Ep. 889: The Boss of All Fishing Records

Steven Rinella talks with Jason Schratwieser.

Topics discussed: the history of IGFA and world of fish record keeping; conservation efforts for bluefin tuna and billfish; innovative satellite tagging technology; IGFA record validation process transforming our understanding of marine life; species identification techniques; conservation and sustainable fishing practices; and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case underwere listening past.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
You can't predict.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Anything brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting,
I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise,
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just gear that works. Check it out at first light
dot com. That's f I R S T L I
T E dot com. K Ladies and gentlemen, we're joined

(00:44):
today by the Boss of All Phishing Records. Is that
what your business card says? No, we're gonna run with it.
Boss of All Phishing Records, Jason Schratwiser, who is the
president of the i g f A or International Game
Fish Association. So if you're sitting at home wondering why
that matters or what that means, we're gonna talk about it.

(01:06):
But one of the ways to connect it is when
you hear someone saying they have a new line class
record or they called a record this or a record that.
You guys are the record holders. We are the world's
keeper of records.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, there are a lot of enterities out there that
keep records, whether it be States or you know, there's
Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, but you know, in terms
of the world's keeper of records, it's the IDFA for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah. And you guys traditionally were salt water, but you
now do the fresh water too.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
We were, so we were founded in nineteen thirty nine
and really the genesis of our organization is at that
point there were a couple of other big time angling
clubs out there, but there was no universal code of
angling rules, so to speak. So if you're fishing in
Australian and I'm fishing in New Zealand or wherever, and
we're fishing for the same fish. You catch a fish

(01:58):
one size, I catch one another. No, really weary to
compare performance. And so that led into us becoming a
record keeping body. And like you said, we were saltwater
for a long time, but what happened over time we
transitioned into freshwater and fly fishing as well. We picked
up the freshwater records from Field and Stream in the
nineteen seventies.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, what what part of Because you know, Field and
Stream is a weird deal where all these different entities
own all these different rights to the name. Right when you.
So if you had, if Field and Stream had the record,
what portion of Field and Stream held freshwater records?

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
This is before my time. This is I think nineteen
seventy for something like that. I can't remember exactly. This
was a year I was born. Man, it was two
years for me. I mean I was born in seventy two.
But anyways, we took them over. Field and Stream said, hey,
we have a deal for you. We've been keeping these
since eighteen hundreds. Our oldest record, I think on the
books is a yellow perch caught in eighteen eighty something

(02:59):
in New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
So that must have been like Field and Stream the magazine.
Because you know, if you go into some store and
you see like a Field and Stream canoe, you know
what I mean exactly?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
They say that.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
They've sold off over the years all these different rights
to the name, and so I didn't know if where
the fact that I didn't know they even had freshwater
record yea.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
So we took it over from Field and Stream.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Then they handed you the papers, They said, here.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Do it, and then we must have done some kind
of vetting process on the on the records there and
then that that included fresh water fly fishing as well.
And then then two years later the Salty Fly Riders,
which was an entity that was you know, really on
the cusp of this emerging news sport, you know, catching
saltwater fish and get saltwater fish on fly. They had
started to create their own set of rules, Mark Sosen

(03:45):
and Stu Apt two luminaries there. They came to the
igf A and we subsequently took over those records and
modified our rules as well.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So we're what does like where do the records live?
I mean, a lot of the stuff prize have been digitized,
A lot of it has as yourself have gone through it.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
So like a lot of those field and stream records
have been entered, especially the ones that are still valid.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
You know, they're in our database.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
But we're we're undertaking a massive digitization process for We've
got what we call our E. K.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Harriet Library Officies. It's massive.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
We've got over seventeen thousand books, you know, millions of photographs,
et cetera. But that was where those old records lie.
But then you know, everything that's been fairly modern is
already in our world record database. We've got photos that
have been you know digitized out of the record application.
So a lot of that has been done already.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
You know, I feel like a lot of a lot
of listeners are are going to be I don't mean
this as a I don't mean this as an insult
to you guys, but a lot of our listeners are
going to be more aware of Boone and Crockett sure
than they would be of IGFA. And I want to
ask you a question, but I want to set up
kind of like how why Boone and Crockett exists?

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (05:00):
So Boone and Crockett was what began and remains a
conservation organization. As part of their conservation work a long
time ago, they wanted to have a way of sort
of how do you measure the health of herds?

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Right?

Speaker 1 (05:17):
How do we know what what hunters are getting, what's
coming off the land? What is big, what is little?
They had an idea and it wasn't entirely wrong that
you could tell the health of a population of wild
animals by whether or not it was producing large specimens, right,
Like all the things need to be happening properly for

(05:39):
a for a you know whatever, for a patch of
ground in North Carolina to produce seven eight year old
big white tails, like a lot of good things need
to be happening. You need to be taking the right
steps to do that. So they felt, and I'm simplifying something,
but the genesis of the idea was by track of

(06:01):
the size of animals coming off the landscape, we might
be able to gauge the health of the ecosystem right
even before some of those words are being used. So
to do that, they established this scoring system, and the
scoring system kind of went on to have It still
serves its purpose, but it went on to have a
life of its own. And so a lot of guys
now might look and they might say, oh, Boone and Crockett,

(06:23):
And in their head they're not thinking wild, they have conservation.
They're thinking it's the people that made the scoring system right. Right,
with that context or understanding that history, can you explain,
are there is there a parallel story with IGFA or
was it sort of reverse engineered that it was all

(06:44):
about the numbers and became about the conservation.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
That was a great slow pitch man. Thanks for that
one quite a bit. So.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
The guy that founded the IDFA, it was a gentleman
named Michael Lerner. He was a man of means in
the late thirties, he had department stores in New York.
But he was very philanthropic to the American Museum Natural History.
You know, he was big into that. And even before
he founded the IGFA, he would go on these expeditions,
you know, around the world, Chile, New Zealand, wherever, and

(07:11):
he would take not only photographers but cinem photographers, take movies,
but also scientists from the American Museum of Natural History
because he wanted to make sure that they were cataloging
whatever you were seeing catching, et cetera. And when IGFA
was founded, we were originally housed in the American Museum
of Natural History and our original president was a curator officious,

(07:32):
doctor William King Gregory.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
So right away you had this tie with science and conservation.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
And our first model, I believe, was for ethical sport
and productive science. So we always had that tie in.
So you know, you know, our rules led into records,
like I said, and you know, you can kind of
look at that as a proxy for health.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
I don't think it's as.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Good as probably as what you can do with Boone
and Crockett, because I think terrestrial systems are a lot
easier to gauge abundance of animals, health of animal, size
of animals. Records are a little bit different because you know,
people say, hey, can we just use your records per SAE,
you know, to see how fish have changed over time.
I'm like yes and no, because records depend on a

(08:14):
couple of things. Obviously, you need to have a fish
for a particular size out there to be beaten if
one already exists, But you also have to have interest.
So it's not this kind of ideal free distribution of
people that are pursuing these things all the time. You know,
it's a really rarefied universe. And so say the all
tackle record for a fish is I don't know, just

(08:34):
for sake of example, four hundred pounds. You know there
may be dozens hundreds of fish that are three hundred
and eighty pounds that are caught as year but are
not entered because they know they won't break the record.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
So you know, when I when I talk to.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
People, I wouldn't get I'd have to know. Yeah, I
wouldn't tell anyone, Like if there's some fish I like
a lot, I wouldn't tell anyone if I caught one
that was closed but not open.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, But I.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Mean as far as the conservation goes, you know, that
really kind of ramped up over the years and we
really really got strong, you know, certainly in the two thousands,
but before then as well, we really started weighing in
on fisheries issues around the world.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
There we used to have a.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Monthly publication called the International It was called the Marine
International Angler. Actually this is before we took over of
freshwater stuff. And on the cover I had this old
edition of it and it says, you know, IGFA is
asking ICAP, which is the international body that manages bluef intuna,
to take measures to protect the stock. And that's just
when the stock started to go down.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
But were you take that example of bluefin tuna, what
was your awareness, like what was the alarm bell for
you during month when bluefin tuna started to drop off?
What year was that when they really started to drop
I think I think they started to really fall off.
The cliffs in the fifties and sixties belong on big

(10:03):
time and and what like, how did you like, how
did that become did you guys become aware of that
or become that was a pet fish of our organization?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
So a lot of the presidents at time really liked
to compete at these international tuna tournaments. They were like
a big deal, like a wedgeport in Canada and stuff
like that. There was a really historical bluefin tuna fishery
and kat k when those fish were coming back and
forth from spawning in the Gulf of Mexico, and I
saw these numbers going down, the size of these fish
going down. So you know, that was an obvious thing

(10:33):
that said, hey, we should we should be doing something
for this.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, got it, got it. And so then so then
the ORG went and went and petitioned or talked with
the group that sort of oversaw and managed that fish
and said we have a problem.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, along with some other groups. But I mean, you know,
we're probably one of the first recreational groups, certainly international
groups to kind of take that stance with things, you know,
and we've done it from that time on on a
variety of different species. You know, we lean really heavily
into billfish. We've done a lot of work to conserve
bill fish. We've passed two laws in the United States

(11:09):
that prohibit the importation and sale of marlin, salefish, and
spearfish before that, I bet you didn't know this. We
were the world's biggest importer of those. No, can you
believe for what tax? Jermy no, No, for food. So
we had a we had a board member and we
were having a lunch at headquarters one day. It was
a social thing, and he sat down. He says, do

(11:29):
you know who's importing the most, exporting the most, killing
the most billfish? I said, I really don't, but if
we had some money. I know the guy that coul
commissioned a study. I had a friend that was in
economists with the National Marine Fishery Service and he had
just gone private. He put the money he should give
you the money for it. So he went through, did
all the date He's like, I guess he's important the most,
importing the most of Like I don't know China, result,

(11:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
No, we are but importing marlin from where and for what?

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Oh, places like say Central America, big time Vietnam food.
You would be surprised at the time. People would be like,
where do you see this? All you would have to
do is google Marlin stakes. Yeah, you know. Wegmans had
it for a while. They got on the campaign and
they kicked it out, but you didn't.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
There was you can still walk into you can walk
into gas stations in Hawaii, you get more poke.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Absolutely, we had to I'll get into that. We had
to do a carve out for that. But there were
I think at least three sushi joints within ten to
fifteen minutes from where I live where I could find
Marlin Sushi.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
So it was there. Yeah, you just had to look
for it.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, And we started off with this public awareness campaign,
you know, telling people, hey, look, you know there's not
that many of these things out there. They've got an
important use in the ecosystem, and they're a big economic
driver for recreational language. That's spend a lot of money
on boots and tackle to largely catch them, release these fish,
you know, killing them in large numbers to bring them
in for you know, you know, a low, low value

(12:59):
pro It doesn't mean a lot of sense, you know.
But finally we knew that we'd have to take kind
of legislative steps. So the first round we went in
and we thought we were all smart. We just wanted
it all out of prohibition and sale and importation in
all fifty states. Well back then in a way was
in power and was a senator in a way, oh okay,

(13:20):
and that was dead on arrival, you know.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And you know, we understand I'm not familiar with the name,
tell me who that is.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
I think he was in charge of appropriation. But he
was a very powerful congress person then, so you know,
if he didn't like a particular bill, you know, he
had the ability to cut it, especially in his home,
you know, in Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, So that that's I was wondering why I had
relevance to him.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
He was whih And truthfully speaking, there is this cultural
significance with with bill fish and Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
I mean, you've been there. You know, fish is very
very important to them.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
So we went back to the drawing board and in
twenty twelve we got a law pass that banned the
importation and sale of those species in the continental United States,
Hawaii and what they call other Pacific insular areas, you know,
American territories like Quam, Samoa. They were still allowed, yeah,
you know, to harvest it.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
But were you Okay, this is a little bit maybe
problematic for me, but you can walk me through. It
was that coming because people were seeing a decline oh god, Okay,
billfish stocks around the world are not being managed good.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
I mean you can only point to I think one
or two that have enough data that state that they're abundant.
But you know, if you look in the Atlantic, okay
Atlantic and blue Atlantic, blue marlin and white marlin, they've
been in alternating positions of either being overfished, experiencing it
over fishing, or the combination of the two for like

(14:45):
ever thirty years.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Absolutely, because the point I was going to make that
if you couldn't demonstrate that, the point I was gonna
make is I know, guys that will be the fish
all the time. Yeah, every fish they catch their adamant
that to be let go. Oh, but they go to
restaurants and buy fish.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Somebody said, well, how are you deciding what? How are
you deciding what fish? Like do you know where that
fish came from? If you don't want to damage your
home fishery, how do you know you're not damaging a
different fishery, Like, how are you making these decisions? Like
you what are your decision process based on? So if
with the billfish thing, if someone could go and say, yeah,
we had to well no, we're in we're in crisis mode.

(15:25):
That's why we should take emphasis off of this fish,
knowing that it's going to be placed upon the next
fish down the line.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, yeah, I mean you have to look at it
from a couple of different lenses. Number one, you know,
especially blue and blackbarlin, you know the kind of apex predators.
You know, thousands of pounds. But you know, we had
data that's shown that their abunnets had declined. And Stephen,
there are a number of species that we don't have
enough data. There's never been a stock assessment so we
can accurately determine how depleted or not they are. Think

(15:55):
about Central America. You know, they're iconic. Billfish areas sale fish.
If you want to take somebody to catch your first salefish,
you're going to Costa Rica, You're going to guatam Ali. Yeah,
there has never been a stock assessment done on Pacific sailfish.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Really. Yeah, how would you do that?

Speaker 2 (16:12):
You've got to have a lot of baseline parameters. You've
got to have things like growth, so you have to
have an idea of how fast they grow all on,
they grow over time, age of first maturity, things like that.
Then you have to have some good indices of abundance.
You know where you're getting you know, historical and current catch,
you know in effort rates, so you can see how

(16:32):
you know, the catch of things fluctuate over time. And
it's a very sophisticated thing, you know, and with.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Someone that involved like mark and recapture, like if guys
start tag and tag and tagging a little bit.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
But really a lot of the abundancies come from longline boats,
you know, because the data is so good. You know,
there are some recreational indices of abundance that are used
in the US for stock assessments, but a lot of
it comes from longline data.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
God, And no one's been able to do that. No
is it because a lack of money, lack of interest,
because it's scientifically too difficult.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
I think it's a it will be difficult to do,
it's not impossible to do. But if you look at
highly migratory species, and they're they're managed by four major
what they call regional fisheries organizations around the world. You've
got one in the Atlantic, you get two in the Pacific,
one in the Indian Ocean. They're the red headed step
children of all highly migratory species because they don't fetch

(17:26):
the market value that big eye tuna or yellowfin tune
or none of the bellfish.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
So they'll be harvested because they're large in size and
there were something, but they don't get the money that
you know, market value that these other species do, so
they take a back seat from a management perspective.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Oh, I got what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, which is why you know, we undertake a giant
effort to start satellite tagging these things all over the world.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Like you mean, because you could catch a blue fin
tune that might feasibly worth you might tell me, but
thirty thousand dollars for it.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Man, there's been bluefin tuna that have been sold for
over a million.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah, So that fish is going to have from from
the market perspective, that fish is going to have greater
scrutiny just because it's going to have added scrutiny just
because of its commercial value.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
And we really don't we really we're starting on no
more now, but we still don't know a whole lot
about bellfish.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
We undertook a joint venture with doctor Barbara Block in
twenty eleven. This was when something called pop up satellite
archival tags were coming on the scene, and what these
are kind of essentially many computers that you deploy on
fish like you would with a conventional attack.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
But he's got a break surface to make of night
or oh no, no, it's not true.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
So let's go back to what you know, conventional tag
and look like you know, you know, you would catch
a fish in ConA, Hawaii and maybe somebody, luckily if ever,
might catch that fish some other location. The data you
got from that was a minimum days at large. Okay,
how long has that fish been swimming since she was
caught and it was recaptured, and then you would get
a linear distance from point A to point B. You
don't know what that fish did in that period of time,

(18:59):
you know, and you didn't know anything about its diving behavior,
you know, starting he.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Could have went a lot farther on his way home
when he got caught.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, in the late nineties two thousands,
you know, these these peace ats as they're called, started
to come on the scene and they collect a wealth
of data. You know, every thirty seconds, you're getting information
on temperature depth, You're you're able to get an algorithm
based on light to determine and daily fix of these fish,
so you're able to get a track where these fish going.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Just I don't want to bog you down in technical details,
but but that fish has to be a There can't
be a benthic fish, right, it has to be like
a plagic fish that's hanging out near the surface. Like,
how is it getting that signal out through the water.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
It doesn't, it can't.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
So what happens is you program that tag to stay
on that tether for a predetermined amount of time, usually
between one hundred and eighty two d and forty days. And
when that happens, a signal comes from the computer on
the tag and it corrodes a pin, the tag pops
up and then starts beaming information to orbiting satellites.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Really yeah, so you never got to go recover it.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
You don't have.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
If you do recover, it's great because you get every
single data point. You're getting daily summaries, you know, from
the from the birds transmit, you.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Don't kidding that thing comes off, floats up and in
cert sentence and the and the beauty about that is
two things.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Number one, the quality of the data that you get
is just enormous. I mean, like I say, you get tracks,
but you're also getting information on diving behavior and we're
looking at you know, how does that change in different areas,
in different oceanographic conditions and things like that, habitat preferences
and things like that. But you never have to recapture
that fish, yeah, to get any data.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
I feel like I've heard stories about those. And it's
when you see that one of your fish has been
eaten by another fish.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
We've got We've got it happens, and we've got a
good story about that. So uh, we we're doing. I
think this was a Lizard Island black Marlin tournament in
Australia and black marlin got tagged and we could tell
it got eaten by a sharp because the tag was intact,
but it had no light level with shark's stomach. Okay,
got it, and you know the shark puked it out

(21:03):
and the diving behaviors were different. We were not only
able to tell that it was a shark, but it
was probably either a maco or a great white. Probably
a maca most likely in that area because the temperature
of that tag in the gut of that fish we
know was higher than the ambient water temperature at that
depth where that fish was swimming.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, I feel like maybe maybe that
was example. I heard it.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
I've heard of that before. Yeah, so it's cool. We've
learned a lot of stuff and we started this.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
But because that's the thing I didn't know too. The
shark's gut is warmer.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
In some sharks that are slightly into themic.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Okay, yeah, he runs warmer. Yeah, that's not a feeling
fish and feeling warm.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
No, no, no, So maca is port beagles and and
and white sharks have the ability to have, you know,
maintain a body temperature that's higher than the ambient water tips.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
I had no idea, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
So we started this project and you know, some started
in twenty eleven. We've deployed over seven hundred tags and
twenty five locations around the world and steven. These are
expensive pieces of equipment. These range from thirty five hundred
to forty five hundred dollars a year. This whole project
has only been able to work because it's born on

(22:12):
the benevolence of recreational billfish anglers. They're the ones sponsoring
these tags and deploying these tags. So it's a beautiful thing.
We've been able to provide the data that you know,
other managers didn't have the money.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
To be able to do.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, but we're also showing that recreational billfish anglers or conservations,
they're not only putting forth their money to sponsor these tags,
but they're also part of the science who are deploying
these tags as well.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
So it's been great. So we've We've got a ton
of data. And one of the other things that we
do is we make it all open access, so this
is not proprietary to just us or our partners at Stanford.
We encourage, you know, are the partners managers to use
it whatsoever. You know, it's open access, which is an anomaly.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Typically, let's talk from it about the record stuff, and
I think a fun way introduced and how the records
work and what the rules are, because you guys have
rules that how would you express the rules? You have
fishing rules that the tournaments will buy to buy, right.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
We have rules that were developed to establish ethics and
fair play. Okay, so you wanted it to be ethical
and you also wanted to have a sense of fair play,
so the finish would have a chance of, you know,
getting away from sometimes.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
So the story that I've read about and written about,
we've talked about is this this guy, Frank Munda's. Munda's
people will recognize they listeners might not recognize Frank Munda's,
but they'll recognize a character inspired by Frank Mundas, which
is this Quint from Jaws is in some way Benchley, right,

(23:47):
Peter Benchley, in some way he modeled his Shark Hunter
off this dude whose named Frank Mundas. And Frank Mundas
was a fisherman who fished out of Montauk, Long Island,
so in New York State, and he was around in
an era when you were starting to see declines in

(24:08):
some of the traditional fish that people went after off
Long Island. So we talked about bluefin declines, swordfish declines,
other things were in decline. And Munda's was kind of
an opportunist and he built this business where he called
himself Monster Man. He had necklaces full of shark teeth.
He would drag home these giant sharks, big tigers, big makos,

(24:33):
whatever he'd get his hands on, he'd hang them up
on the dock, you know, by a chain from a hoist.
Tourists would see these big fish and he would sell
trips to go for sharks, and he built this whole
persona around the big shark hunter. At one point in time,
it let me back that up Munda's had developed a

(24:56):
sort of fishing secret where he would father off to
dead whales.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
He could always he had a he had black belt
for finding dead whales. I mean, that's just what we've
heard about Frank. He just he could find.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Him found black you know, he would find whales, find them.
Now rumors and I'm not he's gone, and and I
don't have firsthand experience. I haven't talked to people who
had firsthand experience with Munda's, but there were rumors that
Mundu's his knack for finding dead whales sort of defied belief.

(25:33):
And it was it was speculated by individuals that that
he it can't be that he's just able to find
these whales. He must be generating dead whales. He's generating
dead whales in order to tether off on these whales
and fish sharks they're coming to feed on whales. That
was a that was a rumor. You can go search
online and you will find it.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Way more diplomatic than that I would. I just always said,
you know, this guy could just find a dead whale
like nobody else.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Get Yeah, you needed to find it, dead whale, here's
your man.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, he'll find it for you.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
You'll find one this morning.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
I know where it is.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
So Mondus goes I don't even remember what year this was.
I think it was eighty six or eighty three. Well,
the one he harpooned. Oh yeah, he goes off. He
has a dead whale. He ties up on it and
he's out there and he harpoons a I believe it
was a white shark in the four thousand pound range.

(26:29):
And he's criticized and people are like, well, yeah, you
harpooned it, you didn't catch it. So then he goes
out and with Rod and Reel and he goes out
and catches one that I believe was in the three
thousand pound range. And he felt as though he would
be now the holder of the the the IGFA would

(26:50):
be the biggest fish ever caught on Rod and Reel
would be this great white shark. That's right, But it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
No in this I'll let you take over.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
This goes back to something I'll always say is that
there's a lot more to catching an IGFA record or
getting an IGFA record, than catching a big damn fish,
which he caught a big damn fish. So, as I
was told, and I went back to the archives, I
talked to I'm President number eight. You know, we've been
around since nineteen thirty nine. There's been eight chairman, eight presidents.
I'm President number eight. I went back to President number five,

(27:21):
who I worked with a little bit when I first
came to IGFA in two thousand and three. And you know,
he was worked with President number four E. K. Harry,
you know, and so he knew a lot of backstory
on this. He was around him. So I just shot
him an email. I said, Mike, I remember you telling
me about this, you know, and I think I have
a right give me the detail.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
So this is what I was talking.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, any part I got wrong, go ahead now, yeah,
I think you got it.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
But I think it was either eighty three or eighty six.
I think it's eighty six. He had a charter party
out and Frank found a dead well. There was like
three or four great whites. He's like, good Lord, you know,
feeding off this thing. But he had a charter party
and they didn't want to assume purportedly didn't want to
fish for these things, so he took them back. They

(28:05):
didn't want to fish for great They didn't want to
fish with the great whites, from what I'm understanding. So
either after he took them back that day or the
next day, he went out there and they were having trouble,
you know, baiting these fish because they were you know, obset.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Gorged don whale. But what he did, admittedly is that
he tethered off, like you said, to the whale so
they could stay with the floating whale. They hooked one,
not the biggest one allegedly though out of the group.
They said one was way bigger than the three thousand,
five hundred.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Whatever it was.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
So catches a fish and I think they have to
tow it back behind the boat. I don't think they
ever got it in the boat. They get it back.
And we had a trustee in New York, Steven Slow,
he had heard about this from the radio chatter, raced
to the spot, talked to Mondus in the in the
crew there, you know, asked what kind of tackle they
were used, and then he says, we were using one
hundred and eighty pound tests and just so you know,

(28:59):
for IGF records, the max we accept is one hundred
and thirty pounds. Anything over that not sportsmanlike.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Okay, so the cables out, No, you can use cable
for leader as long as it has a ten style
strength of.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well no, no, no, no, you're you know, for tackle
over thirty pounds, you're allowed thirty feet of liter.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
It can be made out of chain if you want it. Oh,
I see, yeah, yeah, okay, I got you.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
I got the main main line, so that it's going
to dictate where that where that breaks one hundred and
thirty cut off cut off. So I heard one hundred
and eighty and then we also heard you know that
you know, tied off to the whale. And we have
a rule that says that chumming with the flesh or
using it for bait of mammals is prohibited. Oh so
we didn't expect to see an application. An application came

(29:44):
in and Mike said, sure enough, it said they used
one hundred and thirty pound line even though they were
on the record. I so the short story was rejected
kind of on two grounds. One is you know, they
said they used one hundred and eighty even though they
said in a sample of one hundred and thirty said
that was suspect. But they also admitted to tying off

(30:04):
on that whale, so.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It wasn't there. See that's funny because my understanding of
the story was one of the problems, there was several,
but one of the problems as well, as they were
trading the rod back and forth.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, I didn't hear that, but that's definitely a no no.
I mean because the cardinal rule of IGFA, once the
fish strikes rod real or structs the baitler lure, nobody
but the anglic types Roduler line got it.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
You know. No assistance.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
I mean, if you're walking by and you glance the
rod with your shoulder, that's not an infraction or anything
like that. But you know, assisting with the drag or
certainly help me hold the rod for a minute while
you get a cold beer or something like that.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
That didn't fly.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, yeah, but when you when you do that kind
of stuff, like so if you if the records, sorry,
let me approach this a different way. If you if
you go look at back to the boone and crocket parallel.
There's an aspect of this I feel like it would
be interesting to you guys, is the Boon and crocket

(31:01):
parallel would be that they're interested in dead what we
call a deadhead.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
So if someone just fine it could get hit by
a damn train, right, right, that there's a place for
that in the records, right. Okay, I think that a
handful of the record keeping organizations. When it comes to mammals,
there's a place for well, this was according to our
fair chase rules.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
So so a deer, you know, if a guy spotlighted
a deer at night and kills it, and he goes
to submit it, but he gets busted by the game
warden first. Later he's like, oh, I'm still going to submit.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
He's just out.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, he's not going in the hunter records.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
But let's say it was some unheard of ungodly giant,
you know whatever, it's like a two hundred and fifty
inch typical buck, right, some crazy number I'm just pulling
out of nowhere. It would still find a way, it
would still be codified within right, yep. Because there's an
interest in sort of like that. The landscape, at least

(32:06):
produced it, so it would be cataloged in some way. Yeah, right,
And so for that reason you will see that. For
that reason you will see that, for instance, the biggest
I think it's the biggest non typical. I think it
still stands. The biggest non typical white tail is a deadhead. Really,

(32:28):
that's the biggest typical white tail. Believe the biggest typical
white tails hunter killed.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I could be.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Messing that up, but so for a while it was
the biggest non typical was a deadhead. So within the system,
like why would you guys not be keeping track of
stuff that came in off long lines or stuff that
came in on Frank Munds's boat. Just as a way
of saying, hey, the ocean in nineteen eighty six was

(32:57):
capable of producing a three thousand, five five hundred great
white Is it anymore?

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:03):
So, I mean our rules specifically dictate to the act
of fishing, which we did. We definitely defined by the
active using rod, reel and line. I understand exactly what
you're saying, because you want to know how big these
things get out there, you know, no matter how they're done.
So even for records that were rejected or for fish

(33:23):
that are bigger, that are never sitting. We know about that,
and we have catalog that they don't show up in
our record. But so, for example, you know the Pacific
blue Marlin record. I'm probably gonna butcher this is I
think is like fourteen or thirteen hundred change. There's a
really famous story about something called Choice Monster. It was

(33:44):
like at eight pound blue marlin that was caught in Hawaii.
It was on a charter operation. And if I understand
this correct, it was a father and daughter duo. Okay,
the father was captain of the boat, the daughter was
the mate, and they hook up to this giant thing.
You know, I think I think it Inhaled. I think
they were I could have this run, but I think

(34:05):
they they were fighting like one hundred and fifty pound
tune and this thing just pow drived on, yeah, and
just sitting there gagging itself on this.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
So but you know they've got this inexperienced charter. You
know that's just out there.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
They had a marlin eat one hundred and fifty pound tuna.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean it might have been a hundred fet
but it was like a big dam tuna. I mean
it wasn't like, you know, a football like that. You know,
these things that big have a ma all like huh yeah,
So the rod gets passed around this and that and
the other. So it was it wasn't an idea of
a record, but it was brought in and weighed on

(34:42):
a certified scale. And there's a great picture of it,
you know it. It looks like a rectangle. Rectangle is
so big. Yeah, but we know about these things, you know,
we can say, well, you know, for for our rules
in terms of what we consider ordering an ethical you know,
the biggest Black Marlind ever killed is you know, one

(35:04):
thy five hundred and sixty, you know in Cabo Blanco.
We know that there are others been caught in long
lines or in nets and things like that.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, so those those kind of those those freaks that
fall outside of angling rules would still in some way
because we want to know so that at some point
in time someone could refer back and be like, man,
whatever was going on? Then one A, this is the
optimistic view. We're somehow now producing bigger fish than we've
ever known to be produced, or more likely, we just

(35:35):
are not seeing that happen anymore.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
The difference I think with the boon and crock is
that probably shows up somewhere on their website or on
their if they do a yearbook or whatever. Those other
fish aren't going to show up. But we know and
we have records of them. So when somebody says, well, well,
that's the biggest fish blue marlin ever caught, we say, well,
with the caveat. According to the idea FA rules, there

(35:58):
have been X number of fish had been caught either
by commercial gear or not compliant with the idea favorables.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Except because no, I.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Think there is value in terms of knowing you know
the size or quality of animals you know in the
water and on land for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
How often do you guys find a record that you
later learned to be fraudulent or illegitimate, like I remember
what it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to
be crookedness, like I remember. I can't remember if this
is IGFA or a state thing. I don't remember this
what state it was. But there had been this long
standing there's long standing channel cat record, and there's an

(36:39):
old photo of this guy standing there with a channel cat. Well, someone,
some brilliant person a couple of years ago had the
idea of why not count the rays on its fins,
which you could see in the image was a blue cat.
It was a blue cat. Yeah, so all along the
state record Channel Cat was just because a guy caught
and settled Channel Cat. And then only later did someone go, like,

(37:02):
you know, one, two through four five, I came here
with the numbers are well, like one is like eight
to nine fins and one is twelve to fourteen fins
or something like that, and some other indicators, and like
we had it all wrong. And then it was kind
of funny because the race started all over again, and
so people were breaking Channel Cat records monthly or whatever
because they had to build it back up. Like a

(37:23):
guy comes in, he's got a four pounder, that's the
record five pounder, and then it built back up to
some you know, realistically hits that plateau. Yeah, it built
back up to some realistic measure. But how often in
your own things do you get where someone like Munda's
submits as legitimate and then your investigation finds that it's not,
or you in time realized that there was a misunderstanding,

(37:46):
and in a in an old record falls away.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
So in terms of sending old records. Several of those
things happened to me very early on my career Idea
F I was hired in two thousand and three, and
I'm a fly angler.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
I like the saltwater fly fish.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
And you know, there were people on staff that did
it a little bit, but not really like me. And
we got this application from I think Vera Cruz, Mexico
were somewhere in Mexico for a new tarpain record on
I can't remember the tip at six pounds, twelve pounds,
I forget what it was, but the line sample came
in the bite tip. It was priss, the wetness scuff

(38:26):
on it, and the fly looked like you plucked it
out of a fly shop and just tied it on.
And anybody that's ever caught a tarb, their mouths are
rougher than hell. I mean, they just wear through leader
tear up flies. And I said, you know, guys, I've
got hesitations with this, and I'm not going to mention
who it was, but one of the people in the
review staff said, well, you know, you can hook it

(38:47):
up at the very corner of the you know, top
of the jaw and not have it rub I'm like,
maybe maybe not so I as new So Jason overrode,
I'm keep my mouth shut. We've found out a year
later that this guy had submitted this record erroneously or
false falsely. It was a commercially captured fish and he

(39:08):
wanted to impress one of the staff members working at IDFA.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
What Yes, that was the motivation. That was the motivation.
Money right, no money in it. But so he was
a representative.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
So we have an international Committee of representatives before we
ever had we didn't have members until the seventies.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
We were in a membership organization.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
But when we were first founded, we had what we
called scientific affiliate groups like American Museum of National History,
Chicago Field Museum, things like that. Obviously going to our
scientific roots, but we had this international committee of representatives,
men and women from different parts of the world that
were really dialed in in their different you know, locations.

(39:48):
So if a record catch came in and they were
able to go over and kind of help validate it,
they could do that. They could give us news what's
going on with their fishing, et cetera. So this this
guy was a rep if I remember correctly, and I'm
almost positive was, and the woman that we managed the
record for a REP program was a very nice person
and apparently, you know, he became enamored and he thought

(40:10):
that submitted he was going to help him get a
date with her. I don't know, I don't know, but
what a weird.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
That's that's a kind of a roundabout way to get
a date.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
It was.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
It was like first step that comes a big tarpin.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, and then you know, but then you have you
have things that happened that were kind of like your
blue cat. So forever, up until like two thousand and six,
there was this mystery out there is there another species
of marlin, the hatchet marlin out there?

Speaker 3 (40:37):
These guys are a hatchet marlin.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
They were saying, it looks like a white but it
doesn't look like a white, but it looks a lot
like a white marlin. And what it happened around that time,
through genetic analyzes and being able to go through kind
of morphometrics, you know, looking at you know, counts of
different things, we were able to definembly determine that you know,
it was a different species that had been previously described

(41:00):
called round scale spearfish. The holotype, which is the first
organize as i ever caught in catalog actually burnt up,
so they never had it, and for a long time
scientists actually question the validity of that species. But through
different techniques, primarily genetic, we were able to determine that
they are indeed a valid species, and they look a

(41:21):
hell of a lot like white marlin. You can tell
a couple of different ways. If you can look at
the underside of the fish, the distance of the event
or the anis as well forward of the antle fin
compared to marlin to you know, all spearfish, or you know,
quite far forward. And then also if you look at
kind of the bony elements underneath the gill, you know
they're called branchiostacles, they go back a lot further. So
once you've looked at this a little bit, you can tell.

(41:44):
But obviously when this happened, we were like, oh crap,
we need to go back through our records, and we
were able to go back and determine that a couple
of the white existing white Roland records were actually round
scale spearfish records. Oh yeah, and there's another cool story.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
So so then you got to do if the guy's
not dead, you notify them. We know tofy them. Yeah, absolutely, Like, hey,
you know that record fish you got?

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, sorry, sorry, we had a good tell. We didn't know.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
We didn't know at the time, But then there's other
kind of cool things where people don't know. So another
great story is there was a girl we have junior
angler records. She caught a white marlin and I believe
Madeira submitted it. And this was you know, you know,
post two thousand and six when we're able to kind
of dial in and I started making kind of a

(42:34):
personal mission of mine to be able to identify these fish.
But this fish was laying on the deck of the boat.
You could see the underside of it completely well, so
you could see where the anis was in relations to
the antal fin. You could see the length of the branchioscules,
and I was like, dang, this poor girl is not
going to get a white marlin record. Well, she ended
up getting three records. I think she got the all
tackle round scale spearfish record, she got a line class

(42:56):
record for Atlantic spearfish, which encompasses round scale, long bill
and Mediterranean and she also got a junior record. So
instead of she got one record rejected, but ended up
getting three out of it.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah, yeah, tell me about the line the line class deal, Like,
how do you break that down? So because you got
so you just said, then yeah, all tackle and then
line class.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yes things.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, it's all tackle the one people really watch.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
No, I mean all tackle is you know any fit
An all tackle record is any species of validated fish.
It's got to be scientifically validated. It's got a weigh
at least one pound, but there's a caveat to that.
It's also got to be within the upper fifty percent
of its maximum recorded weight or size, and it can
be caught on any size tackle up to one hundred

(43:44):
and thirty.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Back up on that last thing, it's got to be
what now.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
A the upper fifty percent of its maximum no known side.
So if you catch some obscure fish out there and
it's only a two pounder, but we know from the
scientific literature that you know, it grows to fifty pounds.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Because some dead one that washed up on the beach, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Or something like that, we won't accept that, I think so.
And that's for for line that breaks up to one
hundred and thirty pounds, then you have line class.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
You get two, four, six, eight.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Twelve, sixteen, twenty thirty fifty eighty one thirty okay. And
so that way you're able to tear catches based on
the breaking strength of the line, same way we have
it with with fly fishing as well. You got two four, six, eight, twelve,
sixteen and twenty. We don't acknowledge anything ever twenty.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
First, so does a record snook yep for four pounds yep.
There is a record snook for six pounds yep. Okay, yep,
and then on up to one hundred and thirty pounds
per ten no.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
No. So historically what we did was we kind of
we kind of.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Place the maximum line classic kind of the maximum known
size for a fish. Let's say, I think snook back
in the day, I think might have been an eighty
pound line or something.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
But others.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
But what we did over a decade ago is we
retooled the way we accept records for line and typic class.
New Zealand or New Zealand. Australia, so the Game Fishing
Association of Australia, which pre dates the IGFA by two years.
They were founded in nineteen thirty seven. They've had a
book a rule in the books forever that the fish

(45:26):
has got away, I believe at least as much as
a line breaking strength. Okay, so if you catch a
six pound fish, you know, it's got to be on
six pound line. You know, you can't catch up a
three pound fish on six pound line. We went through
because we were we it was our fault at the IGFA.
We had started kind of a recognition program for you know,

(45:48):
who could catch the most records any year or over time.
You know, and we thought about it and this is great,
you know, getting people interested. But what we found is
that people were actually going out and purposely trying to
you know, just high grade fish over time. You're only
only out one record per line cross per day, but
you would see people that were, you know, the twenty
pound line class is vacant.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Let's say, for.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
I don't know, large amouth bass something like that. You know,
you'd see a record come in for a pound and
a half largemouth pass on twenty.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Pound line because no one had submitted.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, you know, and that large amount bass is probably
a bad one because that's a very popular category.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
We started to get a lot of flak, you know,
because you'd see it, you know, in the monthly publications.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
You know, like these.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
People are but no fault to their own because you know,
we created the system. You know, we were we were
we were awarding people based on number of records.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
So what we started to see.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
Was really a numbers game rather than a quality game
and something that would would you know, denote more kind
of angler achievement you know, out of the catch. So
we instituted it now so that the weight of the
catch has to be at least half of the breaking
strength of the line class or the typic class you use.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
So you got to have the there's got to be
almost this is a very improper use of the word infinite,
but it's got to be almost like like an infinite
number of IGFA records.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Gosh, I wish I had the exact numbers off the
top of my head, because there's only a select number
of species that are eligible for line and typic class records.
So you can't go out and catch some obscure fish
and say I want it to be the line class record.
It's only for you know, a certain suite of species.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
So you spill out what it is, Yeah, what would
be the dude, Like, who's the dude that has the
most IGFA records or what is the number for the
person with the most.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Marty Eurostiki who is a trustee emeritus, really really great guy.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
I think he's got well of.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
A four hundred one individual Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'd be
hard to keep track of.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
He's well, he was a doctor in his former life,
so he's very methodical about things.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
So okay, so he so he's got a bunch of
these line class things and press.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Typic class you know he was.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
We we just unrolled a new angler recognition program called
our Master Angler program. So we've got different things at
the IDFA that you know, people can go after Tonowledge
angling skills. So obviously you've got your records. You've got
all tackle records, you've got link records, you got line
class typic class records. But we also have slam and
trophy clubs. So in our trophy clubs, it's either trying

(48:25):
to get you know, or trophy clubs is instead of
you know, a record that builds over time and size,
we establish a benchmark. Okay, let's say a mahi, we
say is a trophy sized fish. If you catch a
mahi that size, that weight or corresponding length, you get
to be in that Trophy club, okay. And you've got

(48:47):
Grand and Royal Slam Club, So Grand Slam Club, you know,
you know, the big one down in Florida is an
insured Grand Slam bonefish sharpened permit, or if you're lucky
enough to catch a snug, that's an insured Supergland Slam.
And we've got a variety for around the world. So
now we have a metric or a way to compile
these things all together to create what we call the
Master Angler program. So it's over I believe, seven different categories.

(49:10):
So you've got all tackle records, line class records, tippic
class records.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
And all tackle length records.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
And then you've got slams and trophy clubs okay, and
then you've got bronze, silver, and gold in each one
of those categories. You get three in any one of
those categories, you're bronze. If you get six, your silver
nine year gold. Once you achieve gold in five of
those seven categories, you achieve Master Angler.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Got you guys should open up like like a redneck
slam man where it's like we get we cats, you know,
like you got to get all your catfish.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
We get we read horse sockers get We get people
saying that from time to time too, and you know
there's nothing wrong with that. I mean sometimes when we're
out fishing, you know, I do a lot of you
know stuff in the Everglades and like, you know, up,
we got the ladyfish a Jackerville and let's say a
gaf top cat fishing, we'll have we'll have the slam today, the.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Less the less desirable slam exactly on the on the
record book thing. If an angler's out, let's just just
walk through someone that has never done this before. You're
out fishing and you catch can we do fresh water?

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Okay, you're out fishing and you catch what you think
has gotta be like the biggest northern pike anyone's ever
laid eyes on, and you you get it up, it's
alongside the boat, hasn't been touched, it's still in the water.
You having to be fishing for whatever reason with two
pound tests, you know, and here's some you know, fifty

(50:46):
inch northern or whatever, and you're like, man, I feel
like this has got to be something. What do you do?
Walk me through what you do?

Speaker 3 (50:56):
How do you do it proper? Well?

Speaker 2 (50:58):
First of all, you're way ahead of the game if
you know at least a little bit about our angling
rules of what denotes an illegal cat versus catch versus
an illegal catch, and then what you need to do
is document it properly. So get that fish out of
the water. You know, we encourage live release if you can.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
You know that.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
You know, that'd be a big fish for libel. Some
boats might have it, you know, take that fish to
a place. It's got to be weighed on Terra Firma.
So that's one of our rules. You don't have to
kill a fish for an IGFA record. In fact, over
half of our records that we get every year are
released alive.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
But you can't.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I want to pause on that one because we covered
this pretty heavily one time the Terra Firma. Yeah, okay,
we had a musky expert on the show and we
were kind of talking about the Muskie Wars.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Which is, God, don't let me talk about that.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
We don't need to go down a musky rab hole.
But we had a guy here to go down the
musky rabbit hole, and basically he was he was a
gentleman who had made it his life's passion.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
I think I know, this gentleman probably.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
To track down all the old crazy musky photos, right,
all of the whatever the eighty inch musk, you know
what I mean. He was kind of like, how many
of these are actually out there? Can I find the
people that caught him? Can I find out what the situation?
How did they actually weigh it?

Speaker 3 (52:17):
Right?

Speaker 1 (52:18):
And he was going through the historic record of the
real famous giants where it's some picture of an old
man standing there and on the polaroid someone wrote, you know,
when someone wrote like sixty pounds or whatever, right, and
he's like, who caught that? What really happened? How was
it weighed? Okay? Yeah, And we put that question to

(52:40):
him about why the Terra Firma. So when you got
your old rusty Zevko scale and you lift it up
in the boat, like, why that doesn't count?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
You know?

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Can you touch on that?

Speaker 2 (52:50):
The only thing it's been time immemorial since certainly since
my tenure there, but I think before that too. The
only cabot we do allow juniors to do that junior
angler or the way they're fishing the boat, presumably just
because the rocking back and forth of it on the boat,
you know, and you can't dictate, you know, and and

(53:10):
and you know, sure if you're on a lake and
it's just still day and it's just lack, I mean,
there's no variation whatsoever. But you know, you could also
be out in three to six footers off shore and
you can't.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
You got to have a definable act.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, and that scale spring on the waves.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
So getting back to it, you need to document your fish.
So photographs of the fish and make sure we can
determine its right species.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Most of the time it's not a big deal, but oftentimes.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Do you have to have someone with you?

Speaker 3 (53:39):
No, you don't. It's helpful.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
It's helpful to have somebody there as a witness, a
disinterested witness, or just a witness period if we have questions,
if we can go back to it, because if what
we see in the application isn't satisfied and we can't
go back and query other people, we're probably gonna disqualify it.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
But document it.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
So get pictures of the fish, you with the fish,
the scale that was used to weigh the fish, and
the scale has to be certified within twelve months, okay
with the catch, so it can be certified after that,
it can be it can be. Then the very important
thing to do here is to cut five meters of

(54:19):
your main line off and lead that attached to your
entire leader setup and send that in because that allows
us to test the line and determine its true breaking
strength if it's a line class record, and we also
are able to measure the leader itself to make sure
it's compliant. We also need to make sure the hook
sets compliant.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
And don't don't mess with how you got, how you
got your terminal, your jig, your jig head or rapollo
or whatever. Just leave it all tight on and say
you can.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Leave it tight on.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
I mean, you know sometimes if it's like something super heavy,
you know, if we have a picture of it still
on there, you know we're fine. But you know, typically
the best thing is to send it all in together.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Ye do that.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
So I caught my northern get it out of the water.
I go up. I see some dude walking down the beach.
I'm like, sir, would you mind taking a gander at
this fish?

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Can I get your name and number? You take a
cell phone photo of it. I want to get your
name and number. I go to a scale. I can't
find a certified scale. I go to a scale, I
get the best measurement I can get. I take note
that I need to then get that certified. Yeah, and
then I I go on your website.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Go on our website. You can you can apply digitally.
We've got two great people in our Angler Recognition apartment.
People ask questions all the time. I encourage people if
they have any questions on remotely going out, you know,
take a look at our record or at our rules.
But if you're if you've got questions, call us. That's
what we're here for. We'll walk you through it. So

(55:50):
documenting that fish well and submitting it in time, so
within I think within the continental United States, you gotta
submit it within sixty days, and it's ninety days outside
of the country the United States for lining class records.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
But it's also important to know again ahead of time,
what constitutes a legal catch. I mean, your terminal tackle
may be fine, but you may have done something egregious.
For example, let's say you and I are trout fishing,
and you know you're you cooked into what we're sure
is going to be the new six pound Tibet brook
trout or whatever, and this thing is giving you a

(56:29):
hell of a time. And you know, I'm like, okay,
this thing is like heading for the hills that stop
it over there. So I run, you know, twenty yards
ahead of you, and I get ahead of it and
I net that fish.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
That's not legal.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
You have to be within a rod's length of the
angler before assisting in landing the dead that's in the rules.
And we had to do that because we were seeing
videos of you know, guys that were fighting fish and
the guy is like, wait the hell downstream netting this fish.
This fish has not been brought to hand by the angler.
You can get help in landing the fish from other people,

(57:04):
but they've got to be there with you.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
You know, we see the same thing.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
You know, uh, you know and believe you know, in
permit fishing, you know, typically on these penglis, you've got
a senior guide that's pulling, and you've got the more
junior guide that's kind of sitting amidships kind of to
like chirping in your ear about how to strip and
stuff like that. And you know, here's an example I
can bring up that you know, you'll see, you know,
two errors happen at one time.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
You know, you know, he calls out a fish and
you make a.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Cash and you get hooked up, and the mate has
noticed that the twenty nine wind is turn your line
into a piece of abstract art. So he frantically is
undoing it so there'll be no knots and he's able
to clear the line. You know, before you know, you know,
fish takes off. That's a no no okay number one,
because once the fish takes the fly bait lore or whatever,
nobody but the Anglican touches fadery line. But then what

(57:53):
you also see quite a bit in video.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
So your body can't, like you said, your body can't
tighten your drag.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
No and do anything like that.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
But what you'll also say is the same well intentioned
guy because he wants to catch fish for these people
he just saidden. No, he'll jump out the secondary guide
and go and walk about with his net and net
this permit, you know, any which way he can do it,
any any which way he can do.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
It any which way you can do it. Not legal, okay?

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yeah, And then do you have let's say the state
considers a rule that you don't consider it has to
conform to state law. What do you mean, like, for instance,
like it would These people are all dead now, so
they're not gonna get in trouble mile Man and his
bodies had they used to buy this almost like a

(58:46):
catch pole, a cable catch like a picture dog catcher,
cable catch pole. Yeah, yeah, they would when they were
fighting salmon, huh, they would hook it with that cable
grabber like a tails you know, yeah, tail snare, yeah
he could. Those against state law, tail snares were illegal. Yeah,
so they would hook all their fishers, not all, they
had those tail snares, and they're always hauling fish out

(59:08):
with tail snare rather than trying to get them on
a net. So let's say you don't contemplate tail snares,
but state law contemplates tail snares. I use a tail snare.
Am I thrown out because I broke my Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (59:20):
So our rules are very explicit, and that any catch
that said variance with state, federal, whatever laws governing that
body of water that fishery cannot be submitted.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
For an IGFA record. Yeah, I can't do it now.
I got a question about the line stuff. And I
bring this up only because my buddy's Seth who I
work with. He was just turning me onto this new
braid in terms of the fishing line arms race. There's
this new braid that I can't remember what he's telling me. Man,
we were looking at it. There's braid. It's got basically

(59:52):
the diameter of eight like traditional eight pound power pro
let's say, but the stuff twenty one pounds?

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Oh easily. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Now, and remember we used to use maxima when we
used to fish a lot of salmon and steelhead in
the Great Lakes and the rivers. We would always use
four pound maxima mono. Yeah, four four pounds for tippet
material use. We use maximum mono and guys would point out,
You'd be like, well, maximum mono is so strong, Guys,

(01:00:24):
like you ever measure it? Because four pound isn't four
pound maximum mono is like it says four, but it's thicker. Yeah,
it's like it's like it's like so and so six.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Yeah, it's the strongest four pounds, it really. It's the
thinnest ten pound out there or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Is so do you ever take your stuff and do
you take your line and put it on a machine? Okay, So,
so when you calculate the breaking strength it's not what
the spool says.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
We've got a commercial grade materials sester that when we
bought this back like ninety nine, costs like fifty thousand dollars,
Like it's commercial grade you know stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
So yeah, we do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
We test every liner tippet sample that comes in for
a liner tippet sample, and what we do is you
soak it. We have a protocol you soak it for
a minimum of two hours. Because most people don't realize this,
but monofilament absorbs water, okay, and that actually weakens the
breaking stream, and so we want.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
To give soak.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
It makes it worse, and a good soaking makes it, yeah,
a little bit weaker. So we want to give you know,
a benefit of a doubt, you know, and you know,
and kind of simulate what you know, it's like when
people have line in the water all the time. And
then we'll break the line. Typically we will do five
breaks with a line class sample because it allows we
have plenty of line to work with and we'll get
the average standard deviation out of that. And then with tippets,

(01:01:39):
because tippets don't have to be any longer than fifteen inches,
that allows us normally to get three breaks out of it.
We'll do that. But the other thing that we'll do too.
You know, sometimes we'll see people that are doing things
called line class shopping. Okay, you know, they're out for
say the twelve pound record. They catch a fish not

(01:02:00):
big enough for the twelve pound record, but they're like,
this is big. It's bigger than the sixteen record. I'm
gonna submit it for that. You can't do that. Oh really, no, no, no, no, no,
you can't do that. So we'll do They'll state, yes,
I use twelve pound line and we'll break it in,
you know, or sixteen pound line and we'll break it,
and sure enough it's consistently twelve.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
But they said they're used twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
We're like, okay, we break out micrometers, and we know
we can go through the internet and we can find
out the diameters. We just bout every line out there,
so we can ground truth. Now that said, if you're
fishing and you're unlucky enough because you're using that maximum
and you're a four pound over test, let's say into
the eight and that fish is big enough to beat

(01:02:43):
the fish in this and eight, we do allow that
to happen. God but you can't. You can't shot down.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
What brand and maybe you can't do this whose line
is most consistently off?

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Uh God, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
It's been so long since I've been at the hell
of that, and I wouldn't want to throw anybody on
the bus. But what I'll say is there there are
not a lot of line manufacturers out there that are
really purposely making line that is true to what the
stated breaking strength is.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Okay, there's only a few out there that do it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Yeah, you know, I never thought of it as like,
I never thought of this as just outright dishonesty. I
just whatever. I didn't really think about it too much,
but was just pointed out to me. But this new
braid stuff, man, it's expensive, but it has bought enough
to spool a couple of reels in it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Well, yeah, I'm excited when when the I mean, how
long have you been using braid?

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
For long long time?

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Okay, so when you first when it first came out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
I remember when it came out. I remember like the
one argument I could hear against it. Plus, dudes, I
was still living in braid came out. We were fishing
tons of salmon and steelhead in the in the tributaries
to the Great Lakes, And I remember one guy. It
was early enough that some guy was saying, if you
get hung up, if you get your boot hung up

(01:03:55):
in that braid, you know, you're basically going to die.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Die there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
People were definitely afraid of it's actually it's actually it's
gonna saw into your spool.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
You know. It's like you tangle your waiters up that
braid and you basically just had to resign yourself to
slow death in the river. And I remember, like it
was that early and we started running.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
The other thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
People were just complaining about, oh my god, can you
see what a spool of braid costs? But in the meantime,
if you were fishing a lot, like for me doing
flats fishing or backcountry fishing, mono the life of it,
it doesn't go bad. No, it would twist up and
stuff like that. So like I would change out a
given reel a spool of a mono on a given

(01:04:40):
reel on a rod.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Three or four times a year. How many times you
go to like braid lasts forever.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Yeah, you go to your graham and Grandpa's house and
you go in there looking for a ride and in
the mono is just like it's okay, Yeah, sure, man,
my dad's got.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
To right here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
That my buddy Brody, he was telling me, is killing him.
He wants to drag it out of the nest. He says,
there's a bird nest against our building that is full
of braids. Oh wow, we're talking about whether that bird's
gonna get wrapped up in that braid or not. He's
thinking about he's trying, he was the other day. He's
trying to weigh out like do you meddle and get

(01:05:18):
the braid out of there? Or do you let him
be and just have his braid?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah, which makes me curious where that braid even came from.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
I mean, that's one of the things that you know,
we're we're really adamant about. I mean, we've got this
excellent education program that we have. You know that we
use fishing really as a carrot to teach kids about
the outdoors. Get their hands wet, you teach him about
the natural world around them. You know why aquatic habitats
need to be healthy, why we have regulations for fisheries,

(01:05:48):
why it's important to follow them, Why there's this safety.
And we've got a variety of different curricula. But one
of the things that no matter what we're doing, whether
it's a school event, summer camp, is making sure you
dispose of your line properly. You know, that's just one
oh one right there?

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Do you do you even? I guess probably in the
salt water you find more applications for it. But and
maybe this is more of a testament to the fact that, uh,
that I'm not broke all the time anymore. But I
only ever use I use braid and floral man. I
never touched monofilament.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
You know, monofilament is still the line of choice for
offshore fishing, you know, for for marlin and.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Stuff like that. It's got stretch.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Historically, you know, not the entire real you know, normally
it's a top shot of several hundred yards beneath it
is normally either Dacron or guys now really have gotten
into kind of the modern jel spun, you know, braid braid,
you know Dacron's braided line, but you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Know the modern braid stuff. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
But there's still you know a lot of utility for
that because that line's got a lot of forgiveness and stretch.
You know, if there's bigger fish, I fish with a guide.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
In the Everglades.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
He's probably the most famous fishing guide from Biscayme Bay,
the Keys, every glazes. His name Steve Huff. You know,
he's the guide of guides. He's won, you know, so
many bonefish, tarp and tournaments. He's got records, et cetera.
To this day. He still fishes on his bait casters monofilament,
and even if he's fly fishing. You know, we all

(01:07:29):
think that, you know, floor carbon is more abrasion resistant,
and it's certainly a little bit thinner diameter than mono,
so maybe you're fulling the fish a little bit better.
He won't use anything but fifty monofilament for his bite
tippet when he's fishing for stuff. Yeah, I come there
with forty flour carbon. He looks at me sideway, he's like,
you know, doesn't like it. No, he's like, fifty, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
I do a lot of vertical jigging, you know, Yeah,
a lot of vertical jig and you're like in one
hundred feet of water, you're like interviewing the bottom of
the ocean. There's a rock, there's mud. Yeah, there's like
a little ledge that feels like some coral that was
that was the same transmits I transmits information.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
I used to love to, you know, jig for stuff
like cambery jacks and bottom fish and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
And I remember doing it back in the the.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Mono days fifteen or twenty mono and you know, you're
just like, maybe that's bottom yeah, you know, or you know,
I got a I do have a bite, you know,
and you switch the braid and like every little thing
it was just trans.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
I hooked him the right side of his mouth.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Could tell through the braid.

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
Total total game changer. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
The the one thing I would like to see, and
I think there are some companies that are doing it. It
would be cool to see braids because the thing that
I like about braid the most is that it's it's
it's thin diameter and debt and stretch and it holds
up well, cast well and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
But I don't need, you know, so I'm using.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Predominantly if my inshore fishing, I'm using say a power
Pro fifteen pound braid. I don't know what the diameter
to that is like six pounds or whatever. I don't
need fifteen pounds because it breaks probably closer to twenty
or thirty. But once you get thinner, it makes it
harder to tie. Not I just end up getting cut
to my hands.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
And stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
But what I'd like to see is, you know manufacturers
that are creating braid that is true to what the
breaking string stated is because you get that benefit of
you know, the no stretch and things like that. But
you know you're fishing by you know what they say
it is. Yeah, you know, I just remember back before braid,

(01:09:32):
I'd be fishing for snucking the mangros. I'd be using
you know, eight to twelve pound monto filament and you
get a lower hung up and the mangroes and just like, well,
it's just.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Like trying to pull it out with a rock. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
Now with braid, duck your head and just pull back.
It's coming back at you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
I can't tell you how many scars I got opened
down my fingers from braid to fishing line though.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Yeah, it's like there's a little bit of occupational hazards
and that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Yeah, and you know that a lot of the fly
guys too. You know, the evolution for backing for fly stuff.
You had dak run and you had something called microme,
which is thinner, remember that, you know, and it was softer.
But now a lot of guys are just using straight
up jel spun polyethylene, the same stuff that's I use
power pro. You know a lot of times, you know

(01:10:17):
thirty and man, if you're fishing a lot, you know,
and you know, bone fishing and whatever, and you've had
a lot of fish getting to the backing and your
the level winding back at the end of the day,
you're like, whoh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
So what what what about? Not asked you bout that
I wish I had asked you about With IGFA.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Well, you covered the thing that we're most known for
is is uh obviously our history with record keeping and
rules and stuff like that. But what I tell people
is that IGFA is so much more. Okay, really comes
down to three solid pillars. We've talked about one, which
is kind of the angler recognition records, slams, trophy clubs,

(01:10:53):
things like that. We do a tremendous amount of work
and conservation around the world, and we're doing work on
everything from it to marlin. You know, we've got extensive
programs that we're doing for billfish. I've mentioned, you know,
our IGF a great marlin satellite tagging program, the biggest
of its kind in the world, open access. We have
co chaired the last two international billfish symposia. We did

(01:11:19):
a three year deep dive with the FAO and the
Caribbean looking at the value of billfish resources there. We're
constantly weighing in on these regional fisheries bodies for billfish,
you know, around the world, because nobody else is really
doing it or very few people. There are other people
doing as well, but we're doing a lot for billfish.
We've got some cool stuff coming down the pipeline strip marlin.

(01:11:41):
But we're also at the other end of the food
chain as well, you know. So forge Fish is really
this emerging paradigm fishery management.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
Yeah, so you know, doing We've got something.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Called the forge Fish Research Program.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
Actually I'm missing that workshop to be here for this
right now.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
So yeah, and what we do we started this in
twenty sixteen, is we've FWC. Our State agency is just
phenomenally well run and they've got a great research arm
and they have a tremendous amount of what they call
Fisheries Independent Monitoring program, you know, capturing fish with saints
and things like that, from I think seven different estuaries
around the state for like over twenty years, and they've

(01:12:21):
got just this amazing backlog of data, especially on forge
fish species. So we put together this public private program
where we invite grad students and their major professors to
sit down once a year with the people from the
Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. They talk about the data
that they have in terms of forgefish and what their
research priorities are, and then we fund two fellowships at

(01:12:45):
twenty thousand dollars apiece for them to do work for
twelve months with these scientists to really gin out some
incredible research on forge fish that actually several of them
have had direct management applications.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
The other cool thing about.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
It, there's been probably three or four of these grad
students that have gone on to have now promising careers
in state in federal fisheries work. So we do that.
We've been working on a number of other species. We
finished up a study about a year ago with golden
dorado in South America, you know about the fish there,

(01:13:21):
I mean that species has like gone through the roof
in terms of popularity with visiting English, but we don't
know anything about them. So we did in genetic study
the results will be out on that soon, trying to
look at the population units. And then we said we
did kind of the same thing with rooster fish in
Central America that's their iconic and short fish, and again

(01:13:44):
nobody knew anything about their population structure. You can find
them from Cabo San Lucas, you know, down to Peru.
Are they one contemporarious unit, you know, where you have
a lot of mixing, Are there basically subpopulations, et cetera.
And we were able to find that indeed, there are
distinct units. And you know, the management application to that
is if you deplete a specific unit, you're not getting

(01:14:06):
influx from other areas.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
So you know, you can do that, we might not
refill yep.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
So we do a lot of the conservation and the
other thing that I'm just incredibly proud of is our
education team in the last fifteen years has just done
some amazing things in terms of taking these programs that
we've defined that we're basically housed only in our HQ
in South Florida and now exporting that to the world.
They've got something called a Passports to Fishing program and

(01:14:32):
it's super cool. It's been translated into seventeen different languages.
We've got in fifty different countries, every continent except Antarctica.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Maybe you can help us with that one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
But basically what it is is a fishing kit in
the box, twenty five rods and reels, and then educational matts,
you know, translated to talk about the importance of quatic habitats,
why regulations are important, how to know if a fish
is legal, different types of tackle, safety whatever. They go
around with a little passport and they got to go
through each one of these stations to get checked off.

(01:15:04):
Then they get a rod and reel and are allowed
to fish for a couple hours. And we're able to
repeat that around the world. And that's been so cool.
So our reach in terms of being able to, you know,
not only get the next generation of anglers on board,
but these are our next generation of environmental stewards as well.
So exceptionally proud of the work that the education is

(01:15:24):
doing our education department. So the thing I always tell
people about the IDFA, you know, we're known for records,
but really, if you're remotely into fishing, there's something for you.
You know, we've got education, we've got conservation. We've obviously
got the records and rules scene, you know where the
angling Historian. You know, we've got the world's biggest repository
of angling related you know, works in the world with

(01:15:46):
books and videos and photos. We're doing a massive undertaking
with that, you know, right now, to modernize that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
So there's there's a lot to it. You know. When
it comes to the IDFA.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
And you guys are a membership board. You know what
we keep saying, IGFA, I don't know that we've that
I have said, it's the international you did.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
In the very beginning, I did ideah, okay, internet where
the International Game Fish Association. We're a membership organization. We've
got a variety of membership levels from you know, a
twenty dollars digital level to I think a fifty dollars
annual level where you get the world record book, a
lifetime membership level. But you know, take a look, come
to our website, take a look at what we do,

(01:16:22):
and get involved. Break some records, break some records, get involved.
What I tell people I don't care what you like
to fish for. If it's trout, if it's bonefish, if
it's billfish, if it's whatever. There you're going to be
able to find an organization out there that is doing
good work to ensure that you've got fish out there
for yourself and for your future generations. I just tell

(01:16:44):
people to get involved, whether it's IGFA or another group,
get involved, be part of helping ensure that recreational anglers
have a voice in terms of advocating and getting policies
that are beneficial for recreational anglers and our resources at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Yeah, and I'm not suggesting like I don't want to
act like they have to be at odds, but they
don't have to be at odds. But commercial, the commercial
fishing industry has a political arm. I mean, the commercial
fishing industry has lobbyists and they make campaign contributes to
now too though. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, but

(01:17:21):
I mean historically the commercial fishery has been politically more powerful. Yeah. Yeah,
not that they need to be at odds with recreational angers,
but it would make sense that recreational anglers look at
how do we play the political game. And how do
we sort of stand up for our interests in the

(01:17:42):
future of our sport the same way that that other
people who rely on healthy fisheries do. It's an important
voice to have in there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Absolutely so two things. I'm glad you brought that. First
of all, IDFA is not an anti commercial organization. We
understand that people need to be able to get fished.
To seem we just want sustainable practices out there. You know,
we've actually worked with commercial interests on projects before. You
know that we had inshoe Alliance. But you're absolutely right.
You know, twenty years ago, recreational anglers, there were groups

(01:18:13):
out there. Obviously there were powerhouses out there like Coastal
Conservation Association, American Sport Fishing Association. You know, the IDFA
was just starting to get into the conservation stuff. But
a number of groups that were out there and had
a voice, but we were fragmented.

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Meanwhile, the commercial interests were so well coalesced. You know,
they had their lobbyist, they had and what was developed
I think a little over twenty years ago was what's
now called the Center for Sport Fishing Policy, and this
is the leadership in the recreational fishing and voting space
in the United States. So you've got groups like the IGFA,

(01:18:48):
cca ASA, and then you've got major manufacturers like National
Marine Manufacturers Association, Yamaha, et cetera. And we meet and
we prioritize policies and we speak off one sheet now
and we have the activists and the lobbyists to go
to the hill and get what we need, you know,
and it's been fruitful, you know where we're starting to

(01:19:09):
see a change.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
Well, thanks thanks to the work. And once again, Jason Schratweiser,
he's afraid I'm going to mess it up there, just
like the and just like Budweiser, you nailed it with
the international president of the International Game Fish Association eight
number eight President number eight. Yeah, you don't do like
number eight shirts and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
It's funny though, because like I said, there's been eight
presidents and eight chairman. My chairman's eight and number eight
and I'm number eight. So okay, yeah, and you've been
in that role hol long twenty twenty. I joined IJFA
in two thousand and three, is conservation director.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Okay, So once again, International game Fishing or fish I'm sorry,
International Game Fish Association when you catch a giant, follow
the rules. Get hold of these boys. They'll get you done.
They'll get you a plaque, right.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
Yeah, to get a certificate in our publications.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
And if you want to catch, who's the dude you
got to catch, if you want to get the most,
he's got four hundred. What's his name, Marty Orski. You
gotta catch Marty. I want to hear from some listener
who passes up Mary and passes up Marty with four hundred,
more than four hundred new records on the books. All right,
thanks guys,