465 | River Smallmouth Fishing Report (Early Spring Patterns & Tagging Program)

0:00Hey everyone, quick announcement here of Fish and DMV. I just want to let you know the reason we're able to produce so much content and stay up on all the late breaking stories, like what's going on on the Potomac River with the sewage spill is because of donations from Patreon club members. This show is for the people and by the people. And it wasn't for all of my supporters on Patreon. None of this really would be possible. For $8 a month, you can help keep the show alive. And I need your help. We need more supporters in 2026 to help keep everything going. All Patreon supporters will receive. 20% off their orders to tactical fishing company. 15% off their orders to super blue stuff. Some of the best pain relieving cream on the market. 10% off their orders to tiger crankbaits. 5% off their orders to Jake's bait and tackle. You'll get access to our members only Facebook group. You'll get access to ad free episodes of the show. Members only content that's exclusive to you guys. Patreon member giveaways and of course, access to our four month long fishing tournaments that we have through 2026. You get all of this, all of this.

1:01And you get to help this show continue in 2026. Link in the episode description down below. Thank you so much. You're listening to Fishing the DMV with your host, Thomas Sarans. Fishing the DMV is brought to you by Jake's bait and tackle. Located in Winchester, Virginia. Tactical fishing company. And fishing protect. Located just outside Williamsburg, Virginia. That doesn't get you jacked up. I don't know what will. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to Fishing the DMV. I'm your host, Thomas Sarans. And today I have on Clark and I have on Scott Brum of the fish tag. We're going to be talking about the Upper Potomac River smallmouth fishing. Yeah, so first off guys, I want to kind of let you guys introduce yourself to the world. So Scott, I'll let you go first. Okay, Thomas, thanks. Scott Brum, I'm the director of development and outreach for fish tag dot org and some of your viewers might know that I used to be a news reporter on Channel 9, down in Washington covered the environment

2:03and anything else that happened like the murder of the day. But anyway, snowstorms, we're going to pick on that on TV. But anyway, I'm involving this fish tag project that we'll talk about shortly. Yeah, and then I'm Clark. I've been on, I think I was on last year talking about fish tagged a little bit. I'm a tagger, so I'm one of the guys out in the water, putting tags in fish. And then I'm also taking on some of the social media responsibilities for this year. So Scott, you want to get going on what we're all about? Yeah, sure, okay. So listen, fish tag dot org is a pretty core group of anglers who have been tagging smallmouth bass primarily in the Potomac for it's been five years now. It's DNR permitted. It's not a DNR project. It's our project, but DNR gives us a permit. And the point of it is to create a data set that's available

3:06like Thomas, you talked about being on a black bass commission. It's available to the black bass commission. It's available to DNR state agencies. It's available to kids in high school who want to do science projects. It's available to researchers. And we've created this data set. There are more than 3000 tags in the river right now just with this core group of anglers who have been putting tags in fish. It's been kind of a beta project for a lot of these years. As I said, DNR permitted. And this year, we've got some real cool people like Clark working with it. It's gelled and we're coming out of beta this year. And we want people to know these tags are in the river. We know Thomas, you've been in a boat when a tag fish has come in and people look at these tags and go, what are they? Is this some kind of DNR thing or what is it? Should we report this thing? We want the angling community to know these tags are in the river

4:10and when they find them, report them. Report them because it adds to this data set that's just got a huge amount of value. An important thing I want to mention about the data set is it's not just tagging information, right? Every time a fish is tagged, it comes in, particularly if a photograph comes in with a fish. While that photograph comes in with geographic data, time, date, place, and we overlay that with all of the river gauge data that's available. So temperature, turbidity, river level, meteorological data from NOAA. And it's all overlaid so that science folks who are looking at this stuff can see river conditions, windfisher caught, windfisher recaptured, where they're recaptured, how conditions may or may not have affected that. We don't know, we're not scientists, but it's become a pretty powerful data set. And that's what it's all about. The final thing I want to mention is that it's also

5:12a STEM science project for a lot of students. Right now, mostly kids in Montgomery County are doing it. We hope to expand that dramatically. But our data being involved with creating it, being involved with creating the architecture, including an app, which we'll be rolling out shortly. It's all been designed by student interns who are achieving an academic credit. A couple of these students who are at University of Maryland with a significant resume already of essentially creating a natural resources app. And we've got students on the river helping us with the tagging effort and everything else. So this is the year where it goes from the core group of people who've been putting tags in fish with the DNR permit to Thomas, you, anybody in your audience, anybody who catches fish begins to participate in this now by reporting the tags in. And we'll probably talk about how you can do that

6:13as we move on here. What is your story? How do you go from the news to tagging fish in your retirement, I guess? Yeah, I retired. Yeah, paint this picture. Well, listen, I was a TV guy, but I also kind of like in the summer, despite being married and having some adult kids in a dog in a normal life. I'm just on the river, man. I just love the river. I sleep out on the river probably three nights a month in the summer. Duck hunt, turkey hunt fish. It's just a place I love me and the dog. My wife not so much anymore. She's like, I'm not sleeping on these islands anymore. Cut that out. Right. But I'm a natural resources type, like we all are here. And so I got into that. I was an environmental reporter at WSA-9. I mean, that translated to my role in the media. Early in my career, late in my career,

7:13in the middle, it was hurricanes and the state house and following governors and stuff like that. And then, so as part of that, I was down at Fletcher's, or no, this guy, Mike Bailey. Okay? He's on an organization called Friends of Fletcher's Cove. They're real big on Shad and public access at Fletcher's and it's a really important organization. He's doing a lot of good work with the National Park Service rehabbing Fletcher's. And Mike calls me up and invites me down to like see the Striper run at Fish for Shad and do a TV story about what they're doing at Fletcher's. And I fall in with this guy and before you know we're fishing together. Right? And then Mike runs in the Clark. And so there's his character Mike Bailey, who's, and the guy is like this, you know, so he turns out, he tags everything. He tags monarch butterflies. And he, you know, he's a very successful, also retired individual, a very successful guy.

8:14And one of the ventures, one of many ventures in his life, was a weather data project that was run through schools and public sore in the early days of the internet when that was kind of really cool. The first iteration of it was called Weather Bug and it became a very, very successful app. And it was all about data. And he's all about data. Clark, would you agree? He's all about data. Yeah. I mean, he's all too strong. So the guy, he's like, and then he's gonna spit at you and then cyclopedia. And he's, we were talking today. He's a, he'll pull up the USGS water gauges. And he'll be like, oh, you see this here? You see this here? That was a, that was a ice dam. And it came through and you can see the water level change. And so yeah, he's, you go to Bailey's house. And he's got a collection of antique barometers. And he like writes the information at every time. You know, so, so Mike was the guy who originally started tagging fish. But Mike is also a real social, really cool guy. He knows a lot of people. A lot of people fish with Mike.

9:16Mike's on a river five days a week. And, and Mike's the guy who first started tagging fish and it realized, hey, this is a data set. And then Clark, what year if you could time stamp this? Just roughly five years ago is the first tag to win a fish. Okay. So they're really ramped up in the last two years with the addition of people like Clark. And I don't tag that much. I mean, I'm so busy like goofing around my boat and trying to fix the, the last time I, you know, whack the mud motor prop on a bot. You know, I spent more time in a river sticking around than I do fish it. But I, but I am a tagger as well. Yeah, I think I've, oh, sorry, one of the, yeah, one of the other things I just wanted to say about the project is it's kind of one of those things where it's like an opportunity for us as fishermen to put our money where it mouth is and instead of just complaining about the fishing conditions. Now, you know, we as a core group have been going out there

10:16and trying to actually make an impact in conserving this river. And like, this is a citizen science project. So we're inviting you guys to engage as well. And we're running out a rolling out a rewards program this spring to, you know, thank you. You know, you give us a report of fish to us. Give us a little information so that we can help the state, you know, conserve this resource. And we're gonna, we're setting out gift cards and stuff like that. What is, because as a wise man said, there's overlap between the world's smartest bear and the dumbest human. What is citizen science just so you can explain it to everybody? So citizen science is just, it's just everyday people engaging in a scientific process. So like, I think there's like this whole gatekeeping thing or around science where it's like, oh, this only happens in academic areas or in universities and colleges,

11:18state agencies and things like that. But there is a way for you to still engage in scientific processes outside of those fields. So it's really trying to instill curiosity in people and take interest in things that you care about as well. And you know, Thomas and Clark, that was an awesome explanation. That's exactly like hits an nail on the head. And Thomas, you probably know, there was lots of citizen science out there occurring and like Potomac River Keeper Network has a network of volunteers. They do the bacteriological sampling in a river and a monocacy up and down. There's an organization called Save Our Streams, which educates volunteers to go out and do invertebrate studies. So they actually keep track of the aquatic bugs and insects, which are real important indicators. They have a, they created database. So there's lots of citizen input. I mean, you know, I know DNR would love to have

12:19a funded study on all of this stuff all the time. The reality is they can't. And this is a way to contribute to that. Why? Because we all like the fish, right? We love the resource, we literally love the place. And you hit on something else. The idea of gatekeeping it made sense 10, 20, 30 years ago, but now the bureaucracy is so big. It's a glacier that nothing can get accomplished. This is where citizen science is important because there's so many things that could be accomplished when you activate the public, activate people that are passionate about whatever it is. I see this with forestry and stuff like that where they want to do more studies in some of these parks. And it's like, just get the volunteers to go do it. There are a ton of people that would love to help you. So yeah, it's fascinating. You know, it's important to that. Listen, science is science, right? It has to meet minimum, actually maximum standards of accuracy and everything else. And that's why the group of taggers

13:19is relatively small operating under a DNR permit, right? So that we're trained, we're collecting data in the way that makes sense to them. Because data is just noise if it doesn't match or profile. But Thomas, your point is exactly accurate. You know, it's a new world, right? Lots of people can flex technology tools that we all have access to to really do interesting and good things. Like, I'm at a boat ramp frequently in a summer more down towards the Chesapeake and I'm approached usually by a graduate student with a clipboard who's doing a DNR angler survey. And so DNR puts a lot of time and effort into collecting information from anglers. An angler survey costs them a ton of dough. We're providing angler survey data, you know, for free out of the blue for them. It's just finding different ways to look at the problem and solve it.

14:20I know last year, Virginia, actually used kayak tournament data for certain bodies of water just to have extra data points. And it was free. It was really easy for them to do. And the kayak guys are more than glad to give it up, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Exactly. That one, oh, one thing I want you to hit that on is you had to get a permit just so people to understand the whole structure. You guys just didn't run out there and just start stabbing fish. Right. It's DNR permitted, although it's not illegal to, you know, this is a public resource, but it originally, believe it or not, it's not illegal to tag fish. But listen, we want this thing to be a serious thing. And so yeah, it's got a DNR permit. Again, not a DNR project. They're not telling us what to do, but they permit us just like you buy a fishing license, like that. The thing is real important is that this is not some kind of like, you know, app where, you know, we're gonna sell a membership and you can get on and find out where all the fish are. This is not like some kind of spot burning exercise.

15:22That is you find a fish this summer and you report this. This is not about burning where you caught the fish, okay? It goes on to a spreadsheet and a scientific database. It's not shared publicly, like this is the hot spot kind of thing. And, you know, that's really, really important to us because we want anglers to feel confident that by reporting fish, they're contributing something positive, they're not like burning their spot or whatever. Those of us who've been tagging, you know, like Clark, you know, you know where you, we already know where we tag the fish. The interesting thing is when you report a tag, and I should probably point out there's a tag right there and it's kind of, there it is, okay. Say a big tag. So lots and lots of people, we're getting 11 to 14% return rates, so we know lots of people are touching these fish, and that means a lot more people are touching them and not recording them.

16:23When you catch a small mouth with a tag like that in a Potomac, scratch the algae off, look at it. There's gonna be a phone number, a website, there's gonna be some information on there, including a tag number, and as you can see, the color of the tag, right? Okay, just follow the prompt, go through it. Text the number, hey, I caught this fish at this location, whatever, go to the website. Shortly, we're gonna have an app up, so those of us who really fish on a river a lot just wanna have the app on a phone, you can take a picture of that fish with accurate measurement information and submit the picture through the app, and the data all gets harvested, time, place. So when you catch a fish, look for the tag. Look at the information on a tag, report the fish, and Clark is about to brief you because when you report a fish, we've got more than a half dozen retailers now who have contributed to providing incentives, basically a prize.

17:25You report a fish, you're gonna go into a pool at the end of the month, randomly draw names. There's enough prizes in there based on our tag, return rate pretty much, I can't guarantee you're gonna win, but we're gonna give away a lot of stuff this summer. To get people engaged in wanting to report these things. Clark, run that down, will you? Yeah, so one of the big things also that I just wanted to highlight before we get into the sponsors is just the fact that when you put an accurate fish measurement looks like to one fisherman to the next is it can be a little bit, I don't know, hairy sometimes. Guys are doing fish measurements and everything. So what we're going with is kind of like a kayak tournament standard measurement. So the mouth closed, tail pinched, trying to get the tail to the longest point possible, that kind of thing. We don't wanna see like the mouth open and all this kind of stuff

18:27for this information to be useful for the state. We just have to kind of hold ourselves to a standard. So that's kind of that. And that's gonna be part of the rewards program too, is like we need to accurate information. You give the accurate information, you can, you're eligible for a reward. And one of these, or a few of the rewards are, we're giving away Jake's bait and tackle gift cards, fit lures gift cards, snaggler tackle is on board. I think there's a couple more Scott that you, I think District Anglers has engaged hatch match baits. This guy makes these incredible plastic baits that are like focused on goby's, really cool baits actually. Small little thing, hatch matches on board. And the premier stuff, the end of the year, the individuals who report the most fish then go into a pot for eligibility for a grand prize. And one of those is gonna be a super high end St. Croix,

19:30you know, like Mike and Clark, they won't let me touch their St. Croix rods because I break rods all the time, right? I got a dog in the boat, whatever. But I mean, real, a real nice high end rod and also a rockfish charter trip. It's, you know, retail value, I don't know what those go for, 500 bucks a man kind of thing. So, so there's a grand prize at the end of the year and that's likely to be tournament type fisherman who are handling a lot of fish and reporting a lot sort of familiar with the program. We're gonna be able to do that. There is a way, you know, you can report a fish and opt out. Yeah, you don't have to win the, you don't have to win. The only way you win a prize that you provide enough information how we can contact you. So, if you don't want that to happen, that's fine. You can still report the fish and opt out. Yeah, you can report anonymously as well. Like what's the exact information on where it was caught on size, but if you don't want your name to be known to us for whatever reason, that's fine, you know, you can report that way.

20:33That's so freaking cool. When will the prizes be given away? Just reiterate just for the time limit. When's the deadline for people that want to sign up? Is there a sign up or when is the deadline for the end of this event? Yeah, the sign up is essentially just reporting the fish. Just, you know, your name, we need a way to contact you. That way we can send you the prize because like if, you know, obviously, if we don't have anywhere to send the prize to, then you can't get the prize. I think it's, we're doing, we're doing weekly, weekly drawings, yeah, so, you know, I think you're eligible for one of these smaller prizes, correct me if I'm wrong, Scott, it's one smaller prize and then each additional piece of data you give us, you go into the, you know, it increases your odds essentially at the lottery at the end. Exactly. And, you know, on a good month, let's say we have, let's say we have nine, you know, good week,

21:33let's say we have nine people report fish. Oh, well, there are 10 prizes to give away. Cheezy, randomly drawing, everybody's gonna win. Right. So, you know, we'd love to have 100 tags a week come in, but the reality is, you know, we're looking at handfuls to dozens per week and we're gonna have handfuls to about a dozen prizes to give away each week. So, I think it's a pretty good chance if you report a tag, it's likely you're gonna get something nice. We're also gonna try to, on the, we're starting a social media account and we're gonna try to get out information out there on if case you guys forget and how to, what to do to report the fish and then also, you know, announced essentially who's winning the prizes and stuff like that. If you want, if you don't want to, that's fine too. You just notify us. Yeah. And then guys, of course, I will promote or whatever as the social media gets up

22:35and running and to remind people here with it. Also, I guess I'll do this real quick before we, we pivot a little bit. We're gonna look at this nice fancy website that Clark built. Every Angler knows the feeling. Your shoulder burns after a long day of casting, your lower back and your knees feel super stiff from staying on the front of the boat all day trying to fill out that limit. You love being out on the water, but your body pays the price. That's why I keep super blue stuff roll on everywhere I go. Tackle box, truck, home, glove box my boat. I've been using their products since I was young and the natural pain relief with the emu oil and herbs that works in about five minutes with no harsh chemicals, no strong medical smell, just rub it on and get back to fishing. Bring season is almost here, so stock up now. All fishing and DMV viewers and listeners will receive free shipping off of their roll on orders when they use the code fishing at bluestuff.com slash fishing or you can give them a call at 866-571-Blue. Again, you can use the website bluestuff.com slash fishing

23:35or call 866-571-Blue and use the code fishing. And if you're watching on YouTube, put your phone up to the screen right now and use the QR code and that'll take you right to the website. Thank you guys so much. I swear by this product and I think you'll like it too. Tactical fishing company is a veteran-owned fishing brand that specializes in soft plastics and hollow body frogs that are designed in-house. They collaborate with anglers across the country giving you some of the best designs out there. If you haven't checked them out yet, you're really missing out. Their number one selling bait is the MRE, Mino Ready to Eat Hybrid Swimbait. It flat out catches fish. Whether you're throwing it on your favorite spinner bait or bladed jig as a trailer or using it as a standalone finesse presentation, it's one of those baits you can keep tied on all day and stay confident in. And if you're chasing snakehead, Tactical Fishing Company has you covered. They make some of the most rugged, durable frogs out on the market today. From the Dragon Pop to my personal favorite, the Wizard. When it's time to try and tame your next dragon, they've got the tools you need

24:36to make the day on the water memorable. So go support a veteran-owned business, fish with confidence and make every cast count. Check out Tactical Fishing Company, link in the episode description down below. All right, guys, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our newest sponsor, Fishing Protek. They are located outside of Williamsburg, Virginia in Toronto, Virginia. If you're a serious angler and I'm talking about a serious bass angler, you have got to go check out this shop. They have one of the greatest collections of JDM tackle on the planet. I'm talking megabass, depths, IMA, OSP. They got it all. And these are the baits that you're seeing on TV winning all those big tournaments. So if I were you, I would go down there and check it out, pick up the bait that's gonna win your next tournament. I'll put a link in the episode description to their Facebook, phone number, and address. Tell them, I sent you. Oh, I didn't build it. Nope. All right. Look at me, try to give you a compliment. You helped. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not the tech guy. I just want to make that clear, but don't say it. So you picked up the colors. You're on the website right now, works though.

25:38Thomas, you showed the website fishtag.org or fishtag.com is printed on each and every tag. You can literally go to this website and there it is, right there. You just scrolled up, report a catch. Boom. You can click through, you can do it like that. You can't, we're gonna have a, you know, we're coming out of beta, right? So this has worked, it's tested. There's also a phone number on a lot of these tags. You can literally report by text or by phone. Leave a message, hey, I caught this fish at Dickerson on July 7th, that kind of thing. But there it is. You can see all the, there's the input. And you submit your tag and that point once you've made that submission, you have entered yourself. This is a side feature on a website, which instead of you looking up every darn,

26:38every darn gauge on the river, we've got them all compiled and they update every 10 seconds. Look at you. I know a couple of River Laugh Cliff Bennett, if you're listening to this when this uploads, I know you're gonna be on this website a lot. That's awesome. Yeah, you can just like instead of like going to each gauge, you can just go on our website, click the River Conditions tab. And it's all right there. Thomas, you ever looked into the conditions and what you prefer, like what condition you prefer based off like turbidity, water level, water temperature or stuff like that. Do you ever do that and kind of hope for the best? Yeah. As I get older, I'm more hoping for the best than when I was fully autism and tournament fishing. Do you all sit there and I'll be like, okay, I want the turbidity below 20. I want a four and a half foot river with you know, 43 degree water this weekend. And you know, I'm like sitting there shaking at work, trying to get it to all I know. Well, if you think about the problem is, if you go down that rabbit hole, you are already gonna psych yourself out of a tournament

27:40because tournament days it will literally never be what you want it to be. No. No. No. Oh my goodness, dude, this is fantastic. I can't believe you got all this stuff on here. I wish every single river had this. This is fantastic. And this is gonna be, we're gonna have an app shortly. That's coming out of beta shortly. It's not public. And you know, people like you just mentioned Cliff, yourself, other people who are really engaged with the river can just download the app on a phone. And when you catch, when you catch tag fish, use the app to report. And use the app to look up this information. Yeah. And this is all just a bunch of volunteer guys, you know. That are good. Across ag and development. Across age groups and generations. And assisted by like STEM students out of high school. We're getting academic credit for doing a lot of this stuff. The STEM thing, you know, we haven't talked about much.

28:41Like, we took them all out on a river, Clark, remember? And only a couple of them have ever even fished. And it was just fun to like, run them up from point of rock and, you know, we had lunch and in hand in a rod with like a net rig on it or, you know, just straight up, you know, Texas rig rubber worm and let them fish and go, this is what this is about. And they're like, oh, this is fun, you know. So I was, I asked you first and I asked Clark, what is the most important water condition to read in your opinion? Oh, the most important one, I'm going to say level because it goes to boat launching, but it's not. It's got to be all, it's got to be all three. It's got to be temperature, turbidity and level. It does. I just can't function without all three. Clark. To me, it comes down to and water level and turbidity

29:44are like highly correlated on a rise. And then you'll notice after the rise is kind of over, the turbidity will drop a lot quicker than the water level. So like you can have a five foot river on the point of rock's gauge that's like at 50 turbidity, which is like pretty muddy water. Or you can have a five foot river that's at like 20, depending on the timing of when the river rose and everything. But yeah, I'd say definitely turbidity is the biggest one. You know, I kind of want that green look in color, which is like, or chalky. Yeah, it's like 15 or something like that. Sub 20, fishing is probably going to be good. Once you get up above that, you know, 30, around 30, you can still get a pretty good bite going. You get up at 40 and 50 and it can get kind of a good bit tougher. But yeah, I'd say turbidity is definitely the top one I've been looking at in the last year. I actually didn't know it was a measurement

30:44that they had public until Mike showed it to me. I always just, you can do real well, just going off river level too, though. You kind of notice which ones you like the best. For me, it's about five. I really like a five foot river. And where are these gauges located? Are you talking, is this the, I call it the mainstream of the epidemic from confluence down? Or is this all the way up towards where I'm at at the ass into the world? No, we got Hancock, Shepherdstown, Harpers Ferry. They go in order downstream. So I don't, Hancock's error, but I don't, I don't think there's a gauget way in support. And it goes all the way down to little falls. Little falls is a good indicator closer to the DMV just because it's closer to the DMV. But it also, you know, it's the totality of the river once it's done and ready to spit itself out. And it correlates, you know, once you get below monocacy, you know, what do you got?

31:46You got Edwards and then you got little falls. It's, it's wild how the river mixes, you know, below Shenandoah and then again, below monocacy and also Goose Creek. But, you know, there are a lot of times we'll fish and water is stained on one side and not the other. You can experience that. I'm sure. Is the monocacy the second biggest, right, that dumps water into the Potomac? I don't know, you got, you got Cacapin. You got South Branch, Cacapin, Shenandoah. Shenandoah's number one, I think. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, Shenandoah's got to be number one. Yeah, it's like equal size to the Potomac, where the two meet, I mean. Yeah, like, but I was just, because when you mentioned Goose Creek, I was like, how much flow, how much flow you actually comes out of Goose Creek? We run boats up there. It's, you run out of water fast in Goose Creek in the summer. Yeah. Yeah, well, I can't. Well, you run out of water. I mean, monocacy too, like, you know, it's been really low like this summer.

32:48I could, I could run it up to the Frederick Puppy plant, you know, even over, even over that old rock dam at, forget the road there. Monocacy people don't know. You get boats up there, up there with enough water. I, I know people that have run it all the way up to the dam and plus. Yeah. Yeah. I've had friends that try to, like, hop skip it over the Connick and Jig, which we talked about off air, which is impressive, depending on how, how high that would be. I would hop skip the roller dam on a Connick and Jig. They've, they put a winch on the front of their boat. They're muskie anglers and they put a winch and they, they would come up over the dam, hook it to a tree and try to drag the boat over top. They're a muskie on the other side of that dam. I know I'm gonna get, I'm gonna probably get death threats now, but I've been weighed fishing before and you see a log and it's a muskie up above the dam. So that's funny, you mentioned that. I'm, you know, a lot of these mud boat guys, like I, I run a surface drive mud motor on one of my boats as well. They go that fish, fish for a snake heads down at mouth of gunpowder on the side of the bay.

33:50And, you know, I'll take a trip down to Blackwater every now and then. And the, the winch guys are these sort of dug mud boat guys, you know, Texas. And no, yeah, we went up in the mud, got to get out, got a winch, right? But I'm on a Potomac last summer and I run into these guys on a nice flat bottom jet, you know, like your rhino, Clark. And, and he, this guy was running, you know, you know what the drought was like, right? This guy's running really skinny water. And, and he had a winch on the front of his boat and he starts telling me, oh, yeah, I'm not afraid to run down here because, you know, I got a hundred feet of cable or whatever much he had. I don't know what he's talking about. But he'll literally, you know, he'll hang up on a gravel bar and hook this winch up to a log or a tree and drag his ass up. And it was really a nice boat. It was like, you know, an all-well, you know, 18 footer with a, you know, three, four hundred pound motor on the back. And he was running and I mean like that.

34:53But he was running without fear because he had his winch. They call that the backup plan. That is the way I feel of the Lord. I can't even run, we run so shallow. Some run, never even put the electric motor. And I'm on oars all the time because I don't, I don't have a wide, wide bodied aluminum boat, right? I run a guide skiff called a Toey. So I'm on horse, right? And, you know, so your drift boat you basically get real shallow. And it's a relatively light boat compared to a regular jet set up like most guys run. So if you do hang up, you can literally get out of the boat and drag it like a kayak, much heavier than a kayak, but same idea. I forget why I was going with that, but. Do you have pulling a pulling platform? Because I always thought that would be a such a cool concept on a small boat is to have that, that pulling platform. So you can get up higher and down into the water. I've seen, they make those boats. I've seen them at point of rocks where you can get on top. Yeah, they make them. They put like, what is it, hog island?

35:55I think hog island. Yeah, I think the guy runs, there's a guy runs a hog island and he set it up as a stick steer up front. Yeah, hog island is a plastic boat, but it's real heavy. And I haven't ridden anything, so I can't pass a judgment on the boat, but it's taking its knocks on the blogs and whatnot. I run a boat called a Toey. Most people think I'm insane because it's a glass boat. But listen, the reality is out west, these trout guys run heavy white water in glass boats all the time. They drag on the bottom. It's, you know, it's, it's not like running a glass on bass boat, it's a drift boat. They're designed to take hits. But most, like I said, most people I meet at the ramp think I'm on, you know, like pretty much need to be in a, in a state hospital. But, you know, but in the southeast, these Toey's, they have the polling platform. And a lot of guys, you know, Tennessee, Georgia, they also have access to salt water, like we do here in the Bay. And so they'll run up, upland rivers, fish from muskies

36:56and then they haul those boats down to South Carolina and run the marshes. And a lot of those guys do have polling platform. There it is, polling platforms on the boats. But Clark, you got a poll, man, to get yourself off those rocks, remember this summer? That's my backup, man, yep. I got a big ass poll with like, looks like an athletic sock on the end to grab the ball. It's a big long, it's like, I think it's like 18 foot long. I don't even know, I came with the boat. It's an 18 foot long, just wouldn't rod and I'll just stick it up on stuff and push off. If I get hung up. Or at least narrow, damn. Or we have to get up and get out and pick it up and whatever else. I've donated a number of phones to the river trying to get mine. I feel that. Dude, you know, Mike, we've talked about Mike a couple of times. But I have like the cheapest iPhone, like the oldest one you can. Typically, in the past I have, because of that reason,

37:57I just, I'm in the water. Yeah. Dude, we've got a wall in there. Not the spot burn, and I'm not going to tell you where it is, but he's got a hole on the river called Pixel Hole. Because it's got a couple of Google phones in the bottom of it, you know. Because Mike is a drift fisherman largely in a, he's got a jet boat, but he likes, really loves running a raft. And as a result, he's a really social guy. He invites a lot of people, because rafts run best with more than two guys or gals. So anyway, Mike's in a raft a lot. And so they just are, you know, flick of the wrist. And you're in these little itty bitty places that the big jet can't go. My boat, iffy, kayak, yes, really tight little water. And, you know, this is guide level knowledge

38:58that Clark and Mike and these guys have and get in these places. But one of them is called Pixel Hole, those of the missing phones that are in the bottom of it. You know, people leaning over to the grab a fishing clunk. So I've lost my share. You guys have been here in the area for a long time. What have you seen change wise on the river? I don't like to, well, we end up being hyperbolic of like, this is the best it's ever been. And like, where do you think the river is now in its stage? Is the fishing going up, going down? What do you think? Let's do old guy, young guy. Clark, young guy first. Run me first. Okay, young guy. All right, I started fishing when I was, well, all right, I started fishing when I was like three years old. But I started when I was born. It's all way back tonight. No, yeah, when I was a kid, I was probably like, I think my dad got me my first kayak when I was like 11 or 12. So that's probably when we started getting on the river the most frequently. And it was like one of those deals where you could go out

40:00and catch 30, 40, 50 fish in a six hour trip. And they'd all be like nine to 14 inches. And your big fish today be like a 15 or 16. And I was younger and didn't have the same level of experience at the time. So it's hard to say if, you know, maybe I just wasn't targeting larger fish. And I do now, but that was then, and then now post college, I've been out of college for like four years now. We've been catching a lot, a lot more big fish like, you know, three, four, up to five pounds. And you can expect to go out and catch like two or three that are three to four pounds on a given day and like five or six hours. Or at least that's kind of the goal now. That's kind of what I got in my mind when I go in the water. So I'd say as far as fishing goes from then to now, like through the years, we're catching fewer fish or catching bigger fish. So that's just kind of, yeah,

41:01that's just kind of what I've seen. What you've got. I totally agree with that last seven to 10 years. I mean, I mean, exactly as Clark says, I remember those times you're on a river. It's, you know, you're fishing like beetle spins because that's what they bid on. And you're can, you know, beetle spins and you're catching dinks, but a hundred dinks. I mean, just, it was like all day long. It was super fun. Lots and lots and lots of dinks. And it was very rare to turn up a fish over 1416 in those days. And that started, I feel like it started changing 12, 10, 12 years ago to where Clark is now. I started fishing the river when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I grew up in Northern Virginia suburbs as a kid. So we're talking like 1970, 456. River was way dirtier. I remember it clearly. And at that time, it was all catfish all the time.

42:04I just loved, you know, I'm a kid, right? I was like a kid and I were worms and mouth of difficult runs, stuff like that. That was back in the day when your parents would let you go. You know, you're like 12. Not even. Not even. Yeah, my, my, my folks like, like I could, she would, my, my mom would either drive me down there and dump me off and like pat me on a fanny and, you know, no phones, no nothing. You gotta be back here at five o'clock. So I can pick you up. I have no idea where you are. You know, you walk down scots around a difficult run when I was a kid on the northern Virginia side and, and, you know, light fires and, you know, eat baloney sandwiches and catch catfish. Oh my God, it was great. But the river was filthy, you know? And there's still a lot of debris in the river. I mean, any flood brings every, every little dock and a lot of, most people around the river and know, you know, up the, up the Potomac, West Virginia side,

43:05particularly up the Shenandoah, kind of, achieving a lot of, a monocacy, have lots of stuff on the bank, but especially on a Shenandoah and a Potomac. There's lots of little docks, lots of little screenhouses, mobile homes, campers, and all of those campsites come with mountains of crap. So every flood that comes through rips out the dock and, you know, you're down at the, you know, you're down on a canal kind of around, let's say, Riles or whatever and all the stroller, push your moms are out there and they're shocked, shocked at the chemical barrels in the river. You know, the islands are covered with blue barrels. Well, the blue barrels are the remnants of whoever in West Virginia just got his dock flowing out by the last flood. And, you know, I deer hunt and turkey hunt most of these islands that are public access available to do so. And like you get off and get into woods, I mean, it's thick woods, but you won't believe the stuff

44:09that's up there. Like every guy who had a refrigerator on his, in his little screenhouse and his little waterfront property and outside Martinsburg, you know, all those refrigerators are down on those islands because the floods wash them down. It sounds like you're looking for, you know, see what? He's shopping. It sounds like you're looking for river treasurers. Oh, well, dude, I keep, I keep blue barrel. I harvest a few blue barrels, turn them into like trash cans, compost bins, we have stuff like that, but they're kind of endless there. And they're way, like some of these islands, some of the big islands that you deer hunt on, you know, it takes a whopper flood, you know, like a 1993 kind of flood, but it'll bring that stuff way up on high elevations. You'll find stuff like that. So my point is that biologically, compared to when I was a kid in the 70s, the river is just, you know, the industrial discharges, Cumberland and Luke and Shenandoah Valley, that stuff was, the river was really impacted

45:11and you knew it and the sewage overflows and all the rest of it, the cow shit, all of it. The river was really filthy back then and it is demonstrably cleaner now. Is there a deer population on those islands? That's fascinating. Oh my God. Oh, haven't you, well, yeah, you're fishing mostly a little farther upstream on a summer morning in August, you know, it's dawn. The deer are just walking across the river, like it's like they're on the beltway. Well, you're closer to Loudon County, right? Cause up here in the West Virginia side, there's like four deer left. I mean, it's surreal. Now, the islands are covered with deer, those of us who turkey hunt, the funny thing is the turkeys roost on the islands at night and you think they're covered with turkeys and then you're out there turkey hunting and you, you know, they all go off the roost in the morning and where they go? They go over the farm fields over in Montgomery County or Virginia and you're sitting there where your turkey call going, and you know, they're all over in Virginia.

46:13So, I mean, their turkeys, they're tons of turkeys out there but they're just roosting on the islands at night. And anybody turkey hunts and listen to this, I don't know that I'm full of it, but cause there are turkeys on the islands, but there plenty of deer out there and they swim and move from island to island, no problem. And in the summer, it's really wild, like upstream of one year, big weed year, you know, heavy, that beautiful eel grass kind of weed and I don't know what it's called upstream between lander and pointer rocks. A lot of people camp up there, including me and I was on one of those islands with a buddy and we're watching these deer in the river, dunking down, you know, sticking their heads completely on a water and coming up with these big wads of grass and just eating them. Like they were grazing, which it was a behavior I didn't know they did and never seen before. It kind of made me think about a moose up and like, you know, Canada somewhere. Well, Scott, they have a name for those.

47:14Those are called West Virginia River dolphins. It's a rare thing. Yep, that's what you were seeing out there that day. That was it. Yeah. Right. You can mention dolphins. I remember as a kid fishing there, there used to be ton of river otters. We'd see around whites vary down below. They're not seen one forever. They are, they're pretty rare, but they're around for sure. I can't think of, oh man, it's so unfortunate. I found a dead one last winter along the gunpowder near ball. I live up closer to Baltimore. It's still I love the Potomac. But this bird flu goes around with heavy concentrations of migratory wildfowl. And last winter when they grew up once there's ice on a river, they grew up where there's open water. And I found a dead otter and spoke with DNR about it. Certainly not conclusive, but it was highly probable

48:14that this otter got that bird flu. Because it was jumping species last year. And anyway, we got off track, didn't we? Sorry. Now that's the point of this. I think you might guess, not an otter podcast. It's a conversation podcast because yeah, the gunpowder is fascinating, especially like the brown trout. It's fascinating that you have a brown trout fishery there, but then to get to it, you might get shot by the bloods and grips because it's in that part of town. It's just such a fascinating. It's come on. It's a fascinating thing. I unfair, unfair hit on Baltimore completely. I married Baltimore, so I can dish it out to them as fine. But anyway, that's another show. Because that's the other show, but listen, gunpowder, incredible trout fishery because of the cold release of Pretty Boy Dam. And you get down in that canyon below Pretty Boy and this is Upper Baltimore County. It's like you're out west. It's incredibly high quality river, beautiful resource. And then down Baltimore. And then down closer to the bay, right?

49:15Joppa town, border Hartford County, Baltimore County. It's Snakehead, Wonderland. It looks like the American Serengeti, what you're up in those marshes. That's why I'm running a mud boat. The sun's either coming up or going down, ducks flying everywhere. And it's in between Aberdeen and the city. A lot of it. It's just beautiful. Unless you know about it, I'm going to say the obvious. Unless you know about it, you don't know about it. You have such a natural resource in a beautiful area and nestled in Baltimore. It's the same thing when people say like you bast fish, you know, the Upper Potomac, you know, near Loudon County, DC. He's like, yeah, it's like it's such a different world once you get out on the water. And you don't realize you disassociate. This is next to some of the richest places in the world. There's nothing like fishing, you know, you float downstream from Penneyfield and you know, you're underneath Dan Snyder's mansion. And you know, I mean, you do. You look up like, oh my God. And you feel like, I mean, it really is a striking, unbelievable resource. I think a lot of people in the world don't even know the Great Falls exists, you know,

50:18in a normal place on this planet, it would have like revolving restaurants and a giant parking lot and a theme park around it. It's just beautiful, beautiful place. It's really incredible. The river itself is a greenway. Thanks to the CNO Canal National Historic Park that literally goes, you know, all the way to the Fairfax Stone up in a Potomac Islands. It's an incredible place and you're on the river. Let's say you launch and, you know, one side is you can see high rises in Loudoun County. But there's still ducks flying everywhere. And, you know, there's lots of people with boats. God love us all to get out on a river. It gets heavily used, but it still feels like such a special, incredible place. So I wanted to bring up, because I have you on the show here and hopefully maybe you covered this. The Loudoun County issue, I don't think I'm nuking a spot because I'm talking and not talking about fishing, but just the white's fairy debacle with how they shut down the fairy. Do you think they'll ever convert the fridge?

51:19Can the Virginia side be used to launch boats ever? It's a nice boat ramp still. Like it can get any use on that side at all or is it just never gonna happen? I can't speak for it. I don't know. I did report on it. In fact, one of the reports I did, I put a GoPro on my kayak and launch it white and, you know, paddled the four minutes across and then did the math that if I was commuting and used my kayak compared to driving in a car. It's a total TV news stick, but, you know, both sides of the river, the local government, so both sides of the river want that thing open. Mark L. Rich in Montgomery County and us put a bunch of effort and time into it. I wish I could speak to the accurate status where it is right now. The other side is privately owned. I have never heard of, nor do I think anybody wants the owners on the other side want a public feature over there. They want to, you know, they wild. Just don't want to speak for them. I mean, I haven't spoken to anybody

52:21in this controversy for going on two years. But it's sad that the, you know, the ferry is still kind of sitting there and then, you know, it's a cool thing. It's a version of that ferry has been there since 1780 something. It needs to have another story, don't I? Cause it's just a fascinating situation where, you know, and people talk about they need a bridge or whatever. It's more of like the mindset, I would love, if you guys were listening to it, that owned that property, I would love to get you on the show, just to kind of get your heads at like, why, why? What was your, what was, what do you genuinely believe about shutting that down? Um, yeah, I don't know, just fascinating. Cause I remember as a kid, we would, cause we grew up in Percival, we would take our boat across White's Ferry and launch on Maryland side. That's what we did growing up. It was the closest ramp we thought at the time. Um, and so it's such a cultural impact that that shut down and how that changes not only the flow of traffic, but where people can go to fish and, and it's a, it's a beautiful also shop guys. If you want to go give them business right now, the shop on the Maryland side,

53:21cause it's a beautiful little shop there in these little boat ramps. Yeah, it's fun. Go launch your boat there running, get a sandwich and, um, um, you know, all the bikers, a lot of cyclists get, you go in there, but it's a shadow of what it used to because the ferry's not running. But, you know, to be fair on both sides of the river, like it's a privately operated concern. The other side, excuse me, the landing is privately owned and the dispute was about whether or not the ferry operators were, you know, posting up the money required to use that landing. That's a completely fair debate for property owners to have with each other. Unfortunately, it crosses over cause it's a de facto public resource, even though it's privately owned. And, um, I don't know where the owners of Rockland Farm and, um, I don't know where they are on it. Um, Loughton County got pretty deep into it. Um, and, uh, you know, we don't know what the motivations are and to beat, to be fair about what exactly it's about.

54:23What's the favorite story in your career that you take the most pride in that you covered? Uh, man, there have been so many. Um, I remember going to, uh, Haiti after the earthquake, uh, with a bunch of, uh, folks from, um, uh, you know, Bethesn Naval Center, uh, went down there largely by myself, kind of operating as a, as a one man band, cause this way, uh, sort of modern media was doing things and, uh, seeing. So they just sent you to a third world country and said, best of luck. Uh, I got to go as a guest of the Navy sort of, okay. I mean, I got to sleep on the hospital ship and a bunk and, but I would dead head, uh, and it was cool because I would dead head over in a chopper. Um, but once you're on the ground on the other side, all bets were off, you know, um, but it was incredible to see, um, you know, uh, uh, it was just such a dramatic moment because of what

55:24it was. Um, I'm not sure I'm most proud of it, but it just is the first thing that popped into my memory. I mean, core memory, kind of thing. And the thing, you know, people were, you know, lots and lots and lots of dead people and lots and lots of people from around a world trying to assist and set up these field hospitals. Um, I mean, I literally saw people having their legs amputated on picnic days. Uh, it was just like, it's just hard to, um, fathom all that and, um, and I remember, uh, uh, I actually ended up getting over big fat goofy guy from DC. And it's like a hundred degrees down there and it was December. So I went from really cold to really hot and I kind of was fallen out one day and, and there was no chain, no guarantee I was getting back on a helicopter because they're taking casualties back. And so I'm hanging around where they're doing that. And, um, there's a, I saw this, uh, child was clearly a young person, young girl getting loaded on a chopper. And about the same time I was

56:27falling out in a young medical Navy corpsman came up and said, Hey, sir, you're not looking so good. Could I take your vital science, please? And they took my pulse and are like, they put me on a helicopter to not back. Anyway, the point, the point of the story was this little girl had lost her entire family, been dug up after seven or 10 days and under rubble with a crushed leg. And, uh, and it was the pediatric part of that mission was a bunch of people from Bethesda. And there was a school in Bethesda was involved in sent Teddy bears and stuff. It's a natural TV news story, right? So I went down in a pediatric bay looking for this girl and I found this probably 20 or 21 year old corpsman, right? Medical corpsman in the Navy. And he had to be Haitian. He was from, uh, you know, Haitian American. He was from Brooklyn, New York. So he could speak Creole and whoever was in charge is like, all right, son, you're down there. You know, take care of those kids, whatever the Navy did. And I couldn't, I couldn't believe that, uh, compassion, this young adult had, you

57:33know, he was the only thing some of these kids had. And, uh, it was just great. I'm like getting all misty thinking about it. Cause it was, it was personal. I was human. And it was an example of, uh, beautiful, beautiful things the individual people can do. Uh, and you got me off on a tangent man. But that's the kind of stories I get assigned to, um, a lot. So you weren't local necessarily. Well, you were local, also, local, I was sort of the, the Maryland guy for that was Haiti, right? So I'd be in Prince George's or Montgomery pretty much on any given day on whatever story. You know, sometimes it was a trial. Sometimes it was crime. Sometimes it was, uh, you know, the heroic dog who found his way home from a truck stop in Alaska, you know, whatever, TV news, right? It was a, it was a cool life, man. Real fun. That, that's so cool. Like you, you, you want to, it's almost like watching one of his old westerns when you watch something like that, um,

58:36with the old school news media of you, you're a beat person, you go out there, it just feels like with, uh, technology and chat, CBT and AI, it's like, is it, are we losing that? Yeah, you are in some ways, but listen, citizen journalism. So we talked it, we started our conversation talking about citizen science. Um, but in the world of AI where, um, images and reality can be manipulated. Um, it's, it's still like really, really, really important that there are people out there capturing the reality that they see, um, and contributing that and professional media, you know, way you love them, you hate them, they're, you know, whatever, there's lots of faults in professional media. But, um, it, you know, information and real information is just like, just think about just basic stuff like the weather, it's critically important. I don't want to overstate it, but it is like, okay, for instance, I'm down at Katrina, okay? And, um,

59:36it's like this horrible disaster and there were literally dead people up in the attic, so houses where I was and it was just bad. And I was in this place called St. Bernard Parish. And nobody got in there yet. And the Maryland National Guard had been assigned. And I was attached to them to show what Maryland people were doing because of local TV station. So I'm down there. And, uh, it was an emotional day. A lot of things happened. And we showed what was going on. So we're the media guys. And we're coming out, uh, flooded streets up to the axles on a tractor trailer. And here's this guy in a tractor trailer, like with plates from Iowa and Nebraska or someplace. And he's kind of done nowhere to go. There's no law, no national guard, no police. He didn't know where to go. And he had, he had a little relief supplies that like the church in his town had, you know, and he asked me, uh, you know, where do I go? What do I see? And I said, well, the National Guard guys are another mile down the road. I think you can get the truck through there. I'm not sure we got out. And thanks very much. He climbs

1:00:38up and I go, Hey, listen, man, you're a story. I just like you just asked me, what's your story? And he was like, uh, he's like, ah, you media people all the time. You know, he gave me the media haters thing and kind of throw a couple of cuss words at me. It was like an emotional day already. And, you know, we take that all day long. My whole career is fine. Media is controversial. I mean, always just walk away. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll talk to you later. And that day, I was just like, not today, man. And I just looked at him and said, how the heck did you know to come down here? Did somebody like send you a postcard or call you on a pay phone? No, dude, you saw this on TV, your community saw this on TV and read about it in the newspaper. That's why you're here. That's what I do. And, uh, you know, I probably shouldn't have taken him on like that. But that

1:01:39that's why media is important just for basic stuff. You wouldn't know otherwise about lots of stuff. And it builds in even in this day and age. And the media, you do. It's building a community, right? There are people who do some of your viewers or maybe Charles County, they fish bass down there don't know much about the upper Potomac don't know much about crappy like Anna. Um, maybe I'd ever get there otherwise, but they know all about it now because you're creating your media. And it's building a community and and big media did did that, too, to some extent. And just having long form conversations, I had a person from, um, I think it was Oregon that emailed media their week and said, like, Hey, your coverage at the Potomac bill, it's the first time we had somebody just talk for 30 minutes about the situation, like no sound bites, no headlines, like you just worked through a timeline and like that was really cool. And it's like, that's the one thing I think this is help this medium is like you can just talk about it. We

1:02:39don't, there's no time limit. If it takes you a little bit longer, that's fine. But that way, the facts get out there about whatever you want. You're a citizen journalist essentially, you've got sponsorships, you're building a nice channel, all the rest of it. Some of those things are going to come into play, but the reality is your guy is into this stuff. I want people to know about. I want to share it. And and it's just that's really, really important in the world we live in right now. I'm deeply concerned about AI, you know, I've been duped by AI numerous times, you know, manipulating people's sense of reality and the gravity of some of the subjects we're dealing with in this world, you know, real information really does matter. And it really does matter. When you see something to check it before you share it, just, you know, I know you might hate the New York Times or whatever, but ensure media sources have agendas, but the individual facts they report, they'll give you their checked out. I mean, if I

1:03:41misspelled a dude's name and did it three times a year, you know, I'm subject to being fired. I mean, we took that we took accuracy within the story we're assigned so seriously, you know, down to spelling names, right? So yeah, it's now critical thinking is more important back when you had the gate keepers of three or four big media, now everyone has information. And there's pros and cons to that, the biggest thing is like you just have to have critical thinking schools of double checking the information and looking into it a little bit more. No, whether that's right, wrong or indifferent, that is not as above my pay grade, but that's kind of where we're at right now with AI and everything, man, it's crazy. Clarke, what do you think about this? Are you going to talk about small amount of fishing? I'm just about about media or not. Shoot, dude, no, I love going down rabbit holes, man, you find out what people are really passionate about when you sit down and have to talk to them for a while, you can, it's easy for people to BS five minutes. It's hard to do that for an hour past. Thomas, you're, you're exactly, you know, when I retired, I was

1:04:43asked on the air briefly to reflect on it. And it was exactly what you just said. When would I have otherwise met you, right? And I just, you know, countless stories since I started being a news reporter in 1980, you know, your job is to call people interview them. You don't become best friends because the next day there's another crisis, right? But it's, it's real people. And I just remember countless, countless times, whether it's a worst day in their lives or the best day in their lives, being able to talk to them and say, listen, I just really, really appreciated meeting you. And, and speaking with you, I don't know, when I would otherwise met you, and I just really appreciated it. And I really meant that because it's, it's a it's a richness in the world to be able to, you know, talk to people like you like you do with, with this thing.

1:05:44No, thank you. I really appreciate it. Clark, any closing words here thoughts, report your tags. Yeah, yeah, I guess just closed off. Yeah, just send us, send it in, send in the information on the tagged fish. We're gonna get you guys revolts going. And that's, that's what I have to finish off for today. Awesome stuff. There's a tag. tags right there. Guys, as always, link in the episode description to everything that we talked about here. And emails going to be there, fishing in DV at gmail.com, you got any questions for me, please reach out message me or message these fine gentlemen as well. If you want to go check out me on patreon, since I'm in between jobs, it wasn't for patreon, I'd be behind a Walmart dumpster doing unspeakable things to pay my mortgage. So I thank and appreciate all of you. And we'll see you guys next time on fishing the DMV. Bye. You're listening to fishing the DMV with your host, Thomas Arons. Fishing the DMV is brought to you by Jake's bait and tackle located in Winchester, Virginia, tactical fishing company,

1:06:46and fishing protect located just outside Williamsburg, Virginia. That doesn't get you jacked up. I don't know what will will.