Episode #31: Larry Dahlberg, Hall of Fame Fisherman Joins the RadCast Outdoors Podcast
Photo Courtesy of Larry Dahlberg - Larry holding a Tiger Fish
Our guest today needs no introduction but I’m going to give him one anyway. He is well known as a fisherman, guide, TV Show host, Lure Designer and Big Fish Catcher. During his television career, he traveled countless miles and fished in 87 countries around the globe. During that time, he fished all the oceans and most of the major river systems. He is known around the world as a big fish angler and I argue the greatest big fish angler of all time. During his fishing career, he has received a number of accolades for his incredible work. Some of those are:
- IGFA hall of fame
- Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame
- Henschel award for fly fishing
- IGFA Conservation award
He is also known for his incredible innovations in the fishing world. He has had literally thousands of impacts on the fishing world in regards to tackle and tactics. Some of his well known creations are:
RAD Cast Outdoors Larry Dahlberg
[00:00:00] Patrick Edwards: Welcome to another episode of RAD Cast outdoors. I'm Patrick Edwards and I'm David Merrill. And we're here today with another fun episode. And this has been a dream of mine since David and I started this podcast about a year ago. Probably some of you know that when you do podcasting or. Have any kind of show, you have dream guests that you'd love to bring on.
And today I have one of those guests that is in the top two on my list. So really excited about today. I'm going to do my best to get him introduced. It's probably not going to be up to snuff, but I'm going to do my best. But our guest today, he really doesn't need an introduction. He's a well-known fishermen guide, TV hosts, Lewer designer, and big fish catcher,
David Merrill: big fish catcher.
Well, Patrick, that sounds
Patrick Edwards: like a guy we need to talk to him. Exactly. So during his television career, he traveled countless miles fished in 87 countries around the globe. During that time he fished all the major OSHA or all the oceans, all the major river systems he's known around the world. Best big fish angler of all [00:01:00] time.
And I would definitely agree with that statement during his fishing career, he's received a number of accolades and some of those are the IDFA hall of fame, which is huge freshwater fishing hall of fame. He's received IGF, a conservation award, and many, many others. One of the things that's also really cool about this guy is that he's developed a number of different innovations for the fishing industry that have shaped fishing.
As we know it today, uh, we know a guy
David Merrill: that's been doing that, haven't we?
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. And so Flashabou being one of the things. Um, my favorite top water lure of all time down the Whopper flopper, uh, the wide glide diver frog, clack and crawfish and Mr. Wiggly. So Larry Dalton. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much.
We're really excited to have you on. I remember being a little kid and I would flip on the television. We only had three channels, you know, back in the day. And I could flip on the TV on Saturdays and watch hunt for big fish with Larry Dahlberg and I will forever be grateful for the [00:02:00] inspiration that you gave me watching that show.
It was just incredible to watch. And then I wanted to say this on air because we have a listener and one of my really good friends, Seth Ewing, he lives up in Idaho. He wanted me to pass along that he's very thankful for the fly fishing video that you recorded. He had a VHS tape of it that you did within fishermen, and now he ties flies and is a really avid fly fisherman.
So he wanted me to thank you.
Larry Dahlberg: That's very tangible. I'm happier. That was a positive input.
David Merrill: Um, a little bit of a closet fishermen. Patrick is no by no means closet he's full-blown. But my dad took me to Alaska when I was a early teenager and we spent from January till June tying flies and Flashabou was in.
A big majority of those flies, we tied for salmon and you take a 12 year old boy and put them in a fly tying bench and say, Hey, we're going to go to Alaska and fish with these flies you tied. So I appreciate it.
Larry Dahlberg: Alright, cool. Well, there's a kind of an [00:03:00] organic connection when you build what it is, you catch money.
Patrick Edwards: It makes a big difference and yeah. And, and like I said, the Whopper flopper is just my favorite all time, top water lure. When I talked to you a little bit about it the other day, it's just incredible lure designs, but I really want to kind of dive into what got you started because I mean, you've, you've been doing this a long time and I think it's always fun to share stories.
You know, some of the best things that you can do our share of people's stories and talk about their background and where, where they got their start. And I've, I've read quite a bit online on this, but I'd love for you to tell everybody just kind of how you got started fishing, where you grew up and, and how you really got into it.
Yeah. I
Larry Dahlberg: grew up in a little town of population, 931 for county, Wisconsin. It was the biggest town in the county towns are maybe 20 miles apart, Canada, pretty much everybody hunted and fished and so on as a means of finding something to eat. Hannah, anyhow, I guess after world war II, when my dad came home from the [00:04:00] war he got together, Uncle of mine on my mom's side.
And others Tonko had been recruited as a, kind of a camp buoyant guide for a fly fishing camp. And he knew the river. Cause my grandpa was a woods animal that I fished with worms and mostly targeted sturgeon. He had like 10 kids. And anyway, my dad got into fishing walleyes and small ma doing fly fishing, a lot of fun and tied flies and so on.
And, um, I guess by the time I was about, I was four, when he first took me, uh, fly fishing for sunfish in the springtime. And I scanned in the water up to my waist and he had converted an old ice fishing stick. Uh, it was too long to be an ice patients to a fly rod. Also took, I remembered my first picture.
I remember was ice fishing. I dropped her barber, you know, and a bobber down. It was orange Bowers. We're making it in the basement. He'd make them out of balsa wood and then weight them. So they were like almost neutrally Bryant. And then I set this rubber binder kind of [00:05:00] off to the side. So they'd just be barely tipped and self-efficient bit they'd maybe tip down and it might even tip off anyway, the carpet stuff in the pace on it, or my first session going down, it pulled it up.
I was very excited and my dad was hollering. And his crop, he came up and I had been putting a line on top of the stove where the, you know, that's how you heat up the ice fishing. And so I ruined all the line cause it's going to burn up in the stove, but I still remember that croppy smell. He came from a little kid.
I was just hooked and he moment I had, I finished.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. That's awesome. I can totally relate. I think a lot of us started either on little trout and streams or sunfish or perch or something
David Merrill: like that. So Larry, my, it wasn't my first fish, but I can remember my first solo fishing trip. Old enough to ride a bicycle.
And we had, uh, a canal, maybe two houses away from our house and the neighbor. I was yeah, five, five or six years old, rode my bike with a head, got a cane fishing pole, you know, no real just [00:06:00] line. It had one eye on the end of it. And the line was tied around the handle. I went and caught a, a bluegill. And the funny part of the story is I was so proud of this blue bluegill.
I got a Mason jar out of the kitchen. I put the blue Gill in the Mason jar, and then I put it on a shelf in my room. My mom found out about two weeks later. It was not pleased.
Larry Dahlberg: Yeah. Tell my uncle that's just how he did it.
David Merrill: Well, it would have made good
Larry Dahlberg: up. Yeah, they blow up. Sometimes he had them blow up on time in the kitchen.
He got in trouble. That's a different story as a kid, you know, getting back to that. That's interesting. I lived one block. From a small river that ran through town. They had a little dam on the overshot tomato reservoir. Before I could go with my dad who pitched on a river, I had to be able to catch it.
And it's full of your scale. Casper. Remember the non-free pool, kind of a mid price, low [00:07:00] price stuff, Luger 54 pound line rubber Lewer with no hooks on it. And before I was allowed to go with him on that river, I had to be able to cast it under the swing set into a box eight out of 10 times overhand. And I would practice that in the backyard and he'd come home and take out back lashes at lunchtime.
And then as I was the same age, as you would ride my bike down and in the morning, As the sun was coming up and I had fish for pike. I had a handful of balloons, not real daredevils. We couldn't afford the expensive ones and I would cast a full pike and I remember catching a great big one. Like a great big one, like 34 inch ones.
Yeah, and I couldn't get her on my bike with a Nat tackled and the fishing rod and all that. And I was trying to, you know, ride it home and I'm pushing it up. And the neighbor came and saw this big fish and picked me up and gave me a ride home, the old guy named Fred. And he went down there with me cause it was like, holy cow, where'd you catch that thing.
He showed me how to use it. The yellow river. We went up above [00:08:00] where any boats pass the fork sticks and past the end of the path through the, some of the weeds. And we went up and fished a couple of corners that I had not finished. And, um, it kind of opened my eyes that, but anyway, by the time I was at eight, that summer I could hit that box eight out of 10 times.
And then my mom stepped in, said, Hey, you got to take in the product. And that's when I learned how to roll. I would say the metal seat popped up in his cushions. I could barely see over it. My dad's pulling the right door and push him. Okay, good. Hold on both. And he would cast and then I'd get the fish when we put the anchor down on a real good spot.
So yeah, we did that. We fish every single night after work. Uh, the, we had a Grumman sport boat. It was on the top of the car station, wagon 59 board, most of the time. And when I was 11, some guy died. That was a guide for a private fly official camp that had been around forever, uh, on the river. And they asked my dad I'll help emergency Charlie died.
Pillsbury's coming. He knows [00:09:00] where the Basser and he used to let me go. I could, he'd let them go for two, three days camping when I was at age and I'd go climbing trees and, you know, looking down in the water and catching frogs and throwing them. Doing stuff, you know, like a kid would do. So I had a, really, a lot of time on the water.
So I get hired for this day for Mr. Pillsbury and how we cocked it out. I knew where a lot of them live cast right there when I'm going to buy any. And he thought I was still behind. Cause the other guy, this wall lights, they don't pitch the ass. No, they were guides, but you don't like for the sport. And so it was, I got a full-time job and did it for a total of over 20 years.
I did all through high school and college and my wife and I ran the camper going to school.
Patrick Edwards: So you mentioned, yeah. You mentioned casting into the swing or under the swing set and putting it in a box. So that explains when I, whenever I watch your show, I'm just amazed at [00:10:00] how awesome you are at casting lures.
I mean, you put it right where it needs to be, and it looks like every single time. So that explains it. You started at a really young age learning how to drop it right in there
Larry Dahlberg: like this, you know, there's certain, it seems kind of cold, but in any of our endeavors, we have sports, right? Some are organic.
Like fishing is most of the time and some are sort of a synthetic. It could be hitting a golf ball, throwing a baseball and fishing part of it might be casting, but you can say the mechanics of it being able to do what it is. Get done. You've got it in your mind. Can I make it go there? And, uh, it applies to both control.
It applies to, you know, controlling, controlling your lure. Uh, mechanics is huge, huge, huge, huge part of, uh, I think any, almost any of our activities. If you're a hunter, it's about, you know, getting them behind the shoulders every single time. And then you've got other elements, Egypt, the way I look at [00:11:00] it yet, Canada, which you can control and practice.
You've got strategy, which is about where do I do this? And how is all the system working and is where's my likelihood, the highest. And they have tactics that you combine with the strategy I'm in this kind of a spot. What are the tactical options I have at hand? And then can I ask the cute, the mechanics then you've rubbed the silver off a lottery card, finding her fishing.
I think it's pretty much the same.
David Merrill: I was lucky enough to grow up in the Pacific Northwest. And my dad was a avid steelhead fishermen growing up in. In middle school and high school, we spent a lot of afternoons evenings in the drift boat on the water. And I learned to row, you know, I was 10, 11 years old when he, when I was running the boat myself, the whole, the whole drift.
So dad could be efficient steel.
Larry Dahlberg: Exactly. That's an interesting, it's really an interesting creature. If you grew up this, you know, those are interesting animals, a couple of different reasons, you know, you've got, uh, a riverine system. And in a situation of her speaking with almost any other [00:12:00] species of fish, you've got to care.
And that is based on the amount of before. And as the season changes, you know, things shift around, but you have this finite amount of character feel efficient. These crazy creatures come flying in and other not designed or thinking about eating. They come in in higher numbers in terms of their number of fish per square inch in the, in the water than any native fish would be yet they're reluctant to buy, except in some cases where they could see like sharp.
I have a friend that did a study on the Northern Umpqua river and because fish that river. Okay. And that's pretty tough, you know, a lot of deeper water and. Yeah,
David Merrill: it's got a lot of drops, big rocks, a little more water folly. Yeah.
Larry Dahlberg: But anyway, I did a sample of stomach contents analysis on a hundred and some steelhead and like 101 of them had nothing in it and the a hundred seconds in a water.
[00:13:00] No, no. We're one of those orange crates. If you ever first, those bright orange crayfish put those in front of a Steeler, they squirt them up like a little kitty Franco Americans.
David Merrill: Yeah. I've noticed there's a common thread, whether you're into big game or even photography or fishing there's guys with their craft that have really honed it and fine tuned it to the point where they're very successful. And what would you think would lead? I mean, you, you kind of gave us three tips of where to work in those regions, but what helps a guy all the way around become, you know, that pinnacle fishermen,
Larry Dahlberg: probably something my great grandpa told me, and that is believe nothing of what you hear.
David Merrill: And I think the old timers, you know, I think about the old time dot counters that spent time in their garage with basswood whittling duck, decoys, right hand, painting them to go out and harvest ducks. And now we get to go to a big box store and buy some of the most [00:14:00] beautiful, deep duck decoys that, I mean, when they're on the water, they sit there and swim and look realistic.
I've stocked up on other people's decoys before thinking
Larry Dahlberg: whack and open their mouth.
David Merrill: It's crazy though. But I mean the same thing has happened in the fishing lure industry for sure of from I'm sure you've seen it a lot more than I have in my lifetime from going from just a simple metal spinner or, you know, worms to what we have now.
Well,
Larry Dahlberg: good. That went a long ways. What you just said, because there's a whole bunch of different contrivances that I could substitute for a map spinner and have exactly the of success that I would have with it based on how I run in the water column. How fast based, how fast. Got it. Got it pretty difficult to beat the war properly.
Patrick Edwards: That is true. I remember when I was a little kid, you talked about catching sunfish and using a worm. That [00:15:00] was, I was a barber and worm kid when I first started and there's this little lake here, close to where we live and it's got large mouth bass and yellow perch. And now it has blue Gill and tiger Muskie, which is vastly improved the fishing there, but, and it'll remain a named by the way.
And, uh, anyway, when I was little, I would wait out, you know, up to my armpits just about, and we would throw. A bobber and a worm. And there were, there were guys fishing plastics and in doing their thing. And what I found was that, that Barbara in that worm was actually, I had a higher catch rate than a lot of those guys in a plastic worm did.
Yeah. I think part of it was, you know, placement of where I, where I put it, I was looking for those, you know, weed edges in different places, beds where the bass were. But I think also it's just that you can't beat natural sometimes. I mean, it's just, yeah,
Larry Dahlberg: honestly, the fact of the matter, [00:16:00] if you can present it properly, you can. Beat natural. It can't be beat. I tried, um, uh, there are times where you have to modify how you present it to get the most out of it. That is very common, but it is very, very, very, very hard. And the other reason is that the natural bait, when it is.
And you have to break it into P uh, imagine a Ben, you know what a Venn diagram is retake a circle, and then you make another circle and it overlaps one circle is first at each other. And the other circle is fish that he insects and things that can't swim away quickly. And. Times when. Okay. And we let's take trial for example, most of the time they're on that side, that he insects and then a big brown will get bullet point where he shifts over and he might eat other fish more often than eats insects and most to become crazily available.
On the other hand, we could take a lake [00:17:00] trout that often might eat other fish that weigh four pounds for dinner. If, uh, insects become widely enough available, I've seen 40 pounders cruising on the surface, just eating insects, like a whale, would he krill? And so very often there are two, 100. Can you beat degree preggers when it comes to fish that are focusing on one of these things or another, when it comes to fish that are eating insects, um, very often it requires getting that food form in front of it into a, what I would call a zone of awareness.
And it might only be a cubic order to put three and it has to enter it in a drag free grip. And then as it gets close, it might have to go push Quitch just a couple of microseconds and then go dead. God tapped that Fisher on the shoulder. You'll see as gills flair. The thing goes in, uh, probably Cuba's face four inches square on a trout and it goes in and then you'll see as gears for four, again, organic, it goes [00:18:00] out.
And if he didn't get a strong by it, you could do it again. And you might make that same mistake a couple of times in a row. When you get fish on the other side of the diagram, oftentimes what it takes when they're in a negative slash neutral sort of mood is for that live bait to react to the fact they're there.
So it's going along like a lure goes along with kind of a steady mechanical action, a live bait. If it's presented properly, set up properly, sees a predator that goes over.
And that random non mechanical action relax, uh, wracking the predator is some of the most potent medicine. That's kind of what the world of the two are. And you can, there are ways to sort of interesting to watch when it's really cold. He might be able to walk to the farm this afternoon and do that drill a hole, drops up and down.
Okay. Put up metal on it and, uh, you know, hook it up. So you're not killing it. Maybe just a [00:19:00] little bit in the dorsal fin and watch and watch a fish go after it and try to swim away and get in a big circle and take a weight and put it 36 inches above it. And now he can only spend in the 36 inch circle and you put it down.
Now he can only spend in an 18 inch circle having a play. We'll see, there are times when reducing the circle size makes the fish bike. There are times when increase.
Patrick Edwards: That's interesting. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up. Cause there's one of the things I've learned. I pursue walleyes a lot and there are times when, I mean, you, you throw out and I, I like to work suspending.
Uh, crank bait. Some people call them jerk baits. I don't necessarily call them jerkbaits, but you know, like a suspending crankbait like a app or a, a rogue or something like that. And I'll throw it out. And some, some nights when I'm fishing, they want it just ripped through the water. I mean, just really hard jerks and they'll come up and they'll smack it.
And other [00:20:00] times that won't catch a fish, sometimes they want to really? Yeah.
Larry Dahlberg: Slow or you can't even make it
Patrick Edwards: slow retrieve. Sometimes they want it where you do kind of a medium retrieve and then just stop it and let it suspend. And it's just crazy how different day-to-day is. Cause I, a couple of weeks ago, one night and that night that I showed you that picture of it with my kids, those fish just wanted a slow, just painfully slow.
I hate reeling in that slow, but anyway, really slow retrieve. And my, my youngest daughter, she caught a 28 inch while I on this super slow retrieve with this extra app, which usually when I use an extra app, I'm ripping that thing through the watery, but that's what they wanted that day. And it's just crazy how they're just different from night to night.
Cause the next night that I went, which was only a couple of days later, they wanted it ripped through the water. So it's just insane how different fish are day to day on different things. Or
Larry Dahlberg: you're fishing in places
Patrick Edwards: where there's any current. Yeah. So it's, it's like a, kind of like an inlet system where the waters, you know, it's moving, but it's not moving [00:21:00] really fast.
Yeah. You'll
Larry Dahlberg: find that the angle that you pick and the current is huge, the distance you cast is huge and the place where you allow it to turn the corner is maybe even the
Patrick Edwards: hugest. Yeah. So one of the things I noticed was you understand what I'm talking about?
Larry Dahlberg: Angle you're casting the current angle. That is absolutely.
Oh, absolutely.
Patrick Edwards: Your creation this earlier this year, I found that. So I was fishing pike in a undisclosed, a river system. And if I was casting upstream and reeling it down with the current, for whatever reason, that day they weren't hitting it. And I, and I was like, okay, that's different. So then I cast downstream, which seems totally weird to a lot of us who fish trout for a lot of times, you know, fly fish and I cast it downstream and I started ripping it upstream.
And boy, you talk about turning on a pike. It was, it was awesome. I have this one pike. He just exploded on this thing, but yeah, it does. And day to day, it can make a huge [00:22:00] difference. So in a year, um, tell me just forever he say fishing, uh, a river system, something like that. Cause you've fished so many of them and you're fishing lures.
What, what are some things to consider when you're, when you're looking at a piece of river you've never fished before
Larry Dahlberg: I break it right back down to strategy, tactics, mechanics, first of all, what's my strategy going to be? I just got here. How much, like, how much of this is navigable? If I go over the border, will they shoot it?
So you decide how much, what is my range? What is my reasonable range? And you know, how many days? And so I would do his run as far as I could run up and down. And I would establish where the, uh, if there are any semi barriers, natural barriers, moreover, what I've been looking for is relative changes in vertical drop and sections of river, where the speed varies because of those changes in vertical drop.
And [00:23:00] then I would be just like in a lake looking for where the main basins are, where the stretches are. They have a highest carrying, and then in my mind I would rate them. Yes, a, B, C, D kind of spot. And then, um, after I've run them like that, I have some idea of the best way to begin approaching them. And I would always work them inside out or shallow to deep in most cases, unless I got something spotted.
That's real obvious. Yeah.
David Merrill: Well, I want to tell you about, uh, I got to go fish. The, uh, we, we went to Africa Namibia in 2015, my wife and I did we, we went on safari, but I, uh, added the fishing trip. Just tiger Fisher. A cool fish. If you haven't don't know what they are. I know, you know what they are, but for our listeners go Google tiger fish and look them up
Patrick Edwards: the best grill on a fish I've ever seen is on a tiger fish, man, that has some teeth.
David Merrill: Unfortunately, I don't have a picture with a tiger fish, but I had one on and I lost that fish. And so the one that got [00:24:00] away, I mean, I'm, there's this fire to, I'm not, I'm not a huge fisherman. I'm, I'm a big game. Hunter, Patrick knows this, but that tiger fish that got away. I want to go back and fish that river and catch one.
Larry Dahlberg: Well, river Sam, easier
David Merrill: on the Zambezi. I can't remember the name of the outfit we went with. We went guided in a pontoon boat. We spent the day
Larry Dahlberg: we were
David Merrill: headed. We were headed to Victoria falls. And we stopped over at one of the camps there, right on the main
Larry Dahlberg: road. I know dad. Yeah. Yeah. They're amazing animals.
They're really bad, good carpet. And I've had some of them that have, when I first went there, they told me he couldn't catch them on Lewers. You couldn't do this. You couldn't do that. And we figured it out relatively quickly. I've gotten him on snap, Jamie know, 5, 5, 5, 6 banners, like a use for a king salmon.
Catch them upstream, let them, they could just snap them snaps. No, not even let the spinner, but anyway, I had some jump. I'm not kidding you. They jumped in front of [00:25:00] my boat. And then all of a sudden there's one jumping behind the boat. And I'm thinking that can't be the same fish got there too quick. And when we ran in full motion, you'd see a cavitation trail of bubbles from its tail, from where I happened to work.
Yeah. They could bite your finger off your snippet like that. That's what they do. They're designed to eat fish that are up to two thirds. They're on site. What happens is MBZ jumps up and down like crazy, you know, season some years, there's no flooring and the tiger fish, the ball to being able to stay ahead of the forage base.
So they come flying in and they'll take a bite out of something. Two thirds. The size of they are spin around and eat the rest of it. Really interesting. Why golden Dorado flies there.
David Merrill: You know, I've been talking to Patrick and I said, if we were going to go do a fishing trip. Yeah. Golden Dorado. And I think that's from watching some of your adventures down there.
So tell me more about golden Durado.
Larry Dahlberg: Um, you know, they're found primarily in the [00:26:00] plateau basin, which is the Jason south of Amazon base. They have a light cycle that run up and down these rivers and spawn and relatively fast water next to another creature, I think is called a co portal. And, um, they're born and these poor little other creatures get born side by side and they started eating in front of minutes.
Literally they're they're born and they run up and down these river systems they'll run up into marshes. They'll run up rapids on. Yeah. Very very aggressive fish, biting power. Uh, I have spoons. I put fish lake trout with it looked like you shot him with a 22 short word. has just come up like that.
Unbelievable. You looked at it. You would not, you would not believe me if you looked at it. These are, you know, 35 40 pounders. They get up to, to compete 70 and a couple of areas, Argentina, Bolivia, certain parts of Brazil. They're pretty well spread
David Merrill: out. As you were traveling the globe going on these fishing trips, are you gearing up and specifically [00:27:00] getting your lure set and your, your technical aspect set for one species and one fish?
Or do you kind of have a kit that just goes with you anywhere you go?
Patrick Edwards: Um,
Larry Dahlberg: I've usually got, sometimes it'll be like, I wonder what lives here, type trip in there. When I first started doing that, it was ridiculous, but more, you know, 90% of the time when I've done this, since I've had an idea of what I'm after and you know, the second time around, I'm more tuned in.
Third time around. Very, very, very great.
Patrick Edwards: I have another question on that you talk about, and I've heard you talk about this before, but I think it's good for our listeners to hear this as the different phases of fishermen goes through because, um, you kind of described the progression of, uh, of an angler throughout their time, if they're really serious about it.
So I don't know if you could talk about that a little bit, that it's just the phases that people go.
Larry Dahlberg: Well, I guess the first thing that I would say is I just want to get the fit. And then the second phase is I want to catch a limit. And then the third phase is I want to catch a big one. And [00:28:00] the fourth phase is I want to catch one how I want to catch one.
And then there's a, there's another phase. It's the phase I'm in. It's kind of interesting. Last few years. I just want to watch somebody else. And I'm happy to share one little one of my guests. And so what I do is just mostly drive the boats. I can ask right there. I really
David Merrill: do. I had the, uh, I said, I grew up chasing steelhead with the Pacific Northwest steel headers club.
So my dad was a member of the club and there was a few older guys in the club that had been there, done that. And I was a young pup in the club, you know, I just want to catch a steelhead. And then, then it turned into, I just want to catch a limit of steelhead. And then it was, oh, I just want to catch a really big steelhead.
And the guys that I was going with, they're on the other end of the spectrum of, Hey, I just want to see somebody. Yeah. catch a steelhead.
Patrick Edwards: So yeah, there's a, there's a local guy here that I'm really good friends with. And he, he's definitely in that phase where you're at he's about 78 years old [00:29:00] and his favorite thing bar, none hands down is to take kids, watch him catch a fish.
And he's got this, this older Silvan DV boat, put it in the reservoir and he'll take people out and put them on, you know, big rainbows, big walleyes. And he just, he gets tickled. He'll, he'll send me videos of these kids real and in these nice walleyes or a nice big rainbow trout. And it's just, I think that's just such a cool thing to think about that progression.
Cause I can see that in my own life where I wanted to catch a fish on that bobber and worm, and then it was like, oh, that was cool. Let's catch a limited EAs. Let's catch a really big one. And I've definitely changed over time. I'm probably more in that. I don't know. I enjoy the aspects of taking my kids.
I think that's really fun and seeing them, but man, I still love catching that.
Larry Dahlberg: Well, and we skipped over the catching on how I want to catch one. Right. You know, you're to the steelhead or you got for you couldn't use a fly or are you going to be, you know, leave off and do another dry fly. [00:30:00] And you know, that's a whole nother, a whole nother side of it.
And it's one, I question a little bit, you know, cause there's guys that say, here's what I'm going to do it. And they pick some way that is like one hand tied behind him and that's fine. And they say that's the best way, but they haven't tried any of the other. And that always kind of gets the guys, tried everything.
He wants to go do whatever he wants. No, that's fine. No, the purist with his nose in the air and separate press never taught me either.
David Merrill: I say I pretty much went through three or four of those stages for those stages on one fishing trip. And
Larry Dahlberg: on one trip
David Merrill: on one trip, we went, uh, we I'll even give the name of the river.
It's the select river in Oregon. It's a, it's a steelhead river primarily, but there's actually small mouth bass on that river. And we a drift floated at one day and starting in the morning, I just wanted to catch a fish. Right? Cause I had never been small mouth bass fishing on that river. I'd only gone steelhead.
Larry Dahlberg: Yeah. When you never know if we're even [00:31:00] going to get a,
David Merrill: so we, uh, yeah, that th the, the average, the average fishermen fish is 40 hours for every steelhead, just so people understand that the drive it's, it's many golden Dorado fishing, but we will well,
Larry Dahlberg: steel and steel head refers to the patient. Also a state of mind. That's very quick fishermen. I like that.
Patrick Edwards: I've never heard that before.
Larry Dahlberg: Yeah. Pretty obvious.
David Merrill: Well, we're, we're throwing jigs this particular day and we'd, we'd landed. We'd voted at least 60 small mouth. And I had brought my four-piece take down flight. And a mouse pattern I'd tied. And if anybody's ever tied a mouse pattern takes a lot of deer hair, spinning deer hair and shave it. It's a mess and it takes forever to tie one pattern.
It's not a, it's not a quick fly to Tai, but I I'd got bored of catching small mouth on a [00:32:00] plastic jig. You know what the jig head under the surface. So I started pulling that mouse pattern, you know, throwing it right against the bank and pulling it. And now my cash rate, wasn't nearly as high as when we're, you know, throwing plastic jigs.
But I got a couple small mouth to break the surface of the water and hammer that mouse pattern. Now that is something if you've never done that, that is a
Larry Dahlberg: lot. Absolutely. I was finished with my dad. One time I was in it. I had a summer I'd figured out this lure. It was a thing I could make big Zack back and forth off center board feet to each side, sort of go back and forth like eight feet and only come forward.
Maybe a foot. It had a liquid Merck. It had mercury inside of it. That was just shoot to the back, to get the balance right. To get it to zigzag. Then as it slowed down, stuff was forward and I caught every single musky we hit. Right called like 50. Some of them aren't the, sometime this summer and it's toward the end of the year.
I'm following his surface and like he had all summer [00:33:00] and then I cast this thing on the catcher and I said, dad, just cranking in quick, take my rod, throw this date out and text the damn thing. So you'll have fish. He just kept cranking and looked at me and said it won't break my lure in front of a bitch.
Patrick Edwards: For me, one of the things I really enjoy doing. And sometimes I probably don't catch as many fish as I do like to catch them on top water. David's the same way. There's just, there's something about watching that fish come blowing up out of the water or seeing that V that weight coming behind your lure.
It's like, holy crap. Holy crap. Here it comes. Right?
Larry Dahlberg: All of your senses. Think about it. You're holding it. Boom, boom, boom. It's tactile. You put a barber with it and, well, I thought the bobber go down, but it's not that exciting. Top water Lurie watching it and every single one of your senses isn't off. You can hear it.
See it, feel it.
[00:34:00] Yup.
Patrick Edwards: And one of the biggest mistakes I learned early on is when you see that fish blow up on your bait, you got to wait until you feel them before you set the hook. I, I pulled a few top waters out of tiger Muskie smiles, because I didn't wait long enough or actually chomped down on it. I could see him coming.
And I got so excited that I ran or out of there out of their mouth, you know? And, but yeah, top, water's just, it's the ultimate for me in adrenaline fishing. Uh, and I've watched you do it on so many shows for so many things. It's like
Larry Dahlberg: hunting, it's much more like hunting, right? Yep. You're saying you're sick.
All of a sudden here comes this teacher and that begin, and then you, and you know, it is a lot like that. And also there's something called, I call it puckering. Now there's an invisible string that goes from the top of your head and it goes right down your spine. And it goes all the way around here. And down into your, your reproductive organs.
And when you get real [00:35:00] excited, it gets tight. Your neck gets shorter. Closes up like it's called puckering. Like when a grout jumped up real quick and it's control the puck and use that to get your gun up and shoot you did it. Don't get dope. Same with a top water strike.
Patrick Edwards: I was growing up. We had a pucker factor on a scale of one to 10, I think.
Got it. You're talking about
Larry Dahlberg: your dad.
David Merrill: We pulled a lot of quick fish chasing steelhead when I was a kid, right?
Larry Dahlberg: Oh, that's super effective. Yeah. That's a territorial thing. It's super
David Merrill: effective. It's also super boring. Right? Well, one of my favorite things to do with that, because it's super effective fishing and you in Oregon on steelhead, it's one rod per fishermen.
So if there's two of us in the boat, we can have two plugs working either side of the boat and we can kind of work down through the holes and usually agitate the fish enough to get them to. But you don't get to see [00:36:00] it. You don't get to hold the rod, you just sit there and you're a passenger. So I would always have a fly rod, a spinning rod.
And I'd love to flow through a blue Fox over in a couple of little channels too. Yeah. Two of my favorite steelhead was one was a number three blue Fox come out of the deep water. And I could see my spinner 50 yards out there in front of me, you know, we're we had a gravel bar basically kind of between us, but it was two or three inches of water.
And then there was a seam right against the bank of like five foot deep water. I saw him coming from five feet away to strike that thing. Oh yeah. And the other one was, we were sitting anchored up, plugging into a hole and I got bored and I reeled mine in, I got my fly rod out and I just started throwing a wooly bugger, a number.
I don't remember a smaller wooly bugger just to catch a few rainbow trout that are in that same stream. I had a, uh, a medium-sized deal. I had come up with strike that wooly bugger on my four weight fly rod for trout. And it was, it was a 24 inch steel. It, it wasn't a big steelhead, but [00:37:00] it kicked my butt.
It was more
Patrick Edwards: fun. I wanted to ask you about your TV show, just kind of how you got into that. And it's, it's a show that's inspired thousands of people to, to fish and to travel and, and fish places they would have never, ever fished. So how did you, how did you get involved in the TV show side of fishing? I mean, you talked a little bit about how you got started in guiding, but how did you get into the TV show side?
Larry Dahlberg: Well, um, while I was working as a guy, I got a phone call from, uh, I think it was Spencer Petros. He's a guy that worked with a fishing fax magazine and he was filming with a roll with mark somewhere in Northern. And they'd been up here for a couple of weeks and they had not shot a foot of footage. They were actually trying to get steel that he did in the pool.
I think he had a bite at midnight or something. So they were really thinking that book. And at that time, um, how was the factory wrap I had gotten out of college actually was a major in English, creative, right? [00:38:00] And a minor in politics from the guys that guided where the kind of heavyweights that president of the three, I'm like three generations of Pillsbury that had a Minnesota mutual, the international head for general electric, a bunch of really, you know, that'd be white people.
And they wanted me to kind of like get into politics and law schools. So Vietnam and so on came along. I lost my best friend over there and I decided to go a different direction. And, uh, 3m had just purchased scientific anglers company, pilot company. Uh, there was a hiring freeze on him. Jimmy Carter was president.
So the guy said, well, you know, we want to hire you for sure, but maybe you should get, go get some retail experience. We can't hire, you know, so I wanted to work for retail store, took the owners fishing and, uh, they made me the buyer. We developed a very successful business there. And then, uh, one day I decided it wasn't for me, but I couldn't stand it living in the city.
So if we're going to sell this five fishing camp that had been out, [00:39:00] I called the guys had hit my own. I'd come back and run it. I would like to start a rep business. I said, okay, Keep it open wall, told a hundred, we'll do whatever. And so he did that. I got to start, so I was doing that and I get a call from fencer.
When the tape rolling efficiently. Is there anything going on? I go Muskie fishing. I haven't been for a week. The water's 50 degrees. It's exactly time. Yeah. So he came up. We, uh, that's that's about what? About 200 yards, but where I knew there was a Fisher, too, for sure can get loose. I dropped my anchor and got ready to roll camera mans with me said, Hey guys, come on over here.
This Castro over here, we'll get one teach is kind of like, it looks over here. And back when I was that age, I had like a really, well, my fuse is really hard to light. If he got it lit, it was pretty short. That would light my views because I just ran a whole bunch of water where there's no good options and white book place where [00:40:00] I know how to catch.
So I turned to Eddie and I said, Eddie, do you want to get a picture of, uh, you know, shoot a musty being caught. He said, what? Now he's been, got realized he'd been up here for two weeks. He hasn't taken out the camera and he's got a cooler that says Fred on it. F R E D. And I asked him what I'll take out.
Fred what's Fred f-ing. Electronic. Yeah, effing ridiculous electronic device. That was what he is named. This camera's one video camera and he gets it out and I hook on this. Then we just worked on a loader called the re fog that was wrapped rider. It was a variation of a zigzag bait and just, just, we just got it out, selling it.
And I kinda re frogging a cast and stuff. Screen angle, uh, lands and make three pumps of 44, 45 inch Muskie eats it. And we get on camera. And now these guys come over. [00:41:00] I had a boat up in there kind of excited about it and put it live while we do tell them where that fish was at the top of there's going to be one, maybe two more.
It should be right there, ranking just perfect for it, cast there. And they're throwing a bunch of stuff that I told him not to use that was there, moving away away with, with an Eddy, make a cast, to make a cast. We're going to downhill, uh, at the right speed. And I see a flash behind it and I brought my lure out of the water and there's one right there in front of the podcast.
Do what I said, you get them. And they looked at me and they did not be. They didn't believe. And so, you know, I told Patty to cam make the cast and tore her cats, this Facebook 15 feet in front of the boat. And it rolls up on the surface and I see it flash I'm hauling it rolling cast to my fish. By now he's put on the small refund that I had given him in the first place.
So now he's a believer Roland catches on quicker than the other guy did and roll and make the calf [00:42:00] crime. We've got a double is, is about three feet long and it gets off at the back end of the boat. And the one I've got is about my first son, we hang a board and take the first one that hook it on, whatever it was for special men was using because it's kind of a fake landing scene.
And then maybe say, we've got enough footage. And I've got 15 miles of river to fish and another 10 that I'm going to catch her. And I just want to go home. So we do, that was my first TV stuff. And then, uh, lender talked to those guys and he gave me a call and I come over and he come over and fish with me.
And we worked out a deal where I write for his magazine about fly fishing for warm water species. It's kind of an exclusive thing could write for other magazines. And then we did a couple TV pieces and then they offered me a job to actually produce the TV shows and do that stuff. You know, English background, the grade writing back.
It's pretty easy to put the story together. And I did that for several years and then a professional wildlife trail came along and became a pretty big focus what [00:43:00] they're doing. And I had a lot of curiosity about the rest of the world. Pretty much been through most of the species available, different types of.
Systems that we have, but anyway, I'm excited to leave the fishermen and go off in the hunt for big fish to see what the rest of the world was about and to explore some of the environments that I have not been able to experience. And then all of a sudden 20 years went by and, uh, 80 odd countries. And here I am at home, happy as can be.
Well, I like it here a lot. And like Dorothy and the wizard of Oz, nowhere at the end, would you Quicken or heal? There's no place
David Merrill: like home. So what was your, one of your most memorable TV episode trips species that, that just one that comes to mind? I'm sure they're all memorable, but what, what was your favorite one
Larry Dahlberg: memorable kind of in different places.
We had a trip in west Africa where I had never fished Marlin and I was really excited to go Marlin and we'd go over there. I worked out for like eight months before we went over there with us. 12 pounds, weight [00:44:00] cranking it with my right hand so I could keep reeling. And then, uh, I was just like, it was ridiculous.
And we went over there for six, seven days and caught a bunch of great big Marlin. And then they had a military revolution. We're going to leave him, sorry, the country's calls because the president's being held hostage by, you know, blah, blah. So we went back. Yeah. I caught a Marlin that was estimated that 1300 pounds on stand up.
That was just the most incredible flight you can. It's just ridiculous. It was like something out of it. And my camera man had been up a little bit too late the night before. Cause we thought we were leaving and everything and he missed almost all of it. I've got a few of them that got missed. We had had more than another one that had a peacock bass and he had to wait 35 pounds.
I had chase in a diver right at my feet. I located at the day before and I was out of the boat on a sandbar camera's right behind me. And this thing ate like 15 feet in front of me. And it was like the biggest peacock I've ever seen in my life. We double-clicked on the [00:45:00] camera and missed all of it. And then the thing ended up actually wearing off 60 test, hard on her teeth.
So I never used 60 days. Holy cow. Yeah,
David Merrill: I'm not into filming much, but I did. Uh, we had a wonderful day. I lived in Alaska and we did quite a bit of fishing on the Kenai river for a few years. And most of the time I lived there, king salmon was closed. You know, that fisheries for some reason, having struggling.
But one of the years we were up there, we had just a bumper crop, great year of Kings come in. And I took everybody I knew. And we, we filled that boat up for two days in a row, right at high tide and was just, just hammering the Kings. So finally it was my turn, got a king on one of the passengers and boat.
I had my cell phone too, and I hand the net to my wife and I mean, I've got a, it's a 45, 50 inch king, you know, in, in the 40 pound range, maybe a little bigger
Larry Dahlberg: it's three
David Merrill: quarters of the way in the net. All the wife had to do was lift. And she's [00:46:00] got the net upside down. You know how the net has a lip that
Patrick Edwards: kind of,
David Merrill: yeah.
Well, fish flops left the fish flops, right? The treble hook gets caught in the net and the fish flops back in the water and swims away. And I, I land in the bottom of the boat. There might've been a tier. We are still there. Yes. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: It's awesome. Every time you tell that story, I can just imagine the pain and the heartbreak
David Merrill: that's on film.
I haven't shared it much because it's hard for me to watch every time.
Larry Dahlberg: Uh, well, my, my memory of, with my wife, it was more of a hunting thing. And then she's faced with me in a lot of different places. There's been a number of humorous experiences, but she was getting those hand thrower, quite pigeon deals, you know, condom, and then you got it from him.
She was behind me and she was going to give that thing a throwing. Let me tell you it's the hardest I've ever been hit in my life. I went [00:47:00] flat on the ground. I was seeing stars and sweets and I was unconscious for probably 15 or 20 seconds. Did you have a
David Merrill: shotgun in your hand? Getting ready to shoot the pigeon?
Larry Dahlberg: Yeah.
David Merrill: Okay. So I have a question. Was it intentional or not intentional?
Larry Dahlberg: I have no idea. Or she wouldn't admit it. Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. So I always wanted to ask you this question. Like I said, I saw you at ICAST a number of years ago, and I always wanted to ask you this. So I have to ask those question of all the fish that you caught in salt water and in fresh water.
So two different categories. What was the hardest fighting fish you've ever tangled with in freshwater and saltwater
Larry Dahlberg: and fresh water? No question. Uh, we were in sir, the river. We were called the [00:48:00] corn time borders, sir. Uh, Ghana and, uh, the certainly fish, all these little creeks and so on. It says picture river, it Caesar what's about this river below the big guy waterfall and see what's, there should be big cat.
So we run up there 250 miles. It was like two and a half days running. You guys never been up there. And we host the catheters that was an eight and a half feet long that a three of us couldn't lift it. And I remember lifting all of a sudden my arm disappeared and I went, my hand, went up into the actual bug hole all the way up to my elbow.
It was the grossest thing. Uh, that's pressure. And I had a, I was running a Torsa for real with, uh, I didn't have a standup rate cause I was afraid to use it there. Cause if you get pulled out, it would be your dead. It's real, 120 feet. Some of these pools that's real fast. And I had 130 pound line on, I had the drags up so tight that even not even, you couldn't pull line off the reel and I'm pulling on this thing and there's blind flip and I'm thinking something's wrong with a [00:49:00] reel.
And it's fun. A boat was 26 feet long. It's fun and right around and current in those started heading upstream. And the thing almost killed me, my heart rate. I thought I was going to die and I've never had that happen before where it's like, man, I don't want another one right away. Anyhow. Yeah, that was, that was a hardest freshwater plate is called out loud.
It's the largest CA it's large enough. If I took the fresh water at this records, this fish would be large enough to eat the world record channel catfish and Flathead it in one meal. And I imagine that, I mean, it's so big as an oil barrel, maybe we'll pick her and eight and a half feet long. It wasn't like those European cats, you know, that are all tail just right there.
Just peace, just amazing creatures. And as far as the salt water, for sure, these 1300 pound Marlin, I popped her hernia played under the boat and the boat kind of bumped a little. I felt this kind of a [00:50:00] funny deal. It's a little black stuff. Still have a little higher, oh man. Running, you know, 60 pounds of drag, straight off the meal.
Yeah,
Patrick Edwards: I was, I was wondering about that because I've seen you catch the bluefin and few other things on your show. And so I was curious what was the hardest fighting fish? Cause every fishermen always wants to catch that and really hard fighting big fish. So I was curious what you put in that, in your top.
So now,
Larry Dahlberg: cause you know, a lot of them say heartbeat in the ones. I think about it, the painful ones, you know, there's others where you have to run them round with them, you know? And they're trying to go here and go there. Some fish quite well. Like for example, uh, let's say a bath. I had a dog in the house in most cases and I went chasing stick, he'd go run into a corner going or need something.
Right then there's fish steelhead. It's more like a lot of bird lotion in your house. It's tenant's racket.
[00:51:00] So, you know, there's different, different, uh,
David Merrill: sides to deal most always come out of the water two times. Yeah. King salmon, bottom of the river and downstream. They're going to find the deepest hole and they're going to yep. So
Larry Dahlberg: a lot, depends on how hard you pull in the first place. That's always fun. There's a lot of fish around there.
Just seeing what they do when you pull really, really. I mean, like breathing really hard and sometimes it really
David Merrill: changes sometimes dry fly efficient. I get so excited set in the hook. I ripped the whole fish right out the water. Yeah. Some
Patrick Edwards: of these small trout here in Wyoming, just like, oh, there they go.
Larry Dahlberg: So
Patrick Edwards: another thing I wanted to talk about, if you have a minute, um, I, I don't know. This is, this has always been something I've enjoyed from your show, uh, your YouTube channel, your website, you, you do a lot [00:52:00] of lure making and design. And so what really got you into tinkering around and making all of these innovations?
Uh, what, what was it that spurred that
Larry Dahlberg: along? I'll probably just, my dad always made everywhere. I grew up, everybody made their own stuff, made her own boats and it was a little kid. I would take a little Denzel. And the lips, he would just do that. So I just instinctively, I always drink from the monkeys round with stuff, and then I got the type flies, you know, the little fun fish wise.
I mentioned by fishing for sunfish earlier, a little piece of Shaneal and a little bit of red Maribou and that's about it. And may flies with my dad getting back to, you know, goes back to that again, uh, when I was 5, 6, 7 years old. And so, you know, and then especially fishing muskies are, these muskies are really, has you guys, maybe they're all kind of strange creatures.
They get smart fast and are doing just little variations things, uh, oftentimes, uh, make the difference [00:53:00] between catching them and not. So I guess all my fishing career, I always, uh, monkeyed around with, uh,
Patrick Edwards: Yeah, and you've, you've made a number of different awesome lures. And I want you to talk a little bit about Mr.
Wigley. I mentioned that earlier, and a lot of people don't understand what that is, but it's just kind of explain what Mr Wigley is and, and kind of what you use it for and, and kind of how it,
Larry Dahlberg: um, just talking about random mechanical action before and, uh, opposed to mechanical action or Wigley is, is a piece of rubber that is given stiffness and it's stiff enough or soft enough so that if you crank it really fast, Yep.
Flops like a, kinda like a flag at the back end of it. But it's stiffen up as it's banding when it gets fully bad, that stores energy. So if you stop it just dead, it goes kind of zooms off side and just kind of hangs there. [00:54:00] You can put the edge, Twitch it sideways, you bands a little bit and give it slack and it kind of jumps around.
So it has this really insane non mechanical action that you can. If you've got a fish coming after and you could read the fish, you can really trigger them in and a half long ways doesn't pull hard. Would real stripers must be anything that other fish actually in a single hook in it slide. So the fish gets hooked in the line.
He's a, he's really a good one.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. I, the first time I saw you use that you were fishing in Tennessee and you were down below some dam and you were throwing it. And I was just sitting there, sir. Seriously, my mouth was gaping open as you're catching these stripers. I was just like, just be there right
Larry Dahlberg: now.
Well, what was weird? We had a guy we'd fish and I had some of them with, and then we were going to fish [00:55:00] stripers, and we had a guy that we were with. It went all his trouble, went to, I had somebody at that drive two hours over the hill to get a bunch of live rainbow trout. So we'd catch stripers for sure.
And we got below the dam, put out these trout, we weren't catching anything. And, uh, I put on a wiggly and just started firing out it out into the fast water and started catching, whatever crazy, crazy way to kick anything on the trout. A couple of them kind of got rushed away. No trucks swam fast away from something, but none of them ever got there.
Fine. We just cranked them in. But yeah, that was really fun. Had the same thing happened out in our Cape Cod official Patrick's stripers, and same thing happened. We got into schools. I was mentored by, they quit buying to put our way great fired out there, burn it, stop it, burn it. Ridiculous.
Patrick Edwards: That's awesome.
So,
David Merrill: Larry, I, uh, I tell Patrick this all the time, but the reason I go to Alaska almost every year is just for the [00:56:00] halibut. Yeah.
Larry Dahlberg: They're so good. And they'll fall. They'll pull, they'll give you.
David Merrill: Oh, and when you're, when you're fishing for halibut, you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a fun fishery, right? It's, it's basically cranking up a battery from the, from the bottom.
But every once in a while, you'll get a battery that strips all the line and goes back down to the bottom again. Then you have fun. So my question for you, Larry, is, you know, if, if I had to pick one fish to eat, it would be halibut. If I had to pick one fish to just go chase and catch, I really love catching those, those king salmon.
There, you tie into one of those and you you've done something. They, they pull back. So what's your favorite fish to catch? And what's your favorite fish to eat? I
Larry Dahlberg: think I'd have to say the catch would have to be tough because they use every single environment. You can catch them on flies. You can catch them on lowers.
You can catch them on live. Bates can catch them on everything. And so, yeah, probably Tarpon. And if I got to pick the environment, they'd be in, [00:57:00] it'd be some sort of an estuary thing as far as eating well, I'll tell you, I really, really like tuna, fresh tuna, a lot of white meat fish. It'd be, it'd be kind of a toss up between Nile perch, Snoke and halibut, somewhat similar.
That's kind of a hard question and to make my mouth water
Patrick Edwards: talking about that. But, um, I, I took a trip to Hawaii once and we, we got into the Yellowfin and the mahi mahi. It was kind of funny. We had a house rented, we were there for a wedding and of course I had to go fishing. Cause that's what I do everywhere I go.
But there was a grill at this house. So we brought back the mahi mahi and uh, grilled that and we put it on a plate and we kind of set it off to the side of the grill. And then we start grilling Yellowfin, tuna steaks that were about an inch thick. Next thing I know, I turned to the left and almost all the Mahima.
And, and what had happened is all the, all the women in the house, it came over and they were like, man, that [00:58:00] smells really good. And they ate almost all of our mahi mahi. I was so bummed. I got a little bit, but I think of all the fresh or the saltwater fish I've ever caught, uh, that my humor, he was really, really good on the grill.
And then my wife and I went to Costa Rica and we caught some little or tuna. They called them black and white tuna. And man, those were really, really good too. And I, David and I both liked to eat the hell halibut. That's a, especially those halibut cheeks. Those are pretty darn
Larry Dahlberg: yes. I had a lot of catching those things. I made some, uh, you know, the Beatles center.
Patrick Edwards: Yes. Yes. It's like a little spinner bait. I
Larry Dahlberg: took some, uh, that were 16, 24, 32. And then I used a wire like biggest coat hanger, wire only. And made these great big Beatles spans and put a soft plastics on them and use them for halibut [00:59:00] and just washed them really.
It's all effective. You can't even believe all affected.
Patrick Edwards: It's like more fun than just dropping down. Uh, you know, oh, it's way more fun. You
can
Larry Dahlberg: feel it. And when people are quitting, when the current is picking back up or flip drifting and find the little knob to stop Beeler on there, those Calvin we're catching it, catching prime.
Really a lot of us are really, really find also some real big link. So
David Merrill: right around some of those pinnacles in when the water has been a little clearer, I've seen as many as 10 or 12 chickens following one lure.
Larry Dahlberg: Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You reel it up and then drop it down and it goes, thanks. And all the night spinner, you know how they think, and it look real good and real positive hookups, the plastic on the back and how maybe a little strip of meat to some kinds of.
David Merrill: Well, the most interesting things we're, you know, running a bigger plastic [01:00:00] jig, Gerkin, you know, jig and sea bass and, and halibut and lingcod. And I, I hooked into about a 30 inch lean cotton. I mean, the jig was in his mouth, but he had got a half hitch around the middle of him on the way up. I don't know how that happened.
Right. You fight. And then whatever was interesting where we're on about a 30, 30 foot boat out there in the ocean. And I was off the front and I'm reeling up this 30 inch, you know, link Cod. And it was fighting really funny because he was last suit. I'm not joking, Patrick,
Larry Dahlberg: something's going to eat it.
Something's going to eat that
David Merrill: about eight feet under the water here comes another main. Mine was 30th link card. Yes. Another link card. 60 inch lingcod swam up and bit. I mean, swallowed the whole head of this one. I shook him a lot, came out. He couldn't get him, but he swam one. I mean, it was a 30 edge link, right.
Patrick Edwards: It's a nice fish. He's bait. He was baking.
David Merrill: I
Larry Dahlberg: should have done.
[01:01:00] Patrick Edwards: So, um, one of the other things that I really want to pick your brain about, because this was kind of the crux of the show is that David and I are very passionate about the future of fishing and hunting. You know, you've been doing it ever since. Four years old, just, just a little guy. What advice would you give to our listeners about being a good fishing and hunting mentor and teacher, and what are some tips and suggestions that you would pass along?
I think
Larry Dahlberg: probably it's, it's kind of sick. Um, consistency would be the word that comes to my mind. And that means official often, as you can imagine, I think myself as a little kid, if I only had gotten the fish on the weekends, it would have killed me. That's only like eight days a month. That's gotta be torture.
So, you know, consistency, I think as often as you can, and then rather than jumping around, where are they bite? They bite and find a place that you can make your own. That's [01:02:00] maybe off. Of where other people are and learn it. And you can take that anywhere else you go. Right.
Patrick Edwards: That's good advice. I, I try to get my kids out as much as I can.
And, and David does as well with the hunting. And one thing I've noticed about my kids is that they love to go one, they look forward to it. They're always interested in trying something new. Like I started them off with bait fishing because it was, you know, it just made sense. They weren't really able at the beginning to cast and do that.
But now
Larry Dahlberg: that they're getting. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: Now that they're getting bigger. Oh, and I gotta tell you about catching nightcrawlers. They love that too, but, um, they, uh, like my oldest daughter, she's 11 and she caught a 26 inch walleye the other day. And just, it was so cool to watch.
Cause I kind of see her silhouette as, as the sun starting to come up on we're efficient early in the morning. She's, she's standing over on a Rocky point or, or wherever she's at and she's casting and she's working this [01:03:00] bait and I'm just like, man, that is so cool. That's my kid. And she's been casting. Um, she, her first fishing rod was a Mickey mouse fishing rod with a little plastic fish and she would go into our basement and she would just, you know, with that little spin cast, she would just cast in our basement and to see her grow and change is just such a cool thing.
Um, and. So you talked about catching bait. I want to, one of our favorite activities in the summer is the water, the water, the yard, and the garden. Take the kids out with flashlights and headlamps.
Larry Dahlberg: Amen.
Patrick Edwards: So fun. Well, another thing David wanted to touch on. And so I have note here to talk about it as he's, he's big into knots and, and, and the importance of knots. And I think a lot of fishermen sometimes forget that there are a lot of different kinds of knots that you should probably use in different situations.
So can you talk a little bit about the importance of knots and fishing? Well, you know,
[01:04:00] Larry Dahlberg: obviously you don't want your line to break and you need to tie it maximizes, whatever the wine, there are so many fishing knots, it's a pretty confusing, but there's a family of not that, uh, known as a uni and a uni, not really is the same.
You can also look up nail that. Well, we used to tie that fly leader onto a fly line. That's the, probably the most reliable family of not, it's not personal is going to simplify their life. That would be the family to learn because it can be used to join two lines together to use, to make a loop. And, uh, it consistently tests out higher than any of the other knots that I've tested at my own station.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah, that was good. I remember when I was a kid, I didn't really know any knots and boy I had lost. Lost fish because I, I didn't know how to tie a proper knot. And then I had some people showing me and I was like, oh, well, that makes a lot more sense
David Merrill: if you can't tie knots, Patrick, tie lots.
[01:05:00] Patrick Edwards: Sometimes that works sometimes not, but no, I, I think that's great and I, I really appreciate your insight there.
And again, Larry, it's been wonderful having you on the show. I have, uh, just a lot of respect for everything you've done and I'm really grateful for inspiring, you know, you've inspired me and a number of my friends that grew up watching your show. And, and, uh, so I just want to thank you on behalf of everybody that I know that it's going to listen to this, uh, for everything.
So thank you
David Merrill: so much. And I'll send you a picture of a golden Dorado next summer. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: So David and I are hoping when this COVID stuff gets under, we can, we can go catch the golden Dorado. So when we get one, we'll have to send you a picture.
Larry Dahlberg: I'd do that for sure. Where it would a video and make sure the camera's running
Patrick Edwards: country, would you say would be the best one to go pursue,
Larry Dahlberg: um, Paraguay, Uruguay, uh, borders.
Really good. Otherwise the Bolivia is, [01:06:00] uh, is a really good place where it's a little more rugged, but when you, if you decided to go there, drop me a note and I'll hook you up with my friend that, uh, spends quite a bit of time
Patrick Edwards: there. That sounds awesome. Well, we appreciate that. And again, thank you so much for coming on.
Um, it's been definitely a pleasure for me. I, I just, I love your show. So, um, one question is if someone wanted to get a hold of like a DVD collection or, you know, some of your materials, um, where do they go to find that that
Larry Dahlberg: mean the best place to be? Uh, there's a website, make lower.com. Where we have all little we're making stuff and everything that account there, the DVDs and all of that, we're making stuff that we do, I think is all handled on that website.
Okay,
Patrick Edwards: cool. And so he has a little bit of everything on that website. There's some really great video tutorials, so definitely go check that out, um, and start making your own cause that's, that's a lot of fun. Um, and then for, for everybody, again, if you like the show, it really helps us out. If you [01:07:00] like and subscribe, please go to rag, cast, outdoors.com.
We'll have show notes and we'll link to make litter.com and to other, uh, like his YouTube stuff that he has as well. So you can watch some of that and, uh, yeah, definitely go check out our website and, uh, we will be back here soon with another show. Larry. Thanks for your time. Hi, you bet. My
Larry Dahlberg: pleasure. Good luck in the future.
You guys stay safe. Bye bye. Bye.
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