RAD Cast Outdoors Episode #55: Fireside Fishing and Hunting Chat with Hall Stoddard

Hall Stoddard with a 20+ lb Carp. 

On this episode of RAD Cast Outdoors Podcast, Hall Stoddard joins Patrick and David to talk about fishing in salt and freshwater. Hall shares stories from his many adventures around the world. This is a must listen for anyone who loves fishing stories. 

This episode of RAD Cast Outdoors Podcast is sponsored by PK Lures, Hi Mountain Seasonings, and Bow Spider. Please go visit our sponsors and thank them for sponsoring RAD Cast Outdoors by giving them your business.

Hall Stoddard Episode
[00:00:00] Patrick Edwards: This episode of RAD Cast outdoors is brought to you by PK Lures, Bow Spider and high mountain seasoning.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of RAD Cast outdoors. I'm Patrick. Edwards.
David Merrill: I'm David Merrill and, uh, right off the bat, we kind of got to discuss, there's been a, uh, a development in Patrick summer fishing season. You had to bring it out. It didn't yet. We're just, that's like a bandaid, rip it off, get it out of the way.
Yeah. So
Patrick Edwards: just some advice for all of you, hardcore anglers who are out there, you probably don't want to play basketball. Um, basketball is a dangerous sport. I've learned this after having my nose broken my ankle broken and now destroying my shoulder. So, um, I was playing basketball this past week. Having a good time doing well, went for a steal, got tripped, fell with my full weight on my left elbow, dislocated my shoulder and tore a whole bunch of stuff in my [00:01:00] once reconstructed shoulder, which will probably me be now a twice reconstructed shoulder.
But yeah, I'm kind of, kind of bummed out
David Merrill: it's your left one. So. For us, left-handed people it'd be a big deal, but you'll, you'll survive.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. It makes fishing a little bit harder, but it's, it's gonna work out. And, and David Neil, tell us a little bit about what you've been doing, cause you've been traveling still and selling both spiders.
So tell us, just give us an update
David Merrill: where, oh, 9,000 miles in a month on the old bow spider suburban, if you haven't gone on a social media and seen it yet, uh, we're doing a big giveaway if you tag us in a picture. So when it drives through your state and city, which will be very soon where we're hitting the majority of the Western states, the rest of the month.
So
Patrick Edwards: I have a film coming out soon and a big giveaway. So just give us a sneak peek of what that is.
David Merrill: Yeah. Last fall. We, uh, we had a harebrained idea to, to film one of our hunts and we did so for the premiere of that, we're going to have a huge giveaway and all next month, which will be the [00:02:00] month of July.
Uh, you can sign up and there would be a link on all our socials on the webpage. And we'll throw one in the show notes here as well. We're giving away three, three prizes, a grand prize, a kind of a second, a third place prize. And about $10,000 worth of gear from new backpack to new Maven binoculars, uh, parish, cheap feet, outdoor edge, both spider, and then a blue Creek outdoors.
Joe Bartlett. He's been on here before. If you don't know who he is, go back and listen to his episode. Greek outdoors, Joe Bartlett. He is giving away two days of guided filming. It's a
Patrick Edwards: pretty big pie price package for
David Merrill: sure. It's gonna be cool. And that's, it's all in lieu of all kinds of our premiere for our sheep film launch, which will be on YouTube on the second.
We'll do a little Facebook live and publish that, and we'll also publish the egg.
Patrick Edwards: And if this is your first time listening to the podcast where he's talking about as a doll, sheep hunt in Alaska, then he went on with his [00:03:00] dad and had it filmed. So it's pretty cool deal. And that's going to be out there on YouTube.
We'll have a link to it, as soon as it goes up also on the rag cast, outdoors.com website, as well as of course, both spider.com. So you can watch that, but it's pretty exciting stuff.
David Merrill: Both spider footed the bill for all of it. And it's been pretty cool if you haven't, if this is your first a rad cast outdoors podcast, go check out both spider, you know, you'll, you'll quickly know what the fuss is all about.
Patrick Edwards: Yup. And so today we're going to be kind of getting back to the heart of what we started this podcast to really do and kind of the feel and what we wanted to have. And you know, when David and I talked about this, we wanted it to be kind of a campfire conversation, you know, hunting and fishing, telling stories, you know, also, you know, sharing experiences and tips and tricks.
But, uh, somebody really special to me is in the studio today. And, uh, that's my wife's grandfather hall Stoddard. So hall, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. And so hall [00:04:00] he's, he's done a lot of different things and fishing and, and hunting. And I remember when I met my wife, we had talked about, you know, she said, you gotta meet my grandpa.
I was like, well, why is that? And she said, well, I think that you both have. Fish nuts, which is true. And when I did meet him, it was very true. He is totally efficient not. And so, you know, we enjoy going fishing together and sharing stories. We went to Alaska together. It's been what, seven years ago, something like that.
And, um, just really enjoy spending time with them. So I thought it'd be fun to have him on the podcast. So, yeah, so we were talking about a little bit today, but, um, you know, like I said, you've traveled, you've done a lot of things. And we were talking about, you know, Lincoln Cod fishing and some of the deep sea, cause you've done a lot more of that than I have.
And so I wanted to ask you, you know, what's some of your favorite memories of doing the deep sea fishing?
Hall Stoddard: I think probably, uh, as a [00:05:00] child was my parents. Uh, they were at the deep sea fishermen also. And so I grew up on the ocean in Southern California and, uh, the fish out there at that time when there was no slot limits or anything like that, it was, you know, you could get overboard with too many fish.
You know, really we went fishing. Normally our neighbors would hide because we always came back with, would you like some fish? And it gets old after some time, but no, the saltwater is a good venue. It really is anywhere from, you know, what they call it. Calico bass right up to I've caught a couple of surf or a sailfish.
I've got everything, but a wahoo, that's the only fish that haven't caught out there that I really would've thought I would like to catch, but I don't think I will ever see that day now. So
David Merrill: there's something. Mysterious about, you know, if you, if you're fishing a lake and inland body of water, and we're not talking to the great lakes, we're [00:06:00] talking Wyoming lakes, right.
Where you pretty well could see the bank all the way around. It's, there's something a little eerie about, you know, when, when you launch out of any one of those ocean ports and you just start steaming out and you're now you're not in a little 20 foot aluminum skiff, you're in a, you're in a boat right here.
Right. You're in a ship more or less for the most part, but you know, you get to where you can barely see land out
Hall Stoddard: there. There've been plenty of times when you can't see it at all. You just happened. I hope to know which direction to go, to find something dry, you know, it's sometime. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. Well, I know like you were, you were telling me a little bit about Lincoln Cod fishing.
So tell me a little bit about that. And some of the times you've gone out
Hall Stoddard: well, lean Cod or, you know, pretty severe predator fish and, uh, uh, through inner very Rocky. Uh, structure. So it can be costly because it was losing cigs for which is very easy to do, but the linger or like [00:07:00] a true predator fishing, actually you can hook a small rockfish or something like that.
And the link will understand that it's under duress and we'll then take it. And you think, oh, that little fish has just suddenly its attitude has changed immensely. And so you can piggyback them up. And as long as you don't break the surface of the water, you can normally then GAF the Lange. And I've seen 12, 14 inch fish come out of a link when it hits the deck of a boat.
So, I mean, I've caught them up to 30 pounds and, uh, they don't really, they're not an aggressive fish to catch, uh, but, uh, They make up for it on the
Patrick Edwards: table. David you've had an experience with them too,
David Merrill: haven't you? My one and only claim to Fang on, on link. And we did quite a few laying off the Oregon coast, but I lived in Alaska for a short stint and got to go do an overnight on an [00:08:00] ocean boat where we stayed in a and I'll give it to you.
Port Graham. We, we steamed out a Homer overnight in port Graham and got to bag limits efficient, then went back and we did a little bear hunting in the mornings and evenings as well. It's a pretty good mixed bag hunt, but, uh, I had a fish on it just wasn't acting right and own it got, uh, got most wept the boat and just reeling it in it just, you know, just was acting really weird.
Well, it was, uh, approximately 24 to 30 inch Ling that was hooked in the mouth on a, you know, a running about an eight inch jig, but he got a half hitch lassoed around because he was trying to run away from the other lane that was trying to eat him. And, uh, no joke about six feet below the surface of the water.
I'm up on the front of this big cabin pusher boat, diesel 36 foot boat. And, uh, laying in the 55 to 60 inch swam up swallowed. Half of my fish bit down blood went everywhere [00:09:00] and he shook them for a second. And then he decided he didn't like that. And he left and we were trying to get the GAF and get that other lane.
So it was, you know, the fish I caught had a, had a mouth like a coffee can maybe right. The fish that swam up and bit him had a mouth like a five gallon bucket and that's no joke.
Patrick Edwards: And they've got some serious bite strength. I mean, they could chop
Hall Stoddard: mouthful of teeth. Have
David Merrill: a couple of inches long.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah, no man.
Very serious.
David Merrill: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: You're not
David Merrill: going to lip one of those fish for the freshwater guys. Just think of a Northern pike on steroids. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: With really strong,
David Merrill: jealous, jealous. But you did touch on the one thing that, you know, they're, they don't fight very hard. I mean, they, they have a little burst of fight and then they kinda get the head shake and I think there is a speed fish.
Right. They see that fish, like you're talking about in distress and they dart out of the rocks and grab it.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. Very [00:10:00] predatory
Hall Stoddard: and well, they are an ambush. Yeah. They really do. Like I said, they make up for any. Fall backs roads make up for it on the table. So, yeah. In fact, I don't know you, I don't know if I've got any GQ, if you are not
wife's got to go through the freezer first and all our efficient from last year was on the bottom of the freezer.
Patrick Edwards: I'll tell you what that ocean fish, you know, a lot of people in Wyoming, aren't very exposed to seafood, you know, and ocean fish. And it's just, it's a different animal than your freshwater fish, because it's just so dang good.
And a story I can tell about hauls. We went to Hawaii for a wedding and we went out on the ocean and we caught some Mahima here. Yellowfin tuna. And then we came back to this house that the family had rented, you know? And so we had the whole house in a lot of people, a lot of mouths to feed. So Holly and I start cooking and, uh, [00:11:00] we, we picked up the mahi mahi and put it on a platter and kind of set it to the side and started cooking tuna steaks that were about what, three quarters to an inch thick, something like that.
Right. And what happened all the, my Hema, he, while we weren't
Hall Stoddard: looking, I am I, in fact, I choose my wife. We'll letting people in off the street because I said, there's no way that we could be feeding as many people. Oh man.
Patrick Edwards: That might, he might, he disappeared in about nanosecond. I think. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: That's awful good.
Yeah. My opinion is nothing comes out of the ocean. Isn't good to eat. I mean, it's from shellfish on up. It's it's extraordinary. Really? It's, it's a good sport.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. What's your favorite out of the ocean? If you had to pick one and I know it's a tough, tough question, but what would be your favorite?
Hall Stoddard: I think a big white sea bass is probably as good a fish as I've ever caught in the, you know, labor run in [00:12:00] the 35 to 50 pound class and excellent fish to catch excellent fish to eat.
They're really amazing. Yeah. What would be your
David Merrill: favorite, Patrick?
Patrick Edwards: I dunno, man. That had was pretty hard to beat. Um, gosh, I don't know Krista and I, when we went to Costa Rica, we caught some black and white tuna down there and those were really good too. So I don't know. Um, I think it's, it kind of depends on what you're looking for.
Like. Yeah, the tuna has a different texture, you know, a little bit more like a steak. And so if you're looking for that, I mean, that's the go-to but, um, flavor wise, man, that my, he, my, he, I just remember that just being incredible. And then of course, fresh, fresh cut. Anything out of the ocean is good, but I, I dunno, my human, it was tough
Hall Stoddard: to be buying me to tell you later, I'll give you a good recipe for
Patrick Edwards: tuna.
Yeah, definitely. What's yours. David, what's your favorite out of the ocean?
David Merrill: Well, I, [00:13:00] not as cultured as some of us around the table here, but you know, I do joke that I go to Alaska for that, for the halibut all the time. Just for the halibut. That's a tough one man, to beat. But in on the wife does some home canned tuna.
And if you make a tuna sandwich with that whole fresh home, canned tuna, I mean, I know a bunch of people are, their eyebrows are raised in a winter. What, we're not talking bumblebee tuna from the store here, we're talking, you know, and she puts a little bit of garlic and some other stuff on top. And you know, I'll have to, I'm thinking of prepared fish here at the moment, but right between either, you know, fried halibut cheeks or, you know, fresh tuna fish sandwich with now, you've got to have the cut-up onions and the cut-up pickles and the mustard and the salt and the pepper and mix that all in there on some nice toasted bread.
I don't, I don't know. It's a toss up.
Hall Stoddard: Well, the yellow you consider the Sockeye salmon actually. Um, amazing fish. [00:14:00] And they're probably the most flavorful on the salmon as certain, but,
David Merrill: so there's a joke. There's a little Alaskan boy and his mom's cooking dinner and he starts going around telling everybody mom's cooking dinner.
She says we're having king. I sure. Hope it's not safe.
I like a good smoke salmon every now and again. But other than that, I'll go for the hell of it. Yeah. I'm with
Patrick Edwards: ya. Hell. That's as good as it gets. Although, when we went up there that first day that we got into him and then we went back to back to the cabin, we grilled one fresh that we just caught. I mean, it was about a four pound hen Saka.
Yeah. Out of the river and man. It's pretty tough to be when it is just alive and you cook it. And I mean, that's yeah, that's
David Merrill: good. So I did cook a chum in Southeast Alaska. [00:15:00] I wouldn't recommend it. It's it's marginal at best dog salmon. There's a reason they have that nickname. Uh, the Sockeye, you don't have the really red meat and they are a really great canning, you know, decent smoking, just a great all around, you know, the silvers are actually my favorite to catch and their fresh.
Silver's great on one fish that a lot of people, even Alaskans turn their nose up as is humpies pinks, pinks. But if you get one with sea lice still on it, you know, if you're like fishing the Kenai and you get one that hasn't, and they change color so rapidly and they start developing that big dorsal hump and they start consuming our fat and they really quickly they're don't they don't keep, well, they're not a great fish, but if you pull one out of the river, like you guys talked about.
Put it right on the fire, especially if it's still somewhat silver and has some see lights on it. It's pretty naked, but king, as far as it's got the fatty, you know, it's just, it's one of the best canning meats. [00:16:00] But as far as fresh cooking, it's hard to beat that.
Hall Stoddard: Oh, the Sockeye is amazing. Yeah, it really is.
And they're fun to catch up, you know, when you're just philosophies at all, all you're doing is flossing them. We talked about it before. Oh yeah.
David Merrill: It's crazy that, you know, you hook into a 40, 50 pound king and I mean, you know, you've done something, but they just kind of go out to the middle of the river and down to the bottom and sit there, you know, those, those six to eight pound sockeyes will break 20 pound test flop it on top of they,
Hall Stoddard: they fight.
Yeah. And the Kenai, runner's usually a pretty good size run because I came out of there one time with the four filets. Six filets. I'll take six flavors. I 24 pounds of meat. Oh yeah, you can.
David Merrill: They get into some of those big bucks are pushing over 10, 12. I don't, they barely get up to the 14, but I've caught a lot at 12 pounds.
Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: That's a, that's a fish when you catch a buck [00:17:00] like that. Cause those, those salmon are beautiful and they,
Hall Stoddard: we introduced him to the philosophy. Oh man,
Patrick Edwards: that was so much fun. That was, that was one of those trips of my life. You know, it was like, I'm finally doing it because I've told this story before, but being a young kid, going to Alaska, seeing Alaska, but not being able to fish, it was hard, you know, and then being able to go with hall and his two boys and man, we had a good day.
It was quite a lot
Hall Stoddard: of fish. Yes, we did. We all came back with 75 pounds of fish, just fish, you know,
Patrick Edwards: and we went out off of Seward and we got to catch some halibut, some rockfish and even some Pacific Cod, which was kind of fun. You know,
Hall Stoddard: it's all a little bit different. Really. Some of those areas, when you put your hook in the water, you don't know what's going to come out of it.
Patrick Edwards: That's a fact that's part of the fun and efficient in the ocean. Right? You don't know what you're going to pull up. Cause I think you were telling me that when you were a kid, you know, you'd go off the coast there. You didn't know what you were going to get.
Hall Stoddard: No. [00:18:00] And, and if you got into them, you always got too many.
That's true. I mean, I can remember Barracuda trips when, before there was a slot limit on the fish and I've seen, I've seen Barracuda come out of the water and take an anchovy that you've thrown. It hasn't even hit the water yet, come out and take it in the air. And that's crazy, you know, but they'll do it.
But, uh, Barracuda are smaller because you get down there in the Florida country. You know, you get to the a hundred pounders out on the west coast. If you get them up to 8, 10, 12 pounds, that's a big Barracuda, but they're still gonna to eat. Those are,
David Merrill: I went to a trade show in Florida this year and we took an extra day and went deep sea out there on Florida.
And one thing I noticed it was crazy as, you know, having been Alaska Pacific Northwest, you know, going out to either Portland or Depot and all the water's kind of gray green, and I'd call it, uh, mostly, uh, you know, what, a [00:19:00] dark green that water there off Florida was just as blue as I've ever seen the
Hall Stoddard: ocean.
And you can see forever down.
David Merrill: I was crazy. Yeah, it's the Pacific's like murky. I mean, it's green and murky and it's cold, right? That, that water down there in Florida was warm and it was. It was just weird. I, I, as a kid, we'd go swimming off the Oregon coast. And in August, you didn't last very long out. Turn the water
Hall Stoddard: here.
It comes
David Merrill: here. I am in February, down in Florida. I go touch the water. I'm like that's bathtub water. Yeah. Yeah. That's
Patrick Edwards: pretty cool that you got to do that.
David Merrill: We didn't catch any fish, but I did get to see some flying fish and that's something I never in Owen. Okay. People talk about us for that, but those little suckers, I mean, the boat would scare him a couple times on the boat was porpoise and over a crest of a wave and 15 or 20 of them would jump.
And, you know, they swim jump and they lock those little [00:20:00] wings of theirs, two, 300 yards, and they go with the waves up and down, you know, as the waves are rolling through, they kind of like surf the weight, just six, 12 inches above. And sometimes they only go 30 feet, but a couple of times they went 400
Hall Stoddard: yards.
They're not a big fish. I mean, no 12, 14 inch fish, but they got their wings are about that much too. Yeah,
David Merrill: that, that was a neat experience I'd never seen before. The other one that really is a little eerie is we've seen Orca is off the Alaska coast and I mean right off the boat and they rolled up and looked at us and.
I looked at that and I said, that's a fish that could eat you. I know they're not a fish, they're a mammal, but okay. They have a tail and teeth and they're in the water. Yeah. And I went up with
Patrick Edwards: hall. We had a pod cam right by the boat and boy. Yeah. It's intimidating. It's like, whoa, that thing
David Merrill: is, yeah. A couple of times I've had whales do the, uh, you know, just the tail where they, I haven't seen them breach, but just the tail where they start diving and
[00:21:00] Patrick Edwards: yeah.
All, do you remember that humpback back that breached by our boat when we were digging out there, out here, that was an awakening when you're not looking for that? No.
Hall Stoddard: It'll wake you up. Well,
David Merrill: that is, that is the new teacher attention
Hall Stoddard: her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you're going to get. You know, when I was down in Texas, you're a few years ago and a camp and we had route fishing and I haven't spotted dolphin and I asked this cold Phil, I was fishing with him.
Dolphin. Oh yeah. That's Henry or George or something like that. She says she's around her all the time. I said, you feed him. And he says, I beg your pardon. I said, you feed him. And he says, no, he says, what are you talking about here? Wait a minute. We had a couple of scrap fish in the bottom of the boat, pick it up.
And I waved at fish and I slapped a water a couple of times. And here he came, he came right up the side of the boat. I held the fish out and he rolled over on his side, took it out of my hand, went away, go, man. I says, can you do that again? [00:22:00] Here he came. He didn't want it. We touched on the fish. Didn't like to be touched, but he would scroll over on his side, over this mountain, take that fish.
And this old fellow says, can I do it? Why not? So he did it a couple of times. And about two or three days later, I'm in the camp. NFL comes up to me. He says, did you go fishing with what's his face the other day? And start feeding that dolphin. Yes. He said, that's all he wants to do now. He doesn't want to fish
feed the dog
David Merrill: dolphins
Patrick Edwards: are cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of fun, like seeing different kinds of porpoises, right? Because I mean, there, I grew up in Alaska, you have those that are kind of like the, you know what I'm talking about, David, the dark gray, black kind of color. And then you've got, you know, all kinds of different varieties, but man, they are so cool to watch.
You know, we, when we were in Costa Rica, you know, we were motoring out, we were looking for birds so [00:23:00] we could find bait. And, uh, we saw a bunch of birds off on the horizon and, and sure enough, once we got up there, there were a whole bunch of these porpoises, you know, in these little dolphins. And I mean, they were out there just tearing it up.
And that was, that was cool to watch because they worked together. I mean they, and they're really intelligent.
Hall Stoddard: Fish and force him into a tight core and then it will just go right through him. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. It was, it was really
Hall Stoddard: fun to walk over to Hawaii. Once we got into some porpoises that are, these guys were black and white, but when they came out of the water, they were very era aerobatic.
I mean, they were doing flips and they were coming up 12, 14 feet out of the water and doing flips and back in. And they were just having a fun, I mean, they were just playing out there,
David Merrill: the SeaWorld dolphins and like flipper. That was a bottlenose dolphin. That, that species, the one you're talking about Alaska is the Pacific white cited dolphin.
And they look kind of like [00:24:00] a, almost like a Orca, not, not quite as dramatic black and white, but they are definitely cool. White speckled Stripe on them there. You just don't have the big
Hall Stoddard: dorsal.
David Merrill: No, they don't. Yeah. The,
Hall Stoddard: yeah, the work has got three
Patrick Edwards: foot or more. Yeah. It's pretty
David Merrill: crazy. Yeah. And they, and they liked to the Pacifics.
When the very first trip I went to Alaska, we took the Alaska Marine highway ferry and we wrote that up to catch can. And then we got a float plane out to our fishing cabin. We rented and fished. And I remember because it's a three or four day ferry ride. Your people were duct taping tents off the back and we just slept rolled a cot out and rolled a mattress out on the front.
You can rent a cabin, but we just slept on the deck up front. And every once in a while, I'd go up front and look, and the dolphins. Play it in the wake of the boat, which is neat to
Patrick Edwards: see. Oh yeah, they're really cool animal. But yeah, it's, it was kinda cool in Costa Rica, watching them work together and kind of driving the [00:25:00] bait into a ball.
And then of course the birds take advantage of it at that point. And they come barreling out of the sky, picking off fish out of the water. It was, it was neat. It's just amazing. Like you talked about the ocean a little bit earlier, right? How it's just different here. You get out there. There's so much out there that you don't know and there's many different,
David Merrill: it sounds different.
And you put your hook down and you might be catching a one pound fish and you might be catching a 300 pound fish.
Hall Stoddard: I was out at brookies two years ago. We had been fishing for bottom fish, you know, just maybe five pound fish. All of a sudden my juke takes off for Alaska. I mean, we're not really equipped for this.
And so I threw the air on it and I had no control over this fishing. Skipper, the boat came up and said, what are you doing? Don't ask me, but there's something out there it's very mad at me right now. And he had everybody reel in and he said, we'll chase it and find out what it was. It turned out to be, uh, a Thrasher [00:26:00] shark.
That's the one that has a big sweeping tail, you know, and we got up to the surface twice and, uh, saw it, you know, about seven foot long. So they figured the weight, something over a hundred pounds. They really wanted to get it, but he took a dive once. And of course we're using braided line braided line and cut the line on his teeth.
Yep. Cut it on the tooth and way it went up. But boy, I had fun for awhile. That's
Patrick Edwards: one of the coolest looking sharks out there too. Oh yeah. I get
David Merrill: that huge long tail. Very long. They're supposed
Hall Stoddard: to be very edible. I found, I went, I mean, the guy on the boat said, well, you're going to share if we land it, we're going to share it with everybody.
I said, I don't care. You know? So then I got on the internet and looked up recipes for thresher and bunch of them.
David Merrill: I remember on free fishing day. We went on a deep sea as there's free fishing weekend in Oregon, where you don't have to have a fishing license or a tag or anything. And it's just, uh, you know, do recruitment for the sport of fishing.
Uh, we went deep sea fishing for the weekend and [00:27:00] I was dating my wife at the time and my father went and my sister went and I went and when you're jigging in the ocean. Yeah, yeah. You just let it right down the rail and just drop it and get down to the bottom as quick as she, you can. Well, my wife had gotten bored, so she started casting that job.
We got there. She caught about a 25 30 pound salmon, maybe. I mean, it, it hit the wall or maybe fell 10, eight feet, you know, and she landed it on that bottom jig. And we got a picture of, uh, a Ling and, uh, a sea bass and a salmon that day.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I know when we were in Alaska, I kinda got bored with the rockfish there for a little bit.
And we could see on the sonar that there were salmon cruising in the middle of the water column. And so the, the captain was like, why don't you reel up? And, you know, see if you can catch one of those. And we can cut a couple of really nice silvers. I mean, those are fun. I like
David Merrill: those silvers too. Yeah. Um, to be effective, [00:28:00] you know, you troll, troll a herring in that water column with downriggers.
Right. And get it right in their face. And I can't quite remember the speed, but relatively. Not half a knot, but not, you know, three about, about a mile, mile and a half. And that's, that's a very effective way, but in my mind, it's kind of boring, right? Cause the, the fish pops off the downriver it's already hooked and you just kind of reel it in and they fight.
But you know, it's just, while you're fishing, you're just standing there waiting for a rod to pop off it down. Right. You get on the Kenai and you start, I like to throw either eggs or a spinner. And you know, sometimes even flies like a purple egg, eggs, sucking, leech. Those silvers will pound that fly and they come out of the water usually twice
Patrick Edwards: hand-to-hand combat man.
Hall Stoddard: And I hooked, I foul hooked to a silver Seward. One time that I know it probably weighed 15, 16 pounds was good silver, but I had it. It's kind of hard
David Merrill: to bring them in the wrong way in right.
Hall Stoddard: I [00:29:00] thought we'd never get that fishing. When we friend finally got it in and saw it, it was hooked to the tail. It's no big deal.
You don't let it go. But I'll tell you what the handful it really
David Merrill: was. I've seen some Sockeye come in the wrong way and just eat people's lunch. They just cause they get them right up to the shore. I hit and they're trying to reach down there and that fish just gets, goes to hyper tail. It just gives them a bath right there.
And right then I
Patrick Edwards: caught a nice buck when we went up a real nice one and it had three or four hooks and it's battery. Yeah. And I mean that, and it was a bigger one, you know, I think you remember it was a good one. Well, I see why they got broke off. I mean, I can't even imagine trying to land a Sockeye hooked in the back.
I mean, they're just so
Hall Stoddard: powerful and there's, and they're not a large salmon and they don't get lunch or they're
Patrick Edwards: charged with they're charged with electricity.
David Merrill: Well, I've
Hall Stoddard: noticed 14 pound sockeyes, a big socket.
David Merrill: Oh yeah. Yeah. I've noticed leader length, [00:30:00] uh, really plays into, you know, catch if you're, if you're much under 12 inch leader, when you're flossing, you just, that doesn't give you a very wide swath of water column to, to actually hook a fish, but you get much over the 30 inch kind of leader number.
We were over that you get into that 50, 60 inch leader and you get more snags because you're, you know, those fish are swimming up in a pretty tight school and the first fish and, you know, you got like three abreast. Basically the first fish is tugging on the weight with his mouth and he's actually foul, hooked.
The F you know, the fish where the hooks at. So you kinda, you gotta play around with that leader length a little bit and figure out what's working for you and your speed of, of the Kenai jerk. I call it cause it's
Hall Stoddard: yeah. Well, you know, you, you develop a feel for
David Merrill: it. Oh yeah, no, it takes about a day. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: Then it starts to sink in.
Patrick Edwards: It's just, it's just like, while I [00:31:00] fish and like, when you're a jig fishermen, you got to get the field down. I mean, it's just any kind of fishing, right? I mean, as its own
Hall Stoddard: technique, you there's techniques to each individual fish, really, when you come right down to it,
David Merrill: I can remember a steelhead on the south San IAM.
And we were just, just a dead drift in a Corky with a little bit of eggs. Right. And basically when the steelhead picks it up, we're, we're floating in the river with, with the water, with the current and you just cast out and you're, you're now floating with your eggs. When it stops, it's either hung up on the bottom or hung up on a fish.
It doesn't matter. You set the hook. Yeah. I remember I went with this guy I worked with and knew in college and we took one of the other guys we worked with and we each put six fish in the boat, you know, catch and release. And he he'd gone with us two or three weekends in a row and could not hook and could not land a fish.
And if there's three guys standing in a boat and two of each [00:32:00] got six, you know, the third one's doing something. I mean, same bait, same tackle, same day, same water. There's there's something going on. Right. You're on the wrong side of the boat. So we were all standing on the same side. So the boat
Patrick Edwards: where he's holding his mouth wrong is always say, yeah,
Hall Stoddard: he already battery.
He had a banana in his book.
David Merrill: This is true. So what, what, where does this come from for people who don't understand? Cause you'll get kicked off in ocean bone, go and vote. If you show up with a banana,
Hall Stoddard: I don't know where it came from, but. It's a bad
luck
David Merrill: open. Well, what, what, I think there's actually some scientific evidence to this because seriously, if you take a banana and put it in your lunch box with your, I don't know, little Debbie chocolate chip cookie, when you go to eat that little Debbie chocolate chip cookie, it tastes like dang banana.
And then if you leave that banana in there over the weekend, everything smells and tastes like banana. So yeah. Good old bananas. I don't take them. Don't bring them on my boat. Don't go
Hall Stoddard: fishing with a
David Merrill: banana.
Patrick Edwards: I'll admit [00:33:00] I've taken him fishing and done just fine. But yeah, there is something to that, David, I don't know what it is about bananas, but they tend to, they mess with everything.
Like if you, if you haven't a lunchbox, you are dead on. Remember also
Hall Stoddard: when I was younger, I smoked and I also, I got to thinking, you know, when I'm putting live bait on a hook, you know, you have the nicotine is in your system. There's oftentimes I've thought. Yeah, That the nicotine was adverse to a fish.
They didn't like that.
David Merrill: So I can, I can't speak scientifically of that, uh, observation, but I can, you know, substantiate that when we went to king salmon fishing here a couple of years ago on the Kenai, we had the junkiest boat out there in the, in the water column with 50 other boats. And we out fished every other boat that was out there that day.
But I had brand new, fresh Sockeye eggs that I had prepared with gloves [00:34:00] on, you know, set them on a rack, cured them, put them in the gallon bag. And then when we paid it up, I wore gloves as well. So there's no humans. On those eggs. And I think people buy on the store-bought bait, that's old and rotten, and that's it.
Beta is important,
Patrick Edwards: especially for trout and salmon, because they do have such a good sense of taste and smell. So they're, they're critical without, I mean, I believe that for sure. And I did
David Merrill: it a really loose cure on those eggs. So they're really Milky and they didn't last very long. Right? They were, it fell off pretty quick, you know, maybe 10, 15 minutes efficient we'd reel up.
And you know, if you're a fusion for silvers, you want about a 25 cent piece gob of eggs. When you're, when you're hitting those king salmon, you go for a 50 cent piece, you know, a good, good gob eggs.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. It
Hall Stoddard: makes a big difference. I think of the human, the human scent is really adversely affects a lot of fish more than just [00:35:00] necessarily salmon trout.
I thought. Really it hurts when I was trying to shoot their
Patrick Edwards: sense of smell is so much, I think we don't quite understand it as much as we probably should as fishermen, but I think there is something to it. Like people will ask me, why aren't you putting your hands in, you know, bug sprayer, you know, sunscreen, things like that when I'm fishing well, that's for that very reason.
I mean, they can, they can smell and taste that too. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: I mean another real startling factor that is a blind trout will fish, right. Will beat right along with the other ones. I can see, you know, you find trout that are black and you know, their eyes go white now was working for California fish and game at the hatchery central California.
We have some that would go like that and they live just as well, right. With the other fishes as not. So, you know, there's there a century perception there that [00:36:00] they don't need ice.
Patrick Edwards: Well, I think it's, yeah, I mean that lateral line, they can feel vibration through the water, feel stuff that's coming or, you know, sense things that around them.
And then, like you said, that smell, I mean, they can tell real quick what's, what's something to eat and what's not. So that makes a big difference. So tell me in that job, what was one of the more fun things that you were able to do? Or some of the fun memories you have? The
Hall Stoddard: one that was the most fun. I can't talk about it, but, uh, but uh, I like to go out when we were, we used to air plant fry.
Oh, cool. In some of the lakes up there in central California. And we'd go out actually in boats and be on the, on the water when the plane came by and our job was to keep anything, any birds off the fry until they. Went down deep enough to get off. They're
David Merrill: going to be a little disoriented [00:37:00] after they get dropped out of an airplane.
Hall Stoddard: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And they just kind of swim around the surface for a while. So we'd go out there and run around on a boat and scare off birds and whatever we else we could get out there until they finally would go down into the water. But that was, that was pretty cool.
Patrick Edwards: Cause they're easy pickings to a seagull until they get their butts down to deep into the water,
Hall Stoddard: as far as them.
That was our main problem with Seacoast.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. So were they doing it like just a low fly over with an airplane? Just open that open up. Uh, let them
Hall Stoddard: go out the back end. Let it go. Just like you do out of a truck here. It all comes water and food.
Patrick Edwards: Is it like, cause I know they did, they do that here in Wyoming for like golden trout and stuff like that.
It was
David Merrill: horseback to start
Patrick Edwards: with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But is that what they were just kind of do is just kind of take the airplane in nice, low and sharpen
Hall Stoddard: it. Less distance. They have to follow the less impact there is. I mean, of course there's a lot of water comes out with it. So it's a water that's [00:38:00] within breaks.
The surface tension of the water they're uploading into because you know, as well as I do, the water is hard. So if you could break the tension to the water surface tension, uh, then the fish can enter the water and not to get too much damage to them. I mean, you've got some, you can't help it, but yeah,
Patrick Edwards: it's interesting to me just cause like, I mean, there's, there's a whole lot of, uh, stocking that happens still via aircraft.
I mean, there's a lot of places in Wyoming to your point, David, unless you're going to strap them on your back and hustle them in there. You're not going to be able to get them in there cause there's no roads or anything like that. So I know golden trout is a big one that they gave in fish stocks that way, cutthroat trout, things like that.
What were you guys stocking?
Hall Stoddard: Yeah, it's exclusively. We had one hybrid. I don't remember now what we call it, but it was a group. Quickly. It was fast growing fish.
David Merrill: So on the south San and Oregon, there's a, uh, a hatchery run of steelhead and they cut that, uh, oh, [00:39:00] adipose fin off
Hall Stoddard: dorsal
David Merrill: side. Well, they, they do this horrible thing to those steelhead is they, uh, recycled them is what they call it.
So they have a trap right at the base of the dam in the fish ladder that goes up, they just, you know, about a third of the way up the fish ladder. They have this holding pen and those fish are released right there at the bottom of the dam. So they always come back to spawn, well, they take some of the bigger hands and box and put them in their spawning program.
And I got to help volunteer as a kid with the local Northwest steel headers association. And I got to help do that spawning. So. You know, get in our chest waders and go in there and we'd have to take an iodine bath so that we weren't bringing foreign bacteria in and stuff and we'd get them to milk the bucks and the hens.
And I had a, I had a net and we had two guys that go walking down this, you know, 60 foot long, three foot deep, eight foot wide holding pan and catch a couple and bring them up in the biologist as they're overseeing [00:40:00] all of it. But the ones that once they had enough fish for their, you know, hatching program, they just would recycle all the other fish.
And so they drive them about 20 miles back down the river and have this 16 inch pipe. And they back the truck up to throw the, throw the steelhead back in. And I was there a couple times. I'm like, could we just put a net right at the bottom of that pipe, catch one of those. Cause I'm tired of trying. Uh, you know, average is 40 hours for a steelhead in Oregon.
It's a, it's a tough fish. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: I used to end up at Idaho a couple of times for a steelhead up there on the salmon river. No, the Clearwater up out, out of a, oh, it was a big dam up there in a reservoir. And they, that's where they do a lot of clipping of steelhead, you know? So you can always tell the difference between the reason they do it.
It's just being able to tell the dystrophin, the hatchery fish in the wild, because you can't keep the wild. So
David Merrill: they [00:41:00] take those, those fish as a smolt and they run them through an actual, oh
Hall Stoddard: no, no, that this place there's about a half a dozen ladies sitting up there with Clippers. I, I, I w I went like this, what they take
David Merrill: and just clip them with scissors
Hall Stoddard: or Clippers.
Y'all not quite nail Clippers, but it was similar and they'd pick it up. Pop it off,
David Merrill: throw it in the water. And the reason they do that is to differentiate between the wild, natural, and most of those places you can't keep, or they have a slot limit or a certain season on those wilds. Save the wild.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah. I cut some nice patients there though.
They bought her fish
David Merrill: and,
Patrick Edwards: uh, drifts with the bobbers. Yup, yup, yup. Yup.
Hall Stoddard: You have to know the depth of your ELA. We were using flies, a leader about three foot in front of your weight. Then you got, your bobber is set at the, well, this run happens to be 10 foot deep. So you're Saturday about nine and a half feet.
Watch your barber, you know, [00:42:00] until you. And I've caught up that way. It's crazy, but it works.
Patrick Edwards: I want to get up there and do that.
Hall Stoddard: It's a big rainbow. They just go to the
Patrick Edwards: OSHA. I know. Gives them that electricity charge. It makes a little stronger. Yeah. Salt water, saltwater. Saltwater does a lot. Yeah. There's something about that.
Saltwater just makes fish a lot stronger, but you were telling me some stories too earlier, you know, we've got a lot of people in Wyoming that listened and you were talking about fishing for trout and streams and different things like that. So tell me some of your most memorable trout fishing stories from Wyoming or in the area.
Anyway, most
David Merrill: of
Hall Stoddard: my trout fishing before I ever came in well, was California. Right. And did a lot of fishing there, you know, and. At the time when I was fishing, I thought I was pretty good spin fishermen. So that's all I fished. No, no bait, no flies. I'm dyslexic when it comes to fly fishing. So, you know, I don't know which left from right.
And I can't [00:43:00] fly fiction. I was working there and in the Denver area, but I run, uh, that I always went to from Denver to Craig over highway 40 and a lot of good water in that country. When you get up around Steamboat Springs and. Beautiful fish. Yeah. There's
Patrick Edwards: a lot of big ones. I know David he's like stick, go hit the fly fishing part of it up a lot more than I do, but yeah,
David Merrill: that's the ADHD coming out in me and you know, I can we're okay if we go spinner, fish and Patrick or river fishing, but, but, and Barbara fish is okay.
Like we were talking about here a moment ago for steelhead, if we're drifting through. Yeah. But that, Hey, let's toss the bait out and set the rod and just walk away from it. Whether it's in a boat or on a bank at don't sign me up, don't take me. You're not gonna have, yeah. Yeah. It's too hard.
Hall Stoddard: You know, it's a successful way for a lot of people to fix it though.
Oh, I'm not
David Merrill: denying that. Yeah. This is boring. Yeah. Test my patients too much. We find the tolerance of David's page. No, he's [00:44:00] like my
Hall Stoddard: wife says it's like watching grass grow, you know, so yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: But for some species, like, you know, catfish, sometimes that's the best way to go. Sometimes even trout, you know, Power bait on the bottom or something like that.
It's pretty good. But yeah, I would much rather be casting and retrieving something. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: Moving. Yeah. I get tired of sitting, waiting for something to happen, right?
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. It's. It's fishing is a lot more fun when you're more active and engaged in it. But I, I don't know, but I did want you to share a recipe because you shared it today with our, our friend, Rick, and he had never heard of it before.
And we'll talk about high mountain seasonings as well, real quick, but, um, you know, high mountain seasonings is one of our podcast sponsors. They're a great friend of the show and you know, they really help us out a lot. Um, Hahn's and the crew over there are great. If you haven't checked out high mountain seasonings, you need to do that.
It was about two weeks [00:45:00] ago. I had some family in town. Um, you know, it was one of Hall's granddaughters. Uh, Jessica, she came up with her kids and we kicked up some wallet and we used a couple of the different seasonings with some butter. Did you try to buy you bass? We did. We did buy you bass. And then I also, I was like, you know what, I'm going to try it, but they have like a Western.
Style seasoning. I put some of that on the wall. I too, it was really good. You know, we just pan seared it in some butter and had fish tacos and with a little bit of coleslaw, man, that was, that was pretty, pretty darn good. So yeah.
David Merrill: The cool thing with high mountain seasonings is whether you got fish or foul, whether you got beefer elk, I mean, venison, whether you're doing your own pork, it doesn't really matter what the protein source is.
They have a seasoning to compliment it.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. In fact, I've fed hall. Some of it last night, we, I, he was kind of looking at my seasoning. He goes, why do you have this Hickory burger that you're putting on some of these pork chops, but it turned out really good, didn't it? You know, we had, it gives it a little bit of that [00:46:00] Hickory flavor.
And then I also use some of their garlic pepper rub, you know, on there. But I mean, yeah, like to David's point, it doesn't really matter what you're cooking. It's really good stuff. So go to high mountain jerky.com. It's H I M T N jerky.com. But yeah, you were sharing a recipe. Basically the whole cavity, the whole body of a trout.
Once you catch trout, a big trout, you take the head, take the guts out. Then what
Hall Stoddard: you fill up, you fill the body cavity with a medium salsa, throw a couple of bay leaves on the outside, rapid in the aluminum foil and put it on the high side here at grill at about three 50 to 400 degrees. Let it sit there for about a half an hour.
You unwrap it. All the skin comes off and you leave them in foil. You grab the tailbone with a pair of pliers and start shaking and all the meat falls off. And pretty soon you just. Carcass and drop it off. And now you've got as a pile of meat. Nice salsa in it. I'm liking this.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. So now we got to go catch some [00:47:00] and try that.
Right.
David Merrill: Well, as, as an ocean fishing guy or a steelhead guy, right. Bones are pretty they're, they're not an issue when you're cooking a 20 pound steelhead, right. When you're cooking an eight ounce trout, bones are an issue. I don't like bones
Patrick Edwards: now. I don't like fish bones either. Yeah, no, that's a great way to do it.
And you know, I, I think it's kind of fun to share recipes, you know, and tell stories. Yeah, let's
Hall Stoddard: do it when get into tuna. We, when we go on the west coast, we go for albacore and we'll take a, a steak, not really a steak, a full a, and you pre cooked some bacon to where it is cooked, but it is still
flexible.
David Merrill: I'm liking the sound of all of
Hall Stoddard: this. Then you wrap it around the bacon, around the filet. Pin it with a couple of three toothpicks, put it on the grill and cook your tuna. Not too long. Cause to take a lot of time, [00:48:00] bacon will cook at the same time or you are. Mm mm.
David Merrill: Okay. All right.
Patrick Edwards: First albacore. Second, Patrick.
Yeah, we're going to have to go do that one. That sounds really good.
Hall Stoddard: Go ahead. I got one more. I got
Patrick Edwards: one. Throw it in there.
Hall Stoddard: Take tuna, take a sweet chili sauce and baste the fish with the sweet chili sauce as you're grilling slowly. Hmm.
David Merrill: I
Patrick Edwards: liked chili. So that sounds good to me. Sweet chili sauce. You have. I know what you're talking about.
Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah. It goes well with tuna.
Patrick Edwards: I bet it does. There's not much that doesn't go well with fresh tuna, but, uh, yeah, one of the big things that we like to talk about on this show is getting family involved. And, and I know you have, I mean, I went on one of the family trips with you, you know, doing some fishing with your boys and, uh, it's, it's important to a lot of people, you know, getting their kids involved.
And, and [00:49:00] I always like to hear what, you know, what are some pearls of wisdom on how to get your kids out and get them involved in the outdoors? What, what kind of advice do you have?
Hall Stoddard: You have to be an example. You have to show some results and get them interested. And once you get them interested, well, then the rest of it should be, or could be relatively easy as far as taking them further, but you gotta, you have to set an example, really.
That's the key to where they, they can see that you're getting something for what you're doing. And, you know, if. Your relationship is the way it should be with your children. You would hope that they would follow somewhat in your footsteps, so to speak. So just get out. I go out and I would take, I've taken all the girls out.
I've taken them to both the boys out. So, uh, not always successful. You know what I mean? Like one of the daughters would never go hunting with [00:50:00] me, you know, again, two of them one, you know, but Tony liked to fish. Uh, the boys, I don't know, they just never hooked onto hunting. They hooked onto fishing, but never hooked on it.
David Merrill: That's interesting. My dad is, and Patrick knows he's, he's a fishermen. And you notice in the podcast studio here where we're lacking a few fish on the wall. And my brother's very much his homes, the same way as mine as we like to fish. And we will go, but if it's hunting or fishing this weekend, we're going to go hunting.
But to your, to your point earlier about the, uh, the guy that liked to sit there and feed the dolphin, you know, I, I guess I, I could care less if I catch another trout or not. As long as I live, it's, it's fun. I like to eat them. Right. But taking my boys and we went and let me, let me caveat that I could care less.
If I catch another fish on PowerBait, as long as I live it, it just doesn't excite me. But we went out here to one of the local lakes a couple of months ago, and the two year [00:51:00] old out fished the eight year old, eight year old, caught a fish and was excited and we had to go three different evenings to get him his fish.
And he really didn't want to catch a fish and let's go. So. We got him a pole and a tackle box and some power bait, and we put some hours in it to get it done, but it's a little tight on the little ice fishing, a little blue Disney pole cut, three trout. And I had more fun watching those trout eat his lunch.
And then it got on. He was all right with the fish, as long as it's in the water, but once it started flopping on the bank, he, he just had a little come apart. Like this is not okay, dad. So I felt like I was a little kid again. I could watch kids catch fish on PowerBait forever. I'll go sign me up.
Hall Stoddard: It was great.
I can remember my youngest son, one of the first times we took him out fishing and he was walking across this little Crick and he had had his pole and it had a lower on it, but he wasn't paying attention. And the Lord was touching the top of the water [00:52:00] as he walked. And the dumbest brown had to be in the Northern United States hit that lure.
Right. Yo like at his knees, you know? And he was the most excited kid you ever saw in your life. And he, he likes to fish. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: Through your boys. We had a lot of fun up in Alaska. I know Steven and I, we, we really hit it off and, you know, spent some extra time fishing. Uh, one day we went out on, out of Seward.
We got up really early, caught the charter, went fishing. Came back. And so we're sitting there and Soldotna and, and hall and Scott were tired. So they, they went and they hit the sack and Steven and I looked at each other and we're like, you know, I think we can go catch some more. And we fished till 1130 or so at night.
And it was, it was still light out. And it was really cool all because I got this nice buck I caught and he was probably about eight pounds and right behind me, I've got a picture there's a, a [00:53:00] rainbow across the river and I'm holding that fish. And that, that was pretty cool. We had a, we had a heck of a good time doing that, but those boys really do love fish.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah. I think the funniest part about that whole trip was that I foul hooked a Sculpin about three inches long. I've got a picture. And I'm saying, you know, I didn't spend $5,000 to catch up three years. We got to do something better for that.
Patrick Edwards: He's not kidding either. I mean, it was a dinky little fish, not
Hall Stoddard: that long, and I fell up, but
Patrick Edwards: I had to put her back, but Hey, we caught a lot of fish legit and had a lot of fun.
David Merrill: So it was
Hall Stoddard: good. It was a
David Merrill: good trip.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's kind of fun, you know, and just reminiscing about different trips and different things. I remember on that trip, just being, you know, kind of in, on everything.
David Merrill: And, um, there is something magical about the Kenai river and Alaska, Alaska is [00:54:00] just
Patrick Edwards: such a, I don't know, it's one of those places that just has a special place in your heart once you've been there.
I mean, it calls back to you, like come back.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah, no, I'm not going to pull an RV a cup there. Now of course you quit Chrome.
David Merrill: You, you won't get my wife to go back in a heartbeat, but you will get my wife. She she'd go for the summer, but you won't get her up there. Another winter. Yeah,
Patrick Edwards: well, no, no, no. It's definitely a summer day.
The
Hall Stoddard: last two weeks in July, if you will Sockeye and that's a good time to be there.
David Merrill: Well, the problem with that is you fight winner for nine and a half or 10 months, and then all these tourists show up and ruin your nice little remote Alaskan town. That, I mean, you can pull up to that four way. Stop there on the Kenai, spur and Soldotna any, any month outside of June and July.
And, and there's one car at it. You pull up there in June and there's 300 cars each direction and it, it, it definitely ruins the town. If you're a [00:55:00] local. Yup. Now I'm going to go be a tourist and ruin the town for the locals. I'm okay with it.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. Well, we, we feel that way here in Wyoming, too. It's like, you know, I grew up in Cheyenne, you know, Cheyenne frontier days and all of a sudden, you know, town of 60,000 becomes a town of, you know, a couple hundred thousand with all the people and it gets, it gets a little crazy and a little irritating.
I got
David Merrill: a giggle just to Shoney a couple of days ago, we were pulling in, in the boast butter, suburban to fuel it up, coming home from one of our trips. It was the South Dakota one. And there was this a brand new Mercedes sprinter, all decked out New York plates and the guy gets out and he's got his flip flops on, he's filling her up.
And I said, you headed to the park. He goes, yep. I said, okay, just don't pet the bison please.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah, I understand that. You've had a bad thing up.
Well,
David Merrill: they have people occasionally say, you know, why don't we put the animals up for the night or why aren't we doing a better job of [00:56:00] containing them or caging them.
And then there's people that legitimately don't understand. That's just raw wild wilderness. That's not, that's not Disney world.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. It's, it's more like Jurassic park. How was
Hall Stoddard: that? I was up there a few years ago and there was a one bull bison standing out all by himself, head down, you know, he didn't even look healthy and this guy walked up and put his hand over the hump and says, my, his wife take my picture.
And I was saying,
teach
Patrick Edwards: him a lesson cheering. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's not a petting zoo. That's that's for sure. And I think people forget about that, you know? We're all real familiar with Wyoming and we know what that wildlife can do, but, and some of these folks, they don't have a clue like what a bison can do, or a grizzly bear, grizzly bears look really cute and cuddly until they're barreling down on you at about 30 miles an hour.
Well,
David Merrill: you know, dear attractant says, do not apply to human being. And there's this old, old VHS [00:57:00] video tape for the guy in, in basically world war II, military fatigue, camels, he goes out and this DOE white tail deer, you know, he's wearing deer pee and she comes out and she's, I don't know who's filming it, but she's reared up.
And I mean, she's actively beaten him and he he's kitten his lunch eaten by this, you know, 90 pound DOH, white tail deer. You know, you get to a 2000 pound bison. Yeah. Look what they can, what Cape Buffalo do to African lions, Cape Buffalo. Aren't quite as, they're a little more aggressive than the north American bison, but they're not as powerful north American bison have more.
They've got all those front horsepower. Oh, by center. I would not want to tussle with one. No.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. And I mean, you talked about the Cape Buffalo. You've seen those videos of them pitching lions into trees. Oh, their horns. I mean, they're incredible
David Merrill: that that is on my list here very quickly. I have actually reached out to a pH and we will film it, but I want to go kill a [00:58:00] Cape Buffalo with a bow and arrow.
Patrick Edwards: There you go. That'll be an adrenaline rush for you,
David Merrill: but the hair standing up from my arm right now, thinking about it. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: There's, there's a handful. Yeah. There's a couple of animals in Africa that scare me more than anything. And one is the hippopotamus. That's at the top of my list. And not far from that as the, is the Cape Buffalo, because.
There's something else.
David Merrill: I'm not saying I wouldn't hunt a hippo. It just doesn't entice me. They're they're cool creature.
Patrick Edwards: I'm just
David Merrill: saying they're dangerous. They're 40 miles an hour on hundred. They look, you know, cause they're in the water. They kind of look like a big, I dunno, Manatee, right? I think of Manatee, this slow sluggish, all those hippos get out of the
Hall Stoddard: water.
Well, they could come out of the water in a hurry though. Even in water, they're not, they're not slow. I just watched
David Merrill: a video of them just annihilate a crocodile. Just absolutely chase it down, bite it, pull it out of the water and just, they got after it.
Patrick Edwards: When you think about their [00:59:00] mouth, it's about as big as you can get.
David Merrill: And I did see one hippo try and a challenge and elephant elephant wanted to go through the little hippo pool to the other side and elephant just kind of hooked him and pushed him out of the way. And the hippo finally said, okay, Elephant man, those African
Patrick Edwards: elephants or something else. So when you go to
Hall Stoddard: do your safari,
David Merrill: uh, I talked to the pH, it'll probably be 20, 22.
I mean, we've got to get over this travel restriction stuff, but yeah, it's a, it's not cheap. I was a little taken back, but I went, my wife and I went in 2013 and we did Plains game and you know, I, she got a zebra, I got the kudu and we got some more hog and I didn't get the Impala. That's still on the list.
Those are cool, but, and leopards just too much money. I have no desire for lion that just, I'm not opposed to it. I have no idea. The management sound everything's fine. I just don't feel like spending $50,000 to shoot cat. But like I said, uh, [01:00:00] the, the ones that really come to mind top is a Cape Buffalo with a bow, a crock, but I probably am just gonna chicken out and use a rifle because I don't want to send somebody out in the water to go recover.
My crock that I made a poor shot on with my bow. A leopard and Impala. Those four are pretty high up on the list. No, no cheetah, no elephant, Def draft doesn't entice me there. I think they're neat. I took some pictures. I have no problem with someone shooting one eating any of it. It just, for me, I want a big old Dugger boy, Cape Buffalo, you know, just a bruiser and yes, I want to sneak into about 60 yards and we'll see what happens.
See if I, we got to
Hall Stoddard: have someone behind you with the four 60 or something like that. That was your backup.
David Merrill: Yeah. Yeah. The pH the pH that took us in 13. I reached out to his brother actually, cause unfortunately the pH that took us, uh, passed away due to, uh, diabetes complications. But, [01:01:00] uh, I reached out to his brother and kind of as a little bit of a Memorial and Memorial and said, Hey, what will we charge?
I want to do this and I want to do it. I don't want to do it on a ranch. I want to just go. Out in the Savannah and we'll hike around until we find one. So that's, that's on the list, but it'll be fun. We have to get, uh, we'll get those in this room, but Patrick and I have talked about it. We, we got to get a king salmon on the wall and here there's, there might be room for a small sail fish, not a big one.
So we're going to get a few fish in the podcast,
Hall Stoddard: two sailfish on one, one cast. Really massive. Mazzola
David Merrill: yeah, let's see, let's hear
Hall Stoddard: this. We were just trolling and, uh, I hit, uh, one of the lures and, uh, the crew went to bring in all the other lines that were out. We had like four or five lines of, well, I forgot one.
And in the time I'm in landing mine, trying to it interventionists with the other line, that's still in the [01:02:00] water and then another sailfish hit it. So now I'm tied into two lines with two sailfish and we landed at both the same. The deck hand he's he's going like this. And I said, yeah, I'm sorry. And when we got to the dock, he runs up to the dock badge and he says he caught two at the same time.
And her wife saying, well, how can you do that? It's easy when they screw up, you know, they screw up. Yeah,
David Merrill: no, I definitely, you know, I'd rather be lucky than good. Yeah.
Hall Stoddard: Yeah. That's just like playing golf rather be lucky than good. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: So what's the craziest thing you've ever seen while you've been out fishing.
Hall Stoddard: We were on a boat over by Catalina island and I was sitting up on the, uh, upload cave on the flying bridge with the, with the skipper of the boat. And he says, oh, and I said, what? And he [01:03:00] says, oh, he says, look over there. And I saw this whale underneath the boat. It went underneath the boat. And everybody either snagged it or probably half snake.
So everybody's on this side of the boat or Roger going like this, doing this. And the other guys are watching her line disappeared. Poor whale had some jewelry, a lot of jewelry. The whole boat just sat there, went like this a couple of times until he got he cleared everybody's lines and snapped them off, staffed them off way.
Okay.
Patrick Edwards: You're not reeling in that fell hooked whale that's for sure.
Hall Stoddard: Cause he saw it coming. That's what he, that's what he said. Oh, cause he wasn't right under the
Patrick Edwards: one thing you don't want to hear your captain say is, oh
David Merrill: no, that's a bad sign. I think I annoyed the captain one time when Kenai was maybe 15, 16, and now the water was green and nasty [01:04:00] enough up on the window that he sent me up on the flying bridge.
And we put me in one of those Gumby suits, right. And survival suit. And it, my dad tells the story differently and yes, the captain sat there and watched, but I had control of the throttle and got to throttle her up the ways and throttle back down. And I mean up there, I could see with the wind and rain in my face, but I had more fun driving the name boat than I did catching fish on that trip.
That would be fun.
Patrick Edwards: I know my son Benjamin loves driving the boat a lot more than he likes fishing, but that's just, that's his personality. He loves to drive stuff. So, yeah. He's a handful
Hall Stoddard: at that's his drive. That means drive his Paris a little bit bonkers at
David Merrill: times I was driving a captain bonkers. That's why he said, Hey, let's put you up there.
I'm sure he could have seen just fine to try the boat. Yeah.
Patrick Edwards: So we need to talk about another one of our sponsors before we finished the broadcast. But PK lures is definitely a, a good, good business to do business with. You know, we've I know this [01:05:00] year I've got number of friends who've reached out and said, Hey, you know, I went out there and I bought some of those lures and put them to the test and they work and yes, they do.
Um, I'm not telling you fairytales, I promise, but they are very effective this time of year being summer period for walleyes, I recommend you get the PK, wobbler, PK, Dakota disc, and some of their crank baits do some trolling. We
David Merrill: do have a promo code with them. Yes.
Patrick Edwards: And if you put in rad at checkout, you can.
Um, some free whamming blades if you buy a spoon kit. So that's something you should check out, but great company, great group of people there. They're catching a lot of fish right now. I know Kurt he's on the, on the tournament circuit. He's the owner and he's been doing really well. So, um, go out and check them out.
PK, louver.com and, uh, definitely tell them that we sent you that that helps out quite a bit. Um, yeah, another, another company we want to talk about is one of our locals and one of our favorites and that's Fremont Stoneworks. They, uh, make some [01:06:00] incredible. Stone signs and glass engraving. So if you haven't checked out free mounts, don't work.com.
You
David Merrill: need to do we have some of the glasses on the website and they're pretty cool. I liked the elk one. I like the wall light one.
Patrick Edwards: It makes sense. Right. So anyway, you know, haul it's, it's a lot of fun, uh, getting heavy on the podcast and we've had, you know, I told you about it. We've had lots of different people on, but it's always really cool for me to have somebody on like you, cause you know, I feel like you and I are kind of like kindred spirits on the fishing and we sure enjoy going together.
Um, it was kind of funny today. It was of comical. I, I had a buddy who offered to take us out and of course. One armed man. Uh, but I got the net, a lot of fish for you today. So you did all right.
Hall Stoddard: We did. We did well, we
Patrick Edwards: did well. And he even caught a carp. That is one of the biggest carp I've ever seen in Boyce and actually landed.
Um, I'll, I'll post that in the show notes as well. Cause it, it, it gave him quite the tussle.
[01:07:00] Hall Stoddard: Yeah. Do you
David Merrill: know how I've been trained to cook carp? Throw them out. No, no, you go get the nicest Cedar plank. You can find you fill it out, pull all the bones, put some nice seasoning on it. Cook it at three 50 for about 75 minutes.
Pull it out of the oven. Share with the carboy heat, the Cedar board.
Hall Stoddard: That's what they used to say about what was it you used to be with catch and you actually, uh, you put the hot water in a boot. Cook the fish in the boot, and then you threw the fish and a lot of way in eight to boots. Yeah.
David Merrill: I liked that one.
I'm going to remember that. That's pretty good. I liked
Patrick Edwards: that. I hadn't heard that. I've heard the Cedar plank one, but
David Merrill: yeah, that's good stuff. Well, to everybody out there, you know, get, get on, uh, get on rad cast outdoor. Tell us what you want to hear more of what, what you don't want to hear more of.
Definitely go support all those sponsors. We couldn't do this without them. And we, we really do appreciate them.
Patrick Edwards: Yeah. And there's always new stuff coming up. Um, [01:08:00] David and I we're, we're kinda in the busy season right now for bowspider, but there will be a lot more content coming, stay tuned. One of the ways you can help the show, if you like the show is to go rate, subscribe, follow, you know, uh, go on our social media, follow our pages there.
And then of course the best. Is to tell other people about it. That helps us a whole bunch. So we're going to adjourn for this one, but we will come back with some more episodes here in the near future. And thanks again for listening to RAD Cast outdoors. [01:09:00] .