What's Lurking Below with @southforksalt, aka Tim Regan, The Saltwater License - Can it be defeated?

Hello Anglers, this is George Schocker and you're listening to the New York Fishing Podcast brought to you by your friends. Basically, that's me and our great crew over at nyanglercom, your secret spot online. Now listen, that's one secret spot that I want everybody to give up nyanglercom. If you're not visiting us and seeing all the great content that's there without the FBBS, please stop by nyanglercom. Remember one thing everything there is free. We don't charge for anything. We have how-to articles. We have all the updated news. We have people posted on it every single day of the week. Again, we don't allow the Facebook BS with all the sarcasm and everything else. Look, I'm the guy who had the first bulletin board form there ever was, so in fishing, so I know what I'm doing. You folks really need to stop by nyanglercom or nyanglercom one or the other. Spend a few minutes there and you will see what I'm talking about. We are all New York all the time, so I have a great, great episode here today. We have Tim Regan, who he's the guy who's bringing you many of the unbelievable videos and photos of what we all know have been there all along, but we kind of never got to see them the sharks chasing a bunker and the whales and dolphin and things. Most people outside of those of us that are educating fisheries understand that this is such a wonderful thing that's happening here and please don't think this is like it. You know, everybody's like whoa. There's whales in shore. Yes, it is amazing, but let's not forget it. Really, in the overall scheme of the world, it wasn't that long ago that we would take boats out and kill those whales and we would also kill swordfish, which were everywhere within five miles of the coast. So we're trying to bring things back to normal here in the state. I don't know that it'll ever happen, probably won't. So I just want to jump in because I want to get to Tim. It's a great, great interview. If you care about fisheries and drones, he's very well informed. He's a fishing reporter for On the Water my good friend Chris Meagan over there at On the Water. Shout out to you. want to talk about this fishing license Now. Anyone that knows me understands that this is something I'm pretty well educated on and I'm on top of this thing. There are things going on behind the scenes right now, so, but I do want to just talk about really quickly the article that was a news day about it. So, again, I've been saying from the start that this thing has kind of been hush-hush and it kind of keeping quiet and it's going under the radar. Well, thanks to yours truly and I'm taking this one on my own because I have no organization, I have no one behind me, I have no one supporting me and I took it upon myself to reach out to a couple legislators. You know the people that really make the decision, not the people that are bullshitting on Facebook, that are giving you 42 paragraphs of nothing. Okay, I'm bringing you to real things. So I went out and I spoke to a couple of legislators and I can tell you right now they don't have the taste for a saltwater a license. I mean, who wants to tax New Yorkers? Well, long Islanders you know the city yeah, taxes they don't pay in there really most of them, unless you're. You know you got big bucks. So you know they. They don't care. But Long Island legislators care. They always have, and in this case we happen to have two very powerful legislators that happen to be on both sides of the aisle that are not. They're not crazy about the idea, they're opposed to it. So what better could you? I mean, both of them are heading up the NCon committees. You know, one in the Senate, one in the Assembly, one's a Republican, one's a Democrat. So we can beat this thing. I'm telling you, we could beat it If you want to beat it, if you want to get beat, you could always do this. But I want to talk about this Newsday article and, like I don't know, look, they spoke with a spokesman, john Salka, and if you look at what he's saying I don't know if he's ill-informed or if he's kind of tiptoeing, but you read, I mean I'm gonna quote him here and he says any potential license revenue would be in addition to New York State's existing and robust support of the fishing industry and the potential to help supplement it. So is there anyone listening to this in the industry that believes this saltwater license is gonna help the industry? I don't think so. Yeah, if you have a charter boat, you might say oh, you know, this is good for me. People can't go to. You know, they won't need a license to come fish with me. They'll just call up and I'll have a blanket license and I'll say why buy a license? Get on my boat. But where do you see that being guaranteed anywhere, or even suggested? I don't see it. So it's early, I get it, but how do you know you're not going to end up like California, where every party boat and charter boat has to make sure they're responsible for everything, from the license to the fish to everything else. So you guys better get in line here, I believe, when we get this motion, this movement, going and it's going to happen quick. So the next thing is he claims and again, I'm not saying the guy's lying, he may just be ill-informed and he's claiming that we have 10 officers that are covering 2,700 miles of coastline. So I don't know. So I thought it was 40. I've heard 46, 47, never heard 10. Maybe it is 10. Then he goes on to say that it's going to generate between 5 and 20 million Again ill-informed. I'm not saying he's lying. It does sound like he's trying to sell it though. But I'm not saying he's lying. But that's totally inaccurate. We've had a license ready. We already know what the license is going to do. Top she's going to get 5 million. It's going to cost you more than that in participation laws. It's already been proven. So now they're talking. Also, they're talking about $150 for non-resident licenses. So we have representative feel, representative Palumbo. They're both on the East end. Can you imagine all of the people that are coming out there from all over the place? They got to buy a non-resident license for $150. Maybe they'll have 10 days, whatever. I'm sure they're working all out. But the people that rent there, they go there to bring their fishing rods, they get the kids, they get everything. They run out to the beach. You all know what they do. They throw out a freaking piece of bait. Half of them don't know what they're doing. Anyway, they're not going to catch anything and they're not going to hurt anything. But they have that freedom. So they want to take that away. And I don't know how any legislator on the East end that's representing these hotels and these lodges and charter boats and party boats and residents that could go for something like this. And I'm telling you, I think we could stop it. I'm going to keep saying that. So, again, there's a lot of things that they say that truly are not correct and when I looked through this article, I also see a few organizations which represent, or claim to represent, recreational anglers. Again, I don't s whole thing, but I'm going to leave you with this. I'm coming up with a special just on the sole or the license. I'm going to make this a YouTube presentation laying it all out, laying out the fact that I don't want to get into it. I don't want to talk about what we're getting into, but I am going to tell you that we can beat this license as much, as this governor has shown to us that she really doesn't care about us. We're like we don't exist. We have fishermen. She probably doesn't even know what the water is. This is a woman who's pushing these windmills that are destroying our oceans, which is a whole other story on its own. But again, I'm going to close with this and because I want to get to the interview. I really enjoy this guy and he knows a lot more than really I get out of him. I can tell that. But he does understand what's going on out here and where the bullshit is and where the rubber hits the road. So the bottom line is the license is going to help no one. It's not going to give us a lot of money and it is going to be very burdensome If that's the word. It's going to be a burden on New York anglers. We don't need it. We don't want it. Okay, so we're going to move on from there. So I'm going to jump right to my guest. This was a real again. You've got to listen. Read between the lines. Also. You know I have this podcast in many places and it's like freaking everywhere. But if you go to myanglercom, there's a full description of the entire episode. There's full you know the full transcript and there's everything is there. So you might want to go there and check it out. And also there is some discussion. I'd like to hear some feedback from you guys Again. There are people in groups out there that claim you want this license. At the same time, they claim they represent you. So I'd like to hear from anyone that can tell me that supports the license and explain to me why. That's all I'm asking for. I've yet to get a single explanation. I hear a lot about my position on bass and all these other things, but yeah, so please reach out to me Again. I'm going to Tim Riegan. I'd like to get right into this and, oh, before I go, I want to say, oh, before I go, new York fans. I'm not sure how much he could take with the New York Jets. I'm a die hard Japan Sorry to throw that in, but wow man, again last night killer. So here we are, tim Riegan. He is an angler and he is a photographer and he is a videographer and he is an author. When I say author, he's a fishing writer. So here we go, tim Riegan, a guy who I really enjoyed speaking with on this interview. Well, I want to welcome Tim Riegan here to the show. I'm a huge fan. This guy has produced some amazing footage and I know he's writing over there at the On the Water magazine with my good friends over there. So, hey, tim, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself?

All right. Well, thanks for having me on, George. Appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Yeah, my name is Tim Riegan. I run up my Instagram page as South Fork Salt. I put a lot of fishing content and fish-related content, A lot of drone videos that I take of the Menhaden along our coast and just all sorts of stuff water-related.

Yeah, you got some great videos. I tell you what I look forward to them all the time.

Oh, awesome, thanks, man, I can't hear it.

Yeah, they're great Educational.

It's fun for me to film and fun for me to educate people talk about it. So yeah, it's cool. It's developed a pretty decent following and I love telling people about what I love.

So let me ask you, tim so obviously we have a ton of bunker here, which is, without a doubt, contributing to what we're saying, right? But this whole shark mania thing that somehow it always happens during Shark Week, like I really think those producers like put out stuff up in that coast right before Shark Week. My theory is those sharks have always been there, yet we never had the drones that say them. So what's your take on it?

Yes, so I partially agree with you. I think we've always had sharks here. I don't think there's any question about that. We probably used to have a lot more sharks here until our three primary species were protected. That would be the sandbar shark, the sand tiger shark and the dusky shark. But ever since the bunker population recovered, we have had a huge influx of spinner sharks, which, to my knowledge, they didn't used to be very abundant in our waters.

No way.

Yeah, I know that people would catch them. You know like a handful of them every year, especially to the on the western half of the island. But now with all the bunker there are, there could be thousands of them that come up, migrate northwards into Long Island waters with the bunker every single year. So for the past, let's say for the past four years, maybe five years there, I would say that spinner sharks might be the most populous shark in our Long Island waters on the South Shore. Wow, it's insane how many I see.

Now, just for the record, listeners, we hear estimates all the time oh, we've got this many fish, you know from all different types of councils and commissions, and they, they're basing everything on numbers. We talked to a guy who is showing us in real time, really, what's happening, right? So, and the truth is, I mean, the spinner is the spinner shark is not protected, is it? I mean, I don't know if it is, it might be. No, it isn't.

So okay, you could actually harvest spinner sharks, and I just want to throw caveat out there. I'm not like a scientist. I don't know the, I know that. I know that I don't know how many you know, sand, tigers or brown sharks. We've got how many you know sand tigers or brown sharks we have in our waters. But because I don't really sometimes I see brown sharks I don't think I've ever filmed a sand tiger and I see dusky sharks as well but for the most part I just see spinner sharks. There could be way more sand tigers on the bottom than there are spinners on top, but with the way I see it, just the amount of spinner sharks is wild.

So there's. I'm wondering why there's a lack of blue sharks that are in shore. Is it that they just don't come in shore? But I mean, I don't. I don't see many blue sharks being caught from the beach.

Yeah, my guess is that they're not really a like an inshore species. So one of the species that I'll film on occasion is hammerheads oh those are great videos. Yeah, they're really cool and man, they're hardcore to watch. It's really sick watching them.

I could watch that stuff all day. It really is amazing, amazing.

Yeah, what do we got? We have, I think, scalloped hammerheads and smooth hammerheads. I don't know if we have those giant crate hammerheads that you see hunting black tips down in Florida.

Oh, I've seen them yeah.

But yeah, we've got a few of those species that I see, you know, once in a blue moon up here, and but like I've never seen a blue shark, I've never seen a Mako, and I've only seen three great white sharks and all juvenile, so I would imagine that those sharks, plus the blue sharks, are more of an offshore species. That's just my read on it.

Okay. So when you're, you know, like a look at your videos and you just learn so much just by watching them, you know. I really hope that our fisheries managers and scientists and everybody else are looking at these videos that they could never afford to produce. There's so much information in there rather than rather than guessing. So I'm curious have you ever come across something like I know? I know there are Gilnets coming up and down the coast and I, you know, along the South Shore, which I got to tell you right now. I cannot believe in the year ahead of a 2024 that was still targeting fish with Gilnets, when we can easily fill these quotas with hook and line where a fish can decide whether or not to bite. But have you come across any type of situations where because I've heard a bluefin tuna actually getting caught in Gilnets running up the coast have you ever seen anything like?

that. So I've never seen a bluefin tuna inside of a Gilnet. So I used to film the Gilnets kind of religiously. I had this one experience when I was starting out surf casting within like the first three years, where a Gilnet had encircled this big school of gator bluefish 15 to 20 pounds and caught the whole school of them. It had to be a thousand fish and I was just catching those fish on shore and so I just kind of watched in disbelief as they corralled this school, and then I was watching them through my binoculars as they brought in the net. It looked like, I'm guessing, that the reel, the giant reel that they bring the net onto on the boat must have burned out. They must have burnt out the engine or something. So they had one boat working one end of the net and then one boat working the other end of the net, and as they brought in all these bluefish it took them forever to do it.

So that was a whole scene. That was a whole scene.

No, no, it wasn't, it was a Gilnet.

It wasn't a Gilnet okay.

Yes. So I was watching them through my binoculars and it's appeared to me that they didn't want any of those bluefish. So I saw all the bluefish, with rigor mortis, getting tossed back dead into the ocean and then for the next month and a half we had just rotting bluefish carcasses littering the beach for like probably 15 miles. It was a, it was sad and it messed with me, so I I was like I need to film this and show people how bad this is.

Yeah, well, you're taking a chance with that and I can tell you in that you better be ready for retaliation. When I went after the Gilnetters, I actually got a call in my office and my wife was my secretary at the time. So I went to her and whoever it was literally sent to her, tell your husband to drop the Gilnet issue or he's going to find himself in one. So my wife was like she doesn't even know what to do to her. It's like a regular net to net the fish. It's like I think we have a man advertiser who advertises nets. Oh jeez, and now I got a guy strutting my life. You know so but anyhow, I don't know if you had anything even close to that, but you've got to watch yourself.

Yeah, yeah. So there was some blowback. I had a bunch of different types of commercial fishermen reach out to me, angry with me telling my story and you know I wasn't really. I wasn't like trying to talk bad about commercial things.

I get that.

Yeah, like I hugely respect the profession, I think it would be an awesome thing to do for a living. I know those guys work really hard. It's just I had this experience where I saw this gill net like commit in atrocity and like in my mind and I was, I was like I hate, I hate this and so, and so I film them like constantly for years and Wow, can I get some of that stuff? Well, I like my point of my point of me saying that is that you know I watched some bad stuff happen and a lot of the stuff I watched happen was just fishing as usual, where you know they reel in the net, they take, they take the fish that they don't want, they throw them overboard and the fish swim, swim off.

So Well you hope they swim, yeah, so. So let me give you a couple stats on that, just so you know. Sure, in my opinion, why are we even still using gill nets when we can easily fill all of them, strike bass tags with hook and line, but 48 percent of the fish that get released out of a gill net are dead. So they have a 48 percent mortality rate. And they yell at us because we have a 9 percent mortality rate, which we really don't, but they say we do, yet they turn a blind eye. I mean, how many fish between 31 and 34? Oh, then again, they could keep those. How many fish over 34 inches Died in those nets that can't even be brought to market? I mean, you know as well as I do it's got to be a huge number, but you don't have to agree. So, even though I know you do so, so, so, so, so the commercial, so the commercial fishermen kind of push back on you delivering the truth.

Yeah, and so I'm a friendly guy. I'm not looking for confrontation or anything. So you know, I had conversations with these, with these guys, and just told them where I was coming from and I think I prevented myself from becoming like an enemy to the commercial fishermen and well, that's good.

I mean, you know, look, I don't want to be their enemy, right? But the truth is sadly the way we've set up this system. You know, there's a pie and they make us fight over who's getting how much of that pie. Yeah, we didn't do that, they, you know the regulators did that. The commercial fishermen didn't do that either. But if we're truly trying to protect a fishery, in this case, and strike bad fishery, you know why not just take those freaking nets out of the water?

I don't know, but anyway hold on George real quick. I just wanted to just say a quick you get ahead. That's pretty much related to this. So a few weeks back I was talking to a former commercial bluefin tuna fishermen and I'm not sure if you is around for like the long line days or what, but I kind of got that vibe. So he was talking about how he used to love it, you know. But he ended up quitting because basically because of the regulations, because the way that the fishery the bluefin fishery was being regulated it was causing way more waste. Because in his mind, there were better ways that the fishery could have been regulated where, like you could say only fish on Tuesdays and Thursdays and keep everything you catch. But they made it based on like tonnage, your numbers of fish, and so what ended up happening is like you would catch X amount of fish until you got your limit and then you would have to throw all the other fish you caught back and basically all those fish would be dead. So you're just wasting a ton, rather than in the past when they could keep and sell everything they catch. So he was saying he might still be a tuna fisherman if the regulation had been more sensible. So it's not like these guys are going out there and like and just looking to kill and they like without any remorse or anything. It's like guys actually quit because they were regulated into becoming a wasteful industry.

So I get listen. I totally agree, and so I could be clear. I am not anti commercial fisherman. I'm not. I know I sound it and there are cases where I, you know, like, look, I have a problem. You talked about the bluefish before. We've been cut to two bluefish, three bluefish, and I'm working on numbers now and, being that we didn't catch anywhere near our quota, we are transferring quota to the commercial fishery. I we moved 90,000 pounds from us that we didn't catch because of regulations and we gave that to the commercial fishery. So there's, I am not anti commercial fisherman, I am anti commercial fishing tactics. I don't like potting for blackfish. That'll never stop now. It's way too profitable. I don't like gill netting for striped bass because of the bycatch issue, and and and again, I'm not talking these same guys. I mean they get X amount of tags, I don't know how many they are, but these same guys could go catch them, hook and line. They don't need to gill netting. So I'm not anti commercial, I don't want to put that forward, but I am anti certain fisheries. Yeah.

I go ahead, I hear you, and the reason I brought up that story is to just show how complex this issue is, because I think a lot of people think it's black and white. I certainly did. When I saw this I was like gill netting is terrible and like I didn't know about any other. I didn't know about any other types of commercial fishing, but I was like this is just such an awful thing, Like and you know over the years, what, what, watching it more and more and then also learning about the evolution of local commercial fishing and netting and whatnot, I've just become more informed and just say, able to see that, see that the complexity in the issue and it is much more complex, right, and most people think but let's get back to fishing for a minute.

So how, how often do you fish and where are you fishing?

So I started fishing after college. I graduated in 2013 and let's see the end of that summer, my buddy, who was a lifeguard with me, took me fishing and he had been asking me all summer and I never would go because I just had this vision of us like sitting on a dock just waiting and I was like hyperactive, like energetic dude, and I didn't want to just sit around and wait for a fish to bite. But then my boss came out one day and he was a surfcaster and I watched him catch a couple bluefish which, like not being a fisherman at the time, I knew that I loved bluefish the taste of it and just the power and their, their character, you know. So watch. I watched him one day pull a couple bluefish out of just right out of the surf and I was like that was really cool, because at the time I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew that I was like I think it would be awesome to become self-sufficient, so I got into gardening and nice, and then next I got into fishing and so, you know, with those two things I could, I could feed myself, and so seeing him do that, I was like. That's something that I need to learn how to do. So my buddy took me fishing. We caught a striped bass and then I've been fishing pretty much every every day of the year after that because then for the winter time I discovered white perch and so that kept me on the water all winter and, yeah, really just after college all I knew is that I wanted to be on the water, so fishing was a way to stay on the water all year round, so I probably fish on. In the past 10 years I probably fished on an on average like 350 to 360 days a year. Wow, that's crazy Kind of a psycho.

So are you all surf, and whereabouts? We'll talk about the perch in a minute. Whereabouts are you fishing?

Pretty much all surf and shore based fishing. You know I have a kayak that I used to use when, you know, before before we had this like huge rebound of bunker. We would get to see some bunker for a few weeks during the fall runs and typically what would occur is the small fish would be blitzing on peanut bunker up front and then you'd have the adult bunker like 100 yards off the beach. You know, just a little bit far for a cast, like you couldn't cast to them, so I'd go out there and fish those bunker schools and get into like 30-40 pound fish. Wow, yeah, so I have a kayak. And then you know I've been working at this beach club for the past. They've been living at this beach club for like 10 years now and wait, hold on.

You live at a beach club.

Yeah, yes, I've been working here since I was 16, and then, after college, I didn't have a place to live, and so the manager at the time wanted me to come back, and I was, like I don't have a place to stay, like if you put me up at the beach club, then I'll come back and work and so what a gig. Yeah, yeah, it's been a good ride. Wow, it's been so easy for me to fish every day.

Yeah, really that absolutely helps.

Yeah, big time.

So all right. So now. So you're a surf fisherman, I'm gonna pink your brain a little bit about fishing. You're not being specific about spots, that's okay, it doesn't matter. I can remember when I had the other website, noriestcom, I was blamed spot burning, spot burning, montauk, point. Okay, there are pictures from the 50s elbow to elbow people fishing in Montauk. But because of Noriest, we brought too many people out east, so I know what that's about. So we're not gonna even talk about where you are. But so this time of year, what are you looking for? As far as I mean, a lot of people don't get into the important things like tide and moon stage and all that stuff, but what are you looking for? You got this blow. Finishing next week is gonna be supposedly wide open, so you know they should be a couple of really good days in there. So what are you doing now?

So right now, with the East blow, I haven't fished too much this past week. I've been going through some stuff so I just haven't been able to find time to get on the water. But I do know that there's been a good surf bite and right before the blow I was seeing mullet right along the beach lip. So I would imagine that has something to do with this bite. As well as you know the conditions themselves. Like we all know, striped bass love big water and east blows. So after this blow I would say that again.

So striped bass like an east blow, so east is least. Does not apply to striped bass.

Well, honestly, I would take any saying with a grain of salt. So that was like one of my main goals when I was like completely dedicated to surf casting in the early years. I couldn't really hold down a girlfriend because I was, you know, going fishing every single night. You better off.

You better forget that, girlfriend. We're talking about fish. Forget that girlfriend. I mean what's important? I'm holding good.

And I got a darn good life now, so life's good. You know, what happened was I wanted to get fishing down to a science so that I can go whenever I had time and catch a fish. So that was my goal starting like year three. I was like, all right, if I'm ever going to like be able to hold down a girl, then I'm going to need to be able to catch a fish whenever I want. So that was kind of my goal and I put all my effort into that and met some good guys along the way. There's, you know, probably five guys that I talk with daily and have talked with daily for the past five or six years, and we're able to like help, keep each other on the bite and just be informed on what's going on, what's showing up, what we're seeing and even stuff like where are the gill nets, like what beaches should we avoid, yada, yada.

So see that now. Now that's sad and it's not right. You know, right, there is a perfect example why those nets should be out of the water. I'm sorry, look, and I'm not anti-commercial. Catch them some other way is a gazillion ways to catch fish, but we can't go fishing because your nets are killing a fish. I'm sticking up for the wreck here and I'm sticking up for the fish here. So, anyway, I'm sorry.

No worries, I kind of lost my train of thought. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with that.

Well, you were just talking about fishing, which is cool, all right. So you, so you target. Now, don't talk about these perch. Now, aren't those perch spawning that time of year, or are they not Like? I don't know a lot about them, but I know that there are big perch that get caught in certain places that we're not going to talk about. Yeah, so how do you talk at them? What bait and stuff like that? I'm so curious.

So I mainly use artificial like jigs, marabou jigs or killer. You can use little curly tails, but mainly like you're going to go up to probably an eighth ounce tops. You could go bigger. The biggest one I ever caught was on a half ounce cast master and that was a. I caught and released that one and if I kept that one I'm positive it would have been the new world record. But I was. I was like really, really green at the time. I didn't know. I knew that I was holding like a mythical looking fish but I didn't realize that this was like. This was bigger than the world record. So world records 18 inches, three and a half pounds. This fish was 20 inches fully loaded with eggs and, yeah, it would have been four pounds.

Well, hey look, you caught it and you released it. You did the right that.

Yeah, I've been hunting for it ever since and you know I've caught a bunch of three pounders over the years, but never anything, you'll never get one again.

You deserve one and you'll get one. And you know what? You'll probably let it go again.

Yeah, it's still. It's still on my mind. So, yeah, I'm still still after, but so I mean so.

So like, look again. I don't want to know the spot, but like, what are you looking for to find these? For I know some people that that fish them and catch, like you say, three pounders, and I think it's like during the colder time. Yeah, I'm curious, like when you go and what you're looking for, stuff like that.

Yeah, so I'm a fishing guide and so during the summer I teach kids how to fish, mainly, oh, I didn't know that. Yeah and so yeah, at this beach club I'll take them taking fishing, so we actually caught.

Oh yeah, that's right. The club the tough job.

Yeah, so we, one of the kids. It was literally the last drop of the summer. It was a piece of bait that I had, so we were using shrimp, and typically what I'll do is, if I have the time, I will collect a bunch of sand crabs, crush them up, turn them into like a sand flee soup and use that as chum, and so I had been doing that for like a week.

Sand flee soup Doesn't sound like something I wanna eat, but go ahead.

Delicious, yeah. So yeah, the water was well chummed for like a week and we were mostly catching perch to like, let's say, eight inches or so. So yeah, nothing really big. Biggest ones would have been like 10 inches. But our last piece of bait for the summer, this kid dropped it down and picked like probably a 17 inch perch. That was frigging huge man. This is biggest one I've seen in a while.

That's a big fish.

Yeah, since like last winter at least. So the thing is that it had like nothing in its belly. It didn't have any eggs, didn't have any food and stuff, so that one it probably could have been another extra pound if it was filled with eggs and food. So in the winter time that's the best time to target them, because you're gonna get the heaviest fish, because I'm not sure how long they could hold their eggs exactly. It might be a couple of years, it might be they spawn once a year. If they spawn a couple of times a year, I really don't know that. But in the winter time you're more likely to find fish holding eggs, which is if you wanna catch a world record, you're gonna go in like the winter or the spring pretty much.

Right, right. So I wanna get back to for one second, one more minute the gill net situation. Right, so you never saw any bluefin or anything like that. They got stuck in a net running up the shore Sharks or anything like that. I'm just curious.

The only big thing that I've ever seen in a gill net was a whale the biggest thing you could see in a gill net.

That's scary.

Yeah, I got a call from a friend who is a writer for a paper and I had a drone at that point. So he was like, can you go fly your drone and get a shot of this whale in a gill net? And at that time I was still like vehemently anti-gill net. So I was like, yeah, man, I'm there. So I just dipped out of work, ran over there, flew the drone and it was a heart-wrenching sight. It sucked. So this whale would come up. You could check out the footage. It's on YouTube.

I'm going to be linking that up to my website.

I got to check this out. Yeah, it's not great footage, but you could see the gill net wrapped around its tail, I believe it was. And so I got there and while I was there, these stand-up paddle borders were just coming in and they had gone out with knives to carve up the gill net to help get the whale out, because it was just surfacing every let's say, it could have been like 40 seconds, could have been a minute to take a breath, and it was just being held down like anchored down to the bottom. So it was just like using a lot of effort to try to survive. And, yeah, thank god, those stand-up paddle borders were there to help it out and eventually I wasn't there when it broke free, but eventually the whale was able to get itself untangled Thanks to those paddle borders cutting up the net.

That really is. I mean, look, I'm sure there's so much happening that we don't see. And again, I don't expect I don't want you to be against gill netters I could do that, but the fact is that that's pretty amazing. So you have footage of this on YouTube. I'm going to link that up to our podcast page so the folks can see what you're talking about. And the other thing is this look, you're not confrontational either, or am I? But at the same time and I'm not telling you what to do, but I cannot sit back and watch these things happening without saying something about it. And again, the whale. Ok, I guess that's like once in a blue moon, and I'm not the whales are being killed by the dozens, with this whole windmill thing going on. So I'm not that I'm that concerned with whales getting caught in a gill net, but although I am but I'm not like that crazy, but the gill nets themselves need to come out of the water. I'm not saying I don't care. Let somebody pay these guys not to fish, whatever it takes. I don't want people not to make money and I get it. It's probably not easy being a commercial fisherman In fact it isn't and I don't want them to struggle. But at the same time we have to be fair. We just do Anyhow, so yeah, hey, George.

on that note, if you're invested in seeing the evil in gill nets, you'll find some other footage on my YouTube.

OK great.

But, of like, there's this video of these, this one boat, emptying their nets of dogfish, because that's pretty much all they were catching, and, rather than be gentle, they were ripping them out of the nets if they could, and if they couldn't, then they were just sawing the dogfish and s and so that was messed up, and so that's something that I tried to bring to the attention of the DEC. And there was this one guy at the DEC at the time who he was pretty high up, I believe, and he basically told me that it doesn't matter that this is happening to dogfish. If you really want to effect change, then you're going to have to film that happening to Stripe Bass. And I'll just say that I never have seen anything like that happening to Stripe Bass, and, like in any industry, there's going to be some bad actors, and I think I just you know.

Well, you know what? I don't really even consider them bad actors. I really don't.

Those guys cutting up the dogfish were definitely bad actors. But yeah, it's just my two cents.

Look again, I agree with you there. So there are bad actors and as bad actors everywhere, right yeah. And commercials unfortunately, they're driven by profit and recreation. Well, then again, you can't call them recs. So many people have caught selling fish illegally. But my point is that the Gillnet itself, its day has come and gone. It's kill every think about everything it's taking and it's, in my opinion, it's time to pull them out of the water. But keep these guys fishing somehow, just without gill nets. We got enough stride bass around. You go catch them, hook a line. Yet they only get X a man of fish a year anyhow. But look I, I don't view them as evil, I do view the fishery is indiscriminative and, yeah, it will kill anything they can stuck in that freakin net. So, alright, so now let's stop. Wow, man, you are like a long interview, because I love it. So let's talk about something that that really interests me at this point. As a lifelong geek, I Want to get myself a drone. Now Let me tell you what it's for. I know people are gonna go oh, my god, george, no. So I fish this lake now in Florida. It's a big, huge quarry, and what I want to do, I mean, I guess I'll apply it here, but for some reason I'm thinking it down there because the weather is always so good. I'm looking just for a drone that I could send up and Video me you know, video the boat While we're fishing and kind of follow us around. Because, without me needing to know that much, having to fly a drone because I'm just a spaz, I don't understand why.

Okay. So First thing I would say is, once you do get a drone, do a lot Especially if you're gonna fly it from a boat is practice Launching the drone from your hand and then catching it in your hand instead of landing it on the ground, because that's what you're gonna need to do on a boat. Also, just practice flying and get used to looking at the GPS, just Just if you like lose track of your drone, you can. You can look on your map and find and use your remote, your remote's GPS to Direct your drone back to you. So that's just the first little tip I'd say. And then, in terms of like, what drone to buy, the one that I always recommend to people is the DJI. I use DJI drones.

That's the company DJI, and I'm actually writing that down, even though I could probably hear it whenever I want, but I'm gonna google it soon.

It's on. So check out the DJI mini 3 pro. It's uh, it's probably gonna cost you overall if you get a couple batteries, and you know what I couldn't tell you the exact price it's gonna be over a thousand and you can get the cheaper version that's not the pro, for uh, under a thousand I believe, but it's um, the. The non pro version doesn't have obstacle avoidance system, so if you like, fly around a tree like you might crash into the tree, whereas with the pro version, um, yeah, I need pro if you get, if you get, if you get exactly better, better safe than sorry.

So, um, Does it have like an automatic way just to follow you around, or no?

Yeah, uh, yes, it does. So the cool thing about the mini 3 pro and they're about, they're about to launch a mini 4 pro, like really soon. I don't know what the price is gonna be Um, sure, it's gonna be a really awesome machine, because every machine they make is pretty freaking awesome, but, um, the mini 3 pro it probably has you can get these extended life batteries that allow you to fly for, like they say, 45 minutes. In reality it's probably more like 35, right, right, um, so you could get a long flight time where you could, like, get some fishing in, and then, you know, it'll start beeping once the battery gets low and then you could, you know, pick the remote back up and, you know, fly it back to your hand.

but, um, yeah, that's what I need. Yeah, it's kind of come home to daddy what happened and do it also there's, uh, there's settings, or what do you call them.

There's ways to film yourself without actually, uh like manually controlling the drone. So, um, I can't remember what the setting is called, but there's, there's one where it active track, I think you know what when I buy the drone?

I'm calling you. That's all I gotta say.

Yeah, I got this underwater drone.

I can't use it. It spins and circle and it's a really good one. So yeah, maybe one day we'll get together You'll teach me how to use that thing too.

Absolutely I'd love to.

All right, look, I gotta tell you it's been a great, great interview. Um, I really appreciate your input on everything and be sure to say hello to the boys down here at On the Water and let's get in touch again soon, okay.

Well, dude, sounds good. George, it's a pleasure talking to you.

All right, all right, okay, there you have it, folks. Another great episode of the New York fishing podcast. Again, or for the first time, because I always forget subscribe to this thing so you get that message every time it comes up. There's nothing that you're sitting in traffic or you're on the train and there's all this BS. Nothing better than listening to me. Imagine that now my wife she'd probably disagree with that 100%. She'd be like, okay, I had enough to listen to imagine what she goes through. Okay, but it's a good, it's really. I mean, I know that I enjoy listening to other podcasts when I'm kind of stuck in traffic or whatever. And you need to understand there's so easy to play. I mean, if you haven't enjoyed, hey, google played a new york fishing podcast. If you haven't, alexa, hey, alexa played a new york fishing podcast. If you have an iphone, hey, siri, play the fishing podcast. If you haven't enjoyed form, hey, play the fishing podcast. That's new york fishing podcast. That's all you got to do. So please tune in um to the next episode, as I will be featuring John McMurray. John, as many of you know, is a great tuna fisherman here in new york. He's a great, great fisherman all around. He's controversial in some ways. Him and I have been on the same page in many cases and in other cases we haven't. John and I have a very long relationship. I was part of a team that hired him when he came out Of the coast guard and he's still involved in this fishery, but now he's a charter boat captain and I. I kind of feel some folks Are going to be a bit surprised on his take about what's being, uh, bandied about for best for next year. So until next time, folks. Once again, thanks for tuning in, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and thank you all for the support that I continue to get. And once again, god bless america.