The Katie C. Sawyer Podcast

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.

Ep.05 Capt. Chris Donato: Lure 101 and the Kona Fishery

In this Episode, host Katie C. Sawyer interviews Captain Chris Donato, a big Marlin fisherman in Kona, Hawaii. Chris shares his fascinating background, which includes fishing in various locations around the world. He discusses the Kona fishery, known for its lure fishing, and the deep marlin culture in the area.
Our Favorite Lures
Lure Making 101/102: The Kona Fishing Chronicles - Book
Fishing Hawaii Style - Volume 3 - Book
Fishing Hawaii Style - Book
 
The conversation also delves into the logistics of shipping boats to the Southern Pacific and the different types of lures used in Kona. In this part of the conversation, Chris Donato discusses the different types of lures and their characteristics, including plungers, tube lures, scoop face lures, and bullets. He also shares the historical origins of lure fishing in Kona and the transition from live bait fishing. Chris explains how to choose lures for the spread based on their aggressiveness and loudness. He also discusses the feeding behavior of marlin and the factors that affect lure performance. Finally, he provides tips on adjusting lures for optimal performance. In this conversation, Chris Donato discusses various aspects of lure fishing. He explains how the orientation of a lure can affect its swimming behavior and the importance of adjusting lure position based on wave conditions. He also compares vinyl skirts to rubber skirts and shares his preference for rubber skirts. He discusses the benefits of teasing fish and the challenges of heavy tackle bait and switch fishing. Finally, he introduces GZ Lures and GZ Tackle Co. as platforms for providing the best fishing equipment and educational content.
 
Takeaways
 
Kona, Hawaii is known for its rich marlin fishing culture and lure fishery.
Shipping boats to the Southern Pacific can be a challenging and stressful process.
The Kona fishery offers opportunities to catch big blue marlin, with the best months being July and August.
The marlin culture in Kona is characterized by a deep history, ego, and a focus on big fish.
Lure fishing in Kona is a popular and effective method, with a variety of lure types used. There are different types of lures, including plungers, tube lures, scoop face lures, and bullets, each with its own characteristics and performance.
Lure fishing in Kona transitioned from live bait fishing, and lures became more popular due to their effectiveness.
When choosing lures for the spread, it is important to consider their aggressiveness and loudness, with the most aggressive lures placed closest to the boat.
The feeding behavior of marlin can vary, with some periods of aggressive feeding and others of territorial behavior.
Factors such as water conditions, lure design, and rigging can affect the performance of lures, and adjustments may be necessary to optimize their performance. The orientation of a lure can affect its swimming behavior, and adjusting the position of the lure can optimize its performance.
Rubber skirts are preferred by some anglers due to their durability and color variations.
Teasing fish can lead to proper bites and better hookups, but it requires skill and technique.
GZ Lures and GZ Tackle Co. aim to provide the best fishing equipment and educational content for anglers.
Transcript
Katie (00:00.238)Today's podcast guest is proficient in the art of big blue marlin fishing. We're gonna sit down with Captain Chris Donato and go through different types of lures, what they're used for, how you can make them work the way you want them to, and what to look for in the spread. Stay tuned, it's a chat you're not gonna wanna miss.
Katie (00:27.662)What's up, you guys. Welcome to the Katie C Sawyer podcast. I'm your host, Katie. And today we have big Marlin fisherman, Chris Donato, joining us on the scene. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So you are checking in from Kona, is that right? Yep. Yep. We're here in Kona. I love that. So I personally have never been to Hawaii.
I've never fished the Kona scene, not even close. I just have heard a lot about it. I'm really excited to have you here. You have an extremely fascinating background that I think might be a conversation for another time. You've done some incredible things. I want you to go over that a little bit with us. Then I really want to dive into the world of lure fishing, which correct me if I'm wrong, but Kona is known for its lure fishery. Yes. Everybody that's -
what everybody's pretty much doing. Unless they're just fishing for ahis or something with live baits, it's pretty much all lure fishery. The conditions just make it easy for us. We're like in a swimming pool and the way the fish feed here and everything. I mean, it's kind of like the birthplace of like modern lure fishing for the most part. And yeah, that's it's it's the spot to do it. That's for sure. I'm particularly excited because it's it's not like you've spent your entire life fishing Kona.
You've spent, I mean, you're originally from New Jersey and fished the East Coast, grew up sometime in Florida, correct? Spent time in Florida. Yeah, South Florida. Yep. And then you ran several charter operations in the Southern Pacific in Samoa and... Yeah, Samoa and then Vanuatu. Vanuatu. Man, that's amazing. So give us a little bit of like a rundown. I want to know...
what your age range was, what you were doing. We're going to dive in in a separate episode of what makes Chris Chris, but give us just a professional rundown of your experiences. Yes, I won't draw it out too much because it's a whole thing we could go down. I pretty much just grew up pretty much fascinated with the -
Katie (02:44.462)South Pacific and fishing and surfing to surfing was probably what brought me more so into that area. Um, you know, I, I went to Costa Rica a bit and did that, but then I, I did a trip down to, uh, French Polynesia. I actually was the first time and actually wasn't fishing. I was actually working on a sailboat. So it's kind of embarrassing to say, but I was pretty young. I was like 17 or 16 or something. I was pretty young and I just wanted, I had an, I had an
to do it and I was like, I want to check this out. This is great. No, come on. What a way to get exposed to it. That's amazing. Yeah, so it was like sailing and surfing and checking that part of the world out. I was like, wow, this is insane. I always love fishing. I obviously thought, obviously, there's a lot of fish here. It took a little while for me to end up getting back down to that part of the world.
fishing wise, I went and surfed a lot, but I would just go surf and come back or whatever. And then I was fishing in Florida and long story short, I ended up being involved in a surfing resort with, with a buddy of mine in Samoa. And so we started building it up and we have a little skips. We go out to all the reefs to surf. And so I was one year like, okay, I'm going to bring down all my Florida stuff.
Cause the seasons were a little bit different. Like, um, and I would go down there when I wasn't fishing in Florida, I would take time and go down or whatever. So I was like, I'm going to bring down a bunch of stuff and just go fish with our little like panga style boats and check it out. What's the time of the year and how old are you at this point in time? Um, at that point I was probably 19. Yeah. Somewhere around that. I think I was pretty young. Um, cause I was, yeah, I was in college. Yeah. Yeah. I was about 19, I think.
Maybe, maybe just turning that, but, um, I don't, to be honest, you know, someone was a little bit like here in terms of like seasons. I mean, you can fish there year round. Uh, it just gets really rough in our summer, which is their winter. Um, and then, um, you know, I get that it just kind of gets kind of choppy and rough and windy and trade winds blow. And, you know, I caught my grander there in November. So I kind of say that that was the season, you know, but I, you can fish there year round really.
Katie (05:08.845)Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. That was a big monkey to get off my back for sure. Anyways, yeah, so I just went down there and just like brought some stuff and just I got my ass handed to me. I mean, I thought I knew what I was, you know, I thought I knew Bill Fish and stuff and I had like, I think my biggest was like a 50.
And I'm on a panga by myself cruising around doing what I probably shouldn't be doing. After your experience, what were you doing in South Florida? Sail fishing and sword fishing? Sail fishing and sword fishing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Maybe in white Marlin or something. Yeah. So it was, yeah. And I had done some, I'd done offshore stuff, but like, I just wasn't to that extent. And so, yeah. So at that point it was like, okay, this is the place.
It took some time and just things just evolved. And next thing you know, I'm down there. I'm running a 43 foot Cabo there and then, um, ran a boat in Vanuatu. And then we cruised around the islands and it just turned into a pretty much what I did up until 2016, um, was just down in the South Pacific for the most part. You know, I come back forth, but yeah, that was it. So just loved it down there. How old were you?
In 2016, what's the time frame there? How many years were you doing that? Gosh, I think maybe 15 years. I was in Samoa. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm not the best with IDA. But yeah, so I'm 41 now, and I moved out here in 2016. So throughout your late teens, your 20s, and into your 30s. Let me get my calculator. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a knucklehead when it comes to that type like timeframes and stuff that some are really not the best with it. But but I was down there for a while. And then I had the 37 Meriden I had someone that came in and was Joe who actually was my crew for a long time. He works on the series now. And he really he was in like the film industry for a while like working as like, I forget what the word I like.
Katie (07:20.749)working with all these like movie stars and stuff, like helping them with things they needed or whatever, kind of like a assistant kind of deal. Um, and he did really well. And then I think he just really wanted to get into his passion of fishing. So he had contacted me and I'm like, man, I'm trying to get over to Kona and we ended up being partners in the beginning and he, he invested money so I could ship that boat to Hawaii. And then he worked for me for years and, um, yeah, it was pretty cool. So that's how I ended up. Super cool.
So you ship the boat from Vanuatu? We had 37 Marriott. No, the Marriott, well, so I went, I was in Samoa for a while, then I went to Vanuatu and I was there for a while and then there was a tsunami that came through and wiped out like our whole resort, everything in Samoa. Was that in 2014? No, it was before then. It was, it just hit like Tonga and Samoa. It wasn't the one that hit like Indonesia. A lot of people think of it, but yeah, it was terrible. And.
Luckily, nobody died on our property, but like, and everyone, the resort got evacuated. We were really lucky there. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was totally lost everything. Um, so we kind of had to make a decision with the insurance and everything like, okay, we're just going to take the money and just say, this is done and walk away from Samoa forever, which was tempting because my life was kind of going in different roads. I was definitely following fishing more with my career than surfing. And so.
but I love the place and I missed it and I just, I had so much, I mean, I still do and I'm going down there shortly, like end of the week or something for us as well. So I mean, I go down there all the time. That was home for so long. Yeah. I mean, it still feels, I love it. It's going to be until the day I can't walk around anymore, like it's home for me as well. I can't imagine. So I'll have to go in there. Honestly, like we've been places with the boat, like we stayed, for example, like La Gomera, we lived there for three years and Drake and I are always like, man,
It's like part of our hearts, you know, like that's a part of you. And I mean, 15 plus years, that's a long time. I mean, I have staff that work at the resort that knew me when I was like 18 years old, 17. They laugh at me. They're like, I go down there with my girlfriend and they're like telling her, oh, I knew him when he was a little. And they're like, he has a pain in the ass. I bet. That's so great. But yeah, so. So you all ship the merit. Yeah. So.
Katie (09:45.133)Yeah, I ended up after that tsunami, I ended up moving back to Samoa because we ended up rebuilding the whole resort. And I was like, I got to be here and manage this and we got to do it correctly. And I'm like, I'm going to turn into a fishing surfing lodge. And so that was the deal and started doing that for the little wall down there. And then, so I had him at that point, sold the, the Cabo got sold in Fiji to a guy. It's still over there. I don't know what's going on with it nowadays, but, and then got the merit down there in, in Samoa, sent it from Virginia.
to Samoa. Oh my gosh. Had it there for a few years and then sent it to Kona. And now it's the boat I'm running now and I'm owner operator. And so the joys of that. Yeah. There's a lot of joys with that type of situation. Oh man. Man. OK. Already just like the logistics. So there we go. That was really good. I'm really impressed. Like what are we? We're 10 minutes in and you've told us your entire life history. So good for you, Chris. You assignment. You've completed the assignment.
The logistics behind shipping a boat already in itself is one thing, but to go to bring, because you brought three total boats to the Southern Pacific. Yes, I shipped three boats down there. One was an Ocean Master, one was a Cabo, and the third was the Merit. None of them were shipped with that yacht path or any of that. I had to deal with, oh gosh, just giving me anxiety thinking about it. It was just dealing with shipping companies and they're like, what do you want to do?
It was earlier in the stage where a lot of people were shipping boats, especially to that region. Or if they were, they were going with Yacht Path or Dockwise. I don't even think Yacht Path is around anymore, but they were the ones back there. I don't know, it was a while back. But anyways, yeah, it was a nightmare. Everything had to be shipped on top of all the containers. And it wasn't fun. I had all kinds of issues. That's a whole different world.
Yeah, I mean, and then after all this and the merit gets to Honolulu and I'm standing there and they're offloading it off the boat in Honolulu and this big gust of wind came and it started swinging back and forth and everybody started scattering. And the guy, my agent that's standing there is like grabbing him. We're like hiding behind a minivan in the parking lot. And he's like, start.
Katie (12:06.957)Yeah, he's like start videoing with your camera because you're going to need this for the insurance company and shit's like falling off the boat as it's like snap swinging. Holy crap. Oh my God. All this and here goes this merit. You know, there's going to be one less merit and I don't know. Somehow they freaking got it under control, got it in the water. I don't know. But yeah, it's shipping boats is I see so many people do it nowadays and I think there's a lot more people involved like to help you do it and.
It's still stressful even now. It's so stressful. There's so many pros and cons with shipping a boat. Sometimes you can't avoid it, like when you're taking a merit from Virginia to Honolulu. Sometimes you can and there's still pros and cons and people definitely decide to ship. Again, a conversation for another time. Also, the logistics behind going into these,
these places that there's not a lot of people going to to start a sport fishing operation and to create a successful charter business. That's really, that's super impressive. So definitely don't want to take away from that because I'm blown away by what you've managed to do. So.
Tell us a little bit about the Kona fishery. I like to approach these podcasts, assuming my listeners really don't know anything about sport fishing and they want to learn. So, big blue marlin over there? Yes. Yeah, we have big blue marlin. Every year is different, but there's always a handful of really, really nice ones caught out of here.
Every year there's at least a few over the mark that are at least seen and hooked, you know, um, and then a few over the mark is yeah. So over over a thousand pounds. Yeah. Um, the last few years, there's been a little bit of a slump where like there haven't been a lot weighed, but there's been a couple of ways in the last, and there was one last year and then I think two years before I, or Marlin caught one. Um, but they're there every year. There's several people that see them. They're just, they're paying the ass to catch. Um, they pull all the tricks. Yeah.
Katie (14:20.461)Um, and then obviously too, when you lose one, it always is a little bit bigger than what you think. So there's a lot of probably 800 pounders that get called over the mark. I would think sometimes, so you never know. But, um, that's still a really big fish. Yeah. Yeah. But in terms of like, like bigger, like, like nicer size fish, we get, we get quite a few. Um, I would say, um, you know, things are changing a little bit with that Omni sonar stuff. Like there's probably more, there's going to be more numbers, but, um, historically, uh, if you're catching like,
through the season, like if I caught 11 over 500, I was pretty happy. That was pretty good. But again, that's probably going to start to change, I think with the sonars, because that thing's a weapon over here. Because it's just like a lack of bait. It's flat calm. Like we're fishing in a swimming pool, and there's not a lot of targets to get. No, you don't need a stabilizer. But people are putting them in there because they're just putting them in there, whatever. But if you go up off the ground, so if you go north, it can get a little lumpy. But. OK.
for the most part, Kona, it's just you're fishing in a pool. It's like fishing for bass, but big blue marlin. So it's pretty cool in that regard. So that sonar is making a big difference. But you can find them, you can spot them, you can stay on them, and then you can just watch them come up. So is the season summertime? Is it like June, July, August? Yeah. Well, generally, historically speaking, well, first off, the one saying that's just like,
which has been true in Kona forever. It's like, people are like, when should I come? When should I come? And everybody's like, come when you can come, you know, get on a flight when you can get here. There's big ones caught all the time. There's been a grander caught in every month of the year here. So if you look like at the records, every single month has a grander, you know, a thousand pounder caught in. I think December might be the one with the least amount. I think there might be like one or two in December. All the others have months, but if you look historically though,
The majority of them have been caught in that July, August time period. And so summertime, but like generally a lot of people really like the spring. I've usually seen like my biggest fish of the year in the spring. The fishing can be like really hit and miss. Like it could be, you go five days without a knockdown, nothing. And then you see a 750 and 800 something, you know, pile on. So springtime, I think,
Katie (16:46.925)Most people here that really want like very large blue marlin. They do like the spring. It's kind of like in quiet type of conversation. Like not everybody knows about it really, I guess. They think the summertime is when you would come, but spring, if you could put in the time, you know, if you can only get to Connor for like three days, maybe spring's not the best, but if you can put in the time, there's usually a couple of really giant ones seen in the springtime. Um, and then as you start to get into the summer, we'll get like a run of rats around June, usually.
How big are the rats? They're like 150, 200 pounds maybe, you know, yeah, somewhere in that range. And they'll start to kind of show up in more numbers and then you'll pick through them and then catch a nice one here and there. And there'll be a lot more like 500 and 600 pounders caught through like that June, July period. All the tournaments run all through, well, they really run June, July, August as the final one in September, but the lion's share of the tournaments is all pretty much July.
I don't get a lot of charters in July because I'm fishing mostly all those tournaments. Um, so my charters are like tournament charters, so not a lot of days in between it. And then you throw in the world cup as well. So July is usually a really busy time. So like if people are asking me when they message me, um, I tell them, you know, come in May, June, August, or early September. Um, that's usually a really good time, you know, but.
Pretty much now all the way up until mid to late September. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. How big is the fleet? Well, it's, you know, there's quite a few boats, but it's not giant. Gosh, I guess I could say there might be like 50 or 60 fishing boats, you know, like that might run charters more like recreation. Well, I guess it would be commercially kind of style, you know, like take it.
paid charters are out there more regular. But the actual boats that you'll see day in and day out, I would think might be more in the 20 to 30 numbers. And then there's days where you don't see really almost anybody. That's a good size fleet, though. Yeah, yeah. Some of those boats may only fish a little bit here and there. But I think.
Katie (19:04.365)You know, any day you'll probably see between 10 to 30 boats would be what you would see out there. But like, you know, there's, Kona is starting to shift a little bit. Like it's starting to turn into more of a private boat fishery. And there's the, there's, there are charter boats, obviously, and like all the private boats charter, but the owners aren't like really pushing the charters. They're just kind of more like, so the captains have some days to go out and fish and the crew don't go crazy sitting there cleaning the boats.
But a lot, it's starting to turn into a private boat fishery. Hawaii has just gotten insanely expensive and you know, with like the sonar stuff and things changing, the owner operator thing is a really difficult thing to accomplish here. And then we also have a business out of Kona called Bite Me Sport Fishing, which is like a, it's like they got a bunch of boats and it's kind of like cheap style, you know, like you can pay like a hundred bucks and you'll like share, you'll share a charter with.
whoever, you know, and they do all that kind of stuff. And it's kind of changed things a little bit there. They've been around for a while, but I kind of foresee it being a situation where you'll have basically the bite meat charter boats, and then you're going to have just a lot of private boats. So it is changing a little bit. And, you know, so I would say like in terms of boats that are actually really out there professionally just blue marlin fishing and actually targeting it, there might only be really like 10 or 15 of us.
You know, like for instance, me, like I only billfish and I told my charters that when I first came to Kona, I wasn't that way. Cause I had to, I, I was broke. I mean, I didn't have autopilot on the boat for like two years because I just couldn't afford it. I was like, I was just like, I mean, thank God I didn't have like a major breakdown. Cause I, but would have been for sale. Like I was, by the time I got there and did everything that I was like balancing. I mean, it was like, I was just, I was so stressed. Yeah. And, uh, you know, over years you make a little bit more and then, you know,
could afford an autopilot, could do this and you work your way up. You know, but, uh, so I was just fishing whenever I could, but now I'm in a situation where I'm lucky enough where I kind of, um, I just bill fish and I tell people right away. So when they call me or they text me, I'm like, Hey, look, you know, first off, understand, you know, we, we are just bill fishing. If you want to just go catch fish, that's cool. I'll recommend some guys that are really good at that. You know, if you got like a bunch of kids with you, you had a 13 year old with you that he's going to hate trolling around. Um,
Katie (21:28.365)Let me send you with my buddy who's going to go out and catch you a bunch of Shibis like little yellow fins or whatever. I want people to have a good time. I don't want them to be out on the boat. Like, uh, you know, whatever. And for sure. So there's probably only a few of us that specifically more, more do that. That just focus on the bill fishing. And, um, I think that if you really want to do it right here and like catch a majority of really nice ones, you do sort of have to more target them, um, instead of just pulling.
mixed spread and changing up halfway through the day to go try something different or whatever. I want to get into that. But first, I want to hear about it seems like Kona has, I mean, there's some good fishing there, ahi, ono, excellent stuff, reef, all that stuff. But what is the marlin culture? Because there seems to be a very deep marlin culture in Kona. Sure.
Well, it's, I mean, it's got a really deep history in Marlin fishing. Um, it's, I mean, every year I learn more stuff about the history of it. And, you know, before any of this social media, any of this stuff, I mean, there were guys out there doing just insane stuff and you never even heard about it. And like, there's guys I'll see, like I've known them there and they do something different now, you know, they work somewhere else or whatever. I, you know, served with them for a while and never even knew they fish. And then someone will tell me a story like, Oh yeah, that guy caught like,
three over 800 and this tournament went back out and caught a grander and did that and like all this crazy like all these different stories and you're like that guy you're like what what the heck like the dude cleaning up doing that like what it's just like there's so many like tigers in that harbor that you just don't know about they're very humble or they're quiet or you never knew or like you know instagram facebook all that it's changed fishing in that way because everybody you
Unless it's on a post or something, you don't even know about it really, but there's, there's just such a history here. Um, I mean, it goes back so long, um, to, you know, the early days of, of the Parker, you know, tube lore that caught a grander and all this stuff. So, um, so there's that rich history, um, and, and it's, it's beautiful that way. You know, there's a lot of ego here. There's probably the most ego I've seen anywhere I've ever been. Um,
Katie (23:44.717)So, you know, there's a little bit of a that side to it. And there's just a bit of a big fish mentality here. Like that's what a lot of us are wanting to target and find out there. And there's a chance of like the giant one showing up whenever. So yeah, I mean, really the culture has been lure fishing forever. And there's a bit of a, there's not a lot of change.
that happens here is a lot of like stubbornness to certain ways that have worked and they continue to work. So why change it, right? But there is, um, there's kind of like the old way and there's only like little adjustments and there's a Kona way of doing things and you'll go and jump on other boats in different parts of the world. And it's a very different, it's not very different, but there is a certain way you can jump on 10 different boats in Kona and they're all doing something pretty much. They're all doing the same thing. Um,
where if you go to different places in the world, everybody has their own little spin -off on things or people are doing different whatever. And so there is kind of like a Kona way of doing stuff. And generally that Kona way of doing stuff is like big, loud, heavy tackle, manly, ego kind of centric, big fish oriented. And that's cool. That's what this place is kind of about. So it's funny when you...
get people that want to come here and catch mahi -mahi or something because it's like, I don't understand. Go to the Keys. I don't know. Go to Mexico. What are we doing here? So I always chuckle. But I do understand. People just want to catch fish sometimes. Yeah. Well, they've never experienced an 800 -pound blue marlin. I assure you that that's definitely generally the case. That's not even something that could even cross their mind, what it takes to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
You mentioned the Kona mentality, how everyone is doing similar things and that it's really deep in the culture and that shows. Kona, from what I understand, Kona is known as a lure fishery. That's what I really want to talk to you about today is really diving into lures because my personal experience in the sport fishing space has been primarily light tackle.
Katie (26:04.365)Heavy Tackle has been more bluefin. We did a season in Madeira for Looking for the Grander. We didn't find her. Drake swears he saw her, but there was another fish in the spread. I was laughing when you were saying that, but there was another fish in the spread at the time. Hit our long. It was a good one. She was upward 600, right? Yes. Hit our long and we got her and Drake's up there and the bridge just yelling and we're like, what is going on? We had no idea there was another fish back there and he was like, that was definitely.
That was the fish. I didn't see it, but that was July 3rd too. He was like, I know where she is. We'll be back tomorrow. We didn't see anything. Anyway, I have some heavy tackle experience, but very little lure knowledge. We do a lot of - We pulled teasers in Costa Rica or super proficient bait and switch and pulled a little bit of lures in Madeira. We did like a -
like a mixed spread teasers in the shorts and then lures in the longs. What are the different types of, there's so many different types of lures out there. Can you give us a general rundown? What types of lures there are? The difference between manufacturing and handmade lures. There's a lot of lure makers out of Kona. Some of our favorites are out of Kona.
Take the wheel, Chris. Okay. Yeah. I mean, oh boy, that's it. This is a load of questions. Like there's so much there. Um, but I'll, I will try and generalize it. Um, there's, there's a few like basic shapes and then from those shapes, there's like all kinds of spin -offs, right? So you kind of have what a plunger, um, I grabbed a couple of lures real quick from my garage. So a plunger. So this is, this is a big one.
This is a Lee Simmons one, but this is a bigger plunger, kind of like what Joe Yee called the super plunger. And so you could see it kind of has like a taper right here, kind of comes down a little more taper. So plunger meaning it plunges, it pops down, it goes down in the water, it'll go down deeper. And then the longer, the longer head kind of makes it act a little bit more like a tube in a way. But that plunging kind of.
Katie (28:28.205)drives it down. So you're going to have more downtime in the cycle. And like, generally, these are like pretty consistent with their pop, like, you know, it, you can almost count it like a pop and then 123456 pop one to, you know, they're generally like pretty consistent in how their action is. And they're fun to watch. They're like a pretty, a pretty, pretty good just like, do their thing plunge, pop, do their thing. So that's a plunger. And then, you know, from that head shape, there's like,
all kinds of different things. There's lungers, there's different variations of plungers, there's sharper cut plungers. So the cut is the face, by the way, like when we're talking about a cut on a lure. So there's like, you know, different cuts on it. There's people that might add like a scoop to it. There's different steepnesses of how it plunges down there. So there's so many variations, but the plunger is one style a lure. Then you have a tube lure.
did grab a tube lure. Here we go. There's a tube lure, which is pretty simple shape. It's the first lure because it was a simple shape. And this was, you know, this is more of like a historical style type tube, like a Henry Chi one, like that they were making out of like bar glasses and stuff. This is a koia that he just did like a one off for me on it, but it's a
It's kind of your more historical type of tube. And they've evolved into, here's a tantrum tube, which is made out of acrylic or a type of like acrylic type material. But as the name states, it's a tube. Right. What's the story about the bar glasses? Yeah. So.
Gosh, I don't want to butcher the story too much, but it had something to do with, I think they were like sitting at the Kona Inn. And I think back when, I think it was Henry Chi and gosh, I can't think of who else, but they were, they were basically looking at ways to make lures. And he grabbed a bunch of bar glasses in the back there that they were going to be throwing out or something and put resin in them and was able to basically create a lure off the.
Katie (30:47.437)off the glass and then they cut it to whatever angle it was. The reason the original tube lures and stuff, they're all at a certain angle. They're all set at that one angle. The reason for that angle was back then the tool that they were using to cut it, it was only made at that angle. That's why they cut it at that angle and then it worked.
Wish I had all the stories in front of me right now so I could like go into details because it's really cool. But like people that are interested in that type of stuff, Jim Rizzuto is a really good guy. He's passed away, but he wrote a lot of books. He's a good guy to look up. Like you could just Google him and look up some of his literature and he's done a lot of historical stuff on lores. There's also a good book that...
Joe Yee didn't write it, but somebody wrote it for Joe Yee, and it's about him and about Lors. There's a bunch of good books about Lors, and it's really, really interesting when you start to dive into the subject and hear all the different things. But Jim Rizzuto's got some great stories. So if anyone's interested to kind of elaborate, you could check out his books probably. Well, I'll tag some – put some of your favorite books in the description. We'll get together on that, and I'll add that. So if you guys are listening…
Check out the description. I'll link some of those books in there and you can check it out a little bit more. So we got the plunger, which plunges. Yeah, so you have a two blower. So a two blower is going to kind of stay more on the surface. And we like to call it mole hilling. And they're not all going to do that. But when we're talking about mole hilling, it's kind of like it just like pushes a bulb of water in front of it all the time. And it'll kind of do like a little back, a little tight.
wiggle as it's pushing this ball of water in front of it. And it just stays on the surface, just pushing, pushing water. And every once in a while it'll kind of push a little bit more, but it really does what we call molehill. But some of the tube lures will do more of like, kind of like a skitter right on the surface and really like just explode a bunch of water. They're really aggressive lures. And the only downside of a tube lure is they're hard to pull in rough water. So a lot of people like on the East coast could struggle pulling these. What's his name? Eric.
Katie (32:58.989)aloha lures that that smash bait is probably one of the few him and the cramped in baits I think can handle the rough a bit in terms of a tubular but yeah they're hard to pull in rough water again that's why I like Kona exactly and that's why like we're it's such a good lure fishery because we just have a flat calm and we just sit there and stare at lures so we're all like lure snobs and everybody's you know.
Everybody's got their own thing and everyone's got their own opinions on it. And it's yeah, you just like staring at lords all day, which is it's fun. It's like playing with toys. You're just like, it's exciting. And it's a dress them up however you want. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then, yeah, then you have like, I mean, it goes into all kinds of areas. You have like flat, you know, like just like a flat head, like a hard head or something like a mole, craft wide range or something. Now there's a lot of guys that make them with just a resin.
Um, and then you have just like variations to, you know, like this is a ruckus of Marla magic ruckus. Everybody knows a ruckus. Yeah. I mean, it may, and for what it's called, I mean, it makes a ruckus, you know, um, these things are killer, but, uh, but yeah, that's kind of their own type of, uh, of a shape. Like you couldn't really say, Oh, this is a plunger. This is a tube. I guess it, it might be more along on the lines of like a lunger or something, but.
Okay. You know, there's just so many variations to what there are. And then even these ruckus is like, they make them in like a hard cut. They make them in a soft cut. They make them in whatever, which people don't really know about, but you can ask for it if, or try and find them. But the regular just ruckus you get off the shelf is the one that most people catching fish on. But in Kona, they, you, there is one that's like a harder cut, which we would call like a Kona cut or a hard cut lure. And that's just a, that's just a steeper angle.
on the face and it just it's just a lot more aggressive. But again, it's a lot harder to run. You got to really kind of adjust it in the rigor and everything. So but yeah, I mean, you have that then you have you have like scoop face lures, you know, cup face lures like, like the, you know, and then here's a classic scoop face lure. I call my grander on this, not this actual one in my hand, that one's up on the wall, but but this, this this model. And so yeah, you have like your scoop
Katie (35:16.301)style lures, which are awesome. Um, and this old shape that they were using for a long time back in the day. And then I think they had them, you know, all kinds of different sized and shapes. And the thing about those two is like back when they used to troll, um, the old like wooden, uh, sand, sandpans, they couldn't go very fast. So they needed lures that could like do a lot of action. Um, so like when you start getting into those more like, like plungers and lures that like,
need a little bit more skill in pulling them and stuff. They can't handle like really slow speeds. So, but back in the day, like the sandpans and stuff, they would, they would make them, they would do these. So sandpan is like the old trolling boats that they had here. They were like, okay. I was going to ask, I was like, I don't know what a sandpan is. Yeah, they're weird looking, like the exhaust isn't out the back of the boat. They like an exhaust sticking up out of the top. They were the old original like, yeah, like old banana looking boats, kind of like the Albuquerque boats in the
Carolina fishery or whatever, you know, they're like old historical. There's still like two of them here and they, they, they fish every once in a while. They're like old classics. And how fast, so like how fast were they going? I believe they were like six knots or something like that. They're pretty slow. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so anyways, and, um, so the issue they had was getting action out of the lures because if you're going too slow, some of those two lures, like they get lazy, they'll act weird. Um,
So I think they were adding, you know, they were doing these scoop type lures or, you know, they had these other ones. I think they were called crocodiles or something like that. Back in the day, they were just like a long, a really long head with a crazy cut on it. So they were just trying to get as much action out of these things as they could going slow. Um, you know, I, I, I have to say that like Kona back in the day originally wasn't a lure fishery. It was a live bait fishery and they would mess around with lures and stuff, but really it was, it was a live bait fishery. People would.
grab a bait, they'd go up on the grounds, they'd fish the grounds and everything's changed now. Everyone's fishing south now. No one, I mean, there's guys that fish the grounds, but a majority of big fish are caught down south. But yeah, it was different. So they would catch a bait and then they would pull it off the ledge and they'd be up off the grounds and they would catch their fish off live baits, off tunas and stuff. So that was that fishery. But,
Katie (37:40.845)it started to change over time. And I think Bart Miller had a lot to do with that too, because in between they would catch their live baits, they'd fish their live baits in the morning. And then in the afternoon they would kind of have to do something. So he would pull lures and he would kind of hone his lure pulling skills. And he started catching a lot of fish and they started catching more fish on his lures. And then the fishery started to change from that point on. I think that that was also a transition where things started to go into more lure fishing and then the bait piles started getting harder to find. And,
fishing started getting really good down south, um, which there's not as readily available. Accus and baits to catch and drag off the ledge. And the lower fisheries just expanded over time. But, um, anyways, that was kind of going off on a tangent there, but yeah, they, um, the scoop lures, the thing about those lures are awesome. They're really good lures. They're, they're very aggressive, but you're not going to catch a lot of fish on them just because of the way that the fish feed on them, because they're so erratic and they move around a lot of times.
A lot of times you'll notice if you have one, there's not too often where you'll have a fish just pile on and get hooked. It's usually like smacks it out of the rigger and then comes back and you'll hook them on the second attempt. Um, so for me these days, I think it's a tremendous teaser lure. I pull it without a hook, but, um, when I used to pull a hook in it, I would get a lot of bites, but I would also miss a lot of fish or pull hooks on a lot of fish just because of the nature of those scoop style lures. So the way it's swimming.
Essentially it's swimming exactly. So the way that they eat it and the way that the, where the hook could be when they pile on and, um, you know, it sounds in my mind, it sounds funny because they're eating tunas and all these fish that are dressed, you know, swimming all over the place. So you would think that that would be no problem, but I just think the way they eat it, you just don't get the best hookup rate. Um, but I get so many bites on those things. It's insane. I have one in my spread forever. I mean, I could see how that would.
Simulate a kind of like a injured injured baitfish. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like it does for Yeah, I feel like it does like its own set of teasing because it's not doing just the same motion all the time Those things just have a mind of their own So if the fish is sitting there looking at it and all of a sudden it does some weird thing just because it catches a wave different I've seen fish sit under that lure and just looking at it and we're watching the fish and the Lord does something and it's just like
Katie (40:03.469)instant boom and he sticks on it. Can't help it. I think it just has that vibration to it and reaction by it invokes. Yes, for sure. I love that you mentioned that, well, I don't really generally pull this one with a hook. I pull this one as a teaser because of this. When you're picking lures for your spread with hooks, what are you looking for? You want something that makes noise. You want something that is going to
induce a bite from the fish, but also have the hook sitting in the right spot. So what do you look for? Well, um, you know, I, I, I changed that all the time and I, over the last few years, I've definitely changed my spreads around a little bit, but, um, we'll go over kind of, I'll go over like a generalization of sort of, um, what, what you would, uh, what a spread would kind of design to be like. Right. So,
Generally what you'll want is have your most aggressive lures up front. So your closest lures to the boat behind your teasers, behind your dredges, whatever you want, a loud aggressive, like a tube style lure. Generally that closest lure would probably be your biggest lure. So just a really aggressive type lure, a plunger would be a little bit farther back. So more of a tube or one of those scoop face lures or like, you know,
one of those big poi dogs or something like that, right? Something up close, loud, aggressive. And then as you go back in the spread, you kind of slowly taper off the aggression. So, you know, the next position back could maybe be a plunger. And then, you know, on your rigor, you may want something that's a little bit more like of a, just a straight popper, you know, just a flat head or a cup face lure or something like that. And then, you know,
going all the way back to then bullets. We always have bullets in the spread here in Kona. A lot of people think that's like a tuna bait and a bullet is, this is a bullet. And a lot of people - Is that the shape of the head? Because like our bullets are often, I mean, we have one such - There's so many different bullets, like, oh, oh, yeah, here's - I like those little ones for the shotgun. Oh, wow, look at that one.
Katie (42:23.181)So this is a nine inch one. This is, I probably catch more fish on this than anything in terms of a bullet. Like if I need to just catch fish, I put out a Koya nine plus, this is a nine plus. And then there's, you know, there's this one, there's so many variation of bullets too. And then, you know, there's this little bomb boy one, which is pretty, pretty famous. Pretty cool. Little pinky. Um, but yeah, the bullets are huge here in Kona. Um, and I know a lot of places people are like, Oh yeah, bullets are kind of just for tunas and stuff, but we catch.
Majority of our Marlin on them and they work majority. I brought them. Yeah, I think so I honestly would say we catch a lot of them on there It's surprising whatever the reason is and I've gone to other places and I used to always say like oh They'll work like that everywhere and they don't work the same. I don't know what it is in this It sounds so silly and it's just counter intuitive but like they don't work the same as they do in Kona they can't they'll catch billfish anywhere in the world, but I
for some reason in Kona sometimes they just want bullets. Like every boat in Kona has a bullet in the spread every day, no matter what. Even if they're look, even on world cup day, there's a bullet in the spread. I caught some giant ones on those things. So yeah, it's weird because you look at the size of it. The biggest problem with the bullet is that it's so small that when the big ones come up on it, they push it out. And so you always get like a crappy bite sometimes on it. Um,
Because they're pushing so much water. Push so much water. Yeah. And you get this thing come up on the stinger. But you know, I think what happens sometimes and I'll go back to your question there, but I think what happens sometimes with the bullets is they'll come up on a big lure up close and maybe they're just not, they might've missed it or they looked at it. And, um, you know, now that I'm bait and switch fishing there, um, I'm looking at the fishery way different than I ever did. It's changed my mind. It's changed like,
All my perceptions on Kona fishing has changed in the last year and a half. Is that how long you've been bait and switching there? Yeah, pretty much. Well, I guess I shouldn't say a year and a half. I'll be like half a season and then, you know, so half a season, I guess. So maybe not a year and a half, but I've been fully committed to it for half a season, but a year and a half I've been kind of gradually getting into it. But that's changed my perception on what these fish are doing here. And
Katie (44:39.245)So I think maybe they're coming up on those shorts and you don't see them and they may just be looking at it and they're just not ready for it. Or maybe they have a half -hearted bite and you just didn't even see it or whatever. And then that bullet comes past them and it's just such an easy meal. It's like a low hanging fruit. So they just pile on. So I think that's what happens sometimes. And we're just saying they love bullets, but I don't know. It could be, it's just a smaller, easier way out the back bait, you know?
That's really interesting. I have a question because you mentioned that you get those rats that come in around May, late spring, early summer. Do you see, I'm just speculating here, do the rats generally feed more aggressively? Are they going to be more prone to hitting those closer lures than the ones out there? Yes, they go through phases of how they feed.
there's sometimes where they're feeding so aggressive. They're just like, they're not even opening their mouths. It's almost like they're being territorial, which I've heard that's a whole nother conversation. You can have a whole podcast on that. Um, because some people think they're like being territorial right before the spawn or something. And then I've heard people say that they're whacking baits to feed the females below them. And I've heard, I've heard all kinds of stuff, right? You know, I don't know what's the stuff. I like that idea. That sounds sweet. Um,
I don't know if that's what they're really doing. I think that generally when I see them doing that whacking thing where they're not, and they're really aggressive, but they're just not eating very good. There's always like a lot of flying fish and small bait around. And I think that's more so how it is if they're just like hitting stuff and there's a lot of bait around. So they're not like committing, but they go through stages. They go through like phases of how they feed. And when they're aggressive, they'll eat anything. They'll come up and eat. Like, I mean, I used to pull this huge,
stupid big teaser and I've had like hundred and eighty like hundred pounders, eighty pounders come up and be all over it. And I'm like, what are you doing? No, that's not for you. Go away. And so you don't they're just they're very aggressive. And that what does happen, though, like you'll sometimes during that time that's that is when like the females are spawning here. So you might mark a really big one and you'll be like trying to get that big one to bite and you'll get like a crazy aggressive bite.
Katie (47:01.741)If you didn't see the bite, you may be like, oh, that's her or whatever, but sometimes the little ones that are around that female, they come up and mess with you and you hook one of those and then you're like, oh, dang it. That's the case, but they are pretty aggressive for the most part, the little ones that come in. They'll eat everything in the pattern when they're feeding. Everything. Yeah, everything. We had one in Costa Rica, we were pulling a...
XXL poi dog. It's like our favorite lure. Oh, yeah, we got when Drake and I got married We had two separate people give us wedding gifts that were double XL poi dogs. Oh awesome. I love that Yeah, it's a good one. But we had one in particular that I actually have one here that was one of our wedding gifts. It's Oh the fish head one. He doesn't anymore. Yeah, hold on. Yeah, this one does not go behind the spread. No, hold on to that one
We had one that, man, we couldn't keep it. This one also doesn't go behind the spread anymore, but this thing just like - It took some beatings, huh? It took some beatings, but from these little blue marlin in Costa Rica, they couldn't get enough of this one. You mentioned aggressive and loud. Can you just explain a little bit - That's right there. It's aggressive and loud. Super aggressive and loud and just it's pushing water, splashing, moving. It's -
it's making noise. If you're thinking like if you're just sitting in there in the ocean swimming around and there was no boat or anything and that thing came past you and you were even underwater, you'd hear it coming from a ways away and you'd see it coming from a ways away as opposed to like one of these bullets, you probably wouldn't hear anything until it was right up on you and you wouldn't see anything until it was right up on you. So you got to think of it in terms of that fish.
they're in the water and that's coming from a while, it's going to grab their attention. And they're also way more sensitive to vibration and sound, you know, with their, the way their air structures, you know, with their ear structure set up and the way it all works with their swim bladders and how everything works. Like they're feeling all this happening before they're seeing it. And they know you're there before, you know, before they actually have sight on it. So those really aggressive, loud type things I think gets their attention and brings them up in.
Katie (49:17.613)into the spread and whether or not they eat that lure, it doesn't mean that that Lord didn't bring them into the spread. So like, you may have a lure that you pull every day and they doesn't get bit every day, but you're getting bit a lot and you may not even know it, but that reason you're getting bit every day is that Lord they're not eating is raising them. And so I'm like always been like a big advocate of big lures anywhere in the world. Like I go, when I go in Cabo and I fish the Bisbees, that double X poi dog caught.
so many little baby marlin like they have over there and raise so many fish. I'm like, okay, well, even if they're not eating it, it's raising them. They might come up and look at it and then there's something better for them and they'll pile on. I'm a big fan of big lures anywhere you're at for the most part. I like that you mentioned that the bullets, they don't pull the same in Kona as they pull everywhere else in the world. They pull -
They pull very distinctly different. You say you like the big lures and the way they pull in other places as well as Kona. What are some factors that could, you mentioned the swimming pool conditions, what are some factors that affect pulling a lure and what should somebody look for and how do they adjust how a lure might pull?
if they want to keep that lure in the spread, but it's doing something a little off, what are some ways that you can finagle or work with a lure to make it pull a little better? Because depending on your outrigger size, where the lure is in the spread, how fast you're going, the boat, how much draft the boat's pushing, everything's going to be different. What are your thoughts on that? There's a lot to that there. Conditions are big.
that's going to make a big difference on the lures you're going to pull. You know, like when it gets rough, there's just certain lures that you can, you just can't pull them. It doesn't matter how low you pull them in the rig, it doesn't matter what you do. At some point you're, you're, you're being counterproductive because you're basically going against what that lure is supposed to be doing. So if it, you can't force it, that's a, that's a thing. Like I learned with lures, like even it might be your favorite lore or, or you just bought this lore and it's like so pretty and you want to get it out there. But like, look, if it's not running right,
Katie (51:39.757)It's not running right. Sorry. Take it out of the spread. Put something else out there. You know, if it's skipping, if it's bouncing, if it's like doing something weird. Um, and I hate to say it, but like, you know, a lot of these lures that are hand sanded, sometimes you get a bad lore and you can't tell until it takes years and years to really be able to like pick up a lore and look at it and like have an idea like, okay, this one's going to pull hard. This is this side. This is going to do something weird or I don't like the.
It's kind of hard. And if you're buying them, just whatever, like you don't know. So sometimes you could get a bad lore that just pulls to one direction or just doesn't act correctly. And then sometimes you get a magic one that no matter what, it just gets killed. It's just hammered. And then you lose it and you try and get the same one. It doesn't happen the same way. And then you spend the rest of your life crying yourself to sleep. Yeah. So every lore has got its own personality. You really can't force it so much, but you can.
you can persuade them to do what you want it to do. So like what I'll do, we use a really heavy leader. We use that Momoi extra hard 530, right? So not everybody's going to use that. So you're not going to be able to influence the lore as much as we can with that leader. But the leader here, I got actually one rigged as a teaser with, I think 530. Yeah. So maybe I can explain it a bit better. So this one does not have a hook on it, but it's got got the leader rate. So.
You have your memory, right? When you buy leader, it's in a coil and it's just always going to have that memory. I guess unless you like did something, I don't know how you could erase that, but anyway, so it's always got its memory. So like when you rig your lore, the coil is going to come out. If you just let it sit naturally, it's going to come out one way or another. Like it could be like that, it could be like that, it could be like that, right? So generally a neutral position to just make your lore run what it was.
made to do, don't mess with it, just see what it does. It's just having this come straight over the top. So it's just pulling the loop is just coming straight over the top. So it's pulling like that, right? If it's this way, the lures are going to run terrible.
Katie (53:43.661)It's just not going to do the right stuff. So if it's pointed down, it's not good. If it's curling down, it's not going to do well. Yeah, if your coil's like that, it's going to run really bad. And then this also goes into why it's so important to have like a rubber stopper on the back or like a toothpick so you can fix the lure in position. I've jumped on some really, really good boats before and seen they have nothing back there. And it just, that lure is going to do weird stuff because it's going to hit a wave and the hook rig's going to move and it's going to.
There's so many little tweaks. I mean, and I say this because we're literally staring at lures eight to 10 hours a day in a swimming pool. And we go long stretches without bites. So we don't have a lot to do, but just sit there and stare at these things. It's clean blue water. So we see every little thing. So it's like, if there's a little piece of vinyl that's come off, we can tell by the way the lure is running. There's so much to it.
So that coil makes a big difference. So yeah, generally just a neutral position would be to have it come just straight over the top like that. And then what you can do is adjust it. If you want it to run out to a certain way, you can move that coil ever so slightly. So it's kind of like a leash to a dog or something. So like, you know, kind of like that.
and it's going to pull that lure that way. I wouldn't go all the way that way because you'll end up getting that lure will go so far that way to like snap back. It'll like come in and do like wild. That's why it has such an, like an impact. Yeah. But like if you're fishing in a really, really rough, you it's hard to see. I mean, you're just trying to get those things in the water. So I've, cause you know, I fished when I fished in like Cabo and some of those like hurricanes and stuff, I'm just trying to get those lures in the water. I mean, it's just like, whatever. So.
You know, these are, but if you know what they should be doing, and then you can kind of like, you know, that if I do the law, if I put the coil on this lower here, it's going to do this, like, then you can definitely adjust them a bit. So that'll make a difference. That'll pull it a little bit. Um, and then the other thing you could use to, and to, to when, obviously, if you have like a stiff rig, when you, when you turn this leader like that, the hook's going to change its position. So what you will basically want to do is.
Katie (55:57.485)you know, have it where your leader's like that and your hook straight down or whatever, and, or wherever your hooks oriented. And then you move this where you want. And then you could shove like a toothpick in there. We'll hold it in that position. And then you don't have to move the whole hook rig. Um, and then obviously too, like the hook, we always like to run. I don't have a hook rig with me right now. I should have grabbed one, but we always like to run the hook on these, on the, on the slant face lures. We always like to run the hook down. So, so like, yeah, not up. We like them down.
And it basically works as a rudder. It stabilizes the lure. Um, so if you have a lawyer that's running like crazy erratic, try running the hook down. So meaning like the bend and the point is here and then comes up that way. So we run them down, but scoop face lures, I'll vary it depending. They're all a little different. Um, I generally like having the hook up on the scoop what lures and on like cup, like lures with a cup or a flat lore. You have the hook up.
because it's generally going to try and go to that position. If it doesn't have an orientation, it might just make your lure run funny. Hook down, creates a rudder, creates stabilization, and helps keep it more of a straighter. You get better bites that way. That's definitely what our mate... We brought a maiden that had lure fished pretty proficiently into the deer and he was telling me that. I have a question for you.
Now, keep in mind I'm a circle hook fisherman. Sure. Why wouldn't you? Is it just atrocious to think about pointing the hook to the side? No, you can point it to the side, but you're going to - To the inside of the spread? Yes, you can point it either way you want. The problem with doing that, and I'll do, that was the next thing I was going to say, is the hook on lures like that with a big single hook in it, if we're talking single hook.
It creates, it's a rudder pretty much. So as you move the orientation of where that is, you're going to affect the way that lure swims. So if I, if I have my bottom hook, if I turn it all one way, it's going to steer really, really good that like hard that direction. So if you take a single hook and you turn it all the way on its side, that lure is going to pull really hard to one side or the other. Um, so that would be your only, your issue. Um, and.
Katie (58:20.397)Personally, I don't know how much of a difference it would make in terms of hookups because it's like, I run the hook down on almost all my lures and we're always hooking them in the top of the face here. And you would think that if they're coming in and eating, like they would a bait or something like this, you'd be hooking them in the bottom of the jaw. And that's why a lot of people don't like to run, not a lot of people, but there are people that I've had this argument with where they're like,
Well, you're just going to hook them in the bottom of the job. No, it hooks them up top here. So I mean, it's a train wreck when they, you know, it's like, we don't know how it happened. I mean, someone told me the other day, uh, it's like porcupines having sex. Like we don't know how it happens, but it happens. And so it happens some, so they're exploding on the thing. But I think Jean Vanderhoek had a, had a theory where right before they, they actually eat it, it rolls. So when they eat it, it actually rolls a little bit. So the hook point is.
because it's moving water. Yes, so it's turning a little bit and that's what was his theory on that, but there's a million ways to do this. That's so interesting. Your toothpick, you mentioned the stopper, which is essential. Yes, stopper or a toothpick, yes, either or. Then, yes, toothpick, you could toothpick the front to move where the leader's at. There's a couple of different ways of doing it, but that's the easiest way, I think. What about moving it up on -
it's positioned in the outrigger, like the halyard. When would you do that? You're going to want to change that all day pretty much depending on what your tack is, what your conditions are like. Every boat's got a different wave signature. There's certain lures that work on some boats and there's certain lures that don't work on some boats because of what you got in the wave.
You're creating something that you want it basically surfing down a wave. Every lure is going to work a little bit different on different parts of the wave. The higher you have it towards the tip of that wave, the more aggressive and pushing it's going to be. And as you go lower, it'll get lazier. And then if you go off the back of the wave, it'll get very, very lazy or like very not lazy, but it'll calm down a little too much sometimes. So you never really want to put it on the back of a wave.
Katie (01:00:39.725)Unless it maybe was like super rough and you just really wanted to run this lore, you could try that. Um, but I would usually just, as it, as it gets rough, I'll bring it down the face of the wave a little more, even to almost where the, the whole of the wave is there. You can bring it down to the bottom part as it's calmer. I'll go higher up in it. And then every lore, like I said, every lore reacts differently. And it just takes, it's hard to just explain that in a conversation, but like, it just takes years of knowing like, okay.
now I know what that lure looks like when it gets bit. And so you know what it looks like when it gets bit. So you want to try and make it look that way. And it honestly could be a matter of adjusting it like a couple, like a half a foot or something. And it just makes a difference, especially if your boat has big wakes. I fished on some boats that have really, really big waves and they run differently on it. My little Merritt, it's got a...
the waves are good, but it's not like really, really big waves. It's a very like calm, calm spread back there. So like, I don't do too good on like a plunger as much as I do on like a tube with that, with that boat. I just find like aggressive lures get bit more on that boat for me. And it's finding that what works for you and what's working on each wave there. So I would adjust it throughout the day. And then like, obviously like,
If you're sitting there and you're hearing your rigors, because the lure is skipping at any point or coming out just doing this, that drives me crazy. That needs to be addressed. You don't want your lure doing that. I don't care if it's the best lure ever. If you can't get that thing to run without doing that, it's just, I'm sorry, you got to take it out and put something else there that'll run in that condition. If the lure is spending time out of the water, it needs to sit the bench.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, try and adjust it on the wave, try and adjust the angle of the pole. But at some point, you're going to start like being counterproductive to what that lure is supposed to do. You know, if it's a lure that's really aggressive, you want a high pole on it, you want an angle that's like high out of the water. So if you're like bringing it down where it's almost a flat line, and it's not doing what it's supposed to do, then you're kind of being counterproductive, you're better off putting something out there that like would thrive on that that angle.
Katie (01:02:55.341)And then, so yeah, it's just adjusting it through the day. I mean, we're lucky like in Kona that our conditions don't change too much through the day. You might have like a little bit of morning sickness as we come around Caillou V point in the morning. There's like a reverberation off that point. And then once we get, if you're going south, once you get past that, you're like in flat calm for most of the day, you might get a light onshore breeze at the end of the day, but it doesn't change a lot. So, you know, sometimes I don't even put, I don't even have snap swivels. I just crimp everything onto a regular swivel. So I don't.
changed my lores that much, but, um, yeah. Yeah. So it's just, everywhere's different and you're going to have to just kind of see, you know, what works and you know, when, if you have a lawyer that keeps getting bit, just make a mental note of like, this is what it looks like when it gets bit. And I mean, people know what I'm talking about. If they've had that happen and they just know like, Oh yeah. And they're like, this thing's going to get bit. It's doing what it does. So trying to get them to do that every day is like, that's the.
That's a little difference in Kona. I think where some boats excel past other boats is like constantly tweaking and getting the lures to be in the best spot ever. And it may only equate to a few more bites a year, but that's a few more bites a year. So what if one of those was a 90 or 1200? So yeah, there's a lot to it. You know, I think it's funny when people say like, Oh, all lures are the same at eight knots or whatever. And it's like, well, you really haven't fished Kona then.
Cause I've heard that all the time. They're like, ah, I just put a couple of Moldcrafts out there. And, uh, you know, I mean, I get it, but there is, there is a lot to lore fishing. If you're actually going to really like pursue lore fishing, you know, I mean, we all know blue Marlin eats some stupid things. We've seen that, but day in and day out, if you want to get more bites and then other people, you got to figure out your, your lore fishing game, even if you're not putting hooks in them, that's still about a raise a fish. So.
That's my favorite. That's my favorite. What's your opinion on, like, okay, give me the scoop on plastic skirts versus vinyl skirts, rubber skirts. Okay. Yeah. Well, I have a little bit different, like unconventional thoughts on that, but most people here like vinyl. Most people in Kona all love vinyl. Again, it's a tradition here and just things don't die out here. Very, you know, new things.
Katie (01:05:20.237)don't get caught with a lot of resistance here and even rubber skirts. So the vinyl is just the name of the game here. And I can understand why it does have a very, a better transition. Like there's not a lot of bulk to it. So it does have a pretty good transition when they feed on it. And I've heard so many different theories. I've heard that the sound that it makes through the water.
The vinyl itself is a sound that they like. I don't know if that's true or not. I heard that, you know, because it's slippery, it's a little bit better transition. And I don't know, you know, some lures do run better with vinyl. You just got to figure out what works for you. For me personally, I like a rubber skirt with just not a double rubber skirt. I like like this rubber skirt with a couple of newels underneath it. And there's like nothing there for that fish to.
It just slides right through the lore runs good. You still have different colors. Um, and then I, I like the rubber skirts are more durable, um, for me at least. And I find like, I have better color variations now, but that being said, frothy is making those like colorful, uh, vinyl, like fish print vinyl. That's pretty cool. I hear a lot of people liking that. Um, so that's, that's cool. You know, before we only had like a couple of colors we could pick from. So I've been wanting somebody to do that forever. Um,
So I'm glad he's doing that. That's kind of cool. So, but for me, I like, you know, just some new holes, you know, or tough tails, whatever they call them underneath. And then I put a rubber skirt and yeah, you get like, there's nothing there. It's like, what about like, do you see, do you feel that way for both lures and teasers or? No, I feel a little bit differently with the teasers, but I'm a little bit more.
new to like the bait and switch stuff. Um, and so I may change my theories on this, but right now, like with my teasers, I do have, I'm doing double rubber skirts on them. And, um, because I find that without the hook in there and everything, I need to add a little more stability to make the lures do what I want. Um, whereas that hook and that rudder and that's really now taking it out, it's now changed the dynamic of that lore. And at first I was like,
Katie (01:07:44.749)What is going on? Why is this lower doing this? And I couldn't get them to run how I wanted. So I added a double skirts. I added them. I made them a little bit longer, added a bit more stability, um, and was able to kind of get them more to do what I wanted. And then, uh, I also feel like, I don't know, maybe that rubber feel, um, that squishy kind of rubber feel doesn't turn the fish off. It could come back and whack it a bunch of times. Um, but if I have a lawyer that runs good on vinyl, I'm going to keep it on vinyl. I just.
The teasers I'm pulling right now are very aggressive and all over. If they don't run good on vinyl, like scoop lures, they don't run good on vinyl. They get too weird and they'll disappear and they'll get lazy. They'll get all over them. They just don't run good on vinyl for whatever reason. How interesting. Yes. I don't like putting vinyl on them. I think it's cool that you brought up that also additionally, if you have a lure that's not running the way you want it to,
you might change out the length of the skirt, the material the skirt's made out of. Now, when we were bait and switching, we were primarily pulling vinyl skirted horse. It almost felt like, I saw a handful of times when we had a rubber skirt out there that if a fish gets a mouthful of that, if you don't get the teaser away in time, it's -
Oftentimes it's going to get all up wrapped up in there. It almost felt like the vinyl wasn't quite as sticky with the bill of the fish. We had a couple of Marlins swim away with plastic skirts off their bill. We're like, oh man, when that happens. I'm newer to that bait and switch stuff, so maybe I will change my theories on it.
Well, definitely keep me posted as you go because I'm curious. I'm not on all of them. I'm pulling double. I'm pulling how I have this, one rubber skirt with the noles underneath. So far, I haven't had too many problems, but we'll see. That's cool. We're running low on time, but I want to touch on a couple of things. The first one is with your bait and switch, are you pitching?
Katie (01:10:01.741)130s out there? Well, right now we're pitching an 80 that I beefed up. I got the drag redone and beefed it up, put 130 on it with backing and all this, but I don't know, but we're going to try that because what happened with us towards the end of last year was my, it was my biggest concern was it's, you can't pitch a 130 really like you have to be so good. And, uh, I just don't think it would work. And, uh, so we were doing like the tingham where you put a lore.
And, uh, so they were converting really good to the tingham, but we weren't catching every fish and it wasn't like pitching a dead bait to them. It's just a different thing. So we were, yeah. And we were trying to, and I know a lot of guys in Madera do it because sometimes they can't get bait or whatever. And so they, they pull those tingams, but they get a lot of shots there. Like our fish, you know, everybody's going to say that you cannot bait and switching Kona. That's what, that's just what people say. That's what they're telling me that I'm.
making a mistake, doing it, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's, they do bait and switch, but you're not going to get as many shots as like you would out of a fish. Like every, they're different everywhere, right? Like St. Thomas, they're going to pile on so many times, right? Like, and so they're a little bit different. Yeah. So they do feed a little differently. So, um, yeah, I think the, the dead bait thing is, is better than trying that tangum. Um,
I don't know. We missed some fish on that tingam and I was like, what the hell? So what is the tingam? It's like a lure that you pitch? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I think the original one was like basically a mold craft with no skirt underneath it with only a couple strands of skirt and just a hook. So it's just a piece of rubber with a hook. And so any variation of that, I think you could be called the tingam. And basically you put it in your spread as you're teasing the fish.
And so you basically don't want to get it out there until that fish is, is gone. You basically want it going past. So the fish doesn't see it as it's chasing that teaser. And then you want to get it in position because ideally you want the going away by on the tingam. You don't want them chasing the teaser and then switching and eating a going like a behind bite. You want to aim for a going away bite, which is different than a bait and switch, right? Cause I don't really want that going away when you're feeding one. I.
Katie (01:12:21.677)as much as you would with a tingham because that going away bite with a hook lure is going to be way better than the behind because he's got that hook as he's eating it. He's got that hook coming right at his face. So, so if you get that going away, if you do like inch, like make it all work, right. It worked pretty good. Um, but, and they're not all going to feed that way. A lot of times you just get that side rush, you know, and then, um,
It's just like lure fishing, whatever. I mean, might as well, whatever. So the only thing that, and then that changed my opinion on lures. And like how I said earlier, once I started bait and switch fishing and all that kind of stuff there, I started thinking about the marlin fishing in Kona way different. Because I saw that when she got them fired up on a very aggressive lure, didn't matter so much what was there. They're gonna eat whatever was there next. So.
My, my thought was like, well, if our really aggressive, crazy lures that raise these fish are terrible at hooking them, then, you know, how often are they coming up and missing them or whatever, and then eating these other ones that are easier running lure, um, like a straight runner or, or something like that, that, um, has a higher hookup rate. Then why are we, you know, I don't want to put.
hooks in these big aggressive stuff anymore, or this, you know, stuff moving all over the place. I just want them to convert to something that is going to hook them and that changed my mind on what these animals are doing. I mean, I've had times where they come up and hit, you don't even see them and they hit the teaser and I have clips up in my bridge. And they're big fish. Yeah. And like I'm staring, I'm looking and I've never seen the fish and it comes out of the clip.
And if you didn't know better, you would have just thought, Oh, maybe they hit a piece of grass or like, we don't have grass in Kona really, but maybe you don't have roadways. Yeah. Like we went downhill, like we went down, see it caught a wave and you look at the teaser and you pull it away and there's nothing there. The fish is, it was a ghost and you're like, what happened? And then out of nowhere, there's like, uh, out of nowhere, the stinger comes down and you got them on.
Katie (01:14:38.445)And so I wonder how often that happens where a fish will just come up on one of those you don't see it and then eat those easier lures in the back. So I've changed my spread to have a lot better hookup rate stuff in the back. That's cool. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I was going to ask you what's the benefit of teasing the fish? When you're talking about the tingam.
You're like, I don't have a bait, but I have a lure with a J hook. I'm going to tease the fish up and then give them this lure with a J hook. Why even pull the teaser? How does the behavior of the fish change when you properly tease one? That was the thing too, people will say that. If you're going to just switch it to a lure, if you're going to just switch the fish over to a lure, then why pull? You know what I mean? Why pull?
Why not just put a hook in your teaser, right? And the reasoning behind it is that you're trying to make that fish do a different bite. So you're wanting it, when they come up on the teaser or when they come up on a big aggressive lure up like that, you don't know how that thing's gonna feed. It could do whatever. It could come up and explode on it. It could come up and whack it with its bill. So your chances of hooking that fish is up in the air.
But if you tease that fish all the way in there, they're, they're, they're getting aggressive. They're pissed off, you know? I mean, as long as you can tease it away. Like I found like, if I struggle and I can't get it away and he eats it too many times, then I'm kind of screwed. And then you're kind of like, that's, that's where I mean, I mean, that's why I like it so much is because there's just so much skill in it and there's so much involved in it. And there's so much, like, it just adds a whole nother element. But yeah, if that thing gets you like,
Yeah, you're screwed. But if you can, if you can get it away and get everything in position, that bite is going to be a proper bite usually. And like what we were saying with the lore was that we're hunting for that going away bite. So you're not always going to get a going, you generally aren't going to get a going away bite when they come into the spread from behind or whatever. You're going to usually get like a inside out fight out call it, which isn't a bad bite either. No. Or.
Katie (01:16:55.949)The worst, I think sometimes is the ones from behind or if they just come straight up at it and like a shark at back. Especially with lures, especially with day hooks. Yeah, it's not the best. So, and that's probably where you were like talking a little bit about having the hook on its side that might, you know, and that's where people, you know, then you can go down the double hook rig where you have one on the side and one down and maybe that would help. But yeah, you're a...
you're not going to get that going away by what you want. But when they come off the teaser and then you have what you would call a tingum, if you can get that over the shoulder going away, when you see that back and like if I'm sitting in the bridge and he eats it that way and I see his back and I see his dorsal, you're like, oh yeah, we got this guy. That's so cool. Pretty much. That's so interesting. But it's still, it's not as good as a dead bait. I don't care what anyone says. Like it's not. And a circle hook.
We had, yes, in a circle, like we had him eat it perfectly. And I'd just been like, oh yeah, no worries. Like whatever. And then pull hook at some point. We're just. That hurts. Yeah. So it's just not as good as a dibbik, but, uh, if you don't have it, it did work. And that's what we were doing with the one 30, because you can do it with a one 30. We were just having a drag light and then he would, my mate would hold it and get it over to where it needed to be. And when it ate, he would let go and run over and then slowly push the drag up.
And, uh, and that was kind of what we experimented with at first, because the, the, the consensus in Kona is everybody says the fish don't tease in Kona and you, you cannot bait and switch in Kona. And I disagree with it, but that's just my opinion. But I, we wanted to just test it first and see. And from what we saw, um, I can't make a full, like proper, this is going to work there until I give it a good, like maybe a couple of years.
giving it hard, but from what I've seen so far, I believe that the fish will tease you and I believe you can do it. It just takes work. It's different. Yes, it's totally different. It's a different, I mean, say like me going in and trying to lure fish, I just like, I don't know what I'm doing. It just, you have to learn, you have to learn the game. You have to relearn the game.
Katie (01:19:11.341)Question for you, you're working now with GZLures. We're going to be doing some collaboration moving forward. You want to talk a little bit about what you guys are launching over there? Yeah. Yeah. So the first thing is GZLures. A lot of people get confused with the name and they think we make lures. And we do not make lures. We leave that to the artists, the professional lore makers.
I mean, I wouldn't even attempt to make a resin lore. I just, it's not, you have to, I have a lot of respect for these guys. That's what they do. And that's the lores we carry are the ones of the guys that have been doing it forever, not the person that just picked it up as a hobby. So, you know, so we carry lores. And I think that that is where the, you know, that's where it originally started was it was just a lore, a company that sold lore. So that's where it became GZLores. We're now kind of transitioning.
to that we're going to also be using the name GZ Tackle Co. And so basically, yeah, so we're an online company and our goal is to sell the best of what's out there. So, you know, the stuff that professionals use. So like, for instance, working with you on that side of fishing and, you know, my specialty is what we just talked about. So I can all day long know what to pick. I can know what lures we want, what this, that hook rigs, all that stuff. But then when we start to venture into different areas of fishing,
we're using our pro staff, I mean our pro team, and we're doing a collaboration with you on a bunch of stuff. And like, so that's ideally what we want to have. We don't want a customer to go on our website and have like 20 different hook brands and 20 different hooks and like 15 different lines and kayaks and all different fishing. That's not us, it's just not gonna be what our model is. That's not what we're based off of.
And maybe there's more money in that, but that's just not what our, that's not what our plan is. Our plan is to provide like what the professionals are using, working with the professionals to provide what is the best stuff out there. And then putting together content on like how to use it, how to videos, like things like that, like just providing the elements. So, you know, if you go on this site and you're like, okay, I want to buy this hook. I want to buy this. I want to do this.
Katie (01:21:31.725)And then you can be like, well, why do we have it? And then you can read the different reasons and learn. And so, I don't know, we, we felt like there was a hole in the industry for that. And so when I got involved, um, and became a partner on the company, I just basically told Cole straight up like, yeah, I want to do this, but we got to do it right. Like, I want to carry what's the best stuff out there. Um, and I, you know, I don't want to get persuaded to like carry this guy's lures because he's a friend of someone or what, like we want to carry what is the best stuff out there. So.
That's our mission and it's been fun. I love it actually, I really do. And it's growing and then what we just did now was launching that subscription service, which is, you know, it's got a lot of elements to it right now. Like for instance, like you get a discount, there's like exclusive content on there. We have like discounted charters all over the world. We have like a social media type thing on there. So we wouldn't go and talk with each other and.
Just a bunch of like, that's just a start, but mainly like the thing is a platform. And I have, we have a lot of ideas that we're going to start implementing into it, but it's a platform that can just be useful in so many ways. And we can do like live seminars on the thing and we can do talking about doing like chaperone, like not, I shouldn't say chaperone. That sounds funny, but like, like trips where like one of the professionals goes along on it. It's like a school. It's not like a chaperone. I mean,
Be the exact opposite of a chaperone trip when you think about it. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, like, I'm going to make sure you guys are okay. Bedtime is 10 o 'clock. Okay. We're fishing tomorrow. No, it's the exact, probably the exact opposite of that. Like hosted trips. That's awesome. Hosted, hosted trips. That's the word we need to use. The chaperone thing used to get thrown out. So hosted trips. Um, and I mean, there's just all kinds of ideas we have that we're going to.
you know, jump into it and just kind of just as more people get involved in like the budget increases and we can do things where just the platform will continue to grow. It's not, it's not going to be one of these things where it's like, okay, this is what you get and never, never changes for five years. Like I want it's a full time job. Exactly. And that was the main thing like Cole and I had to be like, look, this is not going to be like a passive thing. Like we do this, we're going to do it right. And it's got to continually evolve. So.
Katie (01:23:53.709)That's why it is a paid subscription because it's like, the stuff we want to do, it can't just be done for free. I love all you guys, but come on, how we do this without some sort of income? It's got to - No, if it's going to be educational and it's going to be good, it's going to be - Yes. The subscriber is going to grow from the experience with the GZ -Elite membership. That's the plan and we call it GZ -Elite. That's awesome.
That's where we're at with that. Well, you guys, if you're interested in that, I'm going to go ahead and tag that in the description below as well. Make sure you check it out. Chris, I can't thank you enough for your time. I have one last question for you. What is it that keeps you coming back to the ocean? Oh, wow. What is it that keeps? Well, I mean, it's like everything for me.
I couldn't live without it. I mean, between the surfing and the fishing, I mean, it's everything. I mean, it's like my mistress, I guess you could say, because it's like, it takes me away from everything. But at the same time, like when I'm there, I'm just so in love with the fact of being in it and being involved in everything that's going on out there. And yeah, it's just, it's everything, you know? It's being outdoors, it's the activities of it, it's enjoying the ocean. So.
I can't really say what one thing is, but I just know that I couldn't live without it. Even if it wasn't fishing, there's always have to be involved or on the ocean or near the ocean. That's just how I am. Whatever reasoning that is, it's not changing. I don't see that happening. I'm definitely not going to be in a landlocked state at some point in my life. I sure hope not. I've been for good. That was awful. No, that was a great answer.
I love it. The way the ocean makes us feel, you just can't compare it to anything else. Oh yeah. You get home after a day on the ocean, fishing, surfing, whatever it is, whatever you're doing, just even going swimming, going to the beach and going swimming all day. You just have that feeling about you that I have yet to see anything similar. It's a healthy high. It's a healthy high. I love it. It's a salt. Exactly. Yeah.
Katie (01:26:16.429)Cool, Chris. Well, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for taking us to Lure 101 school. And we'll definitely have you back on this channel and talk a little bit more about what it takes to fish around the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to the lure thing. I feel like I opened so many rabbit holes and like, there's just, you could go on for hours and hours, but I hope the little things I did say helped. And I'm sorry if I like left out some stuff or botched some stories here or there or whatever, but, um,
You get the idea and I'm happy to talk lures with anyone whenever I love this stuff. It keeps me excited. Y 'all check Chris out on GZ Elite. Chris, will you also tell us where everyone can find you on social media? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grander Marlin. So pretty easy. Grander Marlin. Pretty easy. That's pretty rad. Thanks so much for joining us, Chris.
And that's a wrap you guys. You heard it here on the Katie C Sawyer podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe. Leave a review on your podcast listening platform if you would like to. And as always, don't stop chasing your wild. We'll see you guys out there.

Ep.04 John DePersenaire: Speed Reduction Zones in the North Atlantic

CONTACT YOUR LOCAL CONGRESSMAN: 
 
https://www.boatingunited.org/take-action/congress-protect-boaters-speed-restrictions/?
 
Summary
 
In this conversation, Katie C. Sawyer and John DePersenaire discuss the proposed rule for the North Atlantic right whale situation and its implications for boaters and seaboard communities. They highlight the importance of speed for recreational fishermen and the economic impact of the proposed rule. They also emphasize the need for collaboration and the use of technology to address the issue. The regulatory process and timeline are also discussed. The conversation discusses the dual path process of rulemaking, with an interagency review and a public side. The role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is explained, along with the challenges of the public not being aware of any changes made to the rule. The formation and work of the Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force is highlighted. The current stage of the rule being in OIRA's hands is discussed, along with the strategy for the ongoing public comment period. The involvement of the Small Business Administration and the importance of a comprehensive approach are emphasized. The potential of recreational anglers as an untapped resource is mentioned, and a call to action is made to reach out to local congressmen and participate in the Boating United action alert.
 
Takeaways
 
The proposed rule for the North Atlantic right whale situation has significant implications for fishermen, including economic impact and access to fisheries.
Speed is essential for fishermen to reach fishing grounds and maximize their trips, and the proposed rule would greatly restrict their ability to do so.
Collaboration and the use of technology, such as artificial intelligence and marine electronics, can help reduce the risk of vessel strikes on whales.
The regulatory process for the proposed rule involves public comments and review by various agencies, with the final decision taking into account economic impacts and other factors. The rulemaking process involves both an interagency review and a public side, with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) playing a key role.
The public is not made aware of any changes made to the rule during the interagency review, creating uncertainty.
The Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force is working on a comprehensive approach to reduce vessel strike risk and protect North Atlantic right whales.
The current stage of the rule is in OIRA's hands, and there is an ongoing public comment period.a
The involvement of the Small Business Administration and the need for a balanced approach that considers both industry needs and whale protection are important.
Recreational anglers have the potential to contribute valuable information and technology to mitigate the risk of vessel strikes.
 
Transcript
 
Katie (01:42.718)What's up, you guys? Welcome to the Katie C. Sawyer podcast. I'm sitting down with John DePerson here today. John, tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are.
John DePersenaire (02:26.149)Yeah, sure. Thank you, Katie. And thanks for having me on. So my name is John DePersonere and I'm the Director of Government Affairs.
So that's a really broad title and it really encompasses a lot of different aspects of my portfolio of work. So obviously things like regulatory issues, government affairs issues, things that have to do with either regulatory or legislation that impacts us as a manufacturer in the marine industry, but also how our customers use the boats. So like fisheries management, that's all really important part of that.
as well, but also then on the sustainability side, looking at things like efficiency, looking at our energy use, looking at our waste stream, all those sort of things, supporting efforts to support fish habitat and some other projects that we're doing. So it's a really broad scope of work and it's really, really interesting.
Katie (03:23.458)That's awesome. That's a huge responsibility on your end. And like you said, broad. Before I started fishing, I was working, not even close, but I was working as director of environmental health and safety for an oil and gas company. And it's just like there's like this entire channel of products that you're supposed to manage. And you're like, I like this is so, so broad. But that's amazing. I'm really, really honored to be sitting with you here today. Thank you so much for giving your time. I really want to jump into what's going on.
on right now with the North Atlantic right whale situation and the proposed rule that was set forth in August of 2022 and how that's affected us and what we can see moving forward. So can you just give us a little bit of a status on what's going on with the right whales and what the what rule was proposed as a reaction of that?
John DePersenaire (04:17.536)Yeah, so, you know, this is an issue the industry has really been following carefully for the past year and a half now. And as you said, you know, this proposed rule came out in August of 2022, and it was driven by NOAA. So NOAA has a an office within it's called the Office of Protective Resources. And their job is to carry out and implement.
the mandates of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. So with North Atlantic right whales, they are, there's no question that they are in pretty serious, dire concern in terms of a population size. And just, you know, recognizing the history of that species, it really was one of the targeted, most targeted species in commercial whaling for centuries, which really-
drove down the population, but also imposed some sort of ecological constraints, which just made it much harder to rebuild when commercial whaling stops. So like when you fish a, or not even fish, but when you hunt a population down that low, you start to have genetic issues. And we see that like with, you know, upland hunting and things like that, you try to manage for a strong gene stock. And so that was one of the constraints. So that like, you know, if you look at
reproductive output for North Atlantic right whales, it has been trailing off. And so it just makes it that much harder to rebuild. So they know the two main sources of mortality for North Atlantic right whales are entanglement with fishing gear, mostly lobster pots up in Massachusetts and North and also up in Canada where they spend their summers and vessel strikes. And so NOAA has been trying to...
up with management measures that addressed those two sources of mortality. And so the rule that came out in August, that was directed towards the latter, that was directed towards reducing risk of vessel strikes. And what that did was it expanded upon an existing rule that was in place starting in 2008. And what it did was it dropped the size class of vessel that would be subject to vessel speed rules. It expanded the areas that would be subject to the seasonal management areas.
John DePersenaire (06:39.036)And it also expanded the vessels. So it dropped it down from 65 and above down to 35 feet and above. And so what that really did was originally the 2008 rule was really focused more on the ocean-going vessels, so like the container ships, the tankers, some of those really high displacement, high tonnage boats. It also captured some of the recreational fleet as well.
but the intent was really the bigger ocean growing vessels. And so this step now starts to bring in a massively different segment of the fleet now. And you're starting to bring in center consoles and a whole bunch of boats that have probably never even seen a North Atlantic right whale. And so this is all about reducing risk. And this is what is somewhat different than what we typically deal with fisheries management.
Katie, I know you're really versed on highly migratory species, you know, and so a lot of times we're dealing with, you know, quota setting and, you know, really specific percent reductions, trying to get to a sustainable biomass and things like that. So we can tailor regulations based on that percent reduction we have to achieve. This is a little bit more nebulous in the sense that we don't actually have that number that we need to reduce risk by. And so that's a really challenging thing.
for us to look at. And so we're just not versed in trying to figure out how we come up with a solution to that. And so when we first saw the rule, we're like, oh my God, this is gonna impact a vast number of boats. For a lot of people, it's gonna go into effect November 1st and last through the end of May. So those are really, really important times of year for up and down the coast now. I mean, as you know, like we have some of the best tuna fishing off of...
New York and New Jersey now in November and December, which is crazy to think, but I mean, it's just, those are no longer months when people have their boat out of the water and up on the hard for the winter. It's, you know, we're fishing all the way through January. And so that becomes a real, real big impact. Also guys that move their boats from say our area down to South Florida in the fall, you know, they're gonna be subject to this. And so what, you know, typically is a...
John DePersenaire (09:02.128)know, two, three day trip now becomes something massively different when you're going 10 knots. And so there's all sort of implications that we have to think about in terms of impacts of this. But one of our biggest criticisms was obviously, you know, a recreational boat hitting a North Atlantic right whale is an extremely rare instance. In fact, we have some third party analysis that really shows that it is like that one in a million chance. I mean, that really is
numbers of boats and the numbers of strikes that are attributed to those boats under 65 feet. But the other thing that we were we were sort of upset about was that there was really no alternative in there that took into consideration technology, right? And so, you know, Katie, I know you've run boats for a long time and, you know, boats are constantly improving it. And so for,
you know, every time you come out with a new model, it's always safer than the last model. And that's just a function of, you know, engineering, design, improvements in marine electronics. And so safety is just one of those key elements when you're building boats, you know, safety, efficiency, performance, amenities are sort of like the top four things, right? And so a big part of safety is collision avoidance. Like, and we don't want to hit anything that's on the water. I mean, you know, like,
Katie (10:29.37)I think what a lot of people don't understand is that a vessel between 35-65 foot, if it hits a whale, we know and there's gonna be damage. There's gonna be significant damage to the vessel and like you said, potentially the safety of the people on board. That's a really good point.
John DePersenaire (10:47.82)Yeah, so I mean, the point is, is that, you know, this is a space that, you know, we and other builders and the whole marine industry are constantly working on. It's not like we just heard about this rule and like, now let's figure out something to do here to not hit whales. Like this is just something we do and not to put it in a in-person way, but a North Atlantic right whale is just another object in the water that we do not want to hit. And we have been developing products over these years that allows us not to hit them at a reduced rate. So.
We've been making progress on this and we were, it was unfortunate that there were no alternatives that kind of gave us credit for that or provided an opportunity to explore how technology can reduce risk. So, of course.
Katie (11:31.502)I'm going to stop you right there before you go on because this is a great segue. The first thing I want to touch on is you said a couple things throughout that were interesting points. So from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, in 2008 there were speed reduction zones put in place in the Atlantic Northwest of the ocean, Atlantic Northwest, Northeast of the U.S. That always gets confusing for me. Where speed reduction zones for ships above 65 foot.
length. Is that correct?
John DePersenaire (12:03.6)That is correct. And most of those areas were around sort of the entrances to major courts. So like the approach to New York Harbor, Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, Cape Fear. Then there was also areas south of Cape Hatteras where there are seasonal nursing areas and calving areas. So like where the mother and the calf are spending a lot of time down there in the winter time. And they are vulnerable down there, there's no question.
Katie (12:29.118)Yeah, for sure. And it's specific in areas where you see a lot of cargo ships coming through because it's significant to global trade and economy. Now, can you tell us a little bit about how, if there was any impact on our economy based on the speed reduction zones for vessels of that size?
John DePersenaire (12:49.304)Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing that's been interesting about this rule is it sort of brought a lot of different sectors together that typically didn't work on, you know, issues together. And so one of those, well, a couple of those sectors were pilots, you know, fast ferries, the shipping interests, the ports, and, you know, so offshore wind, you know, they all have really big concerns and they...
speculate it's going to have implications not only for their operational needs, but also you think about just getting product to shelves. Does that impact supply chain issues? Does that impact availability of products? Does that impact cost to the consumer? So all those sort of things are playing into this and they certainly have implications that are not discrete to
recreational fishing and boating, this is something that would impact a significantly broad part of the maritime commerce in general.
Katie (13:56.398)Mm-hmm.
But, okay, let's talk about how you said it's difficult, I believe, I think you said that it's difficult to quantify the population of whales right now. Do we know how long it takes for them to reproduce and they have how many, they have one pup, I think it's a pup, right, a whale? I'm not sure, one baby, a calf, that's right. A calf at a time, correct? And every now and then too, but like you were saying,
John DePersenaire (14:18.835)Cheers.
Katie (14:27.912)significantly decreased base to overfishing or over harvesting. So in the past, way years ago. So I just want to like really clear up the blurry areas of the last 15 years of regulation to help protect these Atlantic right whales. Is that what you said? Is it the population's difficult to quantify?
John DePersenaire (14:53.912)Well, it's not typically challenging to quantify it. And in fact, North Atlantic right whales are probably one of the most studied and monitored large marine mammal populations in the world. I mean, that's a fact. What I think difficult is that, again, we're not seeing reproductive output that would sort of get us to that number that they believe it needs to be at to be considered sustainable.
And so, like, for example, I'm not a North Atlantic right whale biologist, so I don't know the exact numbers in terms of, you know, their gestation period and how, you know, their sort of calving cycle. But I do know from a management standpoint, the agency is sort of looking for 50 calves a year to, for many years to get the population to a sustainable level. And if you look at reproductive output over the past, you know, 10 years,
I don't think we've gotten to 50 once, you know. So it's sort of underperforming and there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, genetic issues are one, the population size is small, so it's harder for them to communicate and find the mates. You know, there's things happening with climate change and their food source, you know, they're really dependent on copepods and, you know, they're not sort of like a humpback that can, you know, switch from, you know, herring to bunker to, you know, anchovy, you know, like,
you know, they're really discreet feeders and they are really keyed in on copepods. And so their availability of copepods is somewhat changing and perhaps putting them in more areas where they're vulnerable to things like ship strikes. So there's a lot of challenges that are happening there.
Katie (16:37.45)Yes, excellent answer. I love it. So what we're seeing is we're trying to, well, Noah put forth a rule, a proposed rule to try and limit the speed of vessels to help protect these whales, but there's lots of potential issues associated with that. Now you mentioned taking into...
Now, you mentioned taking into account technology. Can you go on that a little bit for me?
John DePersenaire (17:07.936)Yeah, so, you know, and I think it's important, maybe your audience, it's not really important, but yeah, I know for some people involved with this issue, this is important, and they don't quite understand this, that for us, speed is an essential element of our boats, right? Not only is it, you know, safer, you know, to run a boat when it's, you know, operating at a, you know, at the most optimal speed.
But for us, we're not necessarily designed to be out in weather that a container ship can be out in. And so speed allows us to maximize on these weather windows of opportunity, right? And so if we are trying to get to fishing grounds and it takes us say two hours to get out there, we can conduct our trip and get back before that weather turns and makes it unsafe out there. If we are now forced to, you know,
to have that two hour trip now become six hours to get out to wherever those grounds are, that could put us in a unsafe situation or we just canceled the trip altogether because the weather window was not big enough. So speed is one of those things and just everything about our vessels is designed around performance, speed and range. And that's really the only way recreational guys can access the fisheries. I mean, we are not...
commercial fishermen where we can go out, you know, 10 days at a time and, you know, say goodbye to the family and say, Hey, I'm going marlin fishing. I'll be back in 10 days. Maybe some people can do that, but you know, it's a different, it's a different element for us, you know? And so speed is, is it's not something we can dismiss and say, well, you guys can just go slow and still carry on your way. Like it doesn't work that way. Speed is an essential element of our boats.
Katie (18:42.37)Yeah.
Katie (18:54.002)And why is it important for these fishermen to be able to get out to the fishing grounds instead of canceling their trip when there's weather? Like tell us about the economic benefits of that.
John DePersenaire (19:02.964)Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, so well, I mean, it's well, first of all, it's it drives a significant economic impact. I mean, so just from Viking standpoint, I mean, this is a really prime example. You know, we're the leader of the world leader in terms of building sport fish boats. You know, we produce the most in the world and our boats are really designed exactly to go far and fast and engage the highly migratory species. And so if you take away our ability to.
to go fast and access the fish that our boats are designed to do. I mean, the value of that goes down significantly, you know. And so, you know, we have over 2,000 employees that are just building boats to go fast and offshore. I mean, that's exactly what we have a workforce that's doing every day, you know, and that includes electronics folks and everything. So the impact is it just cannot be understated more. And I think what was so alarming in
Katie (19:49.055)locally.
John DePersenaire (20:03.46)the proposed rule in terms of the cost benefit analysis that NOAA put together, they did not understand that trips would be canceled and people wouldn't even take trips under a 10 knot limit. And so yeah, and this is the other thing that's really important. So it's not like these areas are going to be really, you know, discrete like they were in 2008 and they were around just, you know, entrances to inlets and ports and things like that.
know, in some cases, like in the Middle Atlantic, they're going offshore 90, 100 miles, you know, and so, you know, it's hard to imagine even going 20 or 30 miles at 10 knots in a recreational boat. I mean, it's just, it's hard to imagine that. And I just know that would just drive people not to do it. Their boats would come out, you know, December or October 31st, they wouldn't go back in until June 1st, and, you know, you're missing a massive amount of economic activity for that.
Katie (20:42.614)No, it's...
John DePersenaire (20:57.268)And also, I mean, you're really denying a lot of people access to fisheries. So, you know, I know you're a big, you know, HMS fisherman. And so that's one of those fisheries where only the public can only access that through a boat. Like, so the HMS permit that everyone gets that goes out in Marlin and tuna fishes, you know, that's assigned to a vessel. It's not like you can fish for them from shore. It's just illegal to do that, quite frankly, which is an interesting discussion all in itself. But.
Katie (20:57.364)Yeah.
Katie (21:21.751)Yeah.
John DePersenaire (21:25.42)So you have to go out on either your own boat, your friend's boat, a charter boat, a headboat, you know? And so when you start to think about how this would impact those boats, you almost become, it almost becomes an obstacle for the public to access those fisheries, which are really economically valuable, sustainably managed and really good eating, you know, for some of them, not marlin, of course.
Katie (21:47.074)Mm-hmm. Yep. No. Yeah.
John DePersenaire (21:50.36)But you know what I mean, so it becomes this impediment for the public to access a well-managed resource. And I think that's like a really unintended consequence that they didn't quite think about when they put this into place.
Katie (22:02.166)Right, definitely. Because, I mean, it's not just, like you said, it's not just all the jobs that would be at risk at Viking. It's all of these seaboard communities that depend on the tourism, that depend on people wanting to go offshore and go fishing recreationally. Didn't you tell me, John, that you did a impact study on one specific operation and the amount of economic loss that company would had was just exponential? What was that?
John DePersenaire (22:30.188)Yeah, so that's a tour boat captain out of North Jersey. And his specialty is getting folks out, particularly in the fall, to chase striped bass and tuna. And he's built a great business on that. He's got several captains, quite a few mates. He's got three boats. And just looking at his operation between the times that this rule would be in effect between November 1st and the end of May.
He was looking at losing 70 trips. And so that was roughly working out to $140,000 a year, just for him. And it's not just him as the owner operator, but his mates, the other captains that run that boat, the people that detail and service his boat, the people he buys the bait from. It's just that you talked about, yeah, the marina where, I mean, all that shoreside infrastructure that supports the recreational fishery and commercial fishery would be impacted.
Katie (23:09.567)Yeah.
Katie (23:17.226)The Marina. All the support.
Katie (23:28.09)Yeah. And then you have situations like, for example, the White Marlin Open in Ocean City, where I mean, it's not really in the zone, but you have I'm sorry, not really in the time frame, but you have so many people coming to these communities and it's quantifiable millions of dollars being brought into these communities just so that people can be a part of the recreational fishing sector. Like, I mean, that's crazy. That's crazy to me. Hotels, restaurants, all of that
Katie (23:57.904)really big in the northeast. So I find that interesting. I'd like to also touch a little bit on how we have...
there seems to be like a big disconnect between what people are, how some people are dubbed environmentalists. It's kind of like a like a bad word sometimes in our industry, which is strange because in my mind, like I'm an environmentalist 100%. I have a master's degree in environmental science, you know, like I, I'm an environmentalist, but I love the ocean. I'm also a fisherman. And I think that there's like this stipulation between the parties
other every single time. And for example, I think that a lot of people think that fishermen aren't conservationists, that fishermen don't love the ocean, but we're the ones that are spending our lives out on the ocean that want to share that with other people. And I think it's important to really highlight the fact that a lot of times you'll see polarization between the parties, but that involving different stakeholders is really important in making educated good
benefit of the whale population. You touched on how this has brought together a lot of different stakeholders. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
John DePersenaire (25:18.348)Yeah, and that's a really good perspective. And so, you know, one of the things that when we saw the rule come out and sort of analyzed it, and, you know, we obviously knew it was gonna have impacts from an economic standpoint and an access standpoint. But we also knew that there was other ways of addressing this. Like, we just feel like we're too smart of an industry not to come up with another way of, or providing another tool to help with this issue.
And so what we did was we pulled together a task force of experts in various different fields, from marine electronics to analyzing very high resolution satellite to artificial intelligence, processing thermal imagery and visual imagery, forward-facing sonar, modelers that work on crime analysis, but they can see an application here for
managing whales, even friends at like, you know, ROFs, which, you know, I know a lot of your listeners are really familiar with, you know, they have a really interesting approach that, you know, they analyze sea conditions looking for marlin and tuna, but that same application can be used to figure out where we may want to focus management efforts for North Atlantic right whale. So all of this gives us the ability to start to think about how we could more...
Katie (26:36.45)So cool.
John DePersenaire (26:43.3)dynamically manage this and also have more nuanced approaches that are consistent with what we see in terms of differences of risk across vessel classes. So like what we may want to see for say an ocean going vessel, like a container ship, may not be the best approach for what we see on a 35 foot center console. You know, there's just the attributes of those vessels. It's just vastly different.
there's safety concerns that, say the center console can take a base of action, whereas a container ship just, they're not at liberty to take action or slow down or any of those things. So the idea of this task force was really to look at ways that we could start to think about it on that more nuanced level. And also a big part of that was really putting an aggressive thought towards leveraging technology. And again, I...
spoke before about how we're always building a safer boat every day. It's not like we build a less safe boat tomorrow. We're just constantly improving upon that. But what's really interesting about the task force is that we've put this really aggressive focus on marine mammals. So we've always been trying to avoid anything that's in the water. And now we've just sort of thought about how we can be more.
narrowly focused to speed up acceleration for marine mammals. So for instance, we did a pilot project last December off the coast of New Jersey and we affixed, you know, so Viking, Atlantic Marine Electronics, working with a company, you know, so we put a FLIR on top of a commercial fishing boat out of Barnegotte Light, you know, and FLIR is something you're familiar with, you know, a lot of our boats have that, you know, it's nothing new, right? And so what was really
knew about this was that the FLIR feed was being processed real time by an artificial intelligence algorithm. So it was able to, as that feed was coming in, it was able to classify a whale spout, you know, so its breath, it could pick that up, and also its body. And so it was a really fascinating exercise to see what is possible. And it wasn't perfect.
John DePersenaire (29:04.056)But as you know, with AI, it's just, the training is what makes it so good. So the more these things are used, the more data we can throw at them. That's what's really going to spark this innovation. That's what's really going to accelerate this process. And I think what's so interesting about that is that it's coming from the private sector. So you talked about environmentalists. It's, I'm not dismissing any other industry, but we're really at the forefront of trying to find.
pathways here to reduce our risk of hitting whales. And that's a really important thing. So one of the things that the task force asked for, you know, over a year and a half ago was for NOAA to convene a workshop and to pull all these various stakeholders together, you know, and figure out how we can collaborate. You know, what are people working on in all these different buckets that have to sort of be addressed and come together to create this overall bigger risk reduction approach.
And so that workshop was finally convened last week. And I think it demonstrated a couple of things. First of all, I think it demonstrated that we are sincere. We're here to work. We're not starting from zero. And we've been focusing on this over the past 12 months. The other, I think, really important thing was that we're open to working with anyone. So this is sort of separate from the vessel speed rule in the sense that
we're committing long term to doing our part in this issue. And so we are willing to work with anyone. If anyone has a project that they've been working on that has some relevance for this and there's some ability to assist or support what they're doing or bringing them on. And we can provide vessel time on one of our demo boats or something like that. We are open to working through this solution in good faith. And that's something I think was, I think our industry really demonstrated that.
commitment to this and I was very impressed and really I was quite proud, you know, to show us, you know, the garments, the Navico's, the, you know, the fathoms, the roffs of the world to show up and say, yeah, what can we do? You know, let's roll up our sleeves. Let's think about this as a problem that we can all collectively contribute to and make some real progress towards. So it was great to see that.
Katie (31:18.766)Yeah.
That's awesome. I love, I got chicken skin. That's super cool. Um, congratulations. Can you give us like a timeline breakdown? A little idea on the regulatory side, how it looks, because this is where things get a little blurry for me, if I'm being honest. But the regulatory side, how it looks, you, um, they, they proposed a rule. Then the Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force, that's what it's called, right? That's the name for it? Was assembled. And tell me a little bit about the timeline.
that has ensued since the rule was proposed and what has gone on y'all's end and on the government end.
John DePersenaire (31:58.124)Okay, yeah, so like you said, the rule was introduced in August of 2022, and it's following, it's moving forward with the traditional federal rulemaking process. So it was open for public comments for, originally it was open for 30 days, believe it or not. And so one of the first things we did, I think the next day or the day after that, Viking put in a request for an extension for the public comment period, because we just.
I mean, we knew immediately that this was the most consequential regulation that was ever going to impact our industry.
Katie (32:32.35)I mean it's crazy. You already touched on the fact that like 10 knots is so slow. You guys, 10 knots you get like approximately 10 miles in one hour. That is so slow. That's what we go at night when we can't see anything.
John DePersenaire (32:37.448)Right.
John DePersenaire (32:43.02)Yeah. Right.
Right. And so we knew we needed more time. So we put that request in. We got another 30 days. So the comment period was open for a total of 60 days. And so there was over 90,000 comments that were submitted from various interest groups. And we're very passionate about this issue, but there's also that other side that are very passionate about whale conservation, and rightfully
John DePersenaire (33:17.368)we agree that we need to do something to help them. Absolutely we do. And so when that comment period closes, Noah is then charged with reviewing all those comments and responding to them. Not necessarily each individual comment per se, but the general themes of the comments. So there could have been say, 5,000 comments that were all sort of geared in one direction or.
there may be 10,000 comments that came from an action alert or something like that. So they can respond to them as an aggregate, not necessarily each individual one. And so they look at those comments and they take them into consideration and they think about how they could perhaps modify the regulation. And so they can do a couple of things. They can, they can make modifications in response to those comments where they can do nothing and move forward with it. And so that's something that the public is not aware.
And when, yeah, and so when federal rulemaking is taking place, in fact, the agency charged with putting forward that rule typically has, you know, is not able to talk about specifics in terms of modifications to what they may be considering or may have done in that rule. So it's sort of an unknown how this is sort of playing out. And so, but.
Katie (34:13.95)It's behind closed doors.
John DePersenaire (34:37.44)it has taken a much longer time. So originally when the rule came out in 2022, there was this sense, again, I talked about that really short public comment period, 30 days, but there was also this thought that they wanted to hurry this up and have it in place by November of 2022. And so we were like, oh my God, how can this dig? And so that was sort of the timeframe that the agency was initially pushing. And so as you can see, that's been
Katie (34:55.77)Oh my gosh. Ah!
John DePersenaire (35:07.068)significantly, significantly extended and not just because of the impacts to, you know, again, going back not to the impacts just to us, you're talking about, you know, national economy wide sort of impacts that have to be considered. And it wasn't just us that were submitting comments with concerns, it was the ports, it was the pilot associations, it was the shipping interests, it was the ferries, it was a whole host of people that make a living or their businesses tied to
moving on the oceans. So it's a big deal. And so, so as you can see, we're much farther along than the original timeframe that no one wanted to get this done by. And so now we've just transitioned into this final step. And so some of you may have seen the first week of March, the rule went from the Department of Commerce, it went to a small office within the White House. It's called the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. And that's sort of this final analysis where they look at all the work that NOAA has done in developing the rule. They look at their cost benefit analysis, their modeling exercises, how they are looking at risk reduction, what alternatives they've put forward, the economic impacts. So they look at sort of all of that. And they also, even though they're not necessarily a political branch, they look at sort of the
of the White House, they also try to mesh up what this rule could do in terms of some of the priorities of the administration. So, you know, things like, you know, how will this impact American jobs? How would it impact domestic manufacturing? How would this impact inflation? How would this impact supply chain issues? All sort of things that we've been talking about over the past few years. So that could come into play in this, because of course, when...
Katie (36:55.158)macroscopic view.
John DePersenaire (37:01.46)no one in the Office of Protected Resources put forward a rule, they're not necessarily in the position where they have to give so much weight to some of those bigger sort of impacts. They're really just, again, their mandate is really to put forward measures that seek to protect and rebuild an endangered species. And that's, so this sort of all comes together at this final stage. And there are opportunities for the public to weigh in.
There's also opportunities for, you know, members of Congress and other people to weigh in this process. It's sort of a dual path project that happened in parallel. One is an interagency review, which is not open to the public. So that's where this office of OIRA will reach out to, say, Interior or Commerce, all these different departments within the federal government, and ask about their input and thoughts on the rule and how it would impact the
the issues and the stakeholders that they're charged with dealing with. And then also there's this public side. So the members of the public actually can request a meeting with OIRA and then the final stage.
Katie (38:12.882)OIRA is Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. And so when the rule got pushed to OIRA or given to OIRA, did it then become public knowledge or is it still all behind closed doors? We don't know what's going on after the comment period.
John DePersenaire (38:17.68)That's right.
John DePersenaire (38:29.26)Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what's so challenging about this. Again, I said there is an opportunity for the public to weigh in and have a meeting, but when the rule advances, the public is not made aware if any changes have been made. So we understand that some changes were in consideration, but we don't know specifics or if they address all of our concerns. We have no idea.
Katie (38:54.818)from that public comment period, way at the beginning. Wow, so all this time, it's been behind closed doors. We have no idea what's being discussed or if there have been any changes being made. We can speculate on what's being discussed, but if there have been any changes being made, and then it gets pushed over to OIRA, we still don't know, but there is an opening for public comment. When is that opening for public comment? Has it already happened?
John DePersenaire (38:57.296)Correct. Yes.
John DePersenaire (39:21.912)So it starts when the rule is forwarded to OIRA. So it's open now as of the odds of March. And we don't know exactly when that closes. So there's a bit of uncertainty in the speed at which a rule can stay or advance out of OIRA. And there's a couple different things that could happen here. One, OIRA could review this and say there are concerns. And
we need to go back and come up with different, or not different, but add different alternatives, or add new ways of dealing with this issue. So thinking back to the original rule that came out, there was a whole bunch of support documentation that was with that. And one of those was the draft environmental assessment. And in that assessment, it included five different alternatives.
but all of them were exclusively focused on vessel speed. There was no consideration of technology or any other ways of reducing risk of vessel strikes. And so one thing that could happen is that OIRA looks at this and says, the economic impacts are significant enough that we want to send this back to NOAA for them to consider alternatives that could utilize existing technology or technologies that could be developed.
to help with this issue of reducing risk. So that's a pathway that could be beneficial for us, or it could just move forward as written. Again, we don't know exactly how it's been rewritten, but it could just move forward and become final.
Katie (41:00.13)So tell me how the building or the assembling of the Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force has played a role in this process.
John DePersenaire (41:15.168)Yeah, it's been a really interesting, and I'm so grateful to the members who agreed to sit on that task force, because I think it's unprecedented in the sense that we've seen such a diverse field of experts really sit down and commit to working on this. So the task force is just a, basically it's a think tank, you know?
But it has all the key elements, right? So, you know, obviously we're looking at things like detection. We're thinking about how detection information makes it out to the fleet. You know, how that one, you know, how we want that to display on someone's multifunction display. We're thinking about how we can better model. So we're thinking about this in a really holistic way. And we're trying to address all these different sort of puzzle pieces that have to come together.
to ultimately get information out to operators. Because that's a huge part of this and something that is just so, it's just missing from the current approach is that if we can get information out to operators, information that's timely and relevant, there is a significant benefit in that. And as you know, as an operator, like, you know, you don't wanna be bombarded with information that's not relevant, right? You know, because the last thing you want is,
Katie (42:41.358)Oh god no.
John DePersenaire (42:43.076)being, you know, having all these alerts going off, because after three or four, you're like, oh, that was for, you know, an area 100 miles south of me. Like you're going to turn it off or silence it, you know? And so one of the big things that we really have to focus on is getting the most relevant, important information out to operators when they're in an area where they need to get that information. And that's a key element that this task force and what the industry is working on. So as you know, like,
Katie (42:47.85)Mm-hmm, you get me. Yeah.
John DePersenaire (43:11.056)There is a ton of research institutions out there that have been doing incredible work on North Atlantic right whales and marine mammals in general, like just experts. Awesome, they do such good work. But that information and that work has not much use for us in its present form. There has to be this connection to the marine industry to bring it all together and then to have a positive response. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do. We're trying to give...
operators information so they can make decisions about their trips and also how they can make decisions about reducing risk of hitting wells, right? And so that is the real critical element where the task force and our industry plays a role that sort of no one else can. Like we have to be at the table if we want to see this complete solution, so to speak, come together.
Katie (43:49.196)Right.
Katie (44:04.826)Yes, okay, I love it. So not only has it been, has since the public comment period has been behind closed, I'm sorry. So not only has everything been behind closed doors since the initial public comment period, but this task force has been assembling. And didn't you guys push to have a NOAA representative sit aboard the task force so that they can know what's going on?
John DePersenaire (44:31.904)Yeah, no, and it's been a great asset for us and I think for Noah as well. So we meet with that liaison once a month. And you know, I think that's a great
It's a great commitment showing that they're willing to engage with us and share information. And one of the things from this workshop that we're really keen on doing is continuing that sense of collaboration that we saw during the workshop. I mean, I think the majority of people went into that really with, you know, this willingness to sit and talk with anyone and really figure out how we can work together on this issue. And so
That's something we really want to continue with NOAA moving forward. You know, again, we may have concerns with the rule, but we're in complete agreement that we want to reduce vessel strike risk. So we are in parallel with them on that effort if they're willing to work with us. And everything we've seen so far since the workshop has been great. And we want to continue that type of synergy that we think is really essential for this type of problem.
Katie (45:40.758)Well, on behalf of the industry, I think it's absolutely incredible that you guys have not only like just sat back after public comment period, but taken all this initiative to, like you said, take a holistic approach on the issue and to come forth and provide a solution and to fight to make sure that no one knows exactly what's going on and to have a liaison there. I think that's awesome. So the rule right now is in OI-Rez hands. Is that is that correct?
John DePersenaire (46:09.764)That's correct.
Katie (46:10.672)So you mentioned there's another opportunity for public comment, which is happening right now. But you don't know what's being discussed in the rule or what's being proposed moving forward or what Oryrus is exactly seeing. So what's your strategy going into this public comment period? Because you can't say what you said in the initial one because that's just a waste of time, right? So what's your mindset there? Like how are we looking at that?
John DePersenaire (46:39.372)Yeah, so.
Our strategy going into this is, again, we don't know what the rule is, but I mean, I think from Viking's, I'm just going to speak just from Viking standpoint, you know, we have, you know, just over 20 different models of boats. All of them are over 35 feet, except for three. So I mean, the impact to us is really, really significant. And even if they were to say, increase that minimum threshold from 35 up to 40, it really doesn't do much.
for us. So our argument really has not changed even if say the rule has changed as it's progressed on to O'Rei-Ry. And again, we're just speculating. We don't know exactly what they've done to that rule. But there's really a couple of things that we are going to bring to those meetings and how we're going to try to address this. There still are really significant modeling flaws. So this is something we talked about early on.
Katie is that, you know, the way no one looks at vessels and the risk is associated with that vessel. Originally, it was those 35 foot and up all had the same sort of characteristics, right? So you think about displacement and draft depth, you know, they are just vastly different between a Panama X container ship and a 35 foot center console. And so one of the big criticisms is like, you know, if you're going to model risk, I mean,
come to us, get the data, we can show you what a 35 foot center console drafts, right? And what it does at 10 knots and actually how that draft actually to step tall, it starts to decrease as you get up on plane. So we can show you all of that. And we don't think that they've taken enough steps to get to that level of specificity that would make sense from a management standpoint. So we still think that they are vastly, vastly.
Katie (48:12.715)Open book.
John DePersenaire (48:35.936)inflating risk of recreational boats because they haven't, at least as far as I know, they have not come to any of the manufacturers to get those vessel specs, which would be critical to put into that risk encounter model, which is driving a lot of this. So that's something we will continue to point out. The other thing is that we sort of do now have real impacts. So we've had a few orders that have not gone through because of the vessel speed rule. So...
no longer is this theoretical in terms of what it could do to an industry like recreational fishing and boating or a boat builder like flaking. We now have demonstrable impacts and it's not just us and our workforce. You know, for that boat in particular that was canceled, you know, there's 28 different suppliers that we go to from engines to stabilization to electronics packages to...
know, riggers, rott holders, coolers, fish box appliances, like the list is significant, you know. So again, we can start to demonstrate that their cost benefit analysis, which put this at three, roughly $3,000 per vessel per year, was just vastly underestimated because we now have, you know, we now have one example where we can just say, we can walk through, you know, the spec sheet, the bill sheet for that boat and say like,
Katie (49:47.227)Oh my gosh.
John DePersenaire (49:59.512)what we had to go back to those people and say, this order is not going through now, we're gonna need to cancel this PO. And so, and also wrapped up in that boat was roughly 13,000 labor hours. So that's a big hit for a workforce that is here to build boats. So that's really what we're going into, but obviously other groups will be going in talking about the safety aspects, talking about the privacy aspects, knowing that AIS, a safety tool.
is now being used for enforcement. And that's a huge concern. Talking about just the public's access to the resources, you know, these well-managed fisheries, which we've worked all so hard to get rebuilt and well-managed, and now all of a sudden, we're not going to have access to them for up to seven months out of the year. So those are all key issues that, you know, we are going to be going into this OIRA phase really trying to drive home. And of course, you know, small businesses will be weighing in as well. The ferries, the charterboat guys that, you know,
can demonstrate lost trips during these periods of time. All that is really, really critical in this stage.
Katie (51:06.914)I want to ask you about the small business and the inter, I don't remember the lingo, but the intergovernment relations or branches. We'll get to that. But first I would like for you to tell me, please tell me a little bit about how they're proposing for AIS to be used for surveillance and why that's an issue. Tell us what AIS is. Start from the beginning.
John DePersenaire (51:27.488)Yeah, so that is it. Yeah, so AIS is Automatic Information System. And so the easiest way to think about AIS is almost like air traffic control. So when you pull up like flight aware, you can see the flight number, all the aspects about that plane, what its heading is. And we have something very similar on the marine side. And the rules for vessels that are required to carry AIS
generally broken down into two classes. One is class A, those are vessels that are over 65 foot and engaged in commercial activities. So they have both receiving and transmitting AIS. And what that means is that they are sending out a signal that gives it's, you know, the vessel's identification, what its classification is, its heading and its speed, I believe, and also its position. So you can...
Katie (52:18.89)Yeah, speed, length, and bear, yeah.
John DePersenaire (52:22.028)So, right, so if you pull up something like marine traffic, you can actually see where all those big MERSC ships are, are going and all the tugs and tows are going because that's a really important thing to know. Like if you go out and fish for, you know, giants in the mud hole and spring fog, you really want to know those boats are coming, right? So it's a huge safety tool. Boats that are under 65 feet or non-class A vessels include a lot of like, you know, Vikings and sport fish boats. And they're typically,
Katie (52:40.096)Yeah, definitely.
John DePersenaire (52:52.044)receive only. So they get the benefit of receiving that AIS signal, but they don't have to transmit their information. And so what's been happening over the past few years is that NOAA enforcement has been going into these data sets of AIS data and they've been retrospectively investigating boats and seeing where they may have exceeded some of the existing, again, remember,
going back to 2008, there have been some areas that have been placed since then for both 65 foot and bigger. And what they've done is they've gone back and figured out, just calculated if they exceeded the speed limits. In a lot of cases, it's not even like, you know, it's a 10 knots. Two years. Yeah. Or, and in cases, some cases it's like, you know, not even like, you know, they're going 40 miles an hour in this, you know, 10 knot zone. They're going like 13 knots, like something that
Katie (53:34.89)It's not even real time. It's like going back and looking and then...
John DePersenaire (53:49.396)And you know, running boats, like depending on the sea, you can be, you can be going between bouncing between eight and 12 a lot of times, right? Even if you're just trying to spend the tide or you're navigating an inlet. And so.
Katie (53:50.882)with the current, yeah.
Katie (53:55.534)12. Yeah? Mm-hmm.
Katie (54:01.226)especially when you're looking at a ship of that magnitude and size.
John DePersenaire (54:04.14)Yeah, and so that's what I think is one of the most concerning parts of the enforcement aspect of this is that they're taking a tool that has been designed for a navigational aid and a significant safety benefit and using it for enforcement. And the last thing we want people to do is to second guess themselves, turn that thing off and be like, it's just not worth the risk because it's not like these fines are like, you know,
Katie (54:23.646)Stop using it. Mm-hmm. Nope. No.
John DePersenaire (54:31.192)you know, $50 for like an undersized fish. I mean, these are, you know, pretty significant fines, upwards of $7,500 of violation. So it's not like it's insignificant.
Katie (54:38.199)Yeah.
Katie (54:41.87)Oh my gosh, so this kind of like makes me sick a little bit, but obviously we want people to follow the rules. We don't want cargo ships going 30 knots in a 10 knot zone, you know, for sure. But like in my personal experience, you guys like.
the AIS system in the central, in the Pacific, I know this isn't what we're talking about, but I'm just saying in the Pacific there's no shipping lanes. So it's a very, very essential safety tool that both you can see the ship and know where they're heading and what direction and what speed, especially when it's two in the morning and there's no moon. And they can also see where you are and your speed if you're underway or not. And I mean, you have to have AIS. And looking at
I don't have a lot of experience in the Northeast, but I do know that there is significant fog conditions and we already touched on the fact that there's like a lot of ship traffic and a lot of boat traffic because these are really big ports. And like John just said, I just have to reiterate this that no, we don't want vessels to be going too fast in these zones. But what we really do not want is for people, for humans to be turning off their AIS system
be a like a sea that's pushing you a little bit further because you're trying to get out of a storm, whatever it might be, and turning their AIS off and putting themselves at risk. So yeah, no, there's a that's a that's a big issue.
John DePersenaire (56:14.668)Yeah, and so like for the Northeast in particular, you know, like, you know, New York is now considered the busiest port in the U S you know, and so you can imagine all the vessels, you know, coming in and out of that approach. And you're exactly right. I mean, like say you're out fishing and you're hooked up, you know, say you've got a giant on, you know, you, you want to have your AIS on because as those, those big container ships are trucking through and there's no, you know, there may not be any speed restrictions out there. I mean, they'd be going 26 knots. Like you want them to see you.
And so that's a really critical thing to keep our fleet safe. And the last thing we want is it to be used for something it wasn't intended to. And then people start to second guess that because they're concerned about enforcement or even just privacy issues. I mean, we're not considered a highly regulatory, highly regulated activity. And for some applications like the commercial shipping sector, yeah. I mean, that makes sense for them to be.
Katie (57:00.982)Yeah.
John DePersenaire (57:13.136)tracked and monitored. And I think it makes sense to use I.S. in that application for them. But like for the private citizen, it really doesn't. Like I think a lot of people will be upset if, you know, we just found out that like, say the FBI was tracking everyone's cell phone position. Like it's just, you know, we do have fourth amendment rights. Like you can't just have, you know, warrantless search, you know, and monitoring. Right. And so that's, this really comes into that element. You know, do our federal enforcement
Katie (57:32.432)It's very 1984, big brother.
John DePersenaire (57:41.768)agency is allowed to have access to that data without a warrant. I mean, that's a real serious privacy question that has to be answered, to be honest.
Katie (57:50.23)Yeah.
and especially with you guys working on potential technological advances and uses for tech to help mitigate this situation. Just the fact that you guys are working hard to give a different solution, I think is exceptional. Now, already we know how it worked with proposing the rule. We know you guys built a task force and are continuing to try and find a better solution, continuing to be involved in the government, even though it's all behind closed doors.
And you told me the other day, I believe, that there is, you got involved a little bit with the small business office in the U.S. Can you tell me, I don't remember the lingo, I'm sorry, but can you tell me how that is a way to help benefit the situation as a whole despite the fact that you guys don't really have a say in what's going on the regulatory side?
John DePersenaire (58:44.512)Yeah, so we had a roundtable discussion with the US Small Business Administration back in September of 2022. And it's really an interesting branch of the federal government. It's relatively small. But they have this one office, it's the advocate. And really what their charge is, is to make sure that small businesses in the country are not, you know,
inordinately impacted by federal regulations, right? Or at least that the impacts are known if they move forward with a decision on that. And so during that round table discussion, there was representatives from our sector, the recreational fishing and boating sector, the ports, pilots, fast ferries, even seaplanes. I think there was a representative for the seaplanes there.
So as you can imagine, it was everyone that had some stake or had some activity on the water that was important to them. And really what that ended up producing was a really strong letter from the Small Business Administration that was submitted to the federal record that pointed out that the industry was demonstrating that there were things that could have been considered in terms of reducing risk through technology.
but they weren't considered in the rule. And so that was a really powerful statement. And so as this rule now goes on to OIRA and reflecting back upon those two pathways that happened in parallel there, that interagency review is not open to the public, but the Small Business Administration is involved with that interagency review. So...
That is something where we have been sort of going back to them and providing them updated impacts. And so we've had some charter boat operators submit their statement, basically saying, I do X number of trips in this period of time. I sail from this port. This is what I charge for a trip. I'm a small business. I have four employees. I have two employees, whatever it is. And that's a real impact that the Small Business Administration, they can go back and
John DePersenaire (01:00:58.42)submit that during the interagency review. So I think those are going to be really critical messages. And again, like the most important thing, I think, in this stage is bringing new information. The one thing that was hard about that public comment period, again, it was, it's hard to believe they're going to do it in 30 days, but even with 60 days, it was really hard to even get a lot of the economic impact information there, you know, and it just took more time for us to develop that and talk to the right people and get that all into place. So
This is a good opportunity for us to bring that new information to the table because I think it's really compelling and it's really critical that they know about these impacts before they make a decision on this rule.
Katie (01:01:41.49)Yeah, well said. Perfect. I love it. Besides the task force and the US Small Business Administration... You're gonna have to forgive me on that. What other... Have you guys been doing anything else in all your time you have? Or... I'm just kidding.
John DePersenaire (01:01:53.477)I'm so happy to say it.
John DePersenaire (01:01:59.556)Well, yeah, I mean, so, you know, listen, members of Congress, I mean, they're always concerned about, you know, constituents and impacts to, you know, their, their states and their districts that they represent. So this is a time where, yeah, if you ever thought about, if you thought more about how this would impact you, your business, your, maybe if it's even not a business, how it impacts your livelihood and your recreation, because that's a
important thing, you know, reaching out to your member of Congress, letting them know, that member of Congress can then relay that message also through the interagency review. So they're allowed to engage in that as well. So all these sort of things are important. And again, the message is not that the hell with the North Atlantic right whale, you know, let it just run its course. What we're saying is that let's figure out how to come up with a really reasonable
that acknowledges the needs of the industry, but also acknowledges that we have to do something for North Atlantic right wells. And we think there's that balance that can be struck there. And listen, we've, again, you've pointed out that task force several times. I mean, it's not just there on paper. We meet, we talk about this, we're doing pilot projects. The electronics folks are hard at work trying to figure out how this, get this all integrated onto a screen. So work is being done. It's not like we're just.
pushing this off and saying, you know, we just want to go fast. You know, we are trying to come up with alternatives here that make a lot of sense. And so that's really what our message is at this final stage is all about. You know, we are working towards something that's going to have benefits for both the industry and.
Katie (01:03:42.162)100%. And not only that, but don't we feel like having a speed reduction zone for vessels 35 to 65 foot doesn't actually make a big difference on the right whales?
John DePersenaire (01:03:58.124)Yeah, I mean, that's something that, yeah, we're not exactly sure it's going to have much benefit. This is one of the, you know, I talked about this earlier, but this is, again, it's all about reducing risk. And again, it's just a little bit of a foreign approach because, again, thinking back to fisheries, you know, we're typically given a status report of a stock, right? Say we're talking about bluefin tuna, for example.
know, and say, all right, this is the stock status. It seems like we have to reduce fishing mortality by 25%. This is what that 25% reduction is going to do to our overall domestic quota. This is how we're going to implement regulations to achieve that 25% reduction in quota. This is a little different in the sense that they say we need to reduce risk of vessel strikes. We don't disagree with that, but we're not giving a clear objective. And so from an incremental progress standpoint, how do you even know if you're
making progress. That's a real tricky thing. And so what was so interesting as we were trying to dive into the details to figure out a little bit more about this so we could help with our work and product development and all that sort of stuff, seeing if we're coming up with ideas that even had adequate effectiveness rates, what we found was that, what was so interesting is that in response to the 2008 Vessel Speed Rule, there was a reduction of vessel strikes.
but there was actually no, they were not able to correlate that to the rule. So it's a really interesting modeling exercise and one that doesn't quite make sense. It seems like we need to figure out what was driving. Maybe it was a Vessel Speed, because I mean, I know when I think about a big shipping container, I mean, if that thing's going 15 knots or 10 knots and it hits a whale, I mean, I don't think the outlook is much different, to be honest. So...
It just makes you really want to dive into the details and it really wants you to make sure that we're looking at this from a really comprehensive standpoint. Like we don't wanna just assume that risk from a 35 foot center console boat is detrimental to the stock. It may be and it may have a risk, but is that significant enough to take such significant action? Or are there other ways that we can go about?
John DePersenaire (01:06:20.204)mitigating that risk. And I think that's really what we've been driving towards is getting to that level of detail and breaking apart vessels by their construction, their use, their operation, and really their overall risk profile, not just lumping them all into one category and saying we got to do something for all these boats.
Katie (01:06:24.152)Yes.
Katie (01:06:40.758)And in the story of the progression of tech, potential tech avoidance of these whales, that can be incorporated into these really big ships that if they're going 10-15 knots and hit a whale, the whale's not going to do well, but they can find a way to avoid it, which I think is, I think that's really, really cool. So no, yeah.
John DePersenaire (01:06:50.715)Absolutely.
John DePersenaire (01:07:01.4)Yeah. And Katie, I was going to say that's a really interesting point too, because again, I mentioned before that there's a lot of groups that are doing a ton of work on monitoring North Atlantic right whales. And one of the things that we foresee and one of the things that we're sort of working through with this task force is having vessels become detection assets. And so we know not all boats like a big container ship are going to end up Viking.
be honest, are going to have that same sort of suite of electronics up there. I mean, you know, we build a luxury product and they're really sophisticated. Right. And so from a scalability sense, that's not a likely option to think that every boat is going to have, you know, a $20,000 FLIR infrared camera on it. But what's really cool about the work that we're trying to do is that if a detection comes through, say a Viking.
Katie (01:07:34.158)Mm-hmm.
Katie (01:07:46.123)Right.
John DePersenaire (01:07:53.508)there's ways that we can push that information off that boat, have it go to an aggregator, have that information pushed back out through the fleet, either through AIS or through internet connection. And so the entire fleet gets the benefit of one boat being highly sophisticated with its electronics package. So that's right. And so that's where we think AIS plays a really critical role in this, because as you know, I mean, that's coming through very high frequency radio signals.
Katie (01:08:10.666)What a great use of AIS. Ha ha ha.
John DePersenaire (01:08:22.744)widely used easy and cheap way of getting information out to voters, you know, and so that's something that we see again. We know not every boat is going to have the same capabilities as a big commercial vessel or even a Viking, and so the way we're looking at this is we want to have that benefit not just reside solely with the vessel that's really well outfitted. We want that benefit to go out to the entire fleet, and so that's one of the things we're really focused on.
Katie (01:08:27.703)Mm-hmm.
Katie (01:08:50.134)Well, how many, like, you might not know this off the top of your head, but roughly speaking, how many Vikings do you think you have up there in the Northeast? On the water.
John DePersenaire (01:09:01.068)I don't know. I'm sure the sales department knows that. I don't know.
Katie (01:09:04.582)It's a substantial amount you guys. Like the Viking industry up there is pretty exponential and most of these boats in the recreational fishing industry that are going out for offshore for highly migratory species are going to have this type of system. So this is a great example of how recreational anglers can actually really help protect the long-term sustainability of these large marine mammals that are critically endangered. So I think that is just too cool.
Um, yeah, well thank you. Finally.
John DePersenaire (01:09:34.776)That's well said. Well said. And listen, Katie, that was one of the real key points I try to drive home to the workshop is that, you know, we're really an untapped resource right now. You know, like to think what we hold in terms of detection capacity is staggering. I mean, like you said, I mean, you know, you're just talking about Viking, but you think about the entire sport fish fleet, you start thinking about, you know, commercial ships. I mean, there is a vast untapped.
capacity there to really get a lot of good information on North Atlantic right whales, and to use that information to get it out to operators so they have much more informed, timely information that they can really figure out how to avoid this and reduce the risk. So I think that is something that we really need to drive home.
Katie (01:10:20.03)I think that's...
Katie (01:10:23.506)And for the listener that's wondering, well, will these people want to put that system in their boat? They will if it's going to help them be better fishermen. So the answer is it's a win-win, 100%. And as we already touched on, that's a very extremely well managed population up there in the Northeast. Like I'm very, I've fished in a lot of places around the world and I've been very impressed with the U.S. government's way of managing our HMS species.
John DePersenaire (01:10:33.54)Yeah.
Katie (01:10:53.16)So, John, I hate to cut us short, but we're getting low on time, but I just want to make sure for the listeners out there that want to be involved, you said write your local congressman. Do you have any other call to actions you'd like to add?
John DePersenaire (01:11:10.756)Yeah, so the National Marine Manufacturers Association has a Boating United action alert up for this issue right now. So if you wanted to go ahead and reach out to your member of Congress, you go to Boating United and that'll give you all their information about your member, their contact information, makes it really easy with bullet points to kind of go through all these issues. And, you know, it just makes you a more effective constituent. So it's a great way of making it an easy way to reach out and, you know, give your voice to this issue.
Katie (01:11:39.614)And you guys, we've linked that in the description below on this episode, so it's just one click and you're there. Feel free to go there and we'll see you out there. John, thank you so much for your time. I'm gonna cut it short. I really appreciate you sitting down with me and breaking down this situation. And I really appreciate all the work that you and your team have done to help protect our rights and also our Atlantic right whales. So thank you for your time. You guys, we'll be seeing you out there. And as always, don't stop chasing your wild.

MiniEp.03.5 Sailfish Migrations with The Billfish Foundation - A follow up to Ep.03 with Mike Calabrese

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https://billfish.org/research/tag-and-release/
 
Episode Summary
 
In this mini episode of the Katie C. Sawyer podcast, Katie follows up on her previous chat about sail fishing in southern Florida with Mike Calabrese. She brings on Peter Chaibongsai and TJ Morrell from The Billfish Foundation to discuss the tagging program and what it has revealed about sailfish populations and their migrations. They talk about the movement of sailfish from southern Florida to the Yucatan and other areas, as well as the use of satellite tags to track their movements. The conversation highlights the importance of data collection and the involvement of recreational fishermen in contributing to scientific research.
 
Keywords
 
sail fishing, southern Florida, kite fishing, trolling, Bill Fish Foundation, tagging program, sailfish populations, migrations, satellite tags, data collection, recreational fishermen
 
Takeaways
 
Kite fishing is a predominant style of fishing in southern Florida.
Sailfish populations in southern Florida are known to travel quite a bit, with historical records showing them going all along the coast and even as far as the Caribbean.
The Billfish Foundation conducts a tagging program to collect data on sailfish and other billfish species.
Satellite tagging provides valuable information on the migration patterns and behavior of sailfish.
The majority of data collected by The Billfish Foundation comes from recreational fishermen.
 
If you have a question you would like to receive data for, email TBF at tag@billfish.org along with a description of the data you would like and what it will be used for.
A new website is coming soon that will make this process easier!

Ep. 03 Mike Calabrese: Kite vs. Dredge Fishing for Sailfish

In this conversation, Mike Calabrese discusses his history and experience in fisheries throughout the globe. He explains the technique of kite fishing in South Florida and the importance of bait culture. Mike also discusses the sailfish migration and their preferences for different types of bait. In this conversation, Mike Calabrese discusses the differences between kite fishing and trolling for sailfish, highlighting the advantages and challenges of each method. He also explains the impact of seaweed and grass on fishing success and the relationship between seaweed and baitfish. Mike shares insights on water clarity, cold weather, and its effect on fishing. He delves into the technique of hooking a fish while kite fishing and the importance of angles. Additionally, the conversation discusses teaser fishing and the importance of quality dredges. Mike then introduces Firetailz, which offers lightweight and durable artificial dredge baits for fishing.
 
Videos by Dave Collier
 
https://www.firetailz.com/
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Ep. 02 Chloe Mikles Discusses Bluefin Tuna Science

In this podcast episode, Katie interviews Chloe Mikles, a PhD student studying bluefin tuna. They discuss Chloe's research on bluefin tuna and blue marlin movement ecology and population structures. Chloe explains the process of tagging fish and the importance of tracking their migration patterns. Katie and Chloe also talk about the bluefin tuna fishery in North Carolina and the international management of bluefin tuna populations around the world. Chloe shares her background and interest in studying bluefin tuna and discusses her PhD work on population differentiation. They also touch on the handling and care of tagged fish and the differences between handling bluefin tuna and billfish. In this conversation, Katie and Chloe discuss the tagging and tracking of marlin and tuna throughout the Atlantic Ocean. They explore the use of satellite tags and archival tags to collect data on the fish's behavior, including their location, depth, and temperature, and why it is important. They also discuss the challenges of tag recovery and the importance of collaboration with fishermen. The conversation highlights the physiological adaptations of bluefin tuna and their exceptional ability to cross the ocean. The rebound of the bluefin tuna population is also discussed, along with the importance of fisheries management and the economic impact of the fishery. Chloe offers advice for young scientists, emphasizing the importance of following one's passion and staying open to opportunities.
 
Takeaways
 
Chloe Mikles is a PhD student studying bluefin tuna and blue marlin movement ecology and population structures.
Tagging fish is an important part of Chloe's research to track their migration patterns and understand population differentiation.
The bluefin tuna fishery in North Carolina is regulated by size limits and quotas, and the fish are harvested for commercial purposes.
International collaboration is crucial for the management of bluefin tuna populations, as they are highly migratory and cross the jurisdictions of many nations.
Proper handling and care of tagged fish, such as minimizing air exposure and swimming the fish before release, help reduce mortality rates. Satellite tags and archival tags are used to track the behavior of marlin and tuna, providing data on their location, depth, and temperature.
Tag recovery missions can be challenging, as the tags are small and can be difficult to locate in the vast ocean.
 
Bluefin tuna are endothermic fish, able to regulate their body temperature and withstand a wide range of temperatures.
Foraging hotspots and oceanographic conditions play a role in the feeding patterns and migration of bluefin tuna.
Collaboration with fishermen is crucial for successful research and fisheries management, as they have valuable knowledge and observations of the fishery.
The rebound of the bluefin tuna population demonstrates the effectiveness of strict management regulations and the importance of sustainable fishing practices, despite the many challenges that can be derived from these efforts.
 
Find Chloe on instagram at @coastal_chloe

Introduction to Katie and the Katie C. Sawyer Podcast

This episode is here to kick off the Katie C. Sawyer Podcast channel and give you, the listener, and idea of what you can expect moving forward.
 
Katie didn't grow up in the fishing and hunting industry, so how did she end up living a life that completely revolves around it? Find out here.