don't like talking about it. And it's not because I want to put my head in the sand. Everybody's going to know about it. I don't want to talk about it. Listen, if something bad happened to somebody, it happens. Shit happens. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the great thing about our industry.
I love to talk about when my friends win or even if it's somebody I don't know wins. I love talking about when Somebody has a problem and another fisherman comes out and helps them. I love to hear stories about that I love to tell people about how our industry that there's no strangers in it. Yeah, you show up on the dock somewhere and Man I fished on a boat in Japan. I was the only guy that spoke English and
We were out blue marlin fishing. I was fishing out of with some friends from Nagoya and I said, well, I might as well go sit up in the tower because I can't really talk to anybody. I can at least call out blue marlin when they show up in the spread. So I'm up in the tower. I'm all excited. Here comes this 200 pound blue marlin. I know how to say blue marlin in Japanese, kajiki. So I'm starting to yell kajiki, kajiki. But you know what? I realized at that point I did not know how to say left or right. Yeah. I didn't know which way to tell them to look.
So they're all looking at me up in the tower and I'm pouring, I'm like, man, I don't know if this is a good idea. If they're wasting three seconds to look at me. Yeah, it's defeating the purpose. But it's funny, I go to Japan. Last year I fished the J .I .B .T. over there. One of my really good friends, he owns Muta Marine. It's a clothing company there, the largest fishing and golfing clothing company over there. And he was so excited.
Excited to introduce me to you know, the board members and all these people as we're walking around the captain's meeting Everybody's coming up to me. Hey fly what's going on? Hey fly and he's like, how do you know so many people? I'm like, well because this blue monofish and it's a small industry We all share the same passion so It's not especially now with social media everybody knows everybody's faces it's not like You're one of the lucky few that gets printed in a magazine. No
Katie (49:56.878)You can put whatever you want online. Everybody knows you. And he's like, wow, you're famous. I'm like, no, Jennifer Lopez is famous. I'm just well known, man. Nobody is knocking me down for my fucking autograph. They just, they want to come have a beer with me or in my case, cause I don't drink, have a green tea and hang out and tell a couple of fishing stories.
But yeah, it's a small, small world. So anywhere I go, anywhere any of us go, we all know each other. It's tiny. And most of the times, and we were talking about this off air because I showed you a picture of a boat, most of the time people don't even know I'm somewhere until I start posting pictures. Yeah, we were fishing next to each other in Max. Exactly. Nobody knew until I started posting. The only person that knew I was there
was Newt, Little Worm. Little Worm, I was live on Instagram, because I have a friend of mine that works at the UN, and he knew I was in Mag Bay. And he's like, hey man, when you hook a fish, can you go live on Instagram so I can see it? And I'll show it to everybody in the UN. I'm like, OK. So I go live on Instagram, and I'm shown as we're catching a double header striped marlin. And Little Worm, he texts me. First he tried to FaceTime me.
I shushed him and then once I was done, I, he's like, I'm like, man, I'm sorry I shushed you. He goes, no, I wanted to go live with you. I'm like, well, you should have jumped on Instagram, not on FaceTime. That's not how you do it. Not FaceTimeing. You know, he's like, I saw you go live. And he goes, I didn't even know you were up here. I'm like, yeah, I'm here. I'm here on the eight eights. So, but really I did that just to share. I mean, how neat is it? First of all, I had people from
Japan, I had people from Europe, Saudi Arabia, I had people from all over the world, but specifically I had this group watching from the UN, they're passing the phone around in the United Nations to watch us catch some striped marlin. And there's my chance to introduce fishing to somebody new. I don't know who it was. It was definitely somebody. There was definitely somebody. That's why, and again, we had this conversation earlier.
Katie (52:10.062)You never know who you're influencing. You never know who's on the other end. So I try to make sure that their first experience in our world is the best experience possible. To me, that means a lot. To me, that means the world. I want them to say, man, I want to try that. I had a guy just the other day on Instagram. Him and his wife are going on their honeymoon in Cabo.
And he just asked me, hey, I really want to go fishing, but I want to know who to go with. And somebody's trusted. I'm like, here, call this guy. I fished with him on the Great Barrier Reef. He came fishing with me. And him and his father own a charter business over there. And he's like, man, thank you so much. I appreciate looking at all your content. And that's why I do it. That's the reason I do it, is for people like that. I could think about it.
I mean, you've worked on boats however long. You know how many people call me up and say they're bucket list fish as a Dorado?
You know how many people I get? I bet you I get between 50 and 100 people every year say their bucket list fish is a Dorado. How many times have you tried to reel away from a Dorado? God, I can't count. You kidding? Think about that. I just fished Baja 2023. I've reeled away from way too many Dorado. That's the worst Dorado.
That was the worst Dorados I've ever seen. You know what? Chip Schafer said that. If Chip Schafer's saying it's the worst Dorados he's seen in his life, like it was bad. That was some crazy fishing. But yeah, no, people want to catch a... They're fun to catch. They're beautiful fish. They're super cool fish and they're fun to catch. So, I mean, that can make a lot of people happy and make a lot of crews super successful, which is win -win.
Katie (54:01.294)It could also make a lot of crews super annoyed. Yes. You know? But it really goes to show you perspective. As many times we're like, my god.
Katie (54:14.382)And how many people in a year's time? Like I said, I get between 50 to 100 people a year. That's a lot. That's my bucket list fish. Yeah. That's a lot. It's a lot. And to us, it's like, after you catch the one for Mahi Tacos, you're done. I don't want to see another one. You're eating up my baits, man. You're eating into my fishing time. I get it, for sure.
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's again, it's just depending on how you look at it, you know, but there's so many people out there and that's what there's a guy. I haven't met him. I don't, he doesn't have a name, but there's a man in Iowa that every time I take a picture, I think of him. That's what I do. I think of this guy in Iowa that's never been to the ocean. It's never seen the ocean. It's never seen a Marlin, never seen a Dorado, never seen a Bonita.
And when I take a picture, I'm trying to think, how is he going to look at this picture? And that's how I think. Interesting. I like that. I'm going to apply that to my life a little bit. See what happens if I do. Philosophy by fly. Yeah. There we go. It's a book, folks. It's a book. We're actually here to promote that book. No. So I don't think you actually finished your story about the apex.
The apex is wasn't that the name of the boat. I thought you said so no. No, I did they caught no. No. Yeah, everybody cried and then they called the winning fish on that first turn Yeah, yeah, yeah on that first turn. It was it was it was amazing. That's the first thing I did the very first thing I did was I called Jim Hardy's daughter and Again, I'm trust. I'm trying to protect their name. Yeah, very private people. Yeah, of course, but The first thing I did was I called her up
And I'm like, I need to tell you this story. You need to know what your dad did. Even though it's been a lot of years since your dad passed away, this is because of your father. He provided these people the opportunity to celebrate somebody's life and then go out and... Continue to celebrate that life. Continue to celebrate it because of what they were able to accomplish on this day. So it's neat. And our industry, our fishing...
Katie (56:41.614)is filled with stories like this. Filled with stories like this. It's not always in a tournament. Sometimes it's your first day of fishing after your dad passed away or your mom passed away or you know it was my grandfather that took me fishing these times and you remember these things and you're able to share it with other people and that's what people don't understand. I know I got quoted when I wrote my book in 2020.
my biggest quote I put in there because I use it, I live by it every day because people are like, fishing is so boring. I go, listen, what you're confusing is catching and fishing. Catching is reeling in the fish. Fishing is what you do with your friends and family in between bites. Like this right here, what we're doing is for me falls under fishing because we're still fishing. We're talking about the sport. It's bringing two people together to share a couple of stories with
Maybe a thousand people, 10 ,000 people, a million people. We don't know. But this is fishing. We're telling the stories and this is all I do. I had a meeting the other day with some people and we were talking, we're doing some business together and he's like, Fly, I've never been fishing. Do you think you can help me with that? I'm like, I'll tell you what. Let's get what we're trying to do settled and I'll take you fishing and...
We'll sit down and we'll talk and they're like really I said honestly most of the time I go fishing first before I decide to do business with somebody I want to see what it's like in eight hours spending some time with somebody Talking to decide whether I want to do something with you. Yeah, you know cuz I there's not There's plenty of stuff I do and then I just didn't have fun that I won't do it again But if I do something with somebody, you know some kind of business and I enjoy it
Let's do it again. I had a good time with you. Let's do it again, you know And if I didn't have a good time No harm. No foul just move on we do something else, you know, you go do your thing I do my thing My whole thing is I want to have a good time doing it and I want to make sure everybody's having a good time doing and if people are having a good time Why do it? Yeah. Yeah, you know, we don't have a we don't have a long time on this world If we're lucky we get 80 years. I think you know
Katie (59:08.046)Our solar system is something, what is it, like 30 billion years old. We're here if we're lucky for 80 years. So I better make the best of it. I want to make the best of it. I'm going to do it every day. And if I'm not having a good time, fuck it, I ain't going to do it again. So what do you think it is for you that takes you back to the ocean and to fishing every day? People. People.
100%. I love, my time I spent on the real tight, I made a bond with those guys. I was on that boat for 14 years. I made a bond with those guys. I love them. To this day, I love them. Jim Lambert, he was my mentor, still is my mentor. I just quoted him this morning. I'm not gonna repeat the quote because this is a family friendly show. But I just, I think about him every day.
And then now what takes me back every day is the fact that I can share it with people. One of my favorite stories, or not a, it's not an in particular story. You're gonna relate to this and next time you see it, I want you to think of me. When I get somebody on the boat and we got their first sailfish or first marlin or first fish on and I look at their hands, that's holding the rod and their knuckles are all white. You know what I'm talking about? They're holding that.
that handle so hard, that rod so hard, their hands, their fingers are turning white. And I'm like, the rod's not leaving. Release the grip and look out at the fish jumping. And they're like, what? I go, breathe and look out at your fish jumping. Listen, we just spent an hour to get this bite, or five minutes if you're a mag bae. We just spent all this time to get you this bite. I go, release the death grip on the rod.
Take a deep breath and look out and enjoy your fish. Listen, the fish is jumping and the boat's in a turn. You're not gonna get any line. So enjoy the moment. Enjoy the moment. Look at the fish. Look at it jump. And I'll take pictures of it and I'll video it depending on what I got going on. But take a deep breath, enjoy the moment. Here we are. What are you thinking of? Did you enjoy dinner last night? What? I love asking people what they had for dinner.
Katie (01:01:33.294)what their favorite baseball team is, because usually if you take their brain just far enough away from, my God, I don't want to lose this fish as opposed to, hey, we're going to catch this fish. Change your mindset and enjoy the moment. Enjoy the moment. And I can see it. It's the white knuckles. It's the white knuckles. If you see the white knuckles, you're holding on too tight. Or the best yet is when I see people with blisters on the other hand.
And I'm like, I know what the problem is. They're like, really? I go, yeah, your left hand is too tight on the rod. They're like, what? I'm like, yeah. If you have a blister on this hand, it's because you're pressing too hard to push it against the other hand. Relax. Enjoy the moment. That's all. It's little things like that. And it's one of the things after, my God, I can't believe I'm gonna say it, after 32 years of being on the water, it's little things like that that I watch and I...
look at people and I'm like, hey, enjoy this moment. And that's what I enjoy so much about being on the water. And what brings me back is I'm at the point in my life and in my career that I enjoy more sharing it with people than catching. Listen, I've competed enough times and don't get me wrong, I still compete. When I'm out there fishing, fishing, not just entertaining people, I want to kick everybody's ass. Don't get me wrong.
My job is to kick everybody's ass. As a fisherman, that's our job. Yeah, we're competitive as all get out. I want you to do well, but I'm going to do better. You know what? The way I always tell everybody, I never want you to catch less fish than me. I just want to catch more than you. That's the way I tell everybody. I'm not wishing you to lose your fish. I'm not wishing you to catch less than me.
I'm just wishing for me to catch, and I'm not even wishing. I am working to make sure I catch more than you. No. If you have all the information and all the possibilities that I have and you go out and catch more fish than me, hats off. Good on you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good on you. And I'm not going to be mad. No. I used to get mad. I used to get mad. I don't get mad anymore. I used to. I say I get mad. I don't get mad. I just get, you know what? Let's leave 10 minutes earlier tomorrow. Let's leave a half hour earlier tomorrow. Yeah.
Katie (01:04:00.846)I'm going to give more effort and the only way to give more effort is more time. So those are the things. But now it's to the point I'd rather bring somebody that's never caught a fish. I remember a couple of years ago I got a call from somebody, hey, will you fish the white marlin open with me? I'm like, sorry dude, I'm going to Costa Rica. I'm going to do a fad trip. And they're like, what? And they're like, don't you want to fish for dollars? I'm like, listen, I'm going fishing with two Cuban brothers.
One's a cardiologist. They've never seen a blue marlin. All they want to do is catch a blue marlin. What a beautiful experience. I'd rather go out with somebody who's never caught a blue marlin and give them the opportunity. And we did. We caught 19 blue marlins. And these guys spoke no English. We're so fucking happy. They were so happy. And I loved it. I don't care about the money. I really don't. I love sharing my sport.
Ours our sport with somebody else man. I tell you that's what I do some of the best relationships I've developed have been from exposing people on the boat to what it is to catch a fish like that and that experience as a whole like it's it's unrivaled and it brings you so much joy to watch somebody come into your sport and just fall head over heels in love with the moment and I
I love that you said that. I can't disagree with that at all. Yeah, that's what I love. When I see somebody that I've, I took on a, I coached them and took them on their first few blue marlin trips and next thing you know they buy a 40 foot something or a 50 foot something. That means the world to me. Man, I had a lady. That means the world to me. I love that you said that because this is just so special. I had a lady that fished with us in Mags this last Baja, this last season.
And she was like, look, I need you to teach me how to hook the fish. And I'm like, all right, no problem. Let's do this. We worked for three days. She did super well. She killed it. And then the following week, she was fishing in Guatemala in a tournament. And at the end of the week, she sent me a photo of her top angler trophy. And I was like, girl, that's awesome. I just couldn't be prouder of that. And that, to me, is so awesome. Yes.
Katie (01:06:21.262)You get it. Yeah, I love that. I know I totally get it and more so that it's a woman. So all my tournaments, I don't give angler trophies away in any of my tournaments, but I do give top female and top junior angler. That's cool. And my reasoning behind that is number one, we need to encourage the next generation, number one. And I'm a firm believer if you get moms fishing, the entire family goes fishing.
The entire family goes fishing. When you get moms fishing, dad's, okay, I'll bring the kids. Or, I want to hang out with the boys this weekend. Not moms. Moms always want the family. Always want the family to go fishing. So that's why I'm a big proponent of it. I go out of my way to make sure I encourage female anglers. It's a huge thing for me. Because if moms don't...
Get the kids out fishing it just yeah Kids out fishing but I like moms. Yeah, exactly. And I want to see the I want to see the sport grow Not one at a time I want to see it grow exponentially. I want to see one two, four eight six sixteen thirty two sixty four I want to see a lot and I want to see it fast. There you go. That's what I want to see
That's a big deal to me. Well, come on, Fly. You're doing such a fabulous job of that. Like, what you've done for our industry already is incredible. I haven't done enough. Every day is a new day. And I appreciate you saying that, but every day I feel like I don't do enough. Like, right now, I don't even think we even talked about me. I just got back from Saudi and I'm helping introduce recreational fishing to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And I don't think nothing of it to me. NBD. No big deal.
Yeah, to me, I'm just going, hanging out with my friends. We're talking about fishing, and we're going to put together a fishing club, and the first ever in the kingdom, we put on the first ever international fishing tournament. Dude, all this stuff, and to me, it's just what I like to do. And my girlfriend's like, do you really realize what you're talking about, what you're doing? Changing the world. And I'm like, I'm just talking about fishing, man. That's what I do. But that's the way I look at it.
Katie (01:08:43.758)But I want to let everybody know what we do, what it's like. It doesn't matter what color your skin is, what color your hair is. Let's just go fishing. That's my thing. I want everybody to have the same opportunities that I've had. Whether you decide to take those opportunities, that's not up to me. But if you want to take that opportunity, I want to make it easier for you.
I did it and if I can help you, so be it. I'll help you. And if it takes bringing a thousand boats into a country, we'll do it. If it takes putting on classes every weekend, we'll do it. If it means whatever it takes, we'll do it. And I want to see people, you know, enjoy our sport, whether it's catching marlin or catching grouper or catching permanent bonefish. I don't care what it is. Go out there.
You know, I have a friend and you may, may not know him, but he's a boat broker. I knew him when he was born. Again, I used to work for his grandmother and he's a boat broker now. And one day he's like, you're so funny. I saw you on, on, on social media and one day you're catching 800 pound blue fins and the next week you're catching cutthroat trout and you were just as happy. I'm like, yeah, I'm fishing. I don't care. I just want to go fishing.
And some people have the opportunity to catch trout and some people have the opportunity to catch marlin or Dorados or whatever it is. It doesn't make a little difference. Any fish, any water. I love it. I love it. Exactly. I even go with my buddy. He's a commercial lobster fisherman. I love going commercial lobster fishing with him. You know, why? Because I just like being on the water with my friends. So I mean, I think I get that. I find it.
Absolutely awesome. That's the whole reason why we're all out here, right? We just we can't get you can't keep you can't keep us away from it But exactly for we're gonna have to it's close to time. So I'm gonna have to start wrapping up But I really want to ask you a question For I like to only take a moment only one just just this one fly I like to take a moment and Kind of focus on our younger listeners anyone that might be listening that's in their younger years
Katie (01:11:02.382)that's super fired up on what you've said this podcast. Time out one second. You do know that 45 is younger than me, right? Right. I'm just saying. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Younger viewers. Younger, our younger people that are listening in, that are fired up on this conversation that are like, man, I love fishing or I want to get into fishing or I want to be out on the water or I want to be part of these tournaments. What is a recommendation you have for them?
Do you have anything that you can give to these younger listeners to encourage them on their next steps?
my gosh, that's such a broad question, but I'm going to steal a line from somebody. It's a very broad step because it depends on where you live. If you live in Missouri, it's one thing. If you live in the state of New York, it's another. If you live in Guatemala, yes, it's a number. It's another one, yeah. But it's so hard to zero you in that I had to keep it broad. Yeah, but here's the thing. It's really not that.
Yes, it's broad, but I can give you three words. Just do it. Just like Nike said, just do it. Whatever it is that you see the opportunity, I see so many people stop themselves because they're afraid. I don't want to do it because I might mess up. I don't want to do it because... Just do it. Really, seriously. I have a friend... I sat at his booth at a boat show and I had...
I don't know, I was there for an hour. Maybe. We were shooting the shit. I hadn't seen him in a while. So I sat with him for about an hour. And in that hour, I had three different people come up to me and say, hey, you're that guy on Facebook. I want you to come fishing with me. Will you come visit me and come fishing? And I answered their call. Everyone got the same exact, what's the airport code and what time of year is best. And they all gave me their airport code.
Katie (01:13:07.278)They all gave me the best time of year and then I exchanged phone numbers and my buddy's like, really? I'm like, you think I'm gonna turn down the chance to go fishing? And he's like, you'll go with all of them. I go, absolutely, absolutely. And I just did it. I don't wait. If they give me their number, I'm like, listen, I'm gonna put you down for these days. What's a good time for you? I'll buy the tickets right now. And I don't wait.
Do not offer me the opportunity to go fishing That you're not gonna hold up your end of the bargain I'll come visit you I'll come visit you and we'll hang out And let's go fishing. I don't care what it is. I really don't I might not pick up a rod. I just Had dinner with a guy the other day at the Bill Fish Foundation dinner I'm supposed to go fish a tournament with him in Monaco and then he has a he has another boat that's down in
Abhajan and he's like I want you he's been trying to get me to go to Abhajan since 2020 and I'm like, let's do it. Let's just you know, we'll book the tickets and let's go down. I don't yeah, I don't care. Let's just do it because so many people you can there's caught have you ever heard of the the term Paralysis by analysis. No, but it does make a lot of sense. It's called over there and they're like they'll they'll they'll think my god
How much money do I need? How much this? Just do it. Just buy the ticket and give yourself whatever, six months to pay it off or 12 months to make the money and make the plan. And find an Airbnb and seriously just do it because most of the time people sit there for weeks and months thinking about really I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this and they never do it. Next thing you know they're on their deathbed saying man I wish I would have.
And my biggest fear in life, and there's not much I fear, but my biggest fear in life is getting to my deathbed as an old man, older, and saying, damn, I wish I would have tried this. And I don't want that. I really don't. And I want to say, man, I did go and fish this cool spot.
Katie (01:15:29.39)and didn't catch anything or caught the biggest fish of my life or met this really cool kid on the dock that showed me how to whatever. But you'll never know until you go do it. And when you travel and you get to see how other people live, then you come back home and you appreciate what you have. When you're sitting there saying, damn, I got last year's sneakers on. You know what I mean?
people would be happy to have last year's sneakers on, you know? And it's little things like that. Man, you know how much I appreciate going to Publix? It's a huge thing. How much I appreciate going to Home Depot or Amazon? You don't know this until you don't have it. yeah, for sure. Definitely. All of that in one stop. Exactly. So that's what I would tell any young kid. Just...
do it, figure out. If you want to go buy a rod, I still own the first fishing rod I bought. I still own it. Now, I had plenty of fishing rods that my parents gave me, but my first job I had at 14 years old, I saved my first three paychecks and I bought my first fishing rod and I still have that to this day. Yeah, and I appreciate it, but that's what I wanted.
I just did it and I caught my first keeper snook on it, I caught my first sailfish on it, I used this rod for everything. This rod's been with me forever. But I just did it and that's where a lot of people make the mistake is they wait for somebody or something. Don't wait for anything, just do it. Figure out a way, just do it. Us in this podcast today.
How much technical difficulty did we have? We had some technical difficulties. And it was all on my end. It was all on my end. I was really happy you worked through it. Yeah, but we got it done. We never gave up. No. And that's where a lot of people, as soon as they feel a little pushback, it's like, let's go do something that's easier. No. No.
Katie (01:17:46.318)You want to go catch a Dorado? That's on your bucket list. Go do it. Go do it. Reach out to somebody on social media and say, hey, who should I go fishing with? This is where I live. Send us a DM. Both fly and I. Yeah. Go on. Slide on in there. Just go and do it. Yeah. Slide on in there. That's a whole nother discussion that I'm... I have plenty of friends. I'm like, hey man, I sent you a DM. You know how many people try to slide in my DM? I'm like, okay, that's a whole nother story.
That's a whole other story. Listen, I can respect that. I don't hold it back. You didn't get back to me on a DM, I get it. But no, go, ask questions, figure it out. What's it going to cost? Budget it. What's it going to take? Do it. Yeah, what's it going to take? Figure it all out. But that's what I would tell any young person. And it doesn't have to be about fishing. It could be whatever it is you want to do.
You know, you want to be a firefighter, be a firefighter and don't let somebody tell you you can't do it. That's that's where we use that as motivation. I love being told I can't do something. I got twice in my life I was told I couldn't do something and I've been told a lot of times, but two times in particular. One of them, I proved that motherfucker wrong. Every single day and twice on Sundays and the other one.
I'm working my ass off to make sure they know I proved them fucking wrong again. There you go. And I'm very adamant about that. Don't let anybody tell you can't do something. You just go fucking do it. If you want to do it, you can do it. Yeah. And that's where I draw the line on anything. Hey, I really want to do it. Then do it. Yeah. Don't just say it. Go do it. Yeah. You know, so I'm very, very adamant about that.
On more than one occasion, I've jumped off a building and I've built the airplane on the way down. It's a funny joke, but sometimes because... I feel like that's what our industry is. It kind of is, but a lot of people try to go the easy route and there's nothing wrong with it, but me, I don't like that. I want to jump off the cliff and then build the parachute. I'll figure it out on the way down because now you have a sense of urgency.
Katie (01:20:09.678)It's not, it's no longer a side project. It's the main project. Cause if not, you're going to land on your face. So jump and then build it on the way down. You're going to get skinned up. You're going to get beat up. You're going to get bruised up. It's okay. If you want it bad enough, that parachute will open. You'll build it and that parachute will open. You just got to believe in yourself. That's so cool. That's, that's a beautiful saying. Fly.
I think you nailed it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate having you on board and good luck with the World Cup. And that's a wrap. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to like, share and subscribe. If you're fishing the World Cup next week, good luck. Stay safe. Don't stop chasing your wild and we'll be seeing you out there.

Ep.07 Jeremy Higgs: The Science Behind Marlin Tournaments with the University of Southern Mississippi

Summary
Jeremy Higgs, assistant director at the Center for Fisheries and Research Development at the University of Southern Mississippi, discusses his work in fisheries research. He talks about his background and how he fell in love with the research opportunities in the Gulf Coast. Jeremy explains his role at the Research Center and the various projects he manages, including larval shrimp studies, offshore billfish work, bull shark life history study, and oyster reef work. He also discusses the importance of oyster reefs for the ecosystem and the sport fish species that rely on them. The conversation explores the different species of fish studied in fisheries research, including swordfish, marlin, tuna, mahi, wahoo, and more. The researchers discuss the unique characteristics and behaviors of these fish, such as their feeding habits, visual adaptations, and growth rates. They also touch on the importance of studying these rare event species and the collaborative efforts between scientists and anglers. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the handling and donation of fish samples after they are brought back to the dock.
Keywords
fisheries research, Gulf Coast, larval shrimp, billfish, bull shark, oyster reef, ecosystem, fisheries research, swordfish, marlin, tuna, mahi, wahoo, feeding habits, visual adaptations, growth rates, rare event species, collaborative efforts, handling fish samples, donation
Takeaways
The Gulf Coast offers a wealth of research opportunities in fisheries, both inshore and offshore.
Oyster reefs play a crucial role in the ecosystem, providing habitat and food sources for sport fish species.
Jeremy Higgs manages various research projects, including larval shrimp studies, billfish work, bull shark life history study, and oyster reef work.
Collaboration with fishermen, scientists, and other institutions is essential in gathering data and understanding fish species.
Sampling and analyzing fish specimens at fishing tournaments provide valuable insights into reproductive biology, age determination, and diet composition. Different species of fish, such as swordfish, marlin, tuna, mahi, and wahoo, are studied in fisheries research.
These fish have unique characteristics and behaviors, including feeding habits, visual adaptations, and growth rates.
Studying rare event species is important for their long-term management and conservation.
Collaboration between scientists and anglers is crucial in gathering data and samples for research.
After sampling, the fish are handled and donated to organizations for various purposes, such as rehabilitation and feeding birds of prey.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background02:26 Research Opportunities in the Gulf Coast04:19 The Importance of Oyster Reefs08:13 Managing Research Projects15:12 Collaboration in the Scientific Community32:12 Exploring the Diversity of Fish in Fisheries Research34:08 Understanding the Feeding Habits and Adaptations of Pelagic Fish37:57 The Significance of Studying Rare Event Species41:44 Collaboration between Scientists and Anglers in Fisheries Research56:38 Handling and Donation of Fish Samples in Fisheries Research
 
USM Center for Fisheries Research and Development
 
Transcript:
Katie (00:00.206)What's up, you guys? Today's podcast is a special treat. Today I have Jeremy Higgs, the assistant director at the Center for Fisheries and Research Development at the University of Southern Mississippi. I met Jeremy on site at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic last year as he was taking all of these incredible samples from these massive blue marlin coming to the dock. Stay posted. You're not going to want to miss it.
Katie (00:33.134)Welcome to the KDC Sawyer podcast. I'm your host Katie. And today I have the pleasure of sitting down with Jeremy Higgs. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the opportunity to be on the show today. I really appreciate it. Now, Jeremy, you're the assistant director over at the research center. How long have you been at USM? I've been with USM about 14 years. Different roles in my time here as research technician up to where I'm at now as assistant director of fisheries.
That's awesome. Where did you come from before USM? I did my undergraduate work at Southwestern College in a little town in Kansas. We had to do a summer field session at a marine lab. There was a flyer in our lobby and it was for the Gulf Coast Research Lab and it was a first SHERC class. I came down here on a fluke and absolutely fell in love, did a summer of coursework here, and then did an internship and then came back to do graduate school.
and then start working in fisheries. That's awesome. Now, did you use the word fluke as a pun or was that just... That was coincidental. Is it that... For the listener, a fluke is a flat fish. Am I right? It is. And the whale tail, the tails of marine mammals. how cool. I didn't know that. That's awesome. Well, that's all she wrote. That's really cool. So what made you fall in love with USM?
So the campus here is absolutely gorgeous. The Gulf Coast is amazing. And after being here for the summer, I realized there's a lot of research opportunities in this area, not only inshore but offshore. And the folks that we got to work with, like Jim, who's, you know, he really is a big figure here on the coast and the work he's done. So it was easy to get excited and to see passion from other people. And it really just kind of drew me into the entire environment down here.
That's so cool. I got the opportunity to visit you guys on campus last year and I was blown away by how beautiful it is there and what a special thing you guys have going on. Your whole team seems really into the process, the research and being out on the water as well as in the lab. It shows that you guys are passionate about it. We have an absolutely phenomenal team working with us in CFRD as well as other colleagues here at GCRL and along the coast. It's a truly unique place to work and
Katie (02:55.566)a great opportunity to delve into this field. Beautiful. So Jeremy, tell me a little bit about what you do at the Research Center and some of your day -to -day life, but as well as some of your projects. So things have changed a bit over the years. I don't go in the field as much as I used to, but when I do there for fun projects, a lot of my day -to -day now is managing other programs that are going on, so different grants for the research that we are being...
that we are conducting. These range from larval shrimp studies to help inform about the opening of shrimp season every year, all the way up to larger offshore projects such as the billfish work that we do in the Gulf as well as elsewhere around the world. So currently I'm working on a bull shark project, a life history study. We also have...
some of our long -term monitoring projects that we're looking at some of the data, look at abundancies and distribution of different species. And so just a little bit of everything, even some oyster reef work from time to time. those oyster reefs, they're super important. You know, a lot of people don't realize how important they are for the ecosystem. They're a very diverse community and you wouldn't think about it on a reef, but there's so much space in between the oysters and in the sediment around that that is a
There's just a huge community that exists there that not only keeps the reef reef healthy, but also provides a lot of food sources for important sport fish. So we have a lot of small crabs and shrimp that are on the reef that the trout and red drum love to munch on. So like it's a really, really important community. How does that end up affecting the sport? Like the offshore is that does that affect the offshore fishery at all? Not not so much. Our reefs are pretty inshore.
As the salinity increases, you lose the viability of the oysters once you get too far south of the islands here. All of our reefs are inside the Mississippi Sound, so it's really just for inshore sport fish species, I would say it's the most benefit out of it. That's cool. Oysters also serve a huge purpose in terms of filtering the water, keeping the water pH levels.
Katie (05:18.221)as they should be? Absolutely. Oyster reefs are wonderful filters of a natural environment. So a healthy reef has a lot of good water quality around it. Even though in our area, everything is very murky, so you would never tell, but when the reefs are very viable, they're continuously filtering. That's how they feed. And so they pull a lot of the nutrients and sediments back out of the water. Now, I love that you said that the water is so murky there, because I learned something in your lab last year that just kind of blew my mind and also made so much sense.
Now I'm from a small town on the Texas Gulf Coast and we have an incredible inshore fishery as well. I'm not a very good inshore fisherman, but I do like to do it in my pastime and in my free time. And what I learned about was the size of the ear bones. Now we're going to get into otoliths a little bit later, but the size of the ear bones, which are otoliths, of the red drum and why with that murky water. Do you want to share that a little bit? Yeah. So.
The ear bones in fish or the otoliths help with a lot of different things. Fish can listen for sounds to hunt or whatever it may be. If you're in murky water, you have to rely on your hearing a lot more than your visual senses. Your ear bones generally get larger in that case so you can have better sound reception as well as if it's a species that makes noise. The drums...
with their name, they drum, and so it helps up with that sound perception. And then if... That's so cool. Yeah. If you move offshore where it's clear, beautiful water and even a huge fish, they like a marlin, the otoliths are very tiny, microscopic almost, because they don't need them. They're visual hunters, so they don't need that sense as much. That is so fascinating to me. But they all have them. They all have these ear bones. They all have these otoliths. And...
We're going to get into that a little bit later, but I just love that. I just love that drum, that drum tidbit fact. I was like, wow, well, that makes perfect sense. You know, that's how they're hunting. That's how they're finding their their prey and their food and their nutrients, because the water, I mean, here in shore, you're just going to get murky water. It's brackish water. Sometimes it's super clear, but it's cool when you see the differentiation between fish and fisheries around the world and how they feed differently and how they've evolved differently to support that.
Katie (07:45.453)that zone that they live in, right? So I met you because I was fascinated about the work that USM is doing with the fishing tournaments. Now, Jim and I talked a little bit last week about the culture and the history surrounding the Gulf of Mexico fishing tournaments and the science that's come out of a very important collaboration between fishermen and scientists.
And I think it's a very important space. It's a very important thing to share. There's information that we wouldn't be able to derive if there was not that collaboration. And we can't protect a species correctly and manage a species correctly without first understanding them. So we're going to go ahead and jump into your work at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic in Biloxi. And, yeah, go ahead and just take the wheel. Tell us a little bit about, take the wheel. Let's go. All right.
So I will have to start out and say that my introduction to the Bill Fish Classic over in Biloxi was probably one of the other reasons that I am here today, because what's more exciting than that, going to see giant fish as an undergraduate student. So it sucks you right on into the whole environment, and some of the biggest fish I'd ever seen came in at that tournament. And so I've been working with our group at the tournament since probably 2011.
missed a few years here and there, but we have a great setup on the dock. Bobby, who runs the tournament, has been very, very good to work with over the years, and we always have a nice tent set up just off from the way scale. The dock crew, Bert and his crew, and Bert and Jack and everybody, they know what we're looking for and the samples we're looking for, and they're super great to work with. And so we're a little bit off from the main stage.
But as soon as the fish is brought in, you know, hold off the boat as we've seen time and time before and weighed and measurements taken, a bunch of photos taken, because these are amazing fish that are coming in, they get brought over to our tent. And we usually have a team anywhere from five to 10 individuals of researchers that work with us and students that are here for the summer and some other volunteers that we get. And once the fish is brought over,
Katie (10:06.989)We bring it onto some of our tables. We do full measurements. So what we're looking for is, especially with the billfish, we're looking at lower jaw fork length. That's kind of the standard measurement for length and everything so that we can then correlate our work with other studies that have occurred elsewhere. And then what we typically are doing is opportunistic sampling for reproductive biology and then hard structures for aging. So we talked about the otus a little bit, and in marlin, again, they're very, very tiny.
So a lot of times the anal spine, the second anal spine is used because it's also a calcified structure. So then we can retain that. And since we have the individual, we also make sure we get a muscle plug for stable isotope analysis and then to pass along to ourselves or other colleagues as well as removing stomach contents to see what they've been feeding on, if we can get any insights into their diet. Besides...
bait that was used in the tournament, which usually is pretty easy to identify that it was bait and not a natural prey item. So that's, I'm going to stop you for just a second because I mean that's so inclusive and that's all information you wouldn't be able to get from a fish that's released back into the ocean to swim another day. Now obviously with these marlin species I'm passionate about blue marlin, I absolutely love to see them swim away healthy, but when they're being brought back to the dock it's
Absolutely incredible that you guys are being able to take all these samples on these fish So you're taking the length and you've got the weight so that you can as you said correlate it with previous research and see if you can find a good common ground as well as now I'm gonna have you just talk a little bit about otoliths and Why you use the second anal spine? You mentioned calcium. Let's hear why like the differentiation we already talked about the differentiation between like the drum otolith and the marlin otolith and why I
And with the drum otolith, you can use that to age the fish correctly. I mean, is that correct? Correct. Yep. Okay. So, and how does that work? You, you put a dye on it and you put it under a microscope and it shows rings like in a tree, for example. Just like, just like you'd see in a tree. so depending on the species and how large the otoliths are, you have to section them on a, a low speed saw. And so what that does is it creates a nice little.
Katie (12:32.781)a nice little thin slice that we can then mount on a microscope slide. And then when you put them on the microscope and the light transmits, you can see those different rings or the different rings that are banding up.
Knowing some prior life history about that species, you can say, okay, these are generally spawned this time of the year. These seven rings plus this amount that's on the end that hasn't formed in the next ring gives it an age of seven and a half or whatever the number may be. That works great on any hard structure that's calcified. Well, not any, but probably most. In many fish species, it's easiest to do that with their otoliths because they're easy to obtain.
and they're large enough that they're easy to use. Well, in any of the pelagic, most of the pelagic fishes, their odilus are much, much smaller. And in some, like swordfish and marlin, like they are, they're so, so tiny. You can almost barely even see them without a microscope when they're complete. And so you - They're smaller. They're like smaller than half a grain of rice. You showed me last year, you pulled some out and we looked at them and they're in this like membranous layer.
Correct. There's two on each side of the fish. Correct? There's three on each side of the fish. Or is it four? There's three on each side of the fish. That was close, right? There's three on each side and the largest is the saggula otolith. That's what's used most often because it is the largest. So it's easiest to work with. The other ones are half again as large as the saggula or even a third again, you know, as large. So they're much, much smaller.
They're crazy small. Crazy small. And especially, you know, half a grain of rice might be generous with some of them. So they're very easy to miss. They're very hard to get out. And so other studies have shown that you can use the anal spine as a good alternative aging method. So it's also calcified structure. It's going to increase in diameter over the entire life of the fish, just like the otoliths increase in size. So those bands are laid down the same way.
Katie (14:45.837)So it's a good proxy to use and it's very easy to get from a fish that has come into a tournament. And so section the same way, put down on a microscope slide, just a much bigger version of what we need to look at so we can kind of get a better age for them. That's so cool. Now let's talk about like the reproduction studies. So especially because now we understand how you're aging the fish.
How do you look at their organs to decide, to figure out, to decipher what's been going on in their life? So, depending on the species, but most species do not have any kind of sexual dimorphism. So that means you can't tell the different sexes apart externally or visually, for fish. Sharks are totally different. So, internal examination is necessary. So if we, and that's why these...
tournaments are so important for these big rare event species because we don't have a means to go and collect these fish and we probably wouldn't because of what they are. But since they're opportunistically being brought in, let's get as much information from them as possible. So this then gives us our insight into looking at the reproductive biology of billfishes and tunas and such. And so internal examination, the gonads are removed, it's determined if it's either female or male. And then we have a team member.
that works with us that is very good at reproductive histology. And so what that is, is they take a sample of that gonadal tissue and it gets stained and processed and very, very thinly sliced. And they can actually look and see at what phase of the reproductive cycle the animal's in. And if it is during the spawning season or if it's going to be spawning capable or, you know, those kind of things. So we can really kind of.
you in on the what portion of their reproductive biology is occurring and their seasonality is occurring. So what are the phases? Is it like a cycle of the year or is it throughout their lifetime? So it's cycle, I don't want to say cycle of the year because some species are not annual paradises so they don't reproduce every year, maybe every other year and maybe multiple times a year. Some fish are batch spawners so they can spawn numerous times over a period of
Katie (17:03.565)or three or more months. And I'm not going to lie to you, I'm not a fish reproductive person. I know about that much. Me neither. You know more than I do. I know about that much. And so every time I talk about it, I'm like, hey, Anna, come here, tell me a little bit more about this. Anna's awesome. But for the marlin, we're looking at a yearly cycle. And so, well, for the listener out there, these fish that are brought into the Biloxi tournament have to be a certain size.
They have to be a certain length legally to be harvested in the United States. And these tournaments have that length even longer for them to be brought back to the dock. So most of these fish are a big size. They're over 500 pounds generally. And Jeremy, do you want to talk about the female and male, what we know on blue marlin specifically? So the larger fish that are brought in the tournament,
are more often than not females. The females in most fish species grow to a larger size than the males do, and that's for reproductive purposes. The larger female can reproduce more offspring, because they have more viability and more energetics built up in the system to do so. So a lot of the fish that we see at the tournaments that come in are large females, which in the scheme of reproductive biology is way more important to know about than the males.
The males don't, they're there, they do their thing, they don't do anything else. The females are what we can use to gauge. Well, we can use to gauge like fecundity. So how many offspring might be expected? So they're much more important. And so these tournaments, we have the opportunity to collect those kinds of samples. So we can look at, you know, how many eggs are being produced over that season. And not all of those are going to be viable, of course. And that's.
their way that their reproductive strategy is millions of eggs at a time and a very small number of offspring that survived that. Whereas some other species may only produce two or three offspring, but they're expected to survive because they nurture them to a larger size before, you know, their live birth occurs in some species. Right. Definitely not in Markle though. No, absolutely not. Only a handful of fishes and they're very little fishes.
Katie (19:29.357)That's so cool. That is so fascinating. I actually didn't realize that there were fish that do live birth. So I think some of them are down in your guys' neck of the woods, in some of the rivers down there. So they're called live bears, and they're very just little small, small guys.
How interesting. Okay, that's a story for another time. You kind of blew my mind there. I had no idea. But okay, yeah. So yeah, no, Marlin, don't lay their eggs and then watch them grow and care for their offspring. It's far, it's actually, and you guys have done some interesting studies on juvenile billfish too, correct? So Jim has done a lot of studies on the blue current and sargassum and collection of larval black
pelagic species while they're out there doing that as well. And so... That's awesome. We have a fairly good understanding of some of the early life history of billfishes in the Gulf of Mexico. And so he's collected some teeny tiny little fellas and collected some eggs, kind of an idea of where spawning might be occurring. And even with the little larvae, you can backtrack with oceanide models to see where they may have been spawned from.
So you can kind of go back in time and potentially see where that event may have occurred. So, Jeremy, what I want to understand and I think what I do understand based on an article I read once is that you can tell based on what the gonad tissue is saying that how much that fish has spawned, like how long it has been of spawning age.
Can you get an analysis of that or are you just getting an approximation of how many eggs more or less are being released? That is a good question and I don't know the answer to. That's fine. Okay. But you have somebody that's working in that field. We'll just have to have that conversation for another time. And that's why you're collecting that, those samples at the tournament so that we can understand more about the reproduction of these fish.
Katie (21:41.261)how often and how much along correlated with their weight and their age correct? Yep. And so with the, so what are you, go ahead. Yeah, no, go, no, please. so with, what we do collect for the reproductive biology, it can give us kind of a size or age at maturity. So by looking at the dermatal tissue, you can tell it what, if it has reached maturity or not, which is one of the big things that we, we use, cause you can look at it and macroscopically, so to the,
to the naked eye, you might have a good guess, but microscopically it might be different. So that's where that histology comes into play where they do the very thin sections and then they can actually, our team that does the reproductive analysis can look at the different sizes and structures in either sex gonads. And so they can tell where they're at and it's much more, it can be much more accurate than just a visual examination of it. So. That's incredible.
So cool. So what about the muscle plug? Tell me about that. So, stabilized soap analysis can kind of give you an idea of trophic level, which we would expect in a marlin or a tuna or any other large predatory fish to be very high on the food chain. But it can kind of give you an idea of where they fall in line with other species. And looking at different elements,
from analysis of a muscle plug, you can kind of actually get an idea of how much, if they have an inshore signature or an offshore signature, so they have any ties to any specific region near shore. And it depends on the elements you're looking at, depends on the questions you're asking. So there are some pretty neat studies you can do with just a muscle plug. That's been stored correctly and all the fancy stuff afterwards. We...
We often hand those off to colleagues. That's not something we are set up to do here in CFRD, but we have colleagues over on our other campus here in USM that looks into that. So not only are you collecting these data for yourself and your studies, but you're also collecting these samples for other scientists elsewhere. I mean, USM, but I, when I was there with you last year,
Katie (24:01.869)You had other institutions there. You have collaborations with other universities. Absolutely. The Bill Fish scientific community is not very large. I don't know how many of us exist, but there's enough. But every opportunity to sample and everybody has a different interest in what they're looking for. So over this last summer, we had some colleagues from University of North Florida that joined us. We had some.
federal fisheries partners that came and were collecting different samples that they were looking at for federal management as well. And a lot of what their samples are aligned with what we take as well. So we work back and forth. We've sent samples up to the Northeast. We have colleagues over in Texas and some over on the West Coast. So there's always different opportunities to collaborate and whether it's academic with NGOs. So we work with the Bill Fish Foundation on a lot of projects as well.
We work with IGFA on some projects. We have some industry partners either directly tied to the billfish industry or just the overall outdoor sportsmen professions. And so industry partners don't often have a specific research question they want. They just want to be able to provide help to make sure we can get the research that we're interested in. And so that's...
super wonderful. And then the tournaments that we work with. They're a huge component to this. And whoever the laymaster is at the tournament, depending on which tournament it is, they got to know us over the years a lot because Jim has been doing so much work with the tournaments for so long. And it's been such a large part of his career. So they're excited when we come. They're excited when we have the opportunity that we can come over to one of their events and opportunistic example. And then...
probably the most important collaboration we have is with the actual community. So we have this great community of fishers, whether it's billfish or inshore fisheries, and after you've worked with them and you've communicated with them enough, they're excited and they want you to sample their fish. And if you don't, they're like, why aren't you sampling my fish? You sampled Bob's fish, you better look at my fish.
Katie (26:25.773)So there's no shortage of samples when we have the opportunity. That's awesome. I love it. Do you know, I remember she told me a little bit about it, but the professor from Florida last year that was over at the tournament was taking samples from the base of the Marlin bill. Do you know anything about her studies? I don't. I haven't. What she was doing. I haven't followed up with her recently, but I know what she's looking at is.
She was looking at the structure of the bill. We sent her a number of bills several years ago, and so she was doing that for her dissertation. Now she has a whole slew of students underneath her doing even more research. I don't exactly know what they were doing, but it was only a thin section of bill they were interested in. First off, I just got chicken skin because...
You said that you guys have been working with her a little bit over the years. She's looking at the bill and she did that for a dissertation and now she has a slew of students working under her. So what I get from that is that she was studying the Marlin bill, a whole bunch of questions came up and now there's a bunch of, a bunch of people doing research on this so that we can understand this fish better. I think that's incredible. Again, chicken skin. She was telling me there was something about,
the gelatinous membrane at the base of the marlin bill because these fish, we've already established they're visual feeders and they use this bill on their nose to strike the bait, stun the bait and then eat the bait. Right? So they, they use the bill to hit the bait, whether it be a two pound mackerel or a 15 pound tuna and then they consume it.
Right. And so that can be a pretty, that's like a pretty, can be a pretty big shock, of the, the bill hitting the fish and they do it very strong, especially these big blue Marlin, especially when these girls are hungry and, we don't, I was angry Marlin, they don't mess around, but, and so what she was studying was the ability for that shock absorption to, and,
Katie (28:47.917)what she can correlate from the bill strike into our thermodynamic world today. So I thought that was very fascinating. I don't know anything about it. It was completely over my head, but that's why she was just, she was taking that like small sliver at the base of the bill and she just started telling me all about it. I was like, wow, you're interesting and this is super cool. And I had never even considered that. So what about the samples from the stomach?
You talked a little bit about that most of the time it's just bait, but what else are we seeing there? So a lot of times in the marlin that we've examined it's been bait. We do occasionally see some mahi, a couple of small blackfin, but one of those, and a little bit off of marlin, we'll jump over to swordfish. We had the opportunity to sample quite a large number of swordfish from the Biloxi tournament a few years ago.
And if you know anything about swordfish, you would assume that they're eating squid. That's what everybody says. And that is not what we found. We found squid, but that's not what we found as their primary diet here in the northern Gulf of Mexico, or at least from those tournament samples. We found what's called a luminous hake. It's a little silvery fish that lives on the bottom. And they absolutely love them. And there were hundreds of them.
in the diets. And then on a completely flip side of that, we'd find a lot of blue runners, which, my gosh. I mean, who are surf, who are at the surface. And you know, swordfish feed at the bottom and they come to the surface at night and feed them. But it was such, those two items were the most important items in their diet. by far more than any squid or invertebrate that we saw. How interesting. Now I don't,
I don't really know anything about swordfish. I'd love to get some swordfish specialists on here. I've never actually caught a swordfish myself, but this idea that they feed both at the base bottom of the ocean on these little silvery fish and you call them hake. They're a luminous hake. Tell me again. Luminous hake. What a cool name. What a cool name.
Katie (31:14.477)Sorry, got distracted. So, that they're feeding on these like obviously deep water fish and then the blue runners at the surface already that going through the water column like that is Exceptional. it makes me wonder if there are do you know if swordfish are negatively buoyant like tuna? Or do they have a swim bladder that The chain that that equalizes them. It's okay. I don't know I don't know if I've
Billfish are negatively buoyant. I've never been able to find that information. I just know that tuna are, you know, obviously there's a lot more science out there on tuna because those fish can be, there have been economic values put on those fish. So there's more money put into the studies so that there's more studies being conducted. But the fact that you guys are doing this with the tournament show how much the recreational angler,
fishery has to do with the studies and also how much money is put into these tournaments and brought into these communities of these various tournaments all over the world. really puts a lot of value to these fish, but okay. So these swordfish are eating these very different species. Now Marlin are surface feeders. We know that right. And swordfish go surface at night and bottom in the daytime.
And the so it's really, really dark down there. Like even if it's daylight, you guys like the water, it gets dark deep down there. How deep are they feeding? Jeremy, do you know? So a lot of the anglers that we talked to at the tournament are fishing and from colleagues down in Venice that are doing charter trips and personal fishing, a lot of these folks are dropping between 1500 and 1800 feet.
and they're hooking up on the bottom. And I can't imagine fighting a fish up that long, but they love doing it. So I mean, they are, that is the very bottom of the, of the areas that they're in for the most part of where folks are fishing. I mean, I'm sorry, they can go, swordfish can go into deeper water and I'm sure they're feeding even deeper, but nobody's fishing that far out or that deep out and hooking up really past 2000 feet, at least here in the Gulf of Mexico. So,
Katie (33:40.205)With these fish feeding so deep, they've got to have a lot of differentiation in their eyes than the, for example, the Marlin do. Is that true? Do you know anything about that? Well, their eyeballs are absolutely huge. I mean, Marlin have really, you know, large eyes. And then I would say most of the swordfish eyes that we've seen are probably half again as large, if not more. That's one.
Wow. Yeah, really. Do you have a photo? Do you have anywhere like a photo of two side by side or like even like two we could with measurements that we could show on the video? I probably do somewhere. We should find that because that is fascinating. So explain why the swordfish eye would be so much bigger. So that well, because they are deeper down and their otoliths are still tiny. So there's still a visual predator. So they're picking up as much light as possible.
from what little light levels there may be or may not be at that point. That's insane. Now, the hake is luminescent. I don't actually know if it lights up or not or if that's just its name. Okay. I know that a lot of creatures down there have some bioluminescence in them, like squid. Squid have bioluminescence. So...
I've never been down there personally. I have no desire to go down that deep, but what we know, I follow an account on Instagram. I need to figure out what I need to, I don't want to lie to you guys, but essentially it's like deep water and it's scientists that go, they have their little rover style thing that goes deep into the ocean and it's fun because they drive this rover around, they'll find something and it's a group of like four people just talking over what they're seeing and it's pretty geeky and it's pretty awesome. It's a great.
It's a great channel. I should get them on. But so what we know based on studies like the ones you guys are conducting is that swordfish are visual feeders because one, their otoliths are tiny and two, their eyeballs are huge. Yeah. And they're feeding in the entire water column. So it would be a disservice to them to, you know, not be visual when they're up in the open ocean, which they often are at night.
Katie (36:04.653)I mean, they are during the day too. You do see them sunbathing from time to time, from what I've been told anyways, I haven't seen them, but there's plenty of anglers that have come across them at the surface or near the surface during the day too. So they're really living in both environments and they've adapted in a way that is just phenomenal to make that happen. That's really interesting because there's really not a lot of pelagic fish or fish at all that can do that. Like,
I know that tuna, especially bluefin, the master of the tuna, are going throughout the water column pretty regularly. And I know they're feeding both at the surface and down deep, but it's a pretty spectacular situation to find in the fish species. absolutely. Yeah, there is not very many representative species like that. So it's a truly unique situation. Cool. So.
What do we know? Do you guys do any studies from the Marlin eyeballs? We have not done anything with them to my knowledge. One of the things that we've been looking into is seeing if you can pull some stabilized tubes from the different layers of the lenses, maybe if you can age the lenses because they should also have a similar structure to some of the other features. And so we have not done...
into that real deep, but I know there are other groups that are looking into that. They're looking into it. Another pun. Can you tell us a little bit more? I know you told us about the muscle plug already, but you were talking about stable isotope data and the trophic levels. Can you just clear that up a little bit more layman's term for us? Yeah. Simply put the food web.
So you can look and see, depending on what element you may be looking at, or if you're looking at a whole suite of species, you can see where they fall out in the food web. So are they primary producers? Are they primary consumers, secondary consumers? Or are they apex predators? And so depending on what your question is and what organism you're looking at, you can kind of build this web and see.
Katie (38:26.957)what their food web world is per se. And one of the things we're doing with that colleague of mine down the hall is a parasitologist. And so he's, you know, he likes looking at the, he's been looking at the parasites of some of these billfish. And realistically, their entire world is inside this billfish or another small fish that this billfish ate. So he can look at,
where their trophic level is and see how they fall in line compared to either the diet items that are in the marlin's stomach, or is it actually feeding on the marlin? So is it a higher trophic level in the marlin? So could that be an apex predator per se because of how it falls out based on different isotope signatures that you're looking at? So it's really an...
It's really a neat, like crazy world, depending on what your question is. Right. So, I mean, there's so much we think we know, but when you not until you get a deep, deep look at it, can you really have the answers? I remember I remember that the research assistant that was gathering the parasites at these from the Marlin last year at the tournament, and she was just like running or.
burning your hands all over, all these little like creases in the fish and just like, I mean, to be fair, when I am, for example, rigging a ballyhoo and it has, ballyhoo often have a parasite in their mouth that essentially just takes over their tongue. I mean, I don't know, I don't get too into it, but when I see that parasite in the ballyhoo's mouth, it gives me the, the Higa Jibis. Like I do not like that. I do not like that. And I was just like,
I don't know, my jaw was kind of dropped. My eyes were bulging a little bit watching her just cover through this marlin looking all up in the gill plate, all up in the, the cradle fin and with her tweezer. And she's like, I found one. And then she's like tweezing it off and sticking them in, in the tube. And I mean, these people that are collecting the, the, this samples for these studies, they are getting dirty. You guys, I need to paint this picture a little bit and we'll, we'll show some supporting documentation.
Katie (40:48.653)but it's not a pretty job. Like they, you guys are getting so nitty gritty down in there. I've personally never seen fishermen get that far into like, you know, this is the life, this is what we're doing and we're going to do it and we're going to make a difference with it. And I think that is so cool. Your whole crew is so cool. And I'm very, very thankful to have every one of them. And I think we do that super
deep dive in because it's such a rare event for us to have an opportunity to collect these samples. And so while we have that chance, let's make sure we get absolutely everything we think we may want. And then usually some more that we don't, we may or may not ever get around to doing anything useful with it or find out that, well, we don't need to collect that anymore. We know better now. But we know better. Well, we know time -wise better. well, that didn't do it. Yeah. So.
It's better more than not enough. Absolutely. So what other, so we're talking about your Marlin sampling, but it's not just a blue Marlin tournament. You're also seeing other species of fish. You want to tell us a little bit about that? So depending on the tournament, we, we may have swordfish that get brought in and that's just, it's a new budding fisher and not really budding anymore. It's a new ish fishery here in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. And so we're starting to see a lot more.
And so it's a great opportunity to get a lot of samples. So we've been really jumping on those opportunities when we can. The yellowfin tuna fishery has been booming here for decades. And so a lot of the billfish tournaments have a yellowfin category. Usually by the time the Biloxi tournament rolls around, the bluefin fishery is closed down for the year in the Gulf of Mexico. But we have had one bluefin come in over the years. And...
Jim got to sample that fish, of course. If it's ever open and it works out, we're happy, happy to collect bluefin samples because they are very few and far between in our area anyways. Especially in the Gulf of Mexico. We had Chloe on previously this year. She's a PhD candidate over at Marine Hopkins studying getting her PhD. Sorry.
Katie (43:10.605)She's studying bluefin tuna and she's amazing and she gave us all sorts of details. So we know that these bluefin, there's a population of bluefin that are spawning in the Gulf of Mexico. And that's generally, like you said, you guys are a little late, but it's generally March, April time. And being able to sample these fish is so important based on all of the information that you've already presented us with, Jeremy, just to be able to have that.
data on fish that are caught is so important for the long -term management of these species. So it's cool that you guys have gotten to do that a little bit as well. yeah. And so, and to add onto that, because the recreational quota is so low in the Gulf of Mexico, it's by weight. So every year the number changes, but we're talking maybe two or three fish total for the entire Gulf of Mexico. When one's caught, phone calls are starting to be made. And it's like, who wants...
who needs this, who can get close to this fish and get samples from it. So the community knows how important it is as well. So I'm sure she loves that for her dissertation work and the ability. And I'm sure Jim has probably sent her plenty of stuff he has in freezers over the years. I'm sure he has too. Yeah. Yeah. She works with Dr. Barb Block. yeah. I'm sure he has. Yeah. Okay. So we've got yellowfin, swordfish, marlin, tuna.
We don't usually get any blackfin tuna that come into the tournament. Every now and then there'll be one that shows up that we have an opportunity to look at, which I think is a pretty interesting species that we need to start looking at more. I'd like to start looking at more. It's an underappreciated tuna is the way I feel about them. I can second that one because I have no desire for blackfin tuna.
I think it is probably underappreciated. Tell me a little bit more why. I think they're delicious, but in our side, in the scientific side of things, we know very, very little about them. There's so many of them, nobody's really taking the time, much time anyways, to look into them and their different parts of their ranges. Some work's been done off of Florida.
Katie (45:33.293)off the East coast and the Florida Straits, but really in the Gulf of Mexico, there hasn't been much work done at all. And it's just, I think they're just overlooked in that sense because there are so many of them at the moment. Didn't you say that you're seeing a lot of them in the bellies of the fish we're catching? We do. So we do see them as a, as a prey item in a lot of the larger, pelagics and a lot of the sharks too. So. Well, all the more reason that we should understand them better if they're such an important food source for these larger fish.
Absolutely. I mean, you see huge balls of them when you're offshore. So there's always something good to hanging out with them. Okay. And then also what else do you have outside the tuna species? So we collect mahi samples when they're brought in. Mahi are interested in the fact they don't live very long. They're very short lived species. They're sexually mature by six months or so and their entire lifespan is only about
four -ish years. So they're very, they're boom and bust. So. And they, aren't they like the fastest growing fish in the sea as far as we know? I would bet they're close if they're not. I mean, cause you have nothing, I guess some things do, but almost nothing matures within just a couple of months of, you know, being a larval fish to reproducing in less than a year. So that's insane. And the fact that they only get to be about four years of age, I mean, we've all seen those like hundred.
town mahi photos over in the Pacific. Like they get huge over there. I've personally caught like really big ones when we were fishing out of Costa Rica. This last year, we were fishing the Baja bite over in California, I'm sorry, Baja California in Mexico. And, we were fishing the striped Marlin season and the mahi there have just been, as you know, it's an El Nino year this last year.
And I think because of the increased water temperatures, we just had a big just boom of these mahi all throughout the central Pacific. And they were so there were so many of them when I know that I was getting reports from Ronnie Fields on the mamacita saying that in September they were everywhere. By the time we got there in late October.
Katie (47:51.853)they were just, we couldn't even pull baits. We were just pulling teasers because we couldn't get a bait to a striped marlin without a mahi snaking it. And then as the season progressed, come like late December, these fish have like quadrupled in size. So now when you get snaked by a mahi, they're still just as fast. And when you get snaked by a mahi, now you have like a big fish to reel in and you're like, dang it. Like these guys can't leave us alone.
They're also one of the fastest fish. I mean, sailfish are super, super fast, but mahi are also extremely fast. Do you guys do any, do you know anything about that? Like what are your studies? I mean, I know that that's probably information that you would be better derived through satellite tagging is their speed and that sort of thing. It would be, it'd be better. That would probably be the easiest way to actually get the data back. And I don't know if anybody's, we have not tagged any mahi here.
They're doing that in Florida. I know that Chloe personally did that over at CMAP. I think, I don't want to lie, but I know that she started off satellite tagging Mahi and learned a lot about him. There's a lot of work being done with them for sure. But yeah, like you said, I mean, they grow so fast and the fact that they reach sexual maturity at six months of age is insane. Yeah, absolutely nuts. And so...
But with the satellite tag, and we do do that on other species, so we can kind of calculate speed based on reports that we get back in as long as we get good data back. That's important. That's so cool. And so with those mahi samples, you are able to like, like we talked about the the maturity of reproduction. Do you know how often they reproduce once they reach that maturity? I actually do not.
because I haven't done much with the mahi samples. We collected them and I passed them off and I don't actually know what they've done with them since then. But that's cool. I mean, the important part of this conversation is the fact that there are all these questions and because of the samples you guys are taking, we have the ability to get the answers. And I think I find that absolutely amazing. So we have mahi and then there's I think there's one more. We have been collecting wahoo.
Katie (50:13.037)as we're able to. And they're a little bit... God, I love Wahoo. They're a little bit trickier to... I mean, the normal workups are the normal workups, but like age and growth of Wahoo has been a challenge. Their otoliths are very tough to age, which may sound funny, because you'd say, they're just rings. You should be easily count them, but they're not always just rings. There might be some...
some, I don't know, distortion, I guess, would be the way to put it. So it may not be just a clear ring that you can see. It might be that there's broken bands or there's things are just, they don't quite look right. So, you know, Jim's, Jim and, that's interesting. Specific to wahoo. And there we have, we see that with other species as well. The wahoo of their tournament sampled fish have been the problem child for that by far. That is so odd. Now, do they, I guess they don't have a second spinal fin?
What did you call the gap? So I don't know if anybody's tried to use an anal spine or any spine off a wahoo. That would be something to look into actually. I don't know if anybody's tried that or if it was something that we could even do and if there's enough there. I mean, plausibly any calcified structure like that should work. That's so interesting.
How fascinating that all of these pelagic fish, now are all of these fish that we've talked about considered rare event species? I wouldn't say that the tunas are rare events. Bluefin's definitely are, but the yellowfin fishery is booming. And when the mahi are in, the mahi are everywhere. Yeah. There's nothing rare about the mahi. I'm just kidding.
I have a little bit of like anger towards the Mahi now. It's a little residual, just PTSD on the Mahi scene. But yeah, okay. So the bluefin swordfish. I would say that the technique has been largely figured out for swordfish like it has for yellowfin. And so they are less of a rare event species now than what, at least in our area, than what they were even a decade ago.
Katie (52:30.349)I know when I started working on some of the swordfish projects we had, I was looking at landings data and everything around here comes out of Venice, Louisiana for these large fish because it's so easy to get offshore from there. And so I was looking at Louisiana landings data and of those reported and I'm assuming most of them were reported how they're supposed to be, there was only like 14 landings for the state. Within three or four years, we were well over a couple hundred landings.
And so, and I know it's grown and built since then. I haven't asked for the most recent data in a few years. But you can go down to Venice, you see swordfish on the dock all the time. And the folks that are fishing for them, they've got it tuned in. A good buddy of mine, Peace Marvel, who's down there, he has, I think the last time I talked to him, he's got something like 900 under his belt that he's caught on his boat in the last few years.
And that's insane. It's just, it is wild. So I would say they're becoming less of a rare event now that more people are entering that fishery. But blue marlin are definitely a rare event species. Yeah, they're out there. We see them in the tournaments. So when folks are fishing for them, you know, Biloxi tournament last year had an insane number of releases. I can't remember. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was, I feel like it was around a hundred, if not better. Like it was a lot of releases last year.
But that doesn't happen very often. There's only a handful of tournaments. There's only a handful of folks that are fishing them on a consistent basis. So outside of those big events, there may not be very many of them that are hooked up and landed. So they are definitely a rare event. White Marlin, I would say, are a rare event here. I only know a couple of charter boats that have hooked into them. A few of the tournament boats that I know that I've talked to have hooked into them. But...
We never see them. We never see them on the dock. I don't really know about sailfish. I know there's, I mean, we have the sailfish runs, but I don't know how heavy those are targeted and how many are really caught, caught, released or even caught and landed. I'm just not sure about those ones. It seems like the sailfish fishery in the Gulf of Mexico is more prevalent in the Southern part of the Gulf, like off of my shore. We have in...
Katie (54:58.797)Generally in August and September, I could be wrong because I say it's my shore, but most of my fishing experience has been done elsewhere outside the Gulf of Mexico. But we do have some really great tournaments like the Billfish Pechanga out of Port Aransas, Texas that targets light tackle species like white marlin and sailfish.
and we have a really good fisheries sometimes in those months for sailfish about 60 miles offshore. Now 60 miles from here is very close. Yeah. yeah. Our fishery is far. So but but yeah, in the southern Gulf, you have some good light tackle fishing tournaments. Definitely. That's interesting. So I just think it's great that.
the scientists have, and you know, led by Dr. Jim Franks, he's really done an amazing job. And also the Billfish Foundation for putting people in touch with each other, which is really cool, but just have figured out to collaborate with people that have devoted their entire lives to chasing these rare event species. Like we do it, we do it because we love it. We do it because we love being on the ocean, but also the fact that we can help contribute to protecting them is essential.
So I think that's really awesome and I really appreciate your work with that. Before we close up, I have a couple of questions for you. I do want to touch on the fish themselves when you guys are done taking samples. What happens with the fish that are brought back to the dock? Let's talk about the marlin specifically. Because, and I want to say to the listeners, we have blue marlin is not the best fish to eat. It's good. Every now and then, I think two times in my career, we've
unfortunately pulled up a dead fish either from being tail wrapped or having somebody that didn't know what they were doing driving the boat, unfortunately. And in those two times, we ate the fish. Now, I find that the best way to consume blue marlin is by smoking it and then creating dips and smoked. Smoked blue marlin is pretty good, like on a bagel or whatever it might be.
Katie (57:02.893)but all in all, not the best fish to eat. Whereas you have different species of billfish that are better. For example, spearfish is extremely delicious. But with the blue marlin, they've been brought back to the dock. They're not cleaned offshore because their weight is what qualifies them for the tournament. And so they want these fish to be full size, full weight, all the way on the scales. And then you guys take the samples from them.
So that fish has gotten mussels taken out. I mean, it's long dead. Mussels taken out, eyeballs taken out, bills cut off. Sometimes people want to keep the bill for art or a trophy to remember the fish and the situation and their time on the water with their team. The anal fins then cut. There's a lot of samples that have been taken. So what happens with that fish afterwards? So it depends on the tournament, but I believe every...
most every if not all are donating that meat to a cause after the tournament for the marlin. Tuna, swordfishes, mahi, a lot of that goes back to the boat if the anglers would like it so that always goes back. Although we do get a lot of fish that are donated to the Blutzee tournament as well so we'll have donated tunas in the ice truck that...
that go to good causes. And it just depends on the tournament and it depends really year to year where that donation goes. So it may be to shelters, it may be to other good causes, but the meat does not go to waste. It is provided to groups or folks that may be in need. May be able to use it. So.
You touched on a couple of things. First off, that it's given back to the tournament on some of the meat like the mahi and the tuna. And I know that they actually, I'm pretty sure they prepare it for the like the final party night. They'll have like a fish fry or something and feed everybody. Now for the marlin specifically, I have some insight on that, but you touched on the ice truck. Can you tell us a little bit about that? So the one we're using right now is pretty fancy.
Katie (59:21.005)Compared to ones we've had in the past. Travis is a really nice setup going on. And it's just a large trailer that he converted over and he packed it full of, I'm assuming it's blown in ice. And so these fish, as soon as we're done sampling them, they haul it off and they are packed down and they are well preserved and kept in as good quality. Well, I see, I love that. Jeremy's very polite about it, but I've seen Jeremy's team.
haul a 600 pound marlin over to the ice truck, take a saw, cut it up in like concise pieces, lay it nicely in the ice truck. They're covered in the gore, but the fish looks great. And what Travis was telling me last year, actually he found a couple organizations. It's not so much the food banks with these blue marlin as it is with rehabilitation keeps. So he's found a couple organizations that are rehabilitating.
birds, specifically sea birds in the Gulf Coast, all over the Gulf Coast. These birds are getting brought in and they're birds of prey. So their natural food source is seafood. It's fish. That is what they're supposed to be eating. But it's very, very difficult for the rehabilitation keep to be finding fish to feed these birds because that's so expensive. That's so expensive. So Travis,
has figured this out and he's actually bringing all these marlin to feed these birds throughout the year. That is great. So that is, I did not know that he had started doing that. That is also a wonderful way to disseminate that, you know, the marlin that are brought in. And that's really, that's really neat to hear. That's cool. I didn't know you didn't realize that. I was trying to set you up. No, but that's cool. I'm glad that I got to share something with you. And it's because it's so important.
for these wild animals, especially if they're going to be going back into nature, which we would hope they would, it's really important for them to stay as close to their food source as possible. Absolutely. And so the fact that he has found these groups that are...
Katie (01:01:35.405)Birds of prey that are based upon a marine diet that you can provide that to is even better. Because there's plenty of other opportunities similar to that, but that may not be what their normal diet is or even close enough so that those nutrients are still in the same cycle as they would be in the natural environment. Maybe a little bit out of kilter in the food web sort of things.
Probably don't have an osprey. In the tropic level. Probably don't have an osprey smoking a marlin, but you never know. Seeing crazier things out there. As close as we can get. That's awesome. Jeremy, that's time for today. One more question for you. Can you tell me what gives you the passion to keep coming back to the ocean to keep studying fisheries every single day? That is a super easy question. It is just my
general curiosity about the scientific world and the natural world. I always have questions. I always want to know more. I think anybody in the field that you talk to probably has that same desire. It's just what if, what if we look at this? What if I have a chance to examine that? Well, I wonder how they do that. It's just, there's always something to learn. There's always more to inquire upon. And that keeps me going every single day. I love it.
Excellent answer. Thanks so much for joining us today. You heard it here at KDC Sawyer podcast. Y 'all have a good one in tight lines. This episode is available on podcast listening platforms, as well as YouTube. If you want to see more photo and video content to support the conversation, you can check the description below for more information on Jeremy as well as the University of Southern Mississippi. Thank you so much for checking in and tight lines.

Ep.06 Jeremy Cox: Mongo Offshore Challenge and Fishing the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Jeremy Cox, Captain of the Lolita fishing team and co-founder of the Mongo Offshore Challenge, shares his fishing journey and the success of their recent fishing trip. The conversation covers topics such as Jeremy's fishing background, the Mongo Offshore Challenge, and their recent catch of a 704-pound blue marlin. They discuss the tournament format, the significance of the catch, and the importance of preserving and studying these fish. Jeremy also talks about the excitement of lure fishing and the thrill of anticipation. The conversation highlights the joy of fishing and the special moments shared with family and friends. The conversation revolves around the experience of catching marlin in the Gulf of Mexico and the importance of sustainable fishing practices. The guests discuss their recent catch of a 700-pound marlin and the challenges they faced during the fishing trip. They also touch on the significance of donating the meat from the catch to charities and zoos. The conversation highlights the love and passion marlin fishermen have for the species and their efforts to protect and conserve them. The guests also discuss the science and research that can be conducted using these rare event species. Additionally, they talk about the process of catching live bait in the Gulf of Mexico and the strategies they use to keep the bait fresh and alive. In this conversation, Jeremy from the Lolita Fishing Team discusses the evolution of live baiting in offshore fishing. He explains how the use of live bait tubes has become a common practice and how it has improved the ability to keep bait alive for longer periods. Jeremy also talks about the importance of fresh and frisky bait in attracting fish and shares tips on handling and caring for bait to keep it in optimal condition. He emphasizes the significance of structure, such as oil rigs, in creating fish aggregating devices (FADs) and attracting a variety of fish species. Jeremy also mentions the potential for future expansion of the Mongo Offshore Tournament to the East Coast and internationally.
 
Mongo Offshore Challenge East Coast Registration
https://www.reeltimeapps.com/live/tournaments/2024-mongo-offshore-east-coast/register
 
Mongo App:
Iphone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mongo-offshore-challenge/id1516755470
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reeltimeapps.mongo&pcampaignid=web_share
 
Keywords
 
fishing, blue marlin, tournament, Mongo Offshore Challenge, Gulf of Mexico, Lolita fishing team, catch, celebration, preservation, marlin, Gulf of Mexico, sustainable fishing, catch and release, fishing tournaments, conservation, live bait, tuna tubes, live baiting, offshore fishing, bait tubes, fresh bait, frisky bait, handling bait, oil rigs, fish aggregating devices, FADs, structure, Mongo Offshore Tournament
 
Takeaways
 
Jeremy Cox shares his fishing journey and the success of their recent fishing trip
The Mongo Offshore Challenge is a season-long tournament that awards the biggest fish caught in various categories
The Lolita fishing team caught a 704-pound blue marlin during the Hurricane Open tournament
The catch was celebrated with family and friends, and the fish was donated to science for research purposes
Lure fishing provides a unique thrill and anticipation for anglers
Preserving and studying these fish is important for understanding their reproduction and population Marlin fishermen are passionate about the species and work towards their conservation and sustainability.
Donating the meat from caught marlin to charities and zoos is a way to reduce waste and benefit the community.
Catching live bait in the Gulf of Mexico can be challenging, especially during the day when the bait goes deep.
Tuna tubes are used to keep live bait fresh and alive during fishing trips.
The conversation highlights the importance of responsible fishing practices and the role of fishermen in scientific research and data collection. Live baiting has evolved over the years, with the use of live bait tubes becoming a common practice in offshore fishing.
Fresh and frisky bait is essential in attracting fish, and there are techniques to handle and care for bait to keep it in optimal condition.
Oil rigs serve as fish aggregating devices (FADs) by providing structure and attracting a variety of fish species.
The Mongo Offshore Tournament is a popular fishing tournament that focuses on the Gulf of Mexico, but there are plans to expand to the East Coast and potentially internationally.
Transcript:
Katie (00:00.206)In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Captain Jeremy Cox as we dive into the Gulf of Mexico blue marlin fishery with big fish stories, tips on how to handle and maximize the health of your bait and why the oil rigs play such a valuable role in the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
Katie (00:27.886)Welcome to the KDC Sawyer podcast. I'm your host Katie. And today I'm sitting with the captain of the Lolita fishing team. He's also the co -founder of the Mongo Offshore Challenge. Jeremy Cox, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with me today. No problem. Thank you so much for having us. It's my pleasure. Well, we've been talking about doing this for a long time and I'm really glad it worked out the way it did because you guys just had a
heck of a fishing trip out of Grand Isle, Louisiana last week, which I really want to get into you guys. Spoiler alert. They caught a 704 pound blue Marlin, but Jeremy, tell us a little bit about you. Where are you from? What's your fishing experience and how did you get to where you are today? so, let's see. I'm, I was born in Maryland. Actually, my, my family's from Maryland. move my.
family moved us to Pensacola, Florida back in the early 80s. And so I grew up in Florida. I was raised in Florida. I think I was two years old when we moved to Florida, Pensacola. And man, first fishing memory is like four years old. My brother, JD, which is also co -founder of the Mongo, he's my older brother by seven years. He took me fishing in a lake behind, you know, in our neighborhood behind our lake.
caught a bass like the first trip and I was hooked. I was like man this is the thing now I probably pestered him every day after that can we go fishing can we go fishing you know we're going fishing and so that progressed into an addiction of fishing and my mom took me on a fishing charter when I was 10 years old out of Ocean City Maryland and I saw the mate you know back there with us and you know this guy driving the boat which was you know I learned was a captain and
and we caught some tuna and I was like, these guys do this for a living? And my mom's like, yeah, this is what they do, you know? And I was like, man, I want to do that when I grow up. So my brother had a baseball scholarship. He went off to college and played baseball and moved to Birmingham, Alabama. And me and him always talked about owning our charter boat. So I got into the fishing industry. Like my first job was first fishing related jobs working at a place called Boaters World. They're out of business now, but.
Katie (02:50.766)very like West Marine, it was around for years and it was a big box store for marine supplies and marine sales. So I worked there and figured that'd be a good opportunity to meet other fishermen. So long story short, met other captains and landed a mate job and started mating and me and my brother, that's what we were gonna pursue is our own charter boat career. And you know, I'm skipping a lot of stuff, but Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004 and sort of...
hit us back to reality. It's like, man, we saw all these charter boats lose their whole livelihood with their boats getting wrecked and the whole season sort of thrown out the door, at least in our little town. And we're like, maybe that's not the smartest idea for us. We didn't have a lot of money anyway. We wanted to get in those charter boat things. I mean, so I had a lot of friends in the private industry. And we were charter fishing. We were mating and captain. By that time, JD moved down to Pensacola. And we were both mating on different boats. And I did some captain work.
started in the private sector. So I was like, man, that's probably the better route, more secure, you know, and then it's, you know, you got somebody else paying for everything and you get paid to go fishing, paid to kick, you know, a lot more waxing and toilet fixing than fishing, but yeah, it's all part of the, all part of it. Yeah. So, but it's awesome. So, you know, that's, that's how I got into the captain, you know, and in that whole time, you know, I was doing sales, you know, I worked for a
Long time I worked for a distributor. We sold fish and tackle to tackle stores. And then I was a tackle sales rep for a while. We represented a dial and play Jake and other other brands. And I did that for collectively for about 12 years while I was doing captain work on the side in the private world. I had an orange beach, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida, Destin, Florida. But now currently I run the Lolita to 72 foot Viking out of Destin, Florida.
and been working for this family for this is the ninth summer. Great family. They're awesome. Yeah, we're like fam. They treat me to treat us like family and just a great, great time. And yeah, this weekend. So we, we called the art person. Yeah. no, no, no. I haven't interrupted you. Sorry guys. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. No, that's so cool. So are you out of Orange Beach now? Are you based out of Orange Beach now? I'm.
Katie (05:15.47)We keep the boat Lolita, we keep it behind Bo Shamps and Destin. That's where we keep the boat year round. That's right, you just said that. No, yeah, we come to Orange Beach a lot. We're sort of a traveling boat in the summertime, so we're rarely home during the summer, but the wintertime's fall through spring, we're parked behind Bo Shamps. We spend a good amount of time in Grand Isle, Louisiana. The owners have a camp there in Grand Isle. Nice. Yeah, so we get to spend, well now it's about two months a year out of Grand Isle.
a month in the spring. What two months is that? So we're just getting off of this month. So it's a March, you know, late March to well, actually this year it was early April through early May. You know, we're home in Orange Beach now for some work. So about a month, you know, in the late spring and then a month in a late summer, we used to go there late July and stay through late August. Yeah, it's really good fishing over there that time of year. Yeah. Are you, out of Grand Isle, are you...
doing a lot of tuna fishing as well as blue marlin fishing. Correct. Yes, they love to catch tuna and blue marlin, that's pretty much it. That's all they would like to get. We do very little bottom fishing. It's primarily tuna and marlin fishing, which is... I mean, the fishing up there in the northern Gulf for those two species is incredible. And the fact that you've, I mean, you essentially grew up for the most part fishing the northern Gulf of Mexico, right? That's right.
That's cool because I'm from Texas, right? That's where I claim as my hometown. But I, my Gulf of Mexico fishing experience is extremely limited. So, I have so many questions for you and I'm really excited to have a Gulf guy on the podcast. we've had South Florida, we've had Kona and now here we go into the Gulf and we're right in that tournament season. Now, do you want to tell me a little bit about the Mongo Offshore Challenge? It's a 153 day.
regional challenge, right? That's right. So yeah, so me and my brother was involved in this private world of fishing and tournament fishing. I think our first tournament we fished together was in 2007 on a boat called the Sunset. I fished several tournaments in like 2004, 2005, but JD was able to move down from Birmingham, get out of, he was in natural disaster work as well. And anyway, he,
Katie (07:34.382)He was able to fish with me in 2007, our first tournament together on a boat called Sunset. We fished Biloxi and we won it. First tournament we fished together. my gosh. What'd you win it with? 531 Blue Marlin. Yeah, and it caught on the first morning of the first hour of the first morning.
is like totally spoiled. Like JD's like, I like this tournament fishing stuff. This is pretty awesome. Yeah. It's always, it doesn't always work out like that, but that was really special. We did it with our best friend and mentor, Matt Dunn, which he's not really in the, in the sport fishing game anymore. He switched over to yacht world and he's doing, you know, he works for, you know, runs a big yachty yacht now, but,
Man, so we made a lot of memories fishing. We had a really good run there with him for about six or seven years. Did really well in the golf circuit. And that was right when live baiting was sort of getting really, really popular. We were primarily trollers on that boat, but yeah, that was cool. So.
What do you mean primarily trawlers like lures? Yeah, lures. We were, we were lure fishing. We still actually are passionate. I don't know that I would have fell in love with blue marlin fishing if I would have started out just sitting soaking live baits. it's something about the anticipation of rigging the night before the days before. And you got your lures out and you're re -skirting and putting new hook sets on. You're like, maybe that's going to be this color. You know, you got, you know, we need more trawlers. We need more spiked lures.
Yeah, you know, going to the tackle store and like, man, we got to buy this one. This is the one. man, look at the head. You know, it's just, I don't know, something about that anticipation and like, you know, the what if they eat this one? yeah, they should eat this one. It's this color. look, it's a dolphin color. We got to match the hatch. I mean, all that stuff is just like fun, you know, rather than feeding them what they eat all day long. Of course they're going to eat a tuna. Of course they're going to eat it. Yeah. It's like, you know, we do it and it works.
Katie (09:36.782)We have to do it in time efficient up here. You have to live bait to be consistent. But it's, you know, you're not really tricking them anymore. You know, when you're lure fishing, it feels like, man, it's like bass fishing. I'd much rather bass fish with a spinner bait or a plastic worm than throwing a live shiner out there. They're going to eat a live shiner, but it's just something special about it. And so yeah, it's definitely progressed. We came in when it was...
And the northern golf is mainly lure and, you know, in natural baits, you know, you're pulling islander, you know, about who combos is, you know, everybody still pulls and then they work 100%. They work. And that's just, I don't know, something special about, about that. And if we were started out live baiting, I don't know that I would have had the same excitement about it. Now we sort of mix it up a little bit. We do some trolling and we do a lot of live baiting. it's the primarily way we fish up here. We're very, very spoiled.
with this Northern Gulf fishery with these old rigs. I mean, you have giant fads everywhere. So they hold fish. We're going to go a little off topic for a minute because I have a lot of questions for you. No, this is great. I love it. You're giving me great content. So in that tournament, so we won that tournament. I'll go back to the Mongo. Obviously, it's why you have us on here. But us tournament fishing, we saw the progress and we're on fast boats.
And then we started running the Lolita. I started running that in 2016, and it was a slow Hatteras, a 23 knot Hatteras. And we also, when we first started fishing, there's a lot of express boats. In the early 2000s, in these big weekend tournaments in golf, there's a lot of smaller express boats. There's a lot of slower, you know, Bartrams and Hatteras. And everybody's competing. But as the fleet, you know, got more technologically advanced and bigger horsepower engines.
It's a speed race now, so whoever has the fastest boat has more fishing time. And it's a huge, huge deal. We're running 150 to 250 miles one way. So if you're doing that, you know, and you're getting there two, three hours before everybody else, or at least before the slow boats, the slow boats don't really have a chance, you know, unless you get lucky and run over one. So we were like, man, it'd be awesome if there was a tournament that had like a, that would level the playing field that would give them.
Katie (11:54.83)Same amount of time for everybody. Doesn't matter how fast you are, how slow you are. If you have a big giant Viking or a little center console, everybody's on a level playing field. And so that's how that progressed, that birth, that idea of like, man, all right, let's just have a season long event and put the lines in. Whenever you leave the dock, you're in the tournament from May 1st to September 30th. So if you can, and we're all about the big fish, Mongo meaning huge. So if you catch a giant fish.
between May 1st and September 30th, you can win it. And we count your weights in tournaments, and we count your weights on fun fishing trips. We set up these weigh stations all over the Gulf, and you can go in anywhere. We have 20 weigh stations in the Gulf of Mexico from all the way in South Texas all the way to Naples, Florida. So you go in and weigh your fish, and if you have the biggest fish at the end of the season, you win the pot. Blue Marlin, Swordfish, Tuna, Dolphin, and Wahoo.
So yeah, it's really, really fun. We started it five years ago. It had 66 teams that first year and this year. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And COVID year too, which is crazy. That's a whole nother story. But yeah, our first year we had 66 teams. We have a bit of a network. We've been around, we know a lot of guys. So we were able to call up a lot of captains like, what do you think about this format? Would you fish it? And they're like, yeah, that's awesome. Heck yeah, man. Because you always catch your biggest fish on your fun trips anyway. Yeah.
Yeah, typically. I mean, you're going out there for a million dollar tournament and you catch the big one the day before practicing, you know, so now we can celebrate that fish and reward, you know, whoever catches the bigger ones, all kinds of cool things for that format that makes it neat. But yeah, so so that's where it came from. And then now this year is our fifth year we've had a we have 150 teams and over half a million dollars in the pot.
That's crazy in the Gulf of Mexico because you guys have branched out to other fisheries now, right? That's right. So we started the East Coast three years ago. This is our third season in the East Coast. We're trying to grow that East Coast. We don't have the network that we have in the Gulf because we grew up in the Gulf. We know everybody. So we're working on growing that network over there, getting some key individuals, key captains on board. But there's already, and registration is still open for the East Coast until June 30th. So teams.
Katie (14:12.782)fishing from Cape Cod all the way down to Florida can register for the Mongo up until June 30th and pick which category you want to get in. You don't have to get in swordfish if you don't, if you're not a sword fisherman, just get into mahi or whatever you're fishing for. What's the registration fee? So it's alacarte. So each, each one's different. So the mahi and the wahoo are 500 a piece for the season. That's nothing.
You know, we burn in that much an hour out of some of these boats and fuel. So, and then a swordfish is 15, excuse me. Swordfish is a thousand for the season, for the season. yellowfin and big eye are a thousand a piece for the season. And then blue marlin is 2 ,500 for the season. So you'll, if you want to get in all categories, like 6 ,500 bucks for the board. Yeah. And you're in from every time your boat leaves the dock, whether you're fishing two times a year or a hundred times a year, you're, you're in there.
And what did the winner of the Gulf of Mexico last year make and what did they weigh on blue marlin? I think their payday was like 130 ,000 last year and it was a 727 pound blue marlin caught in the bluxy tournament. So he won two tournaments with one fish. I love it. I love that. Yeah. A boat called the salt shaker with Captain Dennis Bennett. And I remember that.
Believe it or not, they also won the mahi. They caught the mahi in the ECBC tournament and won like another 50 grand with the mahi. So they really cashed in last year. That's so sick. And their mahi was 60 pounds, 59 .9 pounds, 60 pound mahi in the Gulf of Mexico. It was totally unheard of. I haven't seen a 60 pounder. That is massive. I haven't seen a 50 pounder in the Gulf in years. The only fish I've seen that big was in like Costa Rica, Central Pacific.
Panama. That's, that's where I've seen the mahi get that even close to that big. But again, my golf experience is pretty limited. Sure. One thing is different, you know, Mongo, golf on that a minute, but we have very big minimums. So there's not a whole lot of fish weighed in the Mongo throughout the season. One, it's a winner take all. So once something huge is on the board, you're not going to weigh in anything smaller anymore. And then our limits are high. Like mahi has got to be 40 pounds to even qualify.
Katie (16:31.278)Wahoo's 60 pounds, Yellowfin's 140 pounds. Blue Marlin's 118 inches. Which is like the federal, you guys, the federal minimum is 99 inches. And a lot of tournaments go 112 inches. So it's definitely progressed over the years. Typically last year was 110 for all the tournaments and this last weekend was 112 for this last weekend.
Yeah, because people are going in figuring them out and they're starting to weigh in more and more and more. So they're trying to inch those links up to not take so many of them. And that's one reason we wanted to just pay one place. You know, one, we just wanted to award the biggest fish of the season. And then two, we didn't want to kill a bunch of extra ones. And then typically the blue morn... Actually, I'm trying to think, other than the first year in the Mongo...
Every other blue marlin has been caught, or the winner was caught in another tournament. So the first year, the first year was a state record fish caught the day after the, the world cup on July 5th. They were out there for the world cup. They stayed out another day, caught this giant fish. If they would have called in the world cup, they would have won a whole lot more money. Obviously fly usually has, I don't know, well over a million dollars in that, in that world cup pot.
But they ended up winning, I think they won like 90 grand or something like that extra. Yeah, that they were. I mean, how cool that you guys are giving that opportunity, you know, like I Drake when we were in Madeira, we saw a real big fish on July 3rd and didn't see it again. But it's just, you know, it's funny how they dance around that date. I feel like those sightings really, really go around the 4th of July. If you guys are wondering what we're talking about, the World Cup is a tournament that's around the world based on your specific time zone on the 4th of July.
and we'll have Fly Navarro on for a podcast coming into that. So stay posted. But Jeremy, I guess natural integration. Tell us about your fish this last week. So this last week in the Lolita, the boat I worked for, my owners are gracious enough to get in. They know we put the tournament on. They're totally supportive and supporting of it. It's me, my brother JD and my best friend, Brian Johnson. We were the founders of the Mongo and we also all three work on the Lolita.
Katie (18:56.366)So my brother's a mate and Brian comes on for tournaments and it's been just a great team. We all get along so well. And so they're always gracious enough to, hey, we'll get into, you know, we never twist our arm or nothing. They like the idea, they like the format. And so they've got in every year and we've never weighed in on qualifying fish during that time for the Mongo. But this year, our first, actually it's our second trip of the season, but our first tournament of the year.
fishing the hurricane open out of Grand Isle, Louisiana this past weekend. And we catch a 704 pounder, which is a nice one. It's 122 inches. It's our biggest one yet. And man, we are so ecstatic. Congratulations. It was money or no money. It's actually sort of special for my owners and my owner's family because they've had a camp on Grand Isle, Louisiana for they call it a camp. It's a beach house and it's nice beach house now, but.
It was camp since the 50s, late 50s. This family has had many traditions of going down there and spending time together every summer. And it's been, you know, it's something where everybody can go and be around each other. And it's, they're a really close knit family anyway. And they fish the tarpaulios and fish some other things over the years, but they've never weighed anything huge there in Grand Isle. So this has always been like a dream of theirs. And to do it in Grand Isle just makes it that much more special. We didn't.
Like I said, we want some money, but it wasn't about the money. It was about that memory that they got to make with their family members. And they brought their 90 year old grandfather down here to celebrate with us. And he's, you know, yeah, his wife was Lolita. She passed away, but that's had to name the boat after. So he was able to come down and celebrate. And it was just so special. It was really, really cool. And we're able to, you know, not only celebrate that fish and won some money with that fish and.
Now we're on the board with the Mongo, which, you know, extra special for me, JD and Brian. I mean, it's really, really cool to be able to do that. But, but you reached out to us and now we were able to donate that fish to science, which is awesome. And we also flayed up a bunch of the meat. Everybody's sharing the meat. We actually, my brother's smoking some up, making some fish dip out of it. Yes. Smoked blue marlin. That's the way to do it. Yep. We got some, some art being made from it. you know, some, the bill and the tail and some prints. And so it's.
Katie (21:19.758)It's not a wasted fish, it's a celebrated fish. And now we got, we had kids down there taking pictures with it. It's just inspiring kids. I mean kids, the thing is, is like what a lot of people don't realize is when these fish are brought back to the dock, like the kids that see it, it's such a lasting impression. Because I mean, even for the adults that have never seen anything like that, like to see a creature from the ocean, a fish from the ocean of that size and magnitude and what it takes.
to bring something like that in and what type of possibilities there are out there. It just opens so many doors. And I'm really, I was really stoked when I reached out to you, you were all on board about the donating. And next, you guys, the next podcast is gonna be Jeremy Higgs over at the University of Southern Mississippi. And that's exactly who these samples are going to. So Jeremy, I had you like.
what we cut the head and we kept some of the innards and we're going to get to age that fish and, and learn a lot about the reproduction and the phases of the fish. So it's blue marlin are females when they're of that size and they're going to get to do reproductive histology on there and we're going to learn a lot about it. And I just think it's so cool that you guys were on board and just sharing that on this podcast is so important because you know, when these fish are brought in, there's so much more that can be done with them than even just.
you know, taking the tournament win. Like you said, I love that you're showcasing the celebration of that life. Tell us a story about catching the fish. Like what did it eat? And, yeah, so, we fished some, a very popular area called, we call it the ghetto. it's just, some shallow, well, it's not shallow. It's, it's close to land rigs. I guess you could say it's a, it's a rig that are
the floating rigs that are closest to the Alabama line. We're fishing out of Louisiana, but everybody knows the ghetto. If you fish in the northern Gulf Coast, you know it's the ghetto. It's the Rampowl and Petronas and Marlin Rig and Horn Mountain. It's these rigs that's been there for years and years and years. Probably some of the early rigs that were floaters are the ghetto. And they've added on to them. And we got hundreds of rigs that we could choose from. So, ghetto's in the shallower waters. It's about 3 ,000 feet and it's working its way up the bank. And,
Katie (23:37.07)I saw some good current in there, like a good eddy being built. We use Hilton's to do our research before we go to figure out exactly what the current's doing, the temperature's doing, and all that. We saw this eddy being formed in there, and I was like, man, it's got some good water pushing in there. Also, Bluefin was still open, so if we accidentally happened to catch one, it wasn't closed yet. It's like, all right, if we get one, we could probably take her home if she ends up.
Accidentally, you know eating one of our live baits that we use for blue marlin which they do typically this time of year And then there's huge tune in that area this time of year had some reports today before Several boats catching actually one boat called a 200 pounder another boat called 185 pounder all in this area. Yep And then several boats have caught blue marlin over the last couple days. So I was like, all right, let's go in there most of the fleet's gonna go to greens Canyon another area south of Louisiana and
Maybe it won't be as so many boats over there. Anyway, we made the call. Go over there. And the bait's a little hard to catch, a little concern. As we get there, the bait's really, really deep. Typically in the daytime, we're trolling around the rigs, try to catch live bait first to fill up our tubes. At nighttime, you're jigging, using butterfly jigs and whatnot around the oil rigs. They all come to the lights and usually up shallower. And you can jig them all night, fill up your tubes. But in the daytime, you've got to be a little creative and catch them on the troll.
There was a lot of different techniques guys used, but they were really deep, really hard to catch. So we were like, all right, at least to the rigs that we stopped at. So we switched over to trolling. That first day we're trolling, nothing. We got to watch another boat that was live baiting catch a couple of fish. So we're like, all right, well, there's fish around. We'll load the tubes tonight and we'll start in the morning and do some live baiting. So we did that. We filled up our tubes at night at a rig and then pulled over to our first stop.
It was a drill ship and first bait in the water. It was a porpoise. Porpoise came up and ate our bait and they just, they're so smart. Yeah. They hated this fisherman. They're beautiful, awesome creatures, but they came up. Yeah. You're fishing. Yeah. You don't want when they're eating your bait. They're amazing how they eat it too. They missed the hook. They know where the hook is. They bite it right behind and they just like suck out everything. You just, all you have left on your, on your hook is the head of your bait. And they did that like first, first bait in.
Katie (25:57.678)Corpus and I'm marking someone's sonar and like these all look like porpoise to me. So let's let's just go. So we went three miles away to the next rig and there's nobody there. There was like four boats or five boats fishing with us at that first one. So there's multiple reasons why I wanted to leave. So we lit we left one over there and there's only other one ended up being one other boat fishing with us there and marked a couple in the sonar. We hooked one fish, jumped them off within like two minutes. It was a
hindsight it was a male. It was a smaller fish. And we found that over the years that that'll happen a whole lot. You'll catch them. You'll catch a small one and you go back and catch the big one or you'll catch the big one and you go back and catch a small one. It seems like they run together this time of year. It's typical to find a big fish with a small fish or multiple. I'm so curious to find out if your fish was spawning. Multiple small fish. A lot of times.
So anyway, I marked one, we hooked that one, lost it, put the baits back out, and I saw another mark going over to the rig. So we were using Omniso Nars. Actually, I'm using an MAQ. I love it. It's awesome. So we go over to the rig, put the baits out, drag it over top of it, and I lose the mark. I can't find it. And a lot of times that means they're coming up about to eat your bait. You know, you're in your prop watch or whatnot. Nothing. About five minutes goes by, I mark something else.
up ahead of me so we pulled the boat up about maybe a football field's length and there she is. She eats the bait immediately, starts dumping it. What you have like a blackfin or bonita? Yep, that morning all we could call it was blackfin. A little football size maybe about that big. And yeah, Aida immediately dumped a bunch of line. We're using 130 class reels with 130 pound line on there. We do have backing and she...
My angler gets in there, Jordan Womack, he fights it for two hours straight. A hot, hard fight. Not a whole lot of jumping, but just a ton of dogging, ton of left and right and down sea, up sea. The fish was crazy. Really, really strong fish. We got one look at it, like two jumps. There's a video we just put up there on Instagram yesterday. You can see the only two jumps. That's the only two times she came out of the water. And she doesn't really look that big in that video. She's pretty far away. And,
Katie (28:17.134)We see it's a solid fish, but we get the measurement stick out, like, all right, it might be 112, we'll see. And then two hours into the fight after, he's like, all right, this fish is super strong. It's big. And then she sounds. Sounds all the way down to the bottom, way back into the backing. We're probably a thousand feet out of line in our angler's life. You guys, sounding is when, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jeremy, but sounding is when that fish goes essentially straight up and down and it's deep. Like it's just deep.
A lot of times when they do that, we try to, captains call a lot of big blue marlin that try to tag and release them. You're trying to keep them up on top because the worst thing you want is from the sound because they'll die. Typically when they sound that deep, they're stroking out, they're giving out. That's all. If you keep them up top, you can usually tag them really quick and release them and be done. So she sounded and we're like, man, we're in for the long haul now. We're already two hours in, which is a long time. Yeah, usually tagging these fish.
If we're tagging the fish, even the big ones, you can get them in 30 minutes, 45 minutes an hour. But anyway, sort of all like defeated after that point. my goodness, we're two hours in, we haven't really saw her again. She's sounded and way back into the backing, our angler is just like totally gassed. He's puking, he's puking all over himself. He's pale in the face. He's like a bodybuilder guy.
His arms are shaking, his legs are shaking. So we've got to get him dehydrated, get him cooled down, pouring water all over him. And then the family's just totally around him. The team's just around, like, you're not quitting. You're staying in this. You're going to get this fish. Just totally positive talking, because he's like, I don't know if I can get this thing anymore. Yeah. I mean, he's done his thing. Yeah. So in that.
When they do that, and she's done fighting, like she sounds and then it's done, done taking more line. We go to full drag and at that process you got to plane them up. You got to, you know, you're pulling forward, getting a little bit of scope in the line where the line starts coming up a little bit and you're backing down really hard, reeling that slack and then doing it again. So basically what your rod was doing before, the boat's doing now. So the boat's pulling up and then you're reeling down. You're pulling up, reeling down about 40, 50 feet at a time. So it takes another three hours to get that fish.
Katie (30:32.782)Hold on, I want to pause you real quick. I really like that you brought up the planing and how it's done because a handful of times when we've been fishing, it's just a really important skill for captains, crews, and anglers to know. A lot of times it can even potentially save a fish. If you have a fish that gets tail wrapped early on in a fight and you're not going to be able to get its head turned. So tail wrapped is when the line's wrapped around the tail of the fish.
And if you can't get its head turned, a lot of times that fish is just gonna be swimming down. But if you recognize it early on, if the angler and the captain recognize it early on, you guys can start planing that fish up and get it up to the boat before it dies. Because if it's tail wrapped and it gets pulled backwards for too long, it's gonna asphyxiate because it can't breathe.
moving backwards. So planing is a really, really important skill in the field of ethical angling. And then of course, in situations like these where, where you have a deep fish that's just gone. And I mean, also when they're that big, it's really interesting, Jeremy, because when they're that big, it's almost like they can't fight as long as the smaller ones. Like, do you think that that plays a key, like a role in it? And what about the like, how, how warm was the water?
I'm just curious. 77. That's pretty cool actually for Northern Gulf. Yeah. It'll warm up. I'm surprised. Yeah. It's, it's, it's been cut off from the loop current that area. So if you go down in greens, it's probably 79 now, somewhere around there. the loop current is probably 80, but you know, this current is down there in greens is probably that, but up, up where we're fishing is still a little cooler because it's sort of been cut off. it's getting most of its water from out in the canyon out to the east of it. And that water is all 76, 77.
Is that pretty regular with the seasons? Sometimes that loop current, you look on Hilton's and watch it come up. It'll come up from the Yucatan, make a hard ride over towards Tampa and loop back down. And then off of that northern part, you'll get eddies that'll curl up into that Louisiana, Alabama area. And those eddies are bringing in that nice fresh nutrients that you want. You want that counterclockwise eddy that brings up fish, brings up all the nutrients from the bottom. And you got to...
Katie (32:50.926)Clockwise, it's pushing everything down. Altimeter's down and it seems like everything's deeper. But yeah, this time of year, it'll be all sort of weird and squirrely. We always like to fish after a really big storm, like a big south pushing storm. A lot of south wind, southeast wind. Sort of like the pocket and people are familiar with Chubb and down there. Anytime you've got something pushing everything into the shallow water, it seems to get better in there.
And that near that shallower water just sort of stacks everything up. So we like doing that. but it was, you know, the, anyway, there's fish in there. There's fish everywhere. People caught fish this weekend all over the place. We were just sort of right place, right time. And then we're capitalized once we did get that fish on, everybody worked together as a good team. And, you know, we didn't make any mistakes. If we would have made a mistake, we would have lost that fish. Cause once we got that fish in the hook was hooked outside end, which is.
already hard, you know, you lose them right at the beginning. It's probably when he chased that circle hook, when he was, when he was chasing that blackfin, that blackfin probably swirled around his head weird, got him somehow. And then that hook was hooked to the outside end. So when he came in, you could grab the hook and it just went, doop, it like barely came out. And then we had like two wraps, we had like two wraps around the tail that probably saved us, you know, saved that fish, you know, saved us getting that fish.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because if it would have been hooked outside in and he sounded and we'd just been pulling him up like this, it would eventually just work this pulled it out because it just and then she would have died in vain. Yeah. And then it starts with ater and nobody got to celebrate. Yeah. All that. So yeah, it was really special the way it worked out. So many so many things worked in its way. It was a blessing for sure. Were y 'all surprised when she came?
when y 'all got her up and she was 122 inches long? Yes, well, actually she popped up way far away. So, you know, we're playing in and once you get them up, you're playing in a dead fish up from that deep. Once you get up to like 200 feet above that thermocline, they'll just pop up and she popped up. Interesting. Yeah, she popped up probably 200 feet away. And so when she popped up tail first, we probably we knew that she was probably tail wrapped, but we didn't know it popped up tail wrap. Our hearts sort of sank. man, I hope she ain't like a 400 pounder, you know.
Katie (35:07.438)come up tail up tail up. And then we, you know, now this is all sort of sucks, you know, we don't, we don't win nothing. And you know, we just killed a smaller fish. So she popped up tail up and we saw the tail sticking out of the water and we're getting back and down, back and down to the fish that JD can grab the leader, pull her over and the tail gets bigger and she gets longer. And we're like, okay, all right. And then JD gets her boat side and we're like, holy moly. Nobody says anything to each other until we, until we get her, you can watch that video. We're getting her in a boat.
Brian and Ryan, the owner, start pulling her to boat and they get her in and then everybody's like, whoa. You know, we didn't want to say anything. Exhale. Yeah, exhale. And then we measured her. Yeah, we knew she was big and then we measured her and now she's a mongo. You know, now she's over one eighteen. We're like, yeah, we're high five. And it was so awesome. It was very, very special. We've killed it. We've killed a fish with these owners a few years ago, but it wasn't a mongo. It was like a five forty or five.
30 or something like that we caught in Blocsie. Which length was approximately? It was like 112, 113 I think was the length. Yeah you guys 118 is a really damn big fish. Yeah. Like it's a big fish. A special fish. In 122. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And I, in the video, I mean it looked like you guys didn't even have a flying gaff out. Like you all just had your tuna gaff. Yeah we did have a flyer out. We decided we didn't need it once we got boat sided and we just stick it.
regular stick gaff in there, straight gaff. And we did that and then we'd just get a new surround her, around her bill and then we were able to sort of guide her in that way. But yeah, it worked out really, really good that way. It was cool. It was very, very special fish. And then now it's like the dilemma of, all right, did we stay out here? The fishing's good. We ain't got a tuna yet. We came out here for a big tuna too. And we made the decision of going on in. So we...
because we're in the Mongo. Because now we're gonna lose, we didn't want to lose any weight. And we wanted to explain how you lose weight. So a lot of times on the deck, they'll just lose weight. They're losing fluids the whole time, blood and other things. And we didn't have that many holes in her, but we had a couple of holes in her. A lot of times they'll just lose weight sitting on the deck. And it kept on going through our minds like, man, if she is a Mongo, she's still got, we got all season for 88 teams to try to beat her.
Katie (37:30.414)But if we lose by like two or three pounds, we're going to be hitting ourselves in the face for not taking it. It's only three hours away to the weigh station. So it's a fast boat. So we go. And our plans are to come out either later that evening or that night and try to get a tuna. And we get in. We have a couple of mechanical issues I'm a little nervous about. So we decide not to go out. We just hung her up. We're 700 pounds. We're all having a great time.
to see if somebody else can beat her. So nobody else beat her and we won that weekend tournament, which we're super excited about. And then, congratulations. See what happens in the market. Now it gives us a little bit later. You know, it was the 118 everybody was shooting for now it's a 700 pounder set by shooting for. So what is that? I don't know. It could be a 118, a really fat one, but typically probably, you know, that probably is going to save a few fish of being killed is in our thoughts, unless it's in a weekend tournament, you know, if it's on a fun trip, they're going to think twice about killing if it's.
you know, 600 pound or something like that. So, yeah, that's cool. Which is really cool. Yeah. Question, what are some like when you're bringing a fish back to the dock and you want to make sure that it's not losing weight, like what are, what are ways that you can help mitigate that? Like, do you have any techniques that you or tips that you want to share? Yeah. So, at least knowledge that I've learned from, from other captains is, we haven't done it yet on.
on length, but to keep length you want to keep them wet. Not necessarily cold, but wet to keep their length. So a lot of weekend tournaments, it might be 110 and you have 112 sitting on the deck. Two days later, that thing could be 110, you know, or 109. They could lose an inch or two pretty easily. And there's plenty of stories of guys catching a legal fish and getting back to dock and it's not legal anymore. So that's a bummer. So a lot of captains...
found that you keep them wet with towels and that'll keep their length. Not sure about the way that is. Yeah. Is like their skin will shrink up. That skin is so it's very similar to Wahoo skin. Right. And even though the scales are different, very different, but it'll like it'll shrink up as it dries. So keeping them wet will keep them. There's like a lot of like.
Katie (39:54.99)ends and outs of it, right? Like I just, okay. So just to clear the air here, I haven't been a really around fisheries that kill fish. you know, my blue Marlin, my predominant blue Marlin experience was in the fat fishery of Costa Rica, which is all catch and release because they're small fish. And then, we were fishing in Madeira for the big one, but we never saw her. So I've heard a lot of stories and like,
of fish like coming back to the dock and people saying they were stretched, fish coming back to the dock, people saying that they, you know, put water in their bellies or whatever. what, like there's, there's definitely things you can and cannot do to keep these fish the way they should be as well as like the word mutilation. Can you, can you expand on that for me? Yeah. So in our tournament, in the Mongo, we def on a weekend tournaments. So say you catch your fish in a weekend, we defer to that tournament.
So if it's dequeued in that weekend tournament, it's dequeued in the Mongo. If it counts, it counts. In our rules, we do Spirit of IGFA. So mutilated fish are not counted. Mutilation is something that impairs its ability to fight, its ability to swim. So if you back over it a little too hard and chop its tail off or chop something up with your propellers, it's not going to count. It's part of the game.
It's shark bit. It's not going to count. We accept cookie cutter sharks because that could have been done months or years ago. Cookie cutter sharks will take like a little round bite out. You'll catch a swordfish and it'll have several of them in there a lot of times as cookie cutter sharks. So we'll accept those, but yeah, if it's a five tiger or something on the way up, then we don't count that. We count that as a mutilated fish. Unless that tournament that you're fishing in accepts it.
then we'll count it because we defer to them. But yeah, I mean, you know, people have, yeah, we hear those stories too. I mean, same thing in the freshwater world, people putting leads in their stomachs and, you know, all kinds of stuff to try to win. So we, in the Mongo, we have some checks and balances in there. Sometimes we have the ability to cut that fish open at the dock and check its innards. And we have to have two witnesses that weren't on the boat to witness you weigh that fish. And...
Katie (42:19.758)lie detector test for the winners. So we have some things built in to try to keep the confidence high that somebody isn't going to cheat. And a lot of it's peer enforced. If you're in this private industry of sport fishing and you're caught cheating, you go find another career. Yeah, you're not going to get another job. After your black eye, bloody nose heals, go find another job.
you don't want to, nobody's going to accept you if you get caught cheating. So it's a lot of it is peer enforced, at least that fear of, you know, so hoping, you know, somebody that didn't want to go on their morals, there's some fear involved as well of getting caught cheating. So, you know, not saying people don't try, but we, we, we try to build some safe, some safe holds in there to keep people from doing it, at least thinking twice. Yeah, that's great. But yeah, and we like to keep them cold. You know, if they're big, big enough fish to weigh, the weigh in, we want to,
try to donate that meat. So we like to keep them cold, wrap them up in a fish bag, put as much meat, much ice in there as you can, keep them wet as well. If you keep them bad and cold, he's going to stay long and you're going to get some meat and you can donate out of it. And people eat them in Hawaii all the time. They eat them in all these other islands all the time. I mean, it's not like the best table fare. It's not like we're going to, I'm, you know, let's go catch them all in a day so we can feed the family. But if you do catch them all in a day, she dies. It is edible.
We have some especially smoked. Like we really like it. I've smoked Marlin on a bagel. Yeah. Yeah. I've had some smoked taco or some fish taco, Marlin tacos or they're fine. Yeah. You can dress it up and it's totally edible meat. but, we have some, some charities that we sit that we work with and the golf, golf coast, feeding the golf coast and different charities like that.
that if a fish does come in the mongo and wait in one of our waste stations, we have outlet to get rid of that meat. A lot of times you'll have to flay that meat up and bag it up, but that's not a big deal. And then you just put those bags in the freezer or wherever and we'll have those cherries come up and pick it up. And they'll donate it to, if it's edible for human consumption, they'll donate it to some homeless shelters and whatnot, but also some zoos and things like that will take it for their tigers and their different. Burning sanctuaries. Yep, yep. So there, you know.
Katie (44:38.158)alligator farm. How cool that you guys have like have thought all that yeah alligator farms for sure thought all of that out at your way stations like okay when we bring this fish back like I just love that you're obviously so sustainably minded. Yeah yeah yeah future conservation minded you know it's making choices you know make make your choice because if you want your kids to do this you know try to take some responsibility you know.
Nobody loves Marlin more than Marlin fishermen. There's a bunch of fish huggers out there. Why in the world are you killing a fish? my goodness, neanderthals. Well, nobody loves them more than we do. I feel like we've hugged more Marlin. Yeah, we've hugged way more Marlin than y 'all have. And nobody raises more.
Nobody raises more money to protect them, to research for them. We buy fishing licenses. That money goes to help all of it. So I love it when people... And the money we put into the communities. Yeah, I love it when people in all the comment sections, they all have an opinion and you go look them up and they're living in Iowa somewhere and never even seen a blue marlin. They have no idea what they're talking about. So nobody loves marlin more than marlin fishermen. We want them around. And yes, we try to take efforts to promote.
people want them around more. We kill a few extra fish a year, but all under that minimum. We're allowed 250 per year. National Marine fisheries, white and blue marlin, and if there's an extra three or four killed in the mongo, and they're all huge fish, and they're all celebrated and all that, I think it's good. I don't think it's hurting anything. If anything, it's helping the industry, all the money that's raised from marlin fishermen, bringing new little junior anglers into it. Like you said, with...
Like you said, with kids taking photos and stuff like that at Grand Isle this past weekend, there was a line of people, like literally after we took our photos, our team photos, there was like a line, like a single line of probably 15, 20 people waiting to take their picture with this fish that they only know who we are. They don't, you know, they're gonna take a picture with this fish so they can send it to their family members. I mean, very, very cool. Look at this. Yeah, so cool. Yeah, very cool. Did you even know this animal existed out there? Right. Yeah, and also like this, you know,
Katie (46:54.286)Another way giving back to the fishery and the communities is the science. The science we're getting from it. These fish are known as rare event species and you and I can both testify to that. And they're really hard to get. They're very expensive to go after. And the scientists, the schools that are studying them to make sure that they are sustainably managed, that they are cared for correctly, that they are going to be in the lives of our children and our children's children in the future.
they don't have the funding to be able to catch them themselves. And the fact that we have fishing teams that want to bring them back and take integrity and donate responsibility and donate these specimens to the science labs. I mean, USM was so stoked on y 'all's fish. Like it was, they were just so excited. USM, the Bill Fish Foundation, they were just really excited. So like you said, no one loves marlin more than marlin fishermen. It's just, it's a fact.
exactly. And really cool fish. Yeah. And I've, I've even heard of people like, you know, we don't catch them as big as they, you know, y 'all are killing the stock. Well, think of all the records has been set in the last couple of years. All right. So last year, the biggest fish that's ever been recorded in the Gulf of Mexico was called in October, 1145 pounds. I see three years ago. Yeah. And days after he's one of our boys, he's one of our boys. He's, he's like one of the original supporters of the Mongo.
Captain Chris Moat, he's an amazing fisherman loves blue morn fishing is really really good at it and Man, that would have been so special if it was caught two weeks prior to that. But yeah, so Yeah, so that's a golf record. I mean biggest one in the golf And then what what was Duffy's fish like four years ago the you know, 1 ,100 pounds caught in Maryland?
All right, and then two years before that, Big Rock had the biggest ones ever caught in Big Rock. I mean, we're, the fish are still here. They're good. You know, we need to continue to take care of them and grow them, but they're not, we're not, we still have those old man in the sea photos. That's what the Mongo logo is about is staying inside that amazing fish. Well, there's proof that they're still out there. I mean, that just proved it. So yeah. That's so cool. I want to get into the live baiting.
Katie (49:19.534)I want to get into why it's challenging to catch live bait in the Gulf of Mexico. So when we were in Costa Rica, I keep bringing this up, but we were bait and switch fishing predominantly, which you guys, that's teaser fishing. And if a fish shows up behind the teaser, we take the teaser away and then we present them with a dead bait with a circle hook in it. Right? And then we generally get a really active aggressive bite. It's a good feed, good hook set. That's all she wrote.
But we were catching our bait out there. It was Bonita and they're prolific. They're just prolific. And I've heard that catching bait in the Gulf of Mexico is a very different experience. You've already touched on how the bait was real deep on this last trip and y 'all were struggling on catching bait. A lot of times you guys will have a little bit of an easier time catching bait at night, but then you're catching bait at night and losing some very valuable sleep.
as well as, you know, those bait, they go deep during, during the day because the water can get so warm. So let, can you, can you give us a little bit of Intel into how you keep your tuna tubes, what tuna tubes are and how you keep them full and what your, your best care and strategy tips are? Yeah. So that's definitely progressed over the years. I remember live baiting in like 2005 and six, somewhere around there was my first time.
was fishing on a boat with a really experienced captain that was really, really good at it. And they didn't even have tubes yet, but he live baited a lot. So he basically catches bait, put it right back out. Might even get a little creative and catch a bait and keep them close on a little leash in the water. Literally, that's your live bait tube, just keep them in the water on like a little leash with a little hook through his or a clip through his nose. Whatever, get creative to keep at least one in the quiver, to put one back out. But there's...
caught a lot of fish by catching them and then hooking them up, putting them right back out and then doing well that way. But obviously if you can have a quiver of baits so when you get sharks or a barracuda eats it or a porpoise eats it, now you got to go catch more bait again. So now became the tuna tube. So it started out with boats getting two or three on there and now you'll have boats with 20 on there. We have 16 on our, so obviously the more tubes you have.
Katie (51:46.094)The more bait you can have, the longer you can go without having to go try to catch bait again. So 16 tubes, man, that's been a whole progression as well of how do you keep 16 fish alive? So you have to have a lot of water flow. So there's a lot of techs and all kinds of science and mechanics and figuring out how much flow and how to get the best flow. And do you want bubbles and not bubbles? And where do you put your through hole? I mean, there's so much that goes into it.
And every boat's different and all that. So anyway, over the last five or six years, it's very common to buy your boat. If you're building a brand new boat, say Vikings building your boat, and you can get your tubes installed at factory or right, you know, maybe you'll refit it when you get it down to South Florida. And there's a couple of guys that specialize in that and they'll refit your boat before you even go pick it up. You go pick up your boat and you got your sonar and your tubes. And those are primarily golf boats. Golf boats, we have tubes.
If you don't have tubes, you're probably not fishing in the Gulf. So not competitively. Yes. And there's a lot of guy dredging now doing phenomenal. The guys that are really good at dredging still catch tons of fish, but a lot of that's on standups. Are you going to kill that? Those are your tag release guys. So the guys that are trying to catch the big one are live baiting primarily. And then you want them on a circle hook rather than have them on a J hook.
because man, all the things didn't go wrong with a J hook. So, circle hook is a really good way of catching a big fish and being able to fight it through and land it. So, yeah, so typical day is, you know, if we're showing up, you know, tournaments leaving in the Gulf, you're leaving at like 10 a 11 a you're running out to your oil rig that you've picked, or you might stop on the way, some guys stop on the way at some bottom spots and pick up some bonito. A lot of times the bonito will hold up over a natural reef.
or a shallow water oil rig and picking up some bonitas first. Bonitas are usually shallower where we live and as you get out you'll start getting to the black fin and the yellow fin and there's some skipjack and things like that. Yellowtail, or not yellowtail but rainbow runners. Things like that you can catch out there too. But you're trying to catch them trolling. Some people fish on the surface for them. The guys are figured out the getting deep, getting creative.
Katie (54:07.502)how to get down deep with planers or downriggers or whatnot to get down deep to where they're at. And then all kinds of different things you can catch them on, little squid imitations or minnow limitations or spoons and all kinds of different ways. You're making them on daisy chains and figuring out a way to get those fish to eat, those little baits, and then you're bringing them up, putting them in your tubes. Once you get your tubes full, you go fishing.
And then some guys, while they're fishing, they got a guy on the bow with these sea keepers. That's a whole nother thing. You got a guy, these sea keepers, if it's relatively calm, they're up there casting the popper, casting little plugs, little jigs to try to catch. You got one guy who's just a bait fisherman on your bow while everybody's fishing in the back. Try to continue. That's how important the bait is. You got to have that fresh bait. So yeah, you load your baits and then you're fishing, looking with sonars. Before sonars, we just all...
stayed up on the up current side of the rig. A lot of times that up current side is where the marlins will be because the school of tuna typically swims around in circles on the up current side. My theory is it's easier for them to get back to safety. If they got to swim down sea to get back to safety, it's a lot easier than having to swim up sea to get back to safety. It's like a bass or anything. Yeah, it's like a minnow or anything else.
or a reef fish, they're gonna swim back. So the upcurrent side will be the busy side. That's where most of your tunas are. That's where most of your predators are is upcurrent of them. So now it's easier for them to catch fish if they're swimming down sea versus having to swim into the current. That's how I figured it. So yeah, so that's the way we used to do before sonar, but now sonar's changing the game. Now it used to be, all right, and I'm gonna sit there with baits on the water while I'm sonar fishing, looking for something to troll over at two knots, my live bait's over to that mark.
But now a lot of guys aren't even putting a bait in the water until they mark a fish because they've gotten so confident in their sonar abilities to find that fish. Don't even put a bait out until they're right on top of that fish. All right, deploy. Put your baits in the water. There he is. A lot of guys are getting really good at doing that. You can tell who's good at doing that. Wow. Just watch three tournaments. And if a guy's winning or placing in each one of those three or two of those three,
Katie (56:16.27)that guy is a really good sonar fisherman because that's what he's doing. He's not waiting on chance and you know, just maybe official swim by this current side. He's, he's literally feeding that fish. It's almost like teasing that fish, but you know, you don't have to tease them. Just drop a bait on it and he'll come up and eat it. Cause I think the prop wash and all that makes them think that the feeding friends of the year, whatever, at least they're paying attention to what's going on with that prop wash up there. Yeah. So it's definitely progressing. It's, it's changed.
It's like every five years something different and people are getting really good at that and then five years have changed and it's something people get really good at that. But that's the thing now, the successful captains that are, especially with numbers of fish are doing is not even putting a bait in the water until. So now you don't have to bait fish near as much because you're not killing so many baits. You're not wasting them whether tiring them out or you're getting shark aid or we get a lot of sharks, a lot of barracus, a lot of porpoise around them.
these rigs too. So yeah, so daytime you're trolling for them, playing in whatever you got to do. At nighttime you're jigging and jigging is pretty easy. Once you find them, at nighttime you can load your tubes and usually 30, 45 minutes you'll have some bite, you know, you'll have some eating by sharks and whatnot. Sometimes it's frustrating, if it's really rough it's sort of hard to hold up sometimes. But yeah, loading them up and then you're ready to go and definitely lose some sleep. Some guys are bringing an extra guy, just like a night driver.
You know, that way he's fresh, doesn't at least not run into the rig in the middle of the night, 3 a trying to hold up, you know, things like that. Yeah. It wears you out. Yeah. And it wears you out, especially if it's rough. Yeah. The golf fish is a lot different. A lot of areas because we stay out. We leave on Thursday. We don't come home until Saturday night. So it's a long time offshore. You know, it's hard to sleep anyway out there because you're in a tournament. You're all hyped up. Yeah. And then now you're bait fishing all night or wherever you're.
A lot of people are moving to a different area, you know, relocating, things like that. So why is it important to have fresh bait? Frisky bait seems to get eaten better. That's what we found. You got a bait sort of sluggish, been pulled all day. He's not going to get eaten as bad as a guy running away. It's like that cat and mouse game. You know, that's what we found. Frisky baits get eaten.
Katie (58:38.094)Yeah, but dead baits get eaten too. You can make them pull in and making them, you know, the mates are working those baits to make them look frisky. So you can get away with the slower dead bait, but that frisky baits, it seems like you drop them, want to drop a frisky bait in there. They're going to get eaten if you're marking something, you know, if that marks not a shark or not too deep, you know, there's a whole. Or porpoise. Goodness. The guys are really figuring that out.
Yeah. So it's fun to watch that fun to be a part of it. For sure. We've had a lot of conversations on the podcast already about, you know, what it takes to get a fish to eat, whether it be a lure, whatever, whether it be a dead bait, Valley, who, but the live bait it's fun because, you know, with the dredge fishing, we, we, I talk about how, your bait, your swim bait wants to simulate kind of like the slower fish, the weaker fish at behind the school. But when you're live baiting, you're not trolling the boats, not.
really moving. So the fish is actually doing the job of enticing the bait of the marlin, of the predator. So what, how, there's a lot of handling that goes on on these fish, on these baits. We don't want there to be a lot of handling, but when we do have to handle them from, for example, taking it from the sabiki or the bait rig to the tubes and then out of the tubes and onto the hook set, what are like some tips on,
how to best make sure that bait is taken care of so that it is going to be frisky in the water. Yeah. We found getting them to the boat as fast as possible. So not tiring them out on a long fight. So might a little heavier drag, a little heavier rod, whatever you got to do to make that fight in as fast as possible. Plus the sharks won't eat them so much. And then once you get them up, we're netting them instead of just ripping them up or swinging them in, you know, putting too much pressure on them. And if he drops on the deck.
Usually just throwing them right back like if he drops on the deck We're not we're probably not gonna put it in the tubes unless we're really struggling to catch bait and keep anything we get but So what kind of rubberized net something with some? I like thinner mesh that way your lot of times your Your jig won't get won't fall through and they get all tangled now You're wasting time getting your jig all untangled out of your net. But yeah, these big big rubberized nets that have you know, I
Katie (01:01:02.094)pretty fine mesh that way it's they can just sort of lay in there and then the guy who's handling them will have you know gloves or you know or some bibs and keep everything wet and moist and try not to handle them too much you know just sort of really babying them. A lot of times lay them keep them laid in that rubber mesh and de hook them in there and then grab them one time and just put them in the in the tube and these tubes will have soft bottoms on them like made out of silicone and so it won't hurt their nose too much.
The flow's got to be right. And that's just a different science that everybody's got to figure out on their own boat to get the flow right. What's keeping those bait alive? People's even going a step further and adding things, whatever they got to do to keep them alive. Whether they get hot, they die faster. If they get a lot of bubbles, they die faster. They don't get enough oxygen, and they die faster. So there's all kinds of things that people are doing to advance their game to keep their baits frisky and alive. It's pretty cool to watch.
It is. I heard, you know, the other day someone was telling me about the chillers that people are putting in the live bait tubes, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Everybody's probably going to be so mad at me after this podcast. People are talking, but it's all out. I mean, people were figuring it out. I mean, it's been sort of this common sense, but figuring it out, you know, is another thing like, all right, yeah, man, if we keep these fish cooler, that would be awesome, because definitely this time of year they stay alive really good.
77, 80 degrees, they're fine. But July and August, it's a whole nother game. You're getting them in the water. It's a bathtub up there. Everything's hot. So that's when chillers and things will probably play a big game. If people can figure it out, you got a lot of water flow. And we're going 70 gallons a minute through these tubes. It's a lot of water flow to try to cool down. That is a lot. And that water that y 'all are pooling.
is on the surface. Like it is the warmest of the water in the Gulf of Mexico is what's going through those tubes. So getting a chiller just makes sense. Cool it down because these fish, blackfin bonita, they're not as endothermic as like the bluefin. So they're not as warm blooded as the bluefin, but they are, they get really hot. All these tuna species, they get really hot when they fight. That's why when you hear that expression, it burned up. But,
Katie (01:03:20.462)They get super hot and then so when you're bringing them in on the bait rig, they're fighting you. You put them straight into a like 88 degree tube, they're not going to do well. Like getting, I mean, it makes sense to have a, we're catching them out of the deep. We're catching them out of the deep a lot of times, a hundred, 150 feet down and that's a water's a lot cooler down there. So yeah, if you can figure out a way to get the water down to where they're used to swimming around and that would only make sense. They're going to stay, stay alive longer. It's just the.
The engineers have got to figure that out, how to do that. That's a lot of testing and stuff going on right now. That's the next progression is that. Yeah, there's all kinds of cool stuff. The freshwater world's had to do that too with largemouth bass. Because if you bring in a dead largemouth bass to a, you're fishing a huge bass tournament, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you've got a dead bass, now you don't count. So they've had that same struggle of how to keep these bass alive. And so there's all kinds of...
things that they figured out already that people are sort of taking over to our world like, all right, well maybe we'll try this because it's working for them and how to incorporate that into the tubes and things. So it's very, very cool. Same thing, South Florida Sailfish. I mean, you got to have live bait down there, how to keep that lot, you know, how to keep them cool and energetic and all that. So there's all kinds of things people are doing now. It's pretty cool to get a little edge, you know. Yeah, lots of nuances. Every little bit.
counts. Yeah, and time on the water, I think is the number one thing. If you're spending time out there, you're able to test things and try things to get more confident on it. So the guys who go a lot, the guys who are out there day in, day out, you know, or weekend, you know, that you can tell, because they're just they're not having to relearn it every time they're there. They've already done it yesterday, you know, and I stayed on the fish out of bite here yesterday, you know, that makes a huge confidence builder. If you know, like, all right, there's fish here.
because my buddy called him here yesterday or I called him here two days ago. That's a big deal. So time on the water is very, very key for professional teams. Invaluable. For sure. We're running low on time, but I do want to touch on a couple of things. You mentioned about how...
Katie (01:05:35.31)the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I've got a lot of listeners that aren't from the US, which blows my mind. I'm looking at you Australia and Barbados, but the oil rigs that are in the Gulf of Mexico serve as FADs, fish aggregating devices. Can you expand a little bit on that? Like why these oil rigs are so important to our fishing communities? Yes. I think it, I started in fishing like as a career for
You know, making money fishing is as a mate on a boat that did a lot of bottom fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. And in northern Gulf of Mexico, we have white, beautiful white sandy beaches, Pensacola, Destin, and all that. Well, the bottom looks just like that too. It's white sand. All right. So if you just have a bunch of white sand, where are you going to go catch these fish? So we put out man -made reefs. So we go out and drop something.
It used to be car bodies and school buses and stuff. Now there's all kinds of regulations. It's got to be some type of something that's going to stay a while. So anyway, you go put something vertical structure that's going to come some type of vertical relief off that white sandy bottom. And now all of a sudden, minnows are going to get on there and then the whole food chain, you know. And now you can get your spots. You can go to that spot and you'll catch fish, guaranteed, almost guaranteed in the Gulf. All right, same thing.
for offshore fishing. If you have a structure, it's like, what do we do before oil rigs? And we've still got us to do it, but you look for a weed line, you're up in a tower, you're binoculars, something. I need something that's gonna hold a bait so something can eat that bait and then we're gonna try to catch that guy. So same thing with oil rig. You got oil rig man -made structure out there. It's naturally attracts crustaceans, which attracts, or not attracts crustaceans, but grows crustaceans.
And then yeah, and then you're gonna have all the bait in the whole food chain and that's that's the way it works and it's yeah everything anything floating out there for a couple that you will have drill ships a drill ship is something that goes out there and they'll do exploratory stuff and They're just a giant ship and they go and they they stay in one spot with their thrusters or whatever They do they're not anchoring and they'll put a pipe down 9 ,000 feet down
Katie (01:07:47.982)drill and test a hole or pull out. I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they're out there for a long period of time. Well, we fished a drill ship before that's only been out there a couple of days and it has fish on it already. Cause it's just sitting. Like some of our best tuna fishing in the Gulf was on drill ships. And I'm like, how does this work? Yeah, anything. So it just proves it. If there's any type of structure that creates a way for bait to get safe is how I look at it.
Like if there's protection, that's what a weed mat is. You know, obviously that's a whole ecosystem, but it's, that's protection. They get in there, they feel safe, you know, same thing with the whole rig. So that's, that's what it is. Just like in Finding Nemo, you guys. There you go. There you go. So I think structure is good. And that's a whole nother thing I want to get on is the whole windmill thing. I think it's a big waste of money and all that stuff, but it's structure. If they're going to allow you to fish around it, it's going to create a fishery.
Yeah, but the windmill thing is... I don't agree with the politics of it. I don't agree with the finances of it. I think it's a big waste of money and waste of time, waste of effort, yada, yada, yada. But if they allow it and if they shut it down fishing, then of course you don't want them. I mean, I would not want anything that shuts you down, shuts that area down. So yes, don't have them if you can't. But if they're going to allow you to go around them...
10 years from now, you're like, man, this is the best fishing we've ever had out here. We don't even go out and look in La La Land anymore out in open water. We're just going straight to this spot. If you had an old rig, you'd do the same thing. If we have an old rig put out, you don't want old spills, you know, all that. You don't want all the negative stuff come from it. But if they figured out a little way to keep it safe, they figured all the way to keep from old spilling commonly and trade it, there's a lot of bad that could come from it, anything.
But man, there's a lot of good that can come from it as well. And this fishery that we have is absolutely amazing. It does spoil us where we don't, it might make us a little rusty on some things. Like we took our way of fishing and go fish in the East coast. We'd probably be pretty rusty when it comes to the way they fish, you know? Yeah. Every fishery is different. But man, what an awesome fishery we have. And if you figure out the way to fish it, there's fish there 24 seven, 12 months at a year.
Katie (01:09:57.518)There's people that go out there and catch blue marlin in December, in January, in February. When we always used to think they just go, right? It gets cold, they just disappear. No, they're there. You just gotta go out there and try. And a lot of guys are doing it. There's tuna there 12 months out of the year. They might not be as good, might not be as many, but a solid believer on there is resident fish that never leave. Why would you, if you're a marlin, maybe instinctually you're...
You're going against what your instinct is, but we've had buddies that worked on little rigs that say, man, I've been seeing this fish. It's got to be the same fish because it's huge. It's way bigger than the other ones. I've seen this fish for months. It's here every day. And then,
You go and then you have proof of it. People go out there in the off season when nobody else is fishing and they end up catching fish. And there's resident fish that live there. I think they hear it. They can sense it somehow with the ladder line or something to know where that rig is. I don't think they just literally camp out under there. I think they probably swim a mile or so away. I don't know exactly how far away they can sense it. But it's very interesting to think about and go down that rabbit hole. Like, how do they know? I don't think they can't navigate. I don't think they can navigate like, all right, all that things just.
you know, five miles over here. I think they're sensing it somehow and they and then if they get close enough to it, they know where it is and they stay there. And then if they get swept in a storm or something like that, then they'll just go on and move on, move on out. But I think there's there is resident fish that stay in that area, unless a storm or something pushes them out. It's my opinion.
Yeah, I mean a lot of the blue marlin tags that have been put in the Gulf of Mexico have been recaptured in the Gulf of Mexico. And as far as location or finding their way, I'm not so sure about blue marlin, but I know tuna, for example, they have that third eye is what the scientists call it, which is a soft spot at the top of their head between their eyes. And there's been a lot of studies done, they seem to, because...
Katie (01:11:58.126)Obviously highly migratory species. They're moving the bigger the fish species so Black and all the way to bluefin the more they seem to migrate but they find their way like bluefin tuna for example They go back to their same spawning grounds much like sea turtles do right? It's crazy but this third eye apparently has like magnetoreceptors in it that like are Aligning much like the way birds migrate the where they're aligning with the for example the North Pole like a compass like an internal compass
So I wonder if blue marlin have something like that. No, it's crazy, crazy stuff. And that's why another thing is, you know, like tuna, the thing is, you guys, is there's, we know so much more about tuna because they have a significantly higher economic value. So for example, bluefin, you know, the industry, the sushi and seafood industry around the world just highly values tuna. So there's been a lot of funding put into the conservation of tuna.
So we know that tuna are negatively buoyant, right? So if they die, they will go down. They just, they sink. But when you brought up how that blue marlin at about 200 feet, they'll float, that blew my mind a little bit because I haven't been able to get an answer from anyone on if marlin or billfish are negatively, positively neutrally buoyant. A lot of fish are neutrally buoyant.
So I guess they're not negatively buoyant. I was starting to think that they must be. Yeah, I don't know if maybe that maybe from planting them up, swims up, you know, fills up their air bladder or something like that. You know, like a tune, like a same thing with grouper. You know, you catch a grouper from the depths. They'll just they'll just pop up and float once you get them a certain high. And yeah, that's that's what they do. You get them up a certain certain amount. If they're dead, they'll just pop up to you. Bluefin will do the same thing. Just pop up on the surface if they're dead.
Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. From the depths. I've never caught a dead bluefin. Yeah. From the depths, if you're planing them up, I think it's... Yeah, I never caught a dead... Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's actually on the bucket list. I've never caught a bluefin. My brother's called it a 822. really? that's a nice one. Yeah. They caught a huge one back in 2009. But I've never caught one, but all my buddies have caught them. And it's just right place, right time. I haven't ran over it. So cool.
Katie (01:14:18.862)But yeah, it's cool. I love those things. Those are amazing fish. You see them a lot. They're crazy fish. They're so cool. They are really cool. Okay. What's your, I want to wrap it up. What's your rest of your season looking like? What are your plans? Where can we, where can we keep up with Lolita? Yeah. So Lolita fishing team, we do a few tournaments. We don't do it the whole circuit.
The bosses got a big family, they're very, very close and they have a lot of things going on. So we usually tip fish three to four major tournaments a year and then the Mongo. We were in the Mongo from May 1st to September 30th. Our next tournament on the Lolita is Biloxi and then ECBC and maybe the championship. Maybe another one in there mixed in somewhere. But yeah, the Mongo is where we're at because we like being able to fish any time. We do a lot of fun fishing.
So I would like to say that the East Coast is hot harp on that one more time for We'd love to grow that pot over there the East Coast we know can be bigger than the golf This like I said this year 150 teams in the golf over 500 grand we can see the East Coast some you know Surpassing that very easily we're hoping to continue to grow I think there's already 90 grand in the blue marlin pod on that coast and Love to love to grow it and
and spread our fleet over there in the East Coast more. So tell your buddies, get on mongooffshore .com. There we go. And I'll put that link in the description. Now, is it too late to register for the Gulf of Mexico? Yes, the Gulf is closed. They started on May 1st. Fishing is open on the East Coast. But if you enter now between now and June 30th, you can go ahead and start fishing 48 hours after you register. You just have to wait a 48 -hour grace period before you start fishing.
That's awesome. And do you have any other regions that have Mongo? No, we don't go in any other. So no, we attempted to take it to Hawaii. We put that on pause for a little bit. We're thinking about doing a international region in the future. Maybe we'll see. We'll see. Right now we're really just focused on East Coast and golf. That's awesome.
Katie (01:16:28.494)Alright you guys, so if you're fishing the East Coast, check it out. Look at the link in the description. We'll put it right there for you. All you have to do is click it and get yourself registered. There's really no reason not to. It's such a cool, such a cool tournament and I'm really stoked on it. It's been such a pleasure having you on Jeremy. My last question for you is what is it that keeps you coming back to the water?
It was my first hobby and I just love being out there. I love God's creation. I love the beauty out there, the sunsets, the sunrises, the fish that he created, everything. I just enjoy it. I enjoy being out there on the water. It's always an adventure. So it hits that little adventure nerve in you because you might not come back. You never know. I mean, it's an adventure, but it's something about that. You never know.
Just being able to conquer, conquer something hard, do something hard. It's not easy. We're on these multimillion dollar boats and we got air conditioning and range and everything you want. But it's still not easy. Look at, talk to Jordan, our anchor last week, five hour battle. He's a beast of a guy and it was not easy. It was a hard, hard thing. And man, what the feeling we had when we accomplished that and brought that thing. And it was...
We all teared up and hugging each other and it's just, we worked so hard for it and it's just, it's just special. So it's a, it's a really special thing. So, yeah, I don't know. There's a long answer for you. That was a great answer. It's exactly what I wanted. I'm sure that the bonds from that experience are even closer and tighter than they were before, which I think is just absolutely incredible, especially with your brother on the team. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much. you guys heard it here on the KDC Sawyer podcast.
And that's a wrap. If you enjoyed this podcast, please feel free to give it a like, share and subscribe on YouTube or leave a review on your podcast listening platform. Thanks so much for tuning in and as always, don't stop chasing your wild. We'll be seeing you out there.