Musky 360 Podcast Episode 233: Dismantling Musky Dogma Rant

 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

STEVEN:  All right, folks. Welcome to the Musky 360 Podcast, J Bird. How does it feel?

JAY:  Whack them and stack them.

STEVEN: Whack them and stack them like cordwood

JAY:  Don't you know the Wack ‘n’ Gaff is a piece of history?

STEVEN:  It is. We were looking at earlier. We were trading pictures of old ads for stuff, and everybody wants to punch you right there, and they'll be. Oh, you bumped a fish, but old Lloyd Thompson Wack ‘n’ Gaffed 40 of them in the 80s. I looked at this thing the other day, JAY, kind of inspired that. So. Through the lineage to get to you, right? For you JAY Esse to exist. 4000 people were involved. So that's all. Your mom was dirty, but if you go back for like grandparents, great grandparents, and you spread it out, it's over 4000 like genetics come together, or just what I just said. Anyway, so what we're looking at is like the spread of that. So, the more fish we're taking out, it just drives me nuts. I hate hearing all this stuff. I don't bump fish. I don't blame anybody that does. It's just my that's called social commentary. JAY, guess why? Cause we freaking can.  What are you doing, baby? Boom.

JAY: Boom.

STEVEN: What's new at the Musky Shop? Freakin’ high on life right now.

JAY:  We've got the full load of Savage Gear stuff in everything. All six models of the new Savage blades. Savage 3D Burbot. Sorry. It's mean-sounding, isn't it? No. No. Okay. Clip on weights, leader and Savage replacement tail.

STEVEN:  That's savage.

JAY:  Oh, man. Shooting a lot of shorts. Got a lot of you know, the lower demo shorts done. You know, highlighting new lures that maybe folks haven't seen or want to check out. So, putting those out now. Daily almost and yeah, just been getting a lot of stuff in.

STEVEN:  Steve Herbeck's boy, good buddy of mine, Danny Herbeck. Heck of a guide help with most of that Savage Gear stuff. So, it's all cool. They got the Burbot Tube. They've got the bunch of different blades. Something I was excited about this week, by the way.

STEVEN:  Oh, yeah.

JAY:  What you got?

STEVEN:  It's early in the day. Most people think later I get weirder. No, the ADDs on fire and the OCD. I turn the light switch on four times before I came in here. Anyway, the Canyon Plastic Gitzit 10-inch tube, right? Yeah, you like that thing.

JAY:  I do.

STEVEN:  Actually, stay talking about Danny. I stole that from Danny. Great throwback for a standard tube or a standard Krackin’ or tiny little water. So that is a fantastic tube. So, I think the next one is what it Gitzit. Let's look at here.

JAY:  Next size down to seven inch.

STEVEN:  Yeah. Yeah. So, you have this tiny little plastic bait. Gets it. Yep. So, you got five, six, seven and the giant. I do really well on the seven. They sell pre-rigged little deals with that, which are kind of heavy. I'll jam a rig in there. It's kind of a pain in the butt. But you can get those rigged up. We go, oh, that's a great little follow-up or alternative. You have a girlfriend, buddy, friend, husband, wife, whatever. Can't get it going on. That's a great follow-up for tube bite. JAY. What else is new at the musky shop?

JAY:  No, we got a lot more Lake X stuff in surface baits

STEVEN: Because I'm freaking fired up.

STEVEN:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

STEVEN: There we go. Good. I'm jacked up on guacamole. Oh, I don't say that. I say guacamole like an old sounds good. You're afraid of Mexican food. I know that J is somewhat somewhat. Yeah, it's terrified. I took you to a Mexican restaurant one time. I remember how awkward it was. Yeah, it was bad. It was scary. But there wouldn't.

JAY:  I don't know. It was mixed it up as a goal.

STEVEN:  No, it was pretty. I'm not making that up. I was there. I can call my mother. Let's call my mother. Let's call Mom.

JAY: Get her on the phone.

None:  Let's see.

STEVEN:  Hey, mama, Paul.

STEVEN’s Mom:  Hey, baby. What's doing?

STEVEN:  How? JAY, you're on the podcast right now.

JAY:  You're live on the podcast with JAY. Hi, mama, Paul.

STEVEN:  Oh, hey, how are you, JAY?

JAY:  Doing great.

STEVEN:  You. I'm doing wonderful.

STEVEN: On a scale.

JAY:  That's awesome. Well, Steve's just going to bother you. So, you know, on a scale of one deal with it.  On a scale to one to 10. How awkward was JAY when we took him to a Mexican restaurant?

STEVEN’s Mom:  Twelve.

JAY:  There you go. See, that wasn't that bad.

STEVEN: If it's not Subway.

JAY: Because I'm like, when it says it comes with chips, does that mean it comes with chips?

STEVEN:  No, that was.

JAY:  No, no, no.

STEVEN’s Mom:  You were quite concerned about it, my friend.

JAY:  It was awkward.

JAY: Good memory.

STEVEN:  Anyway, love you, mom. I'll talk to you later.

DR BOB:  Bye.

STEVEN’s Mom:  Bye.

STEVEN:  So, anyway, we got that out of the way.

JAY:  Even that's the most important thing of the day.

STEVEN:  It really was just to burn your ass.  So, you got the little book. You got the little Lil’ B’s are back in. Dr. Evil's Northern Lights. Oh, my goodness. The other thing that's back in Next Level Blade Hooks.

JAY:  That's right. Frickin. Got those trailer hooks with a with a treble hook you can put on the back of anything. A variety of different baits.

STEVEN:  Absolutely. Stick them on your Beavers. Stick them on your Kracken, bucktails. You know, bucktails. You can do anything you want with these. Really well rigged. It's a 6/0. So, you got the Colorado and the Willow leaf. You could literally buy any bucktail. Put that on the back hook and you've got a basically a tail bucktail kind of deal. You're Kraken your red October's. Anything that's the rear hook. I don't recommend that like for the first hook. Heck you could put them on a Slammer. Very cool. Got a bunch of those in stock. Excited though. I mean, I the Northwoods got like the joke up there. JAY, right? Surface baits work from the time they like if they hit wet water, they work. Right. That's always kind of the joke. Like as long as they don't bounce meaning they don’t hit ice. Yeah. So, you've got the Lake X stuff. I love the Lil’ B’s early season. That's money, but your Dr. Evil. Your Dr. Evil is kind of somewhere in that neighborhood of a Top Raider size. Or a raise a Top Raider. Everybody owns one. That's kind of your early season thing there, but those Lil’ B’s, man. There's frickin money in them hills. I'm just telling you.

JAY:  Yeah, you've done well with those.

STEVEN:  You told really good bone. Duck. Anything that's that color works really well in high sun. Obviously, what is it? They call it Casper. I like I like the orange belly perch. Duck, Casper and bone. There's a couple others like Arctic loon and all these lime loon. I didn't see that when I was watching the David Attenborough show the day. I did not see a lime loon, by the way. I didn't see one, but apparently we're doing those now. You know, dark and light, man. I think we're gonna be looking for some of the bright days, but early season when fish are really pushed up shallow, the shallow running, not shallow running, but small top water baits can be pretty good. Or basically, not right now. Just putting that in your noggin. JAY, what else is going up north? What's it looking like? What's your fever for the flavor?

JAY: Well, we've got that musky special going on, a musky real special going on right now, So it runs for a little bit more. It's by any musky reel out of the musky reel deal category. It's the first category you can select on the website.

STEVEN: I've not seen this. I'm going right there.

JAY: Over 70 models, including the trains and all the popular reels, really, the beasts and everything. And Daiwa’s and the Okuma and you get a $50 gift card and a musky shop cap. So that's a great deal. Because we can't sell them any cheaper than they are being sold. So, we're giving away gift cards.

STEVEN:  There you go. You got the train. Every real I like. You got a little you got a Beasts. You got the Pro Rex. You got Fathoms. You got them all. What do you know? One more. One more special. We got gone is a new map special starting Wednesday.

JAY:  I think it's Wednesday. Yes, sir. So, the Musky Killer special is still running. They're 10% off. That will end soon. And there will be a new cool one starting Wednesday. Just check our social will let you know what it is.

STEVEN:  Is it another maps deal or? It is. Yeah. Yeah. Mepps is coming out strong this year. Like let's do something. Big time. Let's get after it. They say. Yep. So, you got that. Heck yeah. That's cool. I like the real. I didn't even see that on the website. That's a Jodie thing. Very top on the sidebar. Real deal. Yep. If you need a. That's actually really good. I mean frickin Calcutta  400 B. 50-dollar gift card and not that ain't that ain't shabby. All of them. These are all good reels. I mean, you know, whatever. You don't have to have a real but if you're going to buy one it's a good time to buy one. You know, could be worse. Yeah. Do you remember when we did the $50 more sale? $50 more. It sucked. Nobody did it. It was like you send us your hat and you pay $50 more. Did you extra? Yeah. It didn't work.

JAY: They weren't. No, backfired.

STEVEN: But now. $50 off in a gift card form and a free hat. Yeah. Just just like one guy, sent us his hat and 50 bucks. Just other. He was embarrassed. Anyway, moving on. One thing I did want to point out. I love talking to gear. I do like these. And it's very European of them. And it chaps my keister that didn't do it first. But I'll be the first one to say, Hey, did a good job on them. Are these Savage Gear clip on weights? Yeah. So, I talk about modifying and modding things. So. If you've never done illicit drugs, these are on grams. So, you have to weigh them out and figure it out. So, you got 10 grams. You got 15 grams. What is that? Is it so it's half ounce? Right. Hold on. So, 15 grams is half ounce. A 10 gram is a third OZ. So, you have half ounce and you got a third. These snap on and snap off very quickly. I've done a lot of stuff where we use those. You know, this bell sinker from Water Gremlin. Yeah. And you split. Well, no, they make these Water Gremlin ones that have like this black little pop on pop off thing. Yeah, it's plastic though. It's plastic. These do these savage clip-on whites are very cool. Savage Gear. It's a savage world.

JAY: Yeah, that'll be handy on a multitude of different presentations.

STEVEN: What's the song from what's the song from Donnie Darko though? Where's the mad world? Mad world? Yeah. Anyway, nonetheless, it's a savage world and I'm a savage girl. It's fantastic. Most of your bass are plastic. So, you got a half ounce. You got a third ounce. That's a really good thing for modifying your bait. Now these are kind of like flat. They can augment the running depth. They're really handy. There's going to be super handy for augmenting your bait. It's got to give them props for that. Snap them on, snap off, raw hide. The other thing that's new, you've got this Savage Gear generator, musky leaders. 100 pound with a center teaser blade. Okay. Yeah. From the makers of more blades comes more more blades. Is it going to do anything? Hopefully it'll be cool if you're running blades or your bucktails or things of that nature or rubber bait. So cool thing props to Savage Gear on those weights. That's very Euro very reminiscent of the weights like Tim uses where they go on and go off very easily. Props, Props, Props again. Can't tell you if you're an injured bait bite or you're in a tube bite or a Kraken bite or frickin rubber bite. Check out those Gitzit Tubes. I like to rig those myself. So just just a heads up. They make heads for those. They're very. Lake trout. You know what I'm saying? They get get deep super-fast.

JAY: Sure. Thin profile.

STEVEN: Yeah. Thin profile. Not a little buoyancy heavy weights. You got to think like a lake trout or more so than a musky angle. If you're using this, you're going to have to rig those yourself, my opinion. Other than that, JAY. I cannot believe you're sending everybody that buys a real $50 apiece. That's nuts. How do your personal PayPal? That's crazy.

JAY: Yeah. Yeah. Its just a given to it hurts.

STEVEN: Sorry. I'm risk real sale. I'm being an idiot. I'm having one of those days got off the water early. You know why? Cause we scored big and now I'm home. Get to hang out. Have a good day. Talk to my buddy. Other than that JAY. How are you? Oh, pretty cool. Yeah. What's going on with you? Are you gambling again?

JAY: Nope. Nope. Making videos this morning. We know. Put some videos together. Yeah. Good clean fun.

STEVEN: Good clean. Are you staying out of the separate club?

JAY:  I am.

STEVEN: I got spies all over that place. Don't lie to me. No. Supper Club will be fishing soon from from frickin Ryan Lander. Do the Cisco chain. I got people watching you.

JAY: Yup. So hot bed of Rhinelander

STEVEN: Frickin' private eyes, baby. Mm hmm. Watching you. What do you think? What's your favorite hall note song, JAY?

JAY: Don't do me like that.

STEVEN: That's a pretty good one. You know, that's competitive. But yeah, I would. No. No. No. Oh man. Yeah. You're more of a Sarah smile guy. Jim asked. What do you believe produces better results crankbaits with or without rattles? The endless quest JAY. That's a good question. Yeah. It's a wonderful question. And I'll tell you what the answer is JAY.

JAY: Okay.

STEVEN: Each location will vary. There are some right on that. There's some guys that just swear no rattles. Better action. More rattle, better action where I'm thinking loud baits like physically loud baits, baits that make a sound outside of their vibrational profile. Stained water, turbid water, muddy water. Seems to work for me as well as like your tannic water. So, some of the best baits I've ever had for nasty, like the worst of the worst conditions that don't make anymore. I think we might have a couple of the Storm Flat Sticks. They sound like a train coming. Super loud, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just super loud baits. I'm not worried about the sound and clear water per se. Something we've talked about obviously with Livingston Lures, they're using hydrophones all the time. Hydrophone is an underwater microphone that picks a vibration, translate it so we can hear it and it's sound based. And you'll hear hooks clanging. So, there's not a lot of silent baits, right? However, Ninja trick here. Super spooky, super weird fish. I've only done this a couple times, but we talked about in the past. Going to Walmart or your local frickin' whatever and buying those little rubber bands that tie like knots in people's hair, you know what I'm talking about? They're like dental rubber bands. Yeah, yeah. Specifically made for like doing cornrows, they're black, tiny rubber bands. You can tighten the hooks up to your bait and then heat shrink the back and that thing makes no sound. So, the hooks don't bang. The back hooks heat shrink. There's no added sound other than probably the split ring moving on the line attachment has to make a sound. There's some kind of frictional force in there for some emission of sound there now to what volume that is. I have no clue. If I'm dealing with crazy like wary fish and crazy spooky fish that are breaking off way, way, way off. A rubber band say, and I'm looking at right now specifically looking at, I tried to call Joe a second ago Joe, Joe, you know, that and he's probably doing something funner than talking to me. But I've done that specifically with Depth Raiders and baby D.R.'s where I've I've pinned the hooks to the body and the back hook of heat shrunk it. And I've worked it like a jerk bait, like the suspending ones are the negative neutral buoyant ones. And if it comes as deep diving, suspending crank jerk thing, that has saved my butt on fish that are breaking off like 40, 50 feet from the boat in like gin clear stuff. Now that's a rare circumstance that I've fished, but some places people swear by a rattle. Some people hate them. But you know, it just boils down to what's working on your body of water. JAY, what do you think about sound up in the Northwoods? Do you have any commentary on that or something or like, gotta have it, don't want to have it. What's your thoughts?

JAY:  Sound. Yeah. Clear water vs dark water. That's the whole thing. You know, in the dark water, I think, you know, added sound is not going to hurt. It might be incentive for the fish. But in the clear water, it can be looked at as being unnatural. So, like you said, you know, you could do little tricks where you can try to get the bait as silent as possible. You know, I think that's in clear water, why some soft plastic, so effective. You know, there's nothing banging on them. They're, they're just smoothing quiet going through there. And the only real attraction to it is the water displacement, you know, and the visual.

STEVEN:  A bulldog or Medusa is silent, but deadly.

JAY: Yeah. Yeah.

STEVEN: Sorry. So, your soft plastics are not doing the tippy tip. I'm clanging on the desk, right? So as a crankbait comes through the water, anything soft, excuse me, hard plastic or an epoxy bait, right? An epoxy bait is is a hard bait. The hooks touching the bait as they swing makes sound soft plastics are pretty silent. You look at, you say that and I've always heard Wisconsin guys want the rattle, but Minnesota guys don't want them, right? Okay. Where Minnesota guys are like swearing by deep running rubber. I'm just talking. I'm not saying it's a thing. I'm just going, hmm. I don't like. Here's, here's my problem. I'm just taking a step back. We have to make an accurate decision or a good assessment of where our running depths need to be for the appropriate bait size profile the whole bit. Sound is this outlier. This question, right? The way I can tell if it works or doesn't, we have to have interaction. So, when I'm talking about taking say a Suspending Depth Raider, which is a deep glide bait, by the way, let's go down and grab a whole tangent time, JAY.

JAY:  Mm hmm.

STEVEN:  Suspending Depth Raider. Triple Ds are suspended glide baits.

JAY:  Sure. Kick to the side, working like a jerk bait.

STEVEN: Their great for pulling in those negative and neutral fish. When it’s become the spookiest of spooky, If they followed in, I'm like, okay, this is when I try. I'm not going, I know they don't want sound. I know it. Now I'm going crap. I can't get them to eat. I better try something else. Those are two different things. I'm never going to say. I don't know a musky angler that can sit there and go beyond a shove it out 100%. I can prove to you unequivocally. That sound matters, right? When you get down the rabbit hole that far, you're playing games and seeing what happens. I have run into situations where they're deep, clear and spooky, where pinning the hooks with rubber bands and heat shrinking the back hook or taking it off and putting a soft plastic his work. I mean, I've got Depth Raider. They make this a suspending death raider, right? I love it. Love that bait. That's from my favorite Joe Bucher bait. I take the back hook off and I actually think he'll, this is heresy. Prepare yourself. I take the back hook off and I cut the container off with my nip ex and I glue a soft tail onto it. Like a big ribbon tail, right? I will literally take like a culprit worm or a Yamamoto ribbon worm and put this big trailer. I have this thing so it gets left, right? It's got more undulation and it's got some rock and roll. And now I've got two hooks pinned to the body with rubber bands. I do that with baby D.R.s. I'll put hooks on them. They make them suspend and take the back hook. Now I've got the six-inch suspending set dead flat thing. So, guess what? They're coming in on Hellhounds. They're coming in on Phantoms, but they won't hit them. There we go. Again, for guys that are in the known guys that are musky thinkers, where we go. Well, light penetration matters and running depth matters. So, a crankbait will get down faster than a glidebait with more action below the level of light penetration. How can we augment our baits to do so, right? Glidebait's going to be left, right, left, right. When you say a Hellhound, when we pull it, the hooks kick back and hit the body.

JAY: Yeah.

STEVEN: Each time you pull it, the hooks kick back, the inertia moving forward, cause of the hooks to hit the body. And there you go. So, we're in the nitty gritty and I'm playing with things. Your glidebait's will work with the hooks pinned to the body. Play with that and go, is that the difference? And it's like, maybe you could have got that strike without the hooks pinned to the body. But, man, you got the strike. You can't really sit there and go 100% pinning the hooks made a difference in a spooky fish, right? Whereas I can take sound out of it. Easier than kind of add it. Where like Livingston, Livingston has the old, you've heard it in your baits, right? Yep. There's some that I, a little dab of Super Glue will cover it. I want silent ones. I want loud ones. I want everything in between. And you get Joe Bucher baits from back in the day. Some of the Depth Raiders had them. Some of it didn't. You can add it. It's like all over the map. There's not be all end all be all. I'm sure there's lakes where rattles are bad. And there's lakes. I know there are lakes. I personally experience where louder to the bait is better, right? So, it's not a habitat range thing. It's a conditional place, a geographical location day to day. And the only time I play with sound is when I'm going, they're coming up and they want to just bash it, but they won't. So, you got to have feedback and you got to go, what could I do to maybe change this? That's where I'm at. Because there's nobody sitting here with a chalkboard going, well, if I, and I knew that if I know you're playing, right, you're playing around and you play around and get smashed. That's the difference. That would be my take for what it's worth. Oh, God. JAY.

JAY: Yes, Steve.

STEVEN: The sinus that are killing me. You know, you get that. It's a time of year. I'm just playing it. Baker. I've heard used the phrase. Oh, excuse me. I've heard you use the phrase vectors of force multiple times. Can you explain what the meaning of that is? Ooh. JAY. What do you think?

JAY:  Vectors of force. Yeah. That sounds like something you said. I'm not sure what it relates to.

STEVEN:  So, the New Castle University definition, a force applied to a particle is also a vector force as both a magnitude and direction. Right? Basically, what I'm getting at is this. We call the sport of musky fishing angling, right? Fishing is angling. Not the sport of musky fishing, but fishing angling international. Musky angler, right? All this stuff. We have control of, two things, speed and depth. A vector of force is force applied at a certain angle, which dictates the response, if you will. Right? So, let's get nerdy. Great definition. If multiple force vectors add to a magnitude greater than zero, the object excel rates in the direction of the sum of the forces. Right? That's from sciencepickle.com because apparently science pickle is a thing. Now, thank you, Google. Pull that up. Multiple forces, multiple force vectors add to a magnitude greater than zero. So, a vector of force is force applied to anything. Right? So, JAY, you push your chair back right now, right? With your heels of your feet, that's a vector of force. What we are doing, we can augment our baits with two things. Our real and our rod. The angle is dictated by the rod.

JAY: Right?

STEVEN: So, we're applying different angular vectors of force to baits that cause them into different things, right? So, any time we move the rod, that is a vector of force with a magnitude greater than zero. The object accelerates in the direction of the sum of the forces. If you pull a bait to the left, guess where it goes, left. If you pull it to the right, it goes to the right. When I say a vector of force, I've probably had too many Pepsis and I'm high on my own supply being a moron. But what I'm thinking about is this is we are quote unquote anglers. We have control of speed and depth. We can achieve different angles via our fishing rod, which is our magical vector affecter, if you will. JAY, what brand of vector delivery platform?

JAY: Delivery vector vector platform.

STEVEN: Sure. So, we talk about a low rod angle. Baits run what JAY?

JAY: Deeper. Right. Higher. They run what?

JAY: Higher.

STEVEN: Right. So, a high rod angle is a higher vector of force. A low rod angle is a lower vector of force. Sure. And we can apply it. That's just me nerding out. And sometimes it comes out of my head. It's not. You know, I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not big on $10 words and BS. I'm a freaking nerd and I apologize. So, a vector of force is essentially force applied to something and the angle thereof and the magnitude. So, pull on. Let's get it neophyte. Let's get as basic as you can get. Pull on something harder. Guess what? JAY, more force. Pull on a letter. More force. Pull up. Pull up. It comes up. Pull down. It comes down. That's a vector of force for hillbillies like me from West Virginia. Anyway, sorry about that. Sometimes I get stupid. Mike, enjoy Ja’s shorts on the tailgater. Why is he wearing those D bag sunglasses? JAY, what sunglasses are you wearing? Are they D baggy? What do you wear? Are you wearing a next level?

JAY: Next level. That's even better. Total. Hey, that's my second pair of Tom kick the first pair into the ocean. So, they're gone.

STEVEN: Total D bag glasses. If you want to look like a total D bag, get on the Next Level. JAY, they're not even D bag glasses. They're next level D bag glasses. Yeah. Like we're talking yelling your wife at a NASCAR event and Applebee's level. Thank you for wearing them, JAY. I apologize. Don't sue me when you get eye cancer because they don't stop eye cancer.

SPEAKER_06:  Anyway, you see anything with those things, Steve? Anything. You can see under water like magic.

STEVEN:  JAY, JAY got so excited, I'll say that with neighbor Steve. They saw the core of the earth. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. They didn't see it, but they envisioned it. Right. And they were like, they're guessing the composition. They're like, listen, probably cobalt and they started digging with their hands and they passed out.

JAY: I said 40% magma.

STEVEN: Magma. Anyway, actually, they're not bag glasses at all. I wear them every day. Now I like them. They're they're hip for the cool, but they are D-bag glasses. I'm teasing, whatever. I love them. How does fishing below light penetration work and how we stain water? I recently tried to take, excuse me, I recently tried a lake with visible bed about six inches after fishing. A lot of clear bodies of water felt lost. The wretched musky still move deep in sunny weather and high stain water or do they stay on the food shelves all day help. So now we're up a subject matter that I like. DR BOB and I talked the other day, JAY. Right?

JAY: Okay.

STEVEN: Let me see if I can doctor Bob. What do you say? I'm feeling chatty today. It's early. Right? Let's see.

JAY: Give him a call.

STEVEN: Bob. I have DR BOB. Let's see. I'll try to merge him.

DR BOB: Hey, Steve. I want to.

STEVEN: Hey, do you have 10 minutes to be on the podcast to bullshit for a second?

DR BOB: Oh, sure.

STEVEN: Cool. JAY, can you hear me?

JAY: Yeah. I can hear you.

STEVEN: DR BOB, can you hear me?

DR BOB: I can indeed.

STEVEN: So fantastic. So, JAY, DR BOB, I was just eluding. We have a question, DR BOB. So, Mike said next level sunglasses. He said, why is JAY wearing those D bag sunglasses? Which is funny. So, I know it's playing. So, is, from a scientific perspective, DR BOB, is JAY a D bag?

DR BOB:  I don't think so. Not at all. Okay.

STEVEN:  Peer review says no. So, moving forward. He's the question is literally what we talked about the other day in the car, right? Okay. How does fishing below the level of light penetration work in highly stained water? I recently trained a lot of trade to fish body water, six inches of visibility. Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. You and I have a discussion and JAY, I haven't hit you to this and I love you. Chime in. I have a theory. Now theories. What is it? DR BOB, I literally 10 minutes ago try to explain vectors of force. Please just just make me so I don't look like the total D bag. We please define a vector of force, please.

DR BOB: A vector of force. Okay. So, force a force is just it's an it's what we call a vector quantity. It has. It has both a magnitude and a direction associated with it, which means that not only does it have an amount, which is the strength of the force, but it also has a direction associated with it. And vectors can add. They can subtract. They can do all sorts of things. But but yeah, that basically all the vectors are just there are things that have both a magnitude and a direction.

STEVEN:  Okay, which would be from an angle perspective, the way we augment our rod up down left, right would be a vector of force applied correct.

DR BOB: Correct. Exactly.

STEVEN: I do not J. I don't need to edit the podcast. Thank God. I'm too lazy. I would just be one. I would just cut Dr Bob out and never ask that question. I'm moving on. I have a theory. Dr Bob. What is a theory?

DR BOB:  Theory is it's something that's I mean, well, there's a hypothesis in a theory hypothesis is usually untested. It's something that you have a feeling about. You know, like it could be a could be a true statement or something like that. Theories are usually things that have been have a little bit of observational observational background to sort of underpin them a little bit more. But oftentimes those terms and sort of everyday language get interchanged a little bit. But theory is usually there's a little bit of there's a little bit of observation or experiment behind them or something like that. So, hypotheses are ones that aren't right.

STEVEN: So, from my perspective, I have an observational theory, right? That light penetration dictates the feeding depth of actively feeding muskies. I've made that pretty much abundantly clear of the last couple years in the podcast, right? So, my statement would be this. If a muskie cannot dilate its pupil to mitigate incoming light, the clearer the water, the deeper an active muskie will feed outside of low light periods. So, in stained water, turbid water, muddy water, light penetration is now negated and muskies will actually use shallower zones. The stain, the more stain that it is, the more shallow that they are on a regular basis during feeding window. Right.

DR BOB: Right.

STEVEN: What I'm seeing is I go from Eagle Lake to Wabigoon, which is turbid and they're 15 feet deep and eating on an eagle and they're up in three feet in Wabigoon or I go from the Mud River in West Virginia to Stone Coal, totally different animals. Right. So, my running depth is not dictated by frontal movements. My running depth is dictated by light penetration. You and I talked about this other day. What are kind of your thoughts? We're going to work on a project here soon about moon phase, but as far as light penetration, I wanted to sort of get the science brain involved on this one.

DR BOB:  Yeah, and I've got another article coming sort of on light penetration too. But my thoughts, I guess they align pretty closely with yours that the level of light penetration is going to dictate all sorts of things about the musky’s environment. From how water temperature gets distributed, but especially to how how muskies going to be able to see and locate prey based on their ability to just see it. So, there's a certain amount of attenuation, which is the absorption of light as the light passes through the water. So, clearer that level of light penetration is much, much higher. So, if for instance, light is basically eliminated after about 15 feet of total travel within within the water column, then that would mean if you're fishing at 10 feet of depth, that there's only about five feet of visibility left before it becomes invisible light is completely attenuated. So, for the proximity that you need to have for a for a bait. If you're deep, you, they're probably going to have to be pretty close to be able to see it because, like if you're fishing at 10 feet, you've only got five feet left of of light attenuation before it's basically invisible from that point on. So, if you're going to have to be able to see it, the level of light penetration is only three feet. Well, if you're two feet under the surface. They've only got one foot of proximity; you have to be within one foot to be able to actually see it. So, I think it's, I think proximity and total amount of light attenuation stuff like that's really, really important for deciding how you're going to fish, where you’re going to fish, and when you’re going to fish.

STEVEN:  And in something you and I've talked about, obviously JAY and, I've hammered on the podcast. And again, I think I said to you the other day, DR BOB, I call Bob out of the blue sometimes, right? Hairbrained, nuttiest stuff, right? I wake up.

DR BOB:  Usually very interesting conversations follow.

STEVEN:  Right. I wake up and I go, I need to call DR BOB because. And something that I believe fully and we were just bashing our heads and going, okay. Because neither Jane or DR BOB or myself, I'm not a big on conjecture, right? Conjecture has been the dogma of the sport of musky fishing since it began, right? So, they're hot, they're bothered, whatever. Old timers make up all kinds of malarkey, if you will. For me, as a guide, what I see is very solid structural decisions based on seasonality, coupled with the appropriate running depth that gets below the level of light penetration in an extremely slow manner seem to produce more fish. Right. And DR BOB did the math and you believe that a musky's vision subtends at what six to seven feet?

DR BOB:  It, I mean, I think the angle that they tend to start to notice things as if the angle subtends at about, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's, yeah, if the angle of the size subtends about 11 degrees or 12 degrees or something like that, that seems like a good, a good, good estimate of where they'll sort of notice something.

STEVEN:  So, what we're saying, layman's terms is line of sight. Yeah. Okay. So, my theory is this about the whole game of musky fishing. More on this later. Mark it on your calendar.  Today is freaking May The, the, the, the second hands in the lamb. I'll watch what day of the week.

JAY: It's April Steve.

STEVEN: The old GMTs right there in the way here, boys. I got the frickin fancy hand in the way. Nonetheless, my theory is this. We've approached musky fishing entirely wrong throughout the history of the sport. Whoa. Ouch. Most musky anglers have their action during low light periods. Can we agree on that?

JAY:  All three of us.

STEVEN:  Mm hmm. Yep. Okay. That's what I observe.

STEVEN: Right. And that seems to be the mass delusion that muskies feed in the morning in the evening. Right. It is confirmation bias based upon our presentations correlate to their arrival in shallow zones. The reason they arrive in shallow zones is A, they can close the proximity using their physicality, but B, light penetration and light angle allow them to be effective. Right. So, I believe that a small majority of muskies in any given body of water use shallow water zones as their feeding zones. There is a populace that we can all agree that are open water fish and there's a populace that is deep fish and there's a populace that is mid fish. They use light penetration, light angle as societal or feeding cues during different times of the day as they make their movements from shallow to deep, shallow and deep being relative terms. So, water clarity dictates their positioning at the course of the day. So, the more stained body of water, the more app they are to be in low light scenarios because they're only effective in low light scenarios because they cannot dilate their pupils. So, if you don't have a hard visual target, secondly, you have to go past a musky to trigger a positive response, meaning he has to have a visual cue or a lateral line cue. Hence the propensity for really tight casting because me and you, Bob, you've talked about, and the reason, like, obviously you can define terminology better, but you also have hyper experience on some of the most pressure water there is. Right. So, your, your home waters are like beat to death.

DR BOB:  I feel like that's true. Yes.

STEVEN:  I said it on the boat this week, a gentleman asked me about pressure and I said, I don't fish pressure water I fish water that has seen baits, but when there are more musky boats hitting it in the course of a week, there are muskies that's problematic. Right.

DR BOB: Right.

What you and I tend to agree on is good structural decisions coupled with tight casting. Right. Yeah. Which is engagement. So, we need proximity of the cast left to right because we're on this linear flat space. When we look at a lake, what's kind of screwy. And we're the king of the mountain with the very top. Right. Everything is beneath us. In your daily life, everything is in front of you and above. Right. In general, right. You're driving down the road and you might go down a hill, but most things in this very linear, you know, because I believe in a flat earth, DR BOB, as do you the correct right. Who doesn't. J. J. J is a.

DR BOB: It sure feels flat.

STEVEN: It sure feels flat, folks. J. Tell us, tell us how flat the earth is. J.

SPEAKER_06:  Well, there's a few hills around here, you know, but for the most part, she's pretty flat.

STEVEN Paul: She's pretty flat. sorry. Folks.

JAY:  Talk about like these just saying himself right now. Why did I take off the phone?

DR BOB:  This is why this is translated.

DR BOB: Failure of our educational system.

STEVEN:  It just translated a flat earth podcast. Yes. Folks, they've been lying to you the old time.

JAY:  Welcome to the flat earth must be podcast with your lost STEVEN Paul.

STEVEN:  He walked to the end of California to drop off. Any who, nonetheless, it, like I said, the way we conceptualize things, right, is important. And so, we're, we're above the fish and having difficulty like we're discussing vector force. We're just delivering things this nature. Yeah, but I think what's more important is understanding like the limitations of our, our, our, our quandary. Right. And I think something you and I talk about Bob and I'm trying to rope you into it. If you disagree, I love it. I love discourse more than anything in my life. Yeah. You and I tend to focus on what are the physical limitations of this predator. So, I don't think I've never articulated that to you, but when we go down the rabbit. I've like our conversations kind of resonate my head. I go home. Where are we talking about it? The core of the matter.

JAY:  Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it.

STEVEN:  So, something that hit me and I want to run it by both of you. Right. We're down, we're down the hole of rabbits here. So, we have. Let's say a musky in a weed bed. Right. And the boat is setting in very common situation. The boat is setting in six and we're throwing to what would be zero or the edge. That's a very common scenario. Right. Six, seven feet, eight feet. Call your, whatever. As my, say my bucktail hits the water engages in a shallow water setting. Its vibrational profile is eaten up and does not transmit it with transmit as far. Up and down. Left to right. And a conical shape in some capacity. Due to weed and also soil dampening and also surface. Dampening.

DR BOB:  Right. There's a lot of echoes happening in there. Yeah. I think it would be really disorienting. I think if you, it would, I would liken it to this. If you were in, like if you were in a gymnasium or something like that and you were trying to locate someone yelling at you.

STEVEN:  JAY. JAY. You ever hang around gymnasiums? JAY. You ever been to a Turkish prison? I'm sorry. A little airplane reference.

DR BOB:  I got it.

STEVEN:  We're in a gymnasium with DR BOB. Hey, Johnny.

DR BOB: Surely you can't mean that, Steve. You've ever been in Turkish prison?

JAY:  Well, he means it. Stop calling him Shirley.

DR BOB:  Exactly. Now we're right.

STEVEN:  Sorry. Continue.

DR BOB:  I'm sorry. Yeah. But yeah, but if you're, so like if you're in a gymnasium and you had to locate something by sound. Right. How difficult would that be? Because anytime somebody's yelling at you in a gymnasium, the echoes are coming off the ceiling, the floor, all the walls. It's so in shallow water in a situation where you have lots of structure, like I mean weeds like Fishing structure, but there are structures there.

STEVEN:  Absorbing it. Yeah.

DR BOB:  Things that can absorb or reflect or anything like that. They would, I would think would be quite disorienting. It would be very difficult to locate something based on sound. So, if you're getting at, if your point is that you're arriving at is. In such conditions in shallow water with lots of cover. That the strike range of musky would be necessarily small. I think we're in agreement on that. Like that would be. Yeah, that's hard.

STEVEN:  Right. It messes your head up where a deep fish can triangulate on a target better than a shallow fish. Yeah. Bilateral line, which is their ear. Right. So hello, hello, hello. Is there any more?

DR BOB:  Oh, I think that our line is quite distinct from their ear. Actually, right.

STEVEN:  But how far do we go? Nonetheless, it bodes to the importance of proximity at all time. Right. Where proximity is depth because the way I see a bait, a bait has. This wave that comes behind the bait. There's no vibration. There is zero vibrational profile in front of your musky lure. Period. It is yet to affect the water in front of it. Right. As it advances, it affects the. The medium water is a medium for vibration in our purposes. Is the water is affected? Our vibrational profile goes out in a 360 360 degree. radius. Around our presentation. How far that is transmitted is complicated by the depth of our presentation. Right. What you're in agreeance with. Yeah. It bodes to the importance of tight casting in both shallow situations because I believe in shallow situations that some visual stimuli is as important as it is as vibration. But in deep water situations. The disbursement of that vibration, vibrational profile disseminates so far in the water column that you might have problems triangulating them where that target is and if they only subtended seven feet, we need to at all times go. Pass the fish, bring it over them so they can not only feel it before they see it.

DR BOB:  Right.

STEVEN:  Is I'm off base or is this like?

DR BOB:  Yeah. I think you're right. I think that's I think that's true. I mean one thing that my experience I've had. I had a bunch of experiences over the over the course of the last couple of years. That are leading me to think. That I am very interested in making sure that my baits are almost always within five feet of the bottom. Because if I just say approximately five feet is about what the range of interest of a Muskellunge is going to be right. If they're lying on the bottom, if you're not within five feet of the bottom, they're going to ignore it. Yeah. And I don't want if I put it closer to the bottom than that, then it's well okay. That's okay. But it's like, well, now I'm over close. I want to scan the entire water column too. So, I think if I'm putting it within five feet of the bottom, I kind of feel like I'm maximizing.

JAY: Maximizing the zone.

DR BOB: Right. I'm maximizing. I've got five feet on either side of that date. And if I'm in five feet of water, then for my point of view, I might as well be fishing on the surface.

STEVEN:  Yes. Yeah.

DR BOB:  Exactly. Yes. You could. You could be fishing on the surface.

STEVEN:  Which could be a little. Which could be a blade. Yeah.

DR BOB:  It's could be a blade top water, something like that. But if I'm, if I'm fishing in 12 feet of water. Well, I'll tell you, if I fish within five feet of the bottom, I'll be at seven feet. Right. And I think that only the top two feet of the water column would be outside of five feet.

STEVEN:  Ah.

DR BOB:  And I'm going to tell you, I think if a musky is within two feet of the surface, that's where it's awfully darn bright. Right. And I think they're unlikely to be necessarily at that particular position. I think they're much more likely because of the, because of the sensitivity there. Is to light, they're much more likely to be deeper than that. All right. So, I'm, I find fishing five feet off the bottom. I've got five feet above and five feet below. And you know what? You can keep the top two feet. Have, have your buddy in the front of the boat. Cover the top two.

STEVEN: Yeah good luck to ya Ralph.

DR BOB: Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's just my thought. And that's sort of where my, my head has been going the last couple of years. It's like, well, I got to fish deeper. If I'm within five feet of the bottom, that's kind of where I sort of want to be.

STEVEN:  I, for in my brain anymore, you know, and I have a doctor Bob's in down here with me and we played different reindeer games of the course of winning things that nature where the vast majority of the year, the bottom tight. Yeah. The vast majority of the year, the bottom tight. So, I don't even think it. Now, do, will people argue with me that muskies use deep water as a home range? Absolutely. However, my experience probably. Says beyond time on the water, right? I'm not saying I have more or less than I'm going to try to sound that way. But what I'm seeing across the habitat range is the vast majority of the fish. 99% of the time we're using deep waters as refuge. Now the propensity to be in deeper water is a matter of stability. Right? Yeah. Where I called you the other day with a hair brain scheme going, I'll say it. I have nothing. This is just me talking to a friend and J and Bob are both friends. I went, you know what, the shallow water is actually a liability, not only based on instability, but virology.

DR BOB:  Right.

STEVEN: Right. The spread of VHS, the spread of microbe tend to take place in the littoral zone. So, the less amount of time we spend there, the less of a liability it is. And I said to you, what Bob, how much time do you spend at Walmart? Are you get in and out and you get what you need and you leave? Right?

DR BOB: Right.

STEVEN: I, I, listen folks, we have a contest going right now, right? Go lick every cart handle at Walmart and see if you don't die. And if you don't die without taking amoxicillin and I'll give you a frickin used bucktail. You'll die. Right? I don't, I don't get this bucktail. You're going to get frickin typhoid. Something bad. Don't do that. Okay. That's, this is not real legal disclaimer.

DR BOB:  However, I would not suggest doing it.

STEVEN:  And it's not real. This is a joke. Okay. I'm going to go to the guy that like literally jumped in his car and turned to Walmart. So, I can win a used bucktail. Do not lick the cart handles of Walmart.

DR BOB:  Just, just let, if you need to use bucktail that bad, just just let us know. Somehow I got a couple of extras. I said the two, you can skip the Walmart parking lot.

STEVEN:  Right. Licking everything in the store.  The more proximity that we spend in peers, the more bacteria, the more of viruses that can be it passed to one another. Personally, what I think is the propensity of muskies used to be spread out as a survival mechanism outside of stockers. Stockfish become very comfortable being around one another, right?

DR BOB: Yeah.

STEVEN: Whereas native fish tend to spread out. This is a whole of the rabbit hole, but what I'm going is this is a, this is not a theory. I have conjecture on the light penetration. This is just the thought that a secondary concern of spending tremendous amount of times as an absolute home range in shallow water is fraught with not only instability, but fraught with viral, not even communal diseases, but viral interaction in that warmer water for a longer period of time. Is that nuts or I'm just riffing now?

DR BOB:  Yeah. I don't think it's nuts. I mean, I think the propensity for them to, if you're going to look at this as a sort of a natural selection pressure on that.

STEVEN: It's life, baby.

DR BOB: Right. So, this would only, so fish that would tend to crowd each other would, if, if your hypothesis is right on this, they would tend to be more likely to get sick and die and therefore would it be less likely to keep their genes in the gene pool.

STEVEN: Yeah.

DR BOB: So naturally occurring. So, this might not be something that's a pressure that stocked fish would experience. Right. Because reproduction doesn't happen very effectively in very many stocked lakes. But in lakes with natural populations, I would guess the hypothesis suggests and the observations might hold true and I'd have to see it, but then the natural populations would, the ones who pass on their genes would be the ones that said, you know, I don't like being near y'all. All right. Not, not, I would much rather be far away from y'all because not yet my ancestors survived because I did it.

STEVEN: Distanced.  Not like, yeah. Yeah. And not as a matter of a cognizant decision, just as a predisposition to distance.

DR BOB: Exactly.

STEVEN: Which is, I've always thought, and we're down the rabbit hole of fun. I don't, if you guys hate this, I'm sorry. I've always thought that the Prometheus Muskies, right? Like, fricking.

DR BOB: Those who discovered fire. Right.

STEVEN:  Yeah. By Bob, by fire, Bob means Bob Marley records. They're like, yeah, man.

DR BOB:  There you go.

STEVEN: This is fire. Like the Prometheus Muskies. And the argument has been, is it, is it locks or Wabigoon to the Wabigoon river or someone in that neighborhood? Yeah. That's what I was always heard, whatever. Right. If you're a holdover from the Crustaceous period and you have info email me, but that's what I was interested. I would assume, based on their morphology, right, that the Prometheus Muskies were highly aggressive just like a Northern Pike. The ones that succeeded were had a tendency to be less aggressive, right? And we're a little more picky and a little more obstinate and more into caloric risk versus caloric reward. That kind of proliferate. I made a joke with JAY earlier that took 4,000 people to make him, right? Which is actually, if you look at like your genealogy, that's how far it goes back for like 400 years or something.

DR BOB: Sure.

STEVEN: Yeah. But the muskies that survived, I would assume, had the tendency to not eat things that made them choke and live solitary lives.

JAY:  Right.

STEVEN:  Now, stockers don't adhere to that, but, and I'm not saying muskies are like, you get wolf packs, you get things of that nature, right? Yeah. But muskies are not a schooling fish.

DR BOB:  Right. Well, that's probably incidental, right? If the conditions in a particular small area are conducive to feeding, like there's a concentration of a forage fish there or, you know, and the level of light penetrations right and the water temperature is cool, you know, they're good in a particular spot. More than one fish, as long as there's enough space for more than one to fish to kind of be there and operate, yeah, you'll get sort of an incidental wolf pack there. Right. It's not like they go. It's not like they have a conference and they say, well, let's all go in the shallows today. Right. And make trouble for all these perch or something. It's kind of they incidentally arrive there together.

STEVEN:  Right. Based on forage movements or what I'll find when I find wolf packs is you'll, this is just again, we're just talking. You'll find say, I'll give something up. Here comes the big spot burn. Everybody have fun. Say like up around North Shore on Eagle Lake, there'll be a bunch of perch and walleyes spread across the outer edges, like the weed beds and stuff. And then weather will hit or water will, it'll rain and all of them move to the mouth of the outflow. Well, guess what happens? All of the muskies that were staged on the outer perimeter of that weed. Biggest one there I go. Right. So commensurate to that movement, but I guess where I'm going at and I don't have like an in goal, but it's kind of like the, I think when you and I talk about it, Bob, it's like the path of least resistance through genetic development. Right. Like what makes sense? How do I not get a disease? How do I eat as little as possible? And what did I eat the most effectively? I think for like this dude's question, I'm sorry, we're like, wait in the rabbit hole because I love this. And someday there will be a paper or a book and everybody, there's no peer review in musky fishing them at me and DR BOB are going to demand it, right? Which is not a comment on the internet. It is like, okay, if you don't like this, let's review it so we can all end up somewhere because peer review is not to tell somebody the wrong peer reviews get to the truth.

DR BOB: Yeah. So right.

STEVEN: From my standpoint, light penetration is a component of caloric risk and caloric reward because I believe muskies are most effective in low light areas. Yeah. I believe that muskies prefer in this, I'm trying to wrap this up and it's as far as like my thought. So, the lower the light penetration, the better number one, number two, the shallower that they can get that, right? So, what I'm saying is this is like, if I have low hanging clouds, it's the fricking, the bait is in the super shallows. It's two feet deep and I got clouds and low light penetration. Absolutely. I'll be there, but light penetration is six feet. So, six feet becomes the shallows that I'm effective, right? Or eight feet is a shallower. So, I'm effective or 10, 12 as we move our way out. They would prefer shallower zones, but they need to place their effective because caloric risk and caloric reward are more important than light penetration. So, or their hand in hand in some capacity where I'm not going to go up in the high bright sun and miss 50 fish in the hopes of getting one because at a certain point, I go hypoglycemic and not be successful.

JAY:  Right. Right.

STEVEN: I need a staging area that provides me with the most effective depth. What is the cutoff for my effective level is for actively feeding fish? And that's your baseline to fish below then. And that's based on light penetration. Right. The activity level thereof is based on water temperature and where I'm getting at is this and it's a theory, our lure selection is based on the cutoff, the termination point of light penetration and the speed of retrieval is commensurate to the seasonality and the running depth.

DR BOB: Right. So, because of temperature

STEVEN: Because of temperature. Yeah. I must be in 40-degree waters, 40-degree water can fire it off double engines like a turbo jet, but that's like, that's like a lion seeing an antelope on the Serengeti 400 yards away and trying to run it down. He ain't going to get it. Right. So, we need not only do we need to understand what the cut up of their effective ranges. So biologically, and I have you under if you when you're ready to shut me down, say I disagree, please tell me, but I think we might be on the same page. I'm just talking about my my freaking Smitty hole, if you will. Love you, Jake. But my cutoff is the absolute light penetration. Right. Everything right above that is negated.

DR BOB:  Right. Well, I would say I would say this. This is an important factor about light penetration. Let's, and I think this is probably pretty important for folks to recognize too. When let's say that you go on your lake and you're trying to kind of figure out what the level of light penetration is, and you're going out and you're maybe got a nice sand flat or something like that, and you're like, Oh, I can't see, I can't see the bottom when I'm further than eight feet. I can see the bottom when it's when my depth finder reads eight feet. But if I go a little bit further and nine feet, I can't see the bottom. Now I do want to mention that means that the level of light penetration is actually 16 feet because for the light to reach your eye, it's got to go from the surface down to the eight-foot bottom, which you're capable of seeing, but then it has to travel back upward to your eye through that same eight feet. So, the total distance that light can travel in that at that level is actually 16 feet

STEVEN:  right, you can down and back in a neophyte manner. You can't see a grain of sand on the bottom. If it didn't refract it back in your eyes, exactly.

DR BOB:  It's got to reflect off of the bottom. And then that lights got to come back to the surface and then hit the air and come into your eye. Now there's practically no attenuation in the air. So, it's just the water that's doing the light absorption. But that if you say, oh, the level of light penetrations eight feet, not really, it's actually 16 feet. So, keep that in mind about what depth we're talking about here for when light is being extinguished.

STEVEN:  Which is the other conversation piece of this. Angular nature of light and its refraction at different angles because if we're looking at light that comes directly above our head and the photons bounce down and they come right back up. And something you and I've talked about is why sun up can be good and the first hour is good because the light bounces at such an angle that it bounces down and off. Right. Creating void.

DR BOB:  Yep. Definitely a thing. That's refraction at the surface. It's definitely a thing where the direction that the light travels is different in water compared to when it was traveling in air. And that's because of the law of refraction called Snell's Law. So yeah, that will change the path that the light actually travels.

STEVEN:  Which during which is basically follows what I think and this is a theory. There's shout active fish, not all fish because I only believe a small fraction of fish are active in each given day. Fish that are.

DR BOB: I think that's observational. I don't. We don't have to. I think that's probably clear to everyone. Right.

STEVEN:  If every must be was active every day, this would be easy. So, let's say we have. And a given population five percent active per day. That is why and what got DR BOB on here to kind of. I'm not asking him to reiterate my points. We've talked nerd gas them for eons before I use it ever on the show. But where low light periods in the shallows, they an active fish will move shallow and come off of that edge. As the light changes out the course of the day and seek deep feeding zones until it comes back. Now, what I'm saying is could it be one must be on one shift? Absolutely. He is looking for X, Y and Z that crosses his periphery within a certain target range. Right. So, he might spend the entire day. I don't think this is the case, but it is. For example, I am hungry. I'm a musky and it’s sun up. I'm very shallow. Why do muskies use shallow zones or the shallows? I said this. Why would they prefer shallow water? Their physicality and their burst speed mitigates the calories burned. They prefer to feed in shallows and it's because they have to cover less water, which is higher caloric reward versus lower caloric risk. Open water fish

DR BOB:  Right. Right. Well, yeah, another thing. Another way to think about that would be, I think you're exactly right. Another way to think about it would be like what's if a for a forged fish that a muskie's trying to capture only could travel, you know, three feet up and down. The muskie kind of has them trapped except in two minutes. Yeah, exactly. They've taken the vertical part of it out. I mean, any fish, a muskie, if you're within three feet of a muskie, you're freaking dead. Right. So, if they want you dead, you're dead. But so, the muskie is shallow water is good for them because they've got them trapped. laterally.

STEVEN:  Yeah, when I felt really strong about that, you may have heard this podcast, JAY, we did it where Andrew Walker has that underwater footage and he's seeing fish that are coming out of the depths and pushing pan fish up against the ice in the shallow water zone under the ice. Yeah. That is a strategy. Right. Yep. Feeding in a shallow zone for a muskie. His physical, his or her physicality negates the ability of anything to get away.

None:  Yeah.

STEVEN:  Right.

JAY:  Yep.

STEVEN:  The deeper they are, the less and again proximity in the shallows versus proximity at depth or two different things. What I was talking about earlier is we have the dampening effect of our presentations in the shallows. Now we have the widespread and again, the distance reduces vibration and distance of visual target. So, at all times, whether it be shallow or deep casting saturation seems to be probably the most important factor in my mind. So, if cast are landing more than five feet apart and I see this guiding all the time, that's what I feel like is a strong theory, which is we get three people in the way, I'm in the front, I'm in the back. I'm in the middle. It doesn't matter. I want tight casting to an area that I'm positive holding active feeding muskies. If we cast tightly, we get the move. If we come through there blaring with the motor, continue us on four miles an hour and we make little pop shots and go nothing was there, which JAY theory wise talk about, we call it Lovers Lake. Remember the time I looked at my watch and said, uh, we're going to fish that spot and everybody went, there was a boat went through there. I said he didn't fish it. I had a blue to it. Right. Great. I, yeah, he went, he made six casts. I'm going to make a hundred cast. Not really, but you know, for his six casts, we probably put probably a hundred cast, but three and three dudes and got a fish. Now tell me from crazy, Bob, the thought process being this. The proximity is hyper important to a musky and a caloric risk caloric reward situation, right?

DR BOB: I’d agree.

STEVEN: Not from the standpoint of an unnatural presentation, but from the standpoint that it will stage on prime cover and structure with the expectation of natural forage arriving because their vision is so poor, right?

DR BOB:  I mean, their low light vision, I think is probably outstanding, right? But their bright vision is probably, I mean, it's probably just as good, but it's just uncomfortable. It's probably right. Yeah, I think yeah, it's yeah, their capabilities are diminished, certainly relative to their prey, their capabilities are diminished. They have a bluegill or perch, they have good, they have very, very poor low light vision is the, at least that's the observations that I've heard of, you know, scientific observations that perch and panfish and things like that have pretty decent high, you know, bright condition vision, but poor low light vision. While muskies with their low light vision have a monstrous advantage over such prey then at that point. So, they're going to go where they think they have an advantage. And if that's, if under low light conditions, the shallows are where they have the advantage because they're big, they are fast and they are, they have their prey sort of cornered. Yeah. But in dark condition, but in bright conditions, I think they tend to go, I think this is probably where you're taking it. In bright conditions, bright sky conditions, they tend to slide deep to positions where they have an advantage, tend to be darker, a deeper water because of the attenuation of light as it travels down in the water column, they're going to tend to have an advantage in those lower light conditions at depth. If there are any prey out there that are stupid enough to put themselves in a spot where.

STEVEN: I love the way you phrase that,

DR BOB: Yeah, then they deserve their fate and the muskies is satisfying their condition as the top, top predator. They're doing, they're eliminating those prey that are too stupid to live.

STEVEN:  Well, okay, just doubling back, right? And I'm not, I'm not asking you to go yes, right, whatever, but I think we're on the same page. The question I've asked multiple times on the podcast and kind of posed in the boat more times I care to even say, right? Name a musky prey fish or a prey fish that has a belly color other than white.

DR BOB:  Yeah, I think all fish have that, don't they?

STEVEN: Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. So, it would be a hell of a liability to have a white belly and be swimming around and doing your stuff in blue skies, right?

JAY:  Yeah.

STEVEN:  So, I don't believe we want to talk about stuff they'll make people matter, hurt their head. I've said it before on the podcast. We want to double down today. Cold fronts don't matter. Barometric pressure is a lie. I've yet to find and when I wrote the book, I called everybody I could get and I'm not talking anglers. I'm talking meteorologists and scientists and not one of them could tell me the effects of barometric pressure on apex predators. They could tell me that a post frontal would slow zooplankton photo plankton things that nature, which would shift the food chain deeper, obviously, right? But I've said it before, how many BTUs of energy, solar energy, DR BOB, that's why I called you. How many BTUs of solar energy does it take to take Eagle Lake from frozen to 75 degrees?

DR BOB:  8.8 times 10 to the sixth. I just made that up.

STEVEN:  Some dude, some guy at home is getting a calculator. And he just broke. He wrote 8,135 and flipped it over.

DR BOB:  But yeah, I would say it actually be quite a bit more than that given the Eagle Lake's quite a large lake. Anything.

STEVEN:  I mean, the amount of energy. So, in any given front, it's kind of crazy. So, I believe in a cold front, you have two things that happen. Stifling of the food chain starting at the microbial level, right? Followed by light penetration and everything becomes susceptible because what I find to be interesting, we talk about light coming into the water column and their fraction off the bottom, right? Yeah. So, I'm a crappie, right? A crappie, I'm drawing one on my desk here because I'm an idiot. I've talked about in their silver and they have black little spots all over them, right? So, they have that wonderful disruptive camouflage that allows them to hide in cover and against structure and not have a hard visual profile. However, light that comes down and off of a crappie's back is actually bouncing up and creating voids off their actual target, right? So, off the very, there's going to be reflection and there's going to be kind of like a false illusion from the top with disruptive camouflage. Does that make any sense? So, you have reflection and disruption. Is that, am I crazy?

DR BOB:  No, I think that's probably right. If you look down at something that is basically resembling the bottom or darkness as you, if it goes all the way down to the, if you're talking to the point where you're seeing the background of not the bottom, but like just the dark deep, then yeah, they're going to be, they're going to be hard to see against that background if you're looking down on them.

STEVEN:  Right. And then if I'm a musky and I'm looking up, everything's white.

DR BOB:  Yeah.

JAY:  Yeah.

STEVEN:  The sky's white. So, fish or camouflage from the side and the bottom for a reason, right? Which why does everything go to the bottom when the skies are high? Well, yes, the, the stifling of the food chain happened in the shallows undeniably. However, from a standpoint of protection, okay, we take a bowl-shaped lake, right? You get your cereal bowl, it's your Wisconsin like the very edges, your littoral zone and all this fun stuff. Things cooled off in the epilimnion, that top layer of the water comp. So that actually stifled zoo, plankton photo plankton reproduction, those zones. Okay. It might stifle a bug hatch, which is going to stifle your, a silly little pan fish to drop down a few feet. There are predators dropped down. Everybody drops down into what I call this Mexican standoff on the bottom where no one exposes themselves until low light periods, right? Because, sorry, what I've seen in this, this is observational. How many times have you fished horrible cold fronts and you caught a fish in the evening? I've done a million times. You waited out, you waited out, you waited out and you finally get one. Are you watching your graph and you go? Oh, the bait's finally coming up. Yeah. This is the level that the light subtends at a different angle. The angle of the sun changes. Fish are aware that they're no longer exposed.

DR BOB:  Yeah. That's, I mean, that's the, that's time period. I caught my biggest fish ever. That was, there's one bite and guess what it was.

STEVEN:  And it was 29 by 14. Exactly. That was important. It was Donkey Kong. That's the thing is Bucher. I'm teasing you. But Bucher’s made the comment before guys far smarter than I am on the water. May the comment before they've caught some of their biggest fish during cold fronts. Why is that? Well, my personal opinion is during prefrontal, right? Things are flying around like crazy. Competition is high. Bellies are full. So cold fronts, the first day of a cold front, I do believe we are stifled by full stomachs. Right?

DR BOB: I think you're right.

STEVEN: So, we have two methodologies to overcome this methodology one. We downsize, which is the nomenclature of cold fronts. We downsize and slow down, right? A small presentation at slow speeds presents itself as a snack.

DR BOB: A snack.

STEVEN: You got it. An opportunistic snack. You know, last night, embarrassingly slow, right? I love nothing more than a Big Mac, DR BOB, Dr. J. Dr. J.

DR BOB: Dr. J. I love it.

STEVEN: Frick it. J. You really need to work on your rebounds for the Lakers. There's too many airplane references in this. Not Dr. J, but it's Korean, but nonetheless. That was Korean. Yeah, it was good. But, you know, I love nothing more than a Big Mac is the dirty American pig dog that I am, right? So, my wife makes me a Big Mac at home, which is way better than a real Big Mac. But you know, I'm talking. It's just this name. You know, I eat it and we shlub around and I get up. It's like we're going to bed. I'm like, well, one stack. You know, I'm saying like, I didn't need it, dude. Didn't need it at all. Nobody needed it. However, I saw it. I took it. I ate it. Shouldn't have. I think that's kind of the application that we do in cold front. Slow down, downsize snack. Now on the structure fishing into things, you go, if I'm a big fish that uses deep water to the majority of the time, deep water is a relative term. And everything just showed up where I am. Right? The accordion collapsed. I think I've said it before. I think fish, bait fish, to muskies. I'm talking from, let's go from like things the size of your pinky finger to the things the size of your, your children that are 50 inches long. There's a commensurate distance in how they slide in and slide out at a certain point where a structure terminates to the bottom bathometry of a body of water where the biggest fish tend to dwell. Cold fronts become opportunities for giant fish.

DR BOB:  Yeah. Although, I'm sorry. Yeah, that light penetration thing that you're talking about, that's something. I mean, as, I mean, you and I have been talking about this, we've been planning this for a while about, about mine. Well, right. I'm talking about my, about articles and stuff like that. So, I have a couple of articles in the hopper and one of them is about this light penetration stuff that we've kind of been talking about. So, one of the observations that you just made, I think is great. And I make the same observation in the article that's upcoming is that if you look at when, if you look at the bottom, if you were to look up during high bright sun conditions, what are you looking at when you look straight up?

STEVEN:  JAY looked straight up during the eclipse. How'd that work out?

JAY:  Right.

STEVEN:  Well, I don't. The GoFundMe's what?

DR BOB:  But, I mean, when you look up in bright skies, high bright skies, clear skies, the clear skies are, what does that mean? Well, it's dark blue. Yeah. It's extremely dark blue. That's pretty, that's a dark background. And now, if you look up what shows up contrast wise against a dark blue background is something extremely light colored, like white. And most fish bellies are white. Every fish bellies white seems like it. So yep, better put that on the bottom. Or you're going to get spotted in bright conditions. Now, of course, if it's overcast, we call that dark. But I mean, when you're overcast, what's the sky look like? If you're looking from the water, that's white. So bright days, bright lures, dark days, dark lures, why does that work? My hypothesis is, it's because contrast is purely contrast. Really? Black on dark days is black on overcast days. Well, it stands out like a sore thumb against a white overcast background. Right. And a white lure would stand out like a sore thumb against the dark blue background when the skies are clear. So, when you get post frontal, you're darn right. Put that white belly on the bottom. You don't want to make contrast with that dark blue overhead situation. Because you're going to get spotted easy.

STEVEN:  Which is the difference from back to my homemade Big Mac. It was delicious, by the way, right? Yeah. When I made the move from the couch, you only did it once, boys, right? When I made the move to the couch, to the kitchen before I went to the bedroom, right? I was not worried about anything eating me. It didn't cross my mind. Not once did I go, well, son of a b, I'm going to get eaten. If I move from this couch to that fridge, there's a probability. Right. As low as it could be, that a velociraptor is going to bust out like I'm in Jurassic Park and just, you know, gut me on the floor. Sell my baits. Right. Like, and I don't think JAY, DR BOB, you're not worried about turning around and being a prey item anytime soon at the house, right?

DR BOB:  Not too often, no.

STEVEN:  You don't read. JAY doesn't ride the New York subway enough for it to be an issue. So, neither of us do travel. Neither of us. Exactly. Stay off the subway, folks. But nonetheless, we're not worried nor thinking. Again, we love to imbue animals with anthropomorphic qualities because it feels good to explain things. But I think less, less devastating. Like saying fish are finicky is less problematic than imbuing them with anthropomorphic logic. And that's what I'm trying to combat, which is what you just said. Like, okay, listen, I'm a perch. I stand out like a sore thumb right now. I can go to the bottom and hang out bottom tight until sunset and nothing's not going to eat anything because the possible consequence of my movement is what? Death.

STEVEN:  Death. Yeah

STEVEN:  You know, the worst that we're not going to get last night is like gripe that you're eating too much.

DR BOB:  Right. You don't need that fun size Snickers.

STEVEN: That's a slow death.

DR BOB: Right. But I think it's probably a little bit unfair to criticize the old, you know, the folks who came up with these sort of rules of thumb about, well, how do you respond to cold fronts? What's going on with the cold front? Listen, when these sort of rules of thumb were developed, it was pre-structure fishing revolution. It was everyone was fishing in the shallows, like almost all the time, except people that were super good at it. And they were keeping it under their hat.

STEVEN:  Yeah. Buck Perry and just a handful.

DR BOB: And it's so, I don't think, you know, we just have to be careful about being beholden to ideas that are, you know, that were sort of passed down historically. But we should still be questioning like, well, why is it like that? Why should I do that?

STEVEN: And this is...

DR BOB: Now we know like there's, well, what probably happens is the level of light penetration drops. It's not like the water temperature changes all that much. Probably practically changes not at all. And then anything below 15 feet literally does not move. Nothing. Like, I mean, I have a water temperature sensor that goes to depth. Never do I see the water temperatures deeper than 15 feet ever respond even to like a, you know, 20-degree plunge at the surface. Nope. Nothing at the... It's not the temperature at the surface. Yeah. It doesn't move. Right. So, it's not the... I don't think it's the temperature. It can't be the temperature because the temperature isn't moving, not even a tenth of a degree, but the fish migrate out away from that, you know, away from the shallows because of water, you know, water clarity, water, light penetration, those sorts of things. And if we know those things now are, you know, we know that that is what happens. Well, what strategies can we now develop now that we know that is the way things happen and not because of what we were speculating about because that's what the old timers would do. They'd say, well, you know, people would experiment. They'd go, well, let's try out deep. We can't find them shallow. Well, what would he know? There they are. And they're right.

STEVEN:  And the causation was the water temperature drop or... Right. Or...

DR BOB:  Right. And they probably didn't know how the water... I mean, they could probably read that the surface temperature dropped and they assumed that the surface temperature drop meant that the water temperature dropped at depth as well where the fish had moved to or something on that order. So, I mean, they might have... They were still fishing in the right place. Right. But further... But inferred the wrong reason for it and now we're sort of still stuck kind of getting ourselves out of that mindset that maybe it's different than that. I mean, it could be. They might have been right. They did a lot of things that were right. But they maybe did them for quote unquote the wrong reason. Maybe we know a little bit more now and we can exploit that greater knowledge to still continue to catch fish even on the back end of cold fronts.

STEVEN:  I mean, I threw out the phrase Promethius earlier talking about what I thought early muskies would be like, right, and how you would end up being this. We are not that far removed from the beginnings of structure fishing.

DR BOB: Oh, exactly.

STEVEN: I mean, from the right brothers to landing on the moon with 66 years, I think. And so, this is not dogma. I called Jack called DR BOB the other day, right? And I said, I want to talk to you about something. I didn't know we'd be talking this long, but I was in the truck and we went down this rabbit hole and said, hey, I want to nail another thing to the church door like Martin Luther. Heretic, right? The musky earth is flat. It is a cold front. They are not eating. Right? This is total off the cuff. I mean, you're talking and we're kind of echoing each other in some capacity, right? So, let's say that you and I can agree in a body of water that change stops all water temp changes in a typical cold front in the Midwest stop between 12 to 15 feet, right?

DR BOB:  Yeah, sometimes sometimes even shallower, depending on what I like.

STEVEN:  Severe, right? Let's say it's an absolute JAY you and I went through one on the Eagle River chain, right? It was 50 degrees in July 50. I think it was 55 or 56 for the high that day. The water temps at the surface to epilimnion drop it. I say four or five degrees, right? Okay. So, we can all admit in the dogma and dogma, meaning things that are just something you believe because you believe it because you've been told it. I think that's probably the loosest thing I could say for dogma. The dogma of musky fishing dictates that in every cold front, we're going to go low and slow, right? Okay. Fantastic. Well, this particular day was very high winds which caused, guess what? The light not to be able to penetrate as much and we cut fish shallow because we had heavy chop. Now something I wanted to throw out where I'm going with this. Let's say that the, the, the, and, and the dogma of the sport of musky fishing is said for years, stability, right? Stability and weather. If you get stable weather, you'll catch muskies. Now you get stable weather that will typically line up to eat mornings and evenings that correlate to your skill set. Okay. That's a whole other thing. But let's take 70-degree water temp. I think we can all agree that 70-degree water temp is like the most, we're talking that's prime musky temps, right? 70, 72 to 75. Is that, what do you hear, DR BOB? What do you hear, JAY? What are you like the temps you to hear that are like money temps?

DR BOB:  Yeah. What do you like, JAY?

JAY:  Under 72.

STEVEN:  Okay. So, 70, that's got 71.

DR BOB:  JAY, DR BOB, what's I say like 62 to 72. So, if you're in the upper 60s, okay, that's kind of the band of like, Oh, that's primo. Right.

STEVEN:  As far as like, if you're going to, yeah. And I've always heard kind of that 70, 72, some of that neighborhood, right?

None:  Yeah.

STEVEN:  Okay. So, we're all in a grants and some capacity in that zone, right? We know that even if the surface temp, the epilimnion is that the subsurface where musky spend the majority of their timeframe is probably not that warm, correct?

DR BOB:  It is not. Well, right. It depends on where you're at.

STEVEN:  Let's, we're going upper Midwest. Let's say that there's probably a disparagement between 15 feet in the shallow in this upper shallows, right? Yeah. You know, some of these bodies of water, I will give the caveat of Southern waters that get blasted for five months. Yeah. That's a different ballpark, but upper Midwest, Canada, things of this nature. So, there's a temperature difference between the shallows and the deep depths, eight to 15 feet. I keep moving the border on up. But I mean, it's rare that see a change of eight feet, right? Not much.

DR BOB:  Yeah. So yeah, I would, yeah, my observations are if the top 10 feet are volatile water temperatures, then, yeah, once you get down in that 10 to 15, if the surface temperatures are say 72, right, the surf, the temperatures at those depths are probably about, I would say somewhere, maybe like 69, 68, something like that. Right. Yeah. So, they're cooler, but they're rock solid.

STEVEN:  They're rock solid. Right. So, we got, let's, I was about to say high fifties to mid-sixties depend on your light penetration,

JAY:  right?

STEVEN:  Yeah. So, with that in mind, two factors. Lakes get less light penetration have cooler depths and more stable depths at zones that are less penetrable or less influenced by cold fronts, clear water has possibly higher temps. They're slightly more truncated and you have to go slightly more deeper first core stability, right? If we're in agreeance muskies, metabolize and spend the majority of their time in those zones because it's the most stable, right? How much of an influence on their metabolism and feeding windows can it call for an even half because we're only losing a tiny fraction of percentile of metabolism time or depth because it's not as if they eat in 72 and go to 35.

JAY:  Right. Yeah. Which is, I mean, they're spending most of their time at 68 degrees anyway, even if your water temperatures are 72, which is spending most of their times in the stable zone.

STEVEN:  Right. What I'm saying is the metabolism rate and the feeding windows, I mean, I just changed my schedule from like early mornings to afternoons just because of the seasonality of what I'm dealing with, right? Every day where I'm fighting, I've been fighting it for like two weeks since I got back from Toronto, right? I'm starving at 11:30 every day because that I would, when I got up, you know, to eat my breakfast sandwich at 5:45, right? And lunch is 11:30 and we're wrapping an afternoon. Right now, I'm eating breakfast at 10. And I'm like, no matter what, I'm like, wow, you're fighting it because you become habitual in things that work for you. And I'm not trying again, not trying to anthropomorphize, but you go, let's say we have a 20-degree temperature drop. So, the ambient air temperature drops 20 degrees and the epilimnion of the water drops five degrees and it has zero effect on their holding depths, but they still move up shallow. It's not truncated. They're feeding window. It's just augmented where the food chain is.

DR BOB: Yeah.

JAY: Yeah.

STEVEN: Sorry.

JAY:  You're also saying they're staying in that deeper zone with a stable water because of, predictability, it's a predictable life. You know what I mean?

STEVEN:  At the core of the L

DR BOB: the totally makes sense, JAY.

DR BOB:  That's totally nuts. Yeah. Okay. For me, it's just like from from from a humanistic standpoint is like you have your house and you know where it is and you know what it's going to be and you control your environment. When you move into in stable environments, you don't know what you're going to get and there's a modicum of unpredictability. Like I was talking about the policy of virology and thinking of that nature, but you want to have like when it comes to the core of structure fishing is the deep water is a home range because of stability. Not only can you have predictable water temperatures where you can dictate your life cycle, you can also avoid again predation. You can avoid virology and you can avoid just your predatory advantage being negated.

DR BOB:  Well, and and you have an advantage of you have comfortable light levels of light penetration as well.

JAY:  Right. Right.

STEVEN:  Right. Which I think for for any creature you go. I mean, from a musky standpoint, correct. We're wrong yet again. They got one job survive until the spawn. Right. They're all I don't say aware aware is it gives them gives them too much credit. They're cognizant, but that species knows that each individual has a value, which again, I'm man, we're down the ramp. I want to have fun. So, I care what anybody thinks. The theory, the reason musky falls are assessing prey to make sure they don't choke to help show me a picture of a musky choked on another musky. Right. They want to spend time with their prey. They're non reactionary. Most situation because they have to make an assessment to go, okay, is this safe or not in some capacities. Followed by the less I eat, the less I engage physically, the more I can say my sustain myself therefore I'm healthier for the proliferation of my species. The further apart we are into it matters, the less chance of the spread of disease. So, if we stay away from each other and we don't move a lot, we'll make it to the next sponsor. The species doesn't die. Am I particular genetics? Live past me. Right. They're not thinking that, but it's the only thing I'm going. Why are they quote unquote loners? I mean, yes, we talk about go get near each other, but they're not sitting there 50 muskies deep cruising together like a pack of walleyes. Why does that all happen? What is the evolutionary logic or the, I'm not talking creationism versus evolution. I'm talking about what is the species proliferation worth for their biological, what they do, things are non-debatable. Why?

DR BOB:  Yeah, just behavioral characteristics. Like why do they do that particular thing? Well, if they did something different, the, the, you know, that particular musky would not reproduce effectively. They would die and not pass their genes on. I mean, that's, that's no matter what side of the reason on the side of this. Yeah, we're on that's just that's going to happen.

STEVEN:  Right. Right. It's like a pod of orcas. They hunt together and do really smart stuff. Why do muskies not hunt and packs a 50? Right. There's enough food. They can carry his 50 deep and target walleye schools out in the open basin and the eagle lake and they don't eat walleye. They don't eat walleye shit work. DR BOB is fighting the HOA apparently. Can you put that in a sworn affidavit? They don't eat walleye. Sir, the homeowners associate has been

DR BOB: Us Minnesotans we’re sensitive to that because we get accused of destroying walleye populations with all our musky stocking. It's not true, but they do eat walleyes. Right.

STEVEN:  But I think I think we're talking the same language here where you go. What makes sense? You know, a pride of lions hunts together and they hunt as a gang orcas more probably more importantly are fish, they're mammals, but nonetheless, they're instead they're aquatic and they hunt in a pack. Why do muskies spread out? Well, they're pretty. I mean, muskies are pretty dang fragile. Right. Doesn't take a lot to spread disease. Doesn't take a lot to Andrew and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're not. I mean, the grand scheme to your HOA, you're fighting. I'm teasing. But to people that worry about that and proportionate their body size, their caloric intake is really not that high. They eat and they sit. Yeah.

DR BOB:  Well, proportionate their numbers is the other thing. Right. I mean, Northern Pike consume way more as a group than the muskies do. Right. Because there's way more of them. Right. Exactly. Each one of them eats so much per pound, but guess how many pounds of Northern Pike there are in the lake, even though they're all smaller, there's way more. Right. Exactly. So, they end up chowing down the population of perch way more than the muskies do as a population.

STEVEN:  Yeah. I just looked at the frickin thing here. We've rambled way too long. I'm gonna have, I think I called you and said you have 10 minutes. I looked at my phone. It's an hour and a half of me and JAY already did some of the show. JAY, what do you got to say, JAY? Is this just too, too nerdy for musky fishing? Is this just painful?

JAY:  Well, its definitely elite nerdy stuff, but the observations are very interesting and there's just a lot to apply, you know, and it's, it's worth thinking about because of all the factors that you guys have been talking about. I mean, it all makes sense.

STEVEN: It's the only.

JAY: But there's variables on each and every day, you know, and time of day and particular type of water with the light bit and creation, you know, how many clouds and, you know, how clears the water and it's all about catching muskies. So, I mean, I've gained things out of it personally. So, I mean, DR BOB, you're good. Great job.

STEVEN: Well, the thing I'll tell you this and I've said it before where we're riffed on this, right?

JAY:  Yeah.

STEVEN:  The simplistic, the takeaway of this is just too much nerding out. The simplest way I've said how I make my daily game plan. If I'm there at sun, I'm from my fish to sundown. Guess where I'm starting? I'm starting shallow. And as the angle of the sun comes up, I'm fishing deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And if there's a major or a minor or the water clarity allows for it, I move in and I move back out. So, I might pick up two more muskies in the middle of the day because I was willing to target deeper edges and deeper water than staying up with the edge and just pounding the shallows until the sun went back down.

DR BOB:  Yeah. And that's the observation I've made too. If I'm fishing after 10 a.m. Yeah. And I'm on a clear body of water. If I'm not casting with my boat in 25 feet of water, I'm not seeing anything typically. I generally don't, but I'll get a couple of them to come up and look almost every day coming out of deep water. And I bet there's a whole bunch of them that I don't see because they stay 15 feet down and they never get close enough for me to get an eye on them. But that's where I observe them sitting in the middle of the day.

STEVEN:  It's just a different, it's like it's fighting the dogma of what we've been told to do because that worked, fighting the dogma of guys that were there never meant ill. They just just that was what they had to work with.

DR BOB:  Well, your dog must start with the dogma. There's a reason for why that was successful in the past, but don't think it's the end of the discussion. It's the beginning of the discussions. The beginning of learning is using the tried-and-true tactics. And then if you can bring a little bit of other observations in or something makes sense from a light penetration or water temperature standpoint, then make some adjustments and see if you can find out something new about the way that Muskies behave. That's part of the fun of it, from my point of view.

JAY:  Well, yeah, I mean, everyone tries to absorb information with time on the water, but to apply it to something new and add to that information, that's what everyone can benefit from.

STEVEN; And to make everybody's head hurt, DR BOB, are you? Ouch. So, Muskie Angling has been happening since, let's say realistically, the 1940s, 30s, 40s, like targeted, right?

JAY:  Yeah, probably.

STEVEN:  Even earlier, maybe. Yeah, but hardcore people, not hardcore, but like legit, right? They're like the first guides I'm aware of sometime and that time frame, right?

DR BOB:  Yeah, like when when was Louis spray and Art Lawton making their, you know, their competition for the so-called world record? That was 1940s, right?

STEVEN:  Right.

JAY:  40s, whatever you want. No.

STEVEN:  So, let's, let's, hell, let's just cut the cheese. Let's get down to 1900 flat, right? It is 2024. Right? So, what, 124 years of Muskie Angling? DR BOB, in the show by explaining how old the universe is and how little we don't know.

DR BOB:  Well, that, well, I'll just say that's a little bit less than 10% of the 80s.

SPEAKER_06:  Just slightly under, just slightly under.

DR BOB:  I know, just think about that.

STEVEN:  You won't even, slightly, slightly under, slightly under, slightly,

DR BOB: well, okay, slightly might be an under, an under overstate.

STEVEN:  Under overstate.

STEVEN:  We don't have it locked down. Hell, we're probably wrong. We're just trying to move the needle, you know, it's like, I think it's a little. Nobody on this show's ever going, I, I know it all, but it's just one of those things you go, I'm not going to hang my hat on dudes that were, you know, I'm not going to hang my hat on dudes that were, you know, fricking 100 years ago that in rowboats. And again, you don't diminish that knowledge. You don't turn your, like DR BOB said, there's a reason that guys figured out, well, heck, if we do this or something happening, but you can't.

DR BOB:  I mean, I think historically though, those folks, maybe, you know, between 120 and 60 years ago, I think I'm not going to be so charitable right now, but I think they were much more willing to lie. They were very carefully guiding. Well, they were, they wanted to share, they wanted to, you know, curate their, their, their techniques. It wasn't a lot about sharing and learning. It was all about, you know, this is my knowledge. I'm not going to give it away. Right. And I think that started to change about 50, 60 years ago, maybe even less than that. Yeah. But people started to go, Hey, you know what, it's more fun for everyone. If everyone is at least, you know, moderately competent, I'm going to start sharing things. So then like what, like Roland Martin, pattern fishing, the Lidners, Joe Bucher, all of these, you know, giants of the industry now started like sharing their knowledge instead of keeping its secret, like back in the old days.

STEVEN:  So, you said, you said a bunch of operative names. I've said this before, but every, so you said Lidners, Roland Martin, Joe Bucher, Jimmy Houston, I can think of, right? Yeah. Yeah. Guess who they all went and saw.

DR BOB:  Yep. It made the pilgrimage

STEVEN: To Buck Perry. Everyone. Yep.

STEVEN:  Yeah.

JAY:  Yep. Yeah.

STEVEN:  The engineer who was freaking nerdier than being DR BOB put together, but had figured out, Hey man, its Buck Perry's from North Carolina made me, he makes me sound like Tom Brokaw, like the old biddies. And then they're great. There's great stuff. I mean, Buck Perry was just like, uh, in some aspect he would go, Hey man, you're not catching fish the vast majority of the day because you're just beating your head against the ball, which we reiterate all the time, right? And nice in a nicer capacity.

DR BOB:  And that hands going. And we know so as a matter of course, because it's, you know, it's a rite of passage to not catch muskies.

STEVEN:  Right. It's acceptable. Right. And the bar is low, but on the other hand, he's a big basically on list. And these things, uh, everybody's told me up until 1960 here that they do this and they just don't. And here we're barking at the moon and a lot of people looked at Buck Perry and a lot of people in. And Bs and Buck Perry went around Don Dixon, a couple other people and I've talked about him Buck before and all this stuff. They went around and they just basically the only way they could sort of proselytize at that point was like just going to kick people's brains in at musky tournaments or excuse me, bass tournaments, yeah. And just had to prove it. And it's just like, Hey, we're doing it. You know, you just go. It's a different air. Well, here's the fish everybody. You know, here's a get another. Here's a girthy, another frickin sea pig and you're going to, uh, you know, you don't catch them every day, but it's game. It's a game of statistics. The more times you're in front of big fish. Guess what happens more often? You catch big fish. So anyway, I'm going to shut up because we prattle on forever. JAY’s asleep. Say goodnight JAY.

JAY: Goodnight