BC: Before Cormorants

Originally aired on Janurary 31, 2026. On this episode, Doug talks about the Toyota Sharelunker Program, why Texas hasn't caught a 20 pound bass yet, and hiking. All of these and more, on The Doug Pike Show.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Or ready or not?

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Here we go. I'm looking at I've got to move all.
There are three remote controls in here. I presume one
for every TV. No, there's another one over here. I
don't know who leaves all this stuff in here. I
think it's the A team. They would be There was
no Rockets game last night, right, Frankie, I don't recall. Yeah,

(00:21):
I don't think there was, and so that would leave
the A Team as last in here. And boy did
they leave a bunch of stuff laying around. Holy cow.
That's okay. Though they have to do their work. I
have to do mine. I do try. There's one piece
of paper that I'm missing here. I'm filing or flipping
through a bunch of things that I printed out. I'll

(00:42):
try to print it from here in a little while.
So we've gotten through I think the worst of at
least this cold spell that we've been going through. We've
had a couple of freezing nights. Well, I would like
to go get that. Let me see if I can
get this thing to print real quick. It's a document
that I was working on this morning. There's that Oh

(01:03):
I may not have printed it yet. Maybe that's why
it wasn't on the printer, Frankie, huh, holy cow, Okay, click,
I don't want that. I don't know why, but our
printer's in here default. First of all, we have two
primary printers, collect number one and number two, And for
whatever reason, every time I come in here, when it's
when I sign back in, when I completely log out

(01:25):
and completely log back in, it takes me to the
other one, the one I don't want to have to
go chase down. And then on top of that, it
insists on defaulting also to printing on both sides. I
guess there's a paper shortage in the world or something
like that, and every printer in the on the planet
knows it. I don't think that's really the case, but

(01:49):
it just drives me crazy because invariably, when I'm in
a hurry, either trying to prep for a fifty plus
or or prep for this show, and it comes down
to time to print, I get in a little hurry
and I print it, and I walk over there and
I pick it up and I look at it and
it's printed on both sides, and it just drives me crazy.
It just drives me crazy. There is a lot going on,

(02:09):
By the way, in case you didn't know it. First
of all, I want to know if anybody has heard
any stories, because I haven't heard about any major fish
killer even I just haven't heard much at all about
those hard nights we had what last week having any
impact on the coast. I think the coast was just

(02:30):
insulated enough and the cold came on just slowly enough
that things went okay. If you've heard differently, I would
love to hear from you, because I just that's not
what I've been hearing. And so hopefully, hopefully we dodged
a bullet on this one. I really do think we

(02:50):
did too. And this next I think it's tonight that's
supposed to go down to I don't know, around a
little bit, depending on where you are north or south
of I ten. It might be down in the mid
twenties farther north, that's around the Woodlands and into Montgomery County,
and it might be thirty or so down around where
I am, which is well south of Ien. Otherwise, we're

(03:12):
gonna be in pretty good shape. And by the way, Frankie,
if you'd like to play the Texas Temperature game this
morning for a six pack of tickets to the Fishing Show.
If you'd like to challenge Frankie to a duel in
the Texas Temperature Game, if it were as it were, yeah,
just call. We can tee it up early. I think
that'd be kind of fun. And I'm not going to

(03:33):
tell you anything more than depending on whoever's going to
play and Frankie. The only information I'll give you is
that when I looked at the high and the low
kind of surprised me a little bit. That's all I'm
going to tell you. It kind of surprised me a
little bit. So if you're up for it, and you'd
like six passes to go to the Fishing Show coming

(03:55):
up in the middle of well a little bit. I
think it's a third week actually Fedbuary down at the
GRB and that show, by the way, if you don't
know anything about it, this is year fifty one for
that show, and I've been to probably fifty of them,
and I can't even tell you which one I missed

(04:17):
or why, but I'm just presuming I did over that
many years. But ever since that show started in the
what was it called the Fondue, No, that wasn't fondue,
it was the a darn it. My mind is not
bringing it up. I'm looking right at the building where
it started. Uh, but I don't remember the name of it.

(04:38):
It's a downtown place. I think it's an entertainment venue now.
In any event, I've been going to them forever and ever.
And one of the things that I learned while I
was at the paper and talking to all these manufacturers
representatives who are at this show every year is they
they have a lot of respect for Texas fishermen. They

(04:59):
really did, especially Houston, because we are kind of a
blend of fresh water and saltwater fishermen, and so a
lot of these manufacturers are bringing things to this show
that they still haven't decided whether to put in mass production. Yet.
There's production, and there's enough to throw a few in

(05:20):
stores down here to kind of continue the test. But
they'll lay stuff out in front of us just to
kind of see what reaction Southeast Texas fishermen give to
whatever that product is. And in the show, you're also
going to have the usual. My headphones just slipped right
off my head. I've got hair still. I don't know why. Well,

(05:43):
I've got a cap on too that should hold them.
In any event, there will be a lot of people
there as well, who they'll tell you that they have
invented the greatest whatever of all time, and they're going
to sell it to you right there the show. They
only have a few of them.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
And and maybe if it if it catches your eye,
then it probably will catch fish. If it catches your eye,
it will catch fish. But who knows.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
If I got a player here, Yeah, he got one. Okay,
let's go. Let's do this. Frankie, tee it up?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Is it hot? Sweet?

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Or is it cold?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Here?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Well, put you to the test on the Texas temperature game.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
All right, here we go. Let me get dumb tap
on this. Hang on, I got it. I got him.
Frankie got that? Well, no, I don't. I don't think
I can get him. Frankie. You gotta get him. Him
up for me?

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Is he okay?

Speaker 5 (06:52):
Kevin?

Speaker 1 (06:53):
What's going on?

Speaker 6 (06:53):
Man?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well?

Speaker 1 (06:55):
What's up? Douga County, Brazoria County. Okay, Kevin, I know
who you are. Yeah, we're going to trump sir. We're
going to try and send you to the Fishing Show.
These tickets, by the way, that I have are good
for free admission on the weekdays. And then a two
dollars discount on the ticket on Saturday and Sunday. And
I'm trying to get my little mouth pop up here

(07:16):
there it is.

Speaker 7 (07:16):
That's what I'm looking actually won like three years ago.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Oh well, then you're back in. You're good. So you're
a you're an old pro at it too, Okay. So Kevin,
do you want to go first or second?

Speaker 7 (07:28):
I'll let frank go first.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, that was very polite of you, and it puts
him in a strategically a strategic disadvantage. I think everybody's
kind of figuring that out. Frankie, what do you think
is the current high temperature in the state of Texas.
I'll go with thirty five. Frankie says thirty five. Okay,
I've got the difference on that. Kevin, what do you

(07:53):
think it is? I'm going to go fifty six, fifty six?
You sifty six for be high?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Frankie, what do you think is the current low in Texas?
I'll go with a negative.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
I'll go with a negative five, negative five seventy okay.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
And Kevin, what do you think is the current low
in the state of Texas. I'm gonna say eleven eleven. Okay,
this is it started out pretty good, Frankie, and then
you kind of so. The current high in the state
of Texas is actually forty five degrees and that is
down in the valley. And so you missed Frankie by ten.

(08:34):
Kevin missed by eleven. The current low in the state
of Texas is twelve, which puts you out of seventeen
for a total of twenty seven. Frankie, and Kevin's one
degree off, so his total differential is only twelve. You're
gonna have to talk on the low. The low is all.

(08:57):
You could throw a rock into the Red River from
Well I actually no, it's even farther up than that.
It's at Perryton, all the way up in the I
mean at the top of the top of the top
of Texas. There's a second one little yeah, oh yeah,
way up there. All you could throw a rock into Oklahoma. Yeah, yes, sir,
so and yeah. If you throw a rock north or

(09:19):
you throw a rock east, they're both going to land
in Oklahoma. You have to the one, the east one.
You're gonna have to throw pretty farther, probably about twenty miles, yes, sir,
all right, Kevin, Well congratulations, h Frank, you'll tell you
how to get your tickets. Anything going on down your
way now?

Speaker 7 (09:35):
March twenty first, I've got my first tournament that i'll
be working. It's Harvest for the Hungary is a organization
actually grow vegetables and raise eggs and donate it to
the local food pantry and the fishing tournament. Fishing tournament,
they're doing the money they raise. Fermit is going to
be going for children's angler education classes.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Fantastic well by all means when we get a little closer,
tee it up and give me a call, let's talk
about it. Definitely will does all right, man, my pleasure.
I'm glad you got these tickets. Man, I'd have given
to I'd give them to you, and I always gave it.
All right, Ma, I'm gonna put you on hold.

Speaker 6 (10:10):
Frank.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
You take care of you, all right, man. That's good.
That's a good guy. I'm glad he's getting them, and
i'd be. I'd almost be wanting to bet he's gonna
drag a couple of kids up here. I don't know.
He got six tickets, and yeah, he can find his
way up here and bring some kids and they'll all
have a good time. I'm trying to grab a piece
of paper here real quick, hold stand by, there we go. Okay,

(10:31):
that's good, all right, I'll tell you what let's do.
Let's go ahead and take this first break a little
bit early, and I'm gonna go print out that one
piece of paper that I wanted to get, and then
we'll be all fully up to speed on the way
out here Houston Gold Exchange where my buddy Brad Swiss
and I had a little text exchange yesterday. Because the
price of gold is just going crazy up and down

(10:53):
both it's it's spiked earlier in the week at fifty
five hundred dollars an ounce, fifty five hundred. If you've
got a little scrap gold around the house, Let's say
you got an old, old try to forget about it,
but you quite just can't quite old old wedding ring
around the house. It's not current edition. It's just tucked

(11:16):
away in some jewelry box somewhere because you didn't want
to throw it away. You could probably trade that wedding
ring in for about a grand Think about that, just
an old wedding ring, nobody wearing it anymore. Nobody's seen
it ten fifteen years might be worth a thousand dollars
right now. I'm not sure exactly what the price is

(11:37):
at present, but I know it was right around five
thousand yesterday. Let me see if I can pop this
up real quick, and I can tell you bottom line
is what he and I talked about. What Brad and
I talked about was that you have the opportunity now
while it's still really high, very high. Let me see

(11:57):
if I can get a click onto my screen here. Yeah,
it lost a chunk, it lost a huge chunk yesterday,
but it's still forty seven hundred dollars an ounce. You
can still get that grand for a decent chunk of
If you got fat fingers, you might get a little
bit more for the ring that used to be on
that finger. Think about that, Think about gold, Think about

(12:18):
silver silvers hanging up there too, in crazy places. All
of that's out there, and it's gonna go up, it's
gonna go down, it'll settle out at some point and
then start going back up again. And you don't know
when that's gonna be. But you can get that money
right now. Brad's got a he's ready to hear from you.
He wants to hear from you, and he's more than
happy to take a call on his cell phone anytime

(12:40):
you want to dial him. Not maybe not this early
in the morning, Wait till the sun's up. At least
he's an outdoorsmano, so once the sun's up pretty good,
I'm sure he'd welcome a call. One eight five one
thirty nine fifty five Houston Gold Exchange is where he is.
That's West Termer at Darry Ashford. That number again, two
eight one eight five one one three nine five to five.

(13:02):
All right, welcome back, thanks for listening. Doug Flake Show
on Sports Talk seven ninety I want to talk. I've
got a release in front of me here from the
Parks and Wildlife Department on its Share Lunker program, the
Toyota Sharelunker Program. Toyota has been backing that thing pretty
heavily for a long time, and it's a great program

(13:24):
through which the Parks and Wildlife Department hopes, against all
hope that before they all pass, and before I pass
and you pass and everybody else passes in the state,
at some point we'll get a new state record. Bass
Barry Saint Clair's held this record at eighteen point eighteen
pounds forever and ever, and despite all the efforts of

(13:46):
all these programs to grow bigger bass and introduce the
fingering offspring of those giant bass we're catching in hopes
one of them make one will make nineteen pounds or
twenty Dare I dream for a twenty pounder out of
Texas when California and Alabama I think it is, or

(14:06):
maybe Georgia have them. There's just no excuse for us
not to have a twenty pound bass in this state.
It's frustrating, but to that end, the share lunker program,
the Toyota Toyota Share Lunker program already has its first
two legacy class fish, which means they weighed more than

(14:26):
thirteen pounds, and that's pretty dog on solid. Guy named
Charles roberts of Trinity reeled his fish in. It's Cheryl
Lunker number six eighty four late Tuesday of this week,
and his fish, by the way, is one that's a
recapture of sher lunker six't eighty one, which was caught

(14:52):
this past year. She weighed thirteen sixty six. Back then
when guy named Kevin Robertson called guys out of law
but caught that fish on March twenty seventh, and then
right here on January the twenty whatever Tuesday was she
weighed thirteen seventy five. So she didn't gain a lot
of weight, which I find somewhat interesting in that you

(15:17):
would think that these fish would keep on growing and
maybe maybe have put on a pound or so. After all,
that's what happens to most of us in seniority. We
start gaining a little weight. But no, I mean that's
that's a very small weight gain, just not even a
tenth of a pound. So the second fish, now I

(15:40):
just locked that one away. Now we'll go to the
second one, a guy named Ross Gomez fourteen point seven
four pounds, that is sheer lunker six's eighty five worth.
Noting Ross Gomez has caught that same fish on two
prior occasions, brought her in the first time as scher

(16:02):
Lunker six forty one back in twenty twenty three, then
six seventy four in twenty twenty five. And now here
we are in in all the way in twenty twenty six,
and we've got this fish at Scherlunker six eighty five,

(16:23):
same general location, it says, So he's guess where he's
going to be fishing in January of next year. She's
going back to the to the Freshwater Fishery Center in
Athens and gonna be spawned and hopefully produced millions of offspring,
each of which we'll have will carry that super heavyweight

(16:46):
Geene and hopefully maybe one of them will hit twenty
pounds someday. But then they will release her back into
the lake. She'll go back in, and I guarantee you
Ross Gomez, if he he's still alive and kicking a
year from now, he'll be right back over there. He
knows where she hangs out, clearly, clearly he does. So

(17:08):
It's just it's a fantastic program, and they've expanded it
to include reward and awards for people who catch it
slightly smaller fish. Let me see if I can find
the rules and regulations very quickly. I don't want to
dwell on this. I'm still I still am perplexed as

(17:28):
to why we can't raise a twenty pound fish in
Texas in a public lake. The food I think is there.
Lake Fork was the big, big hitter for a very
long time, and the attribution for that lake to its
ability to produce giant bass was that it had such
a tremendous population of big shad, shad that weighed up

(17:51):
to a half a pound or so, and these big
bass were gobbling them up and gaining weight. Whatever it is, though,
there's just something either in the genetics of these fish
or something in their food supplies, something in the habitat
that just stops them from growing past eighteen pounds, apparently,

(18:13):
And we haven't had anything really close to that in
quite some time. I don't have the top fifty list
in front of me right now, but I don't remember.
I remember berries fish, and because that was a big
deal when it was caught. It was caught in the
heyday La Fork too, But I remember his fish, and

(18:33):
then I remember a few more that were not close
but kind of sort of close, if that makes any sense.
And here we are low these many years later, decades later,
still with nobody sniffing the surface of the water and
trying to break through that little ceiling. Eighteen pounds in

(18:56):
California is a good fish. But the there's always that asterisk,
and always that addendum to the sentence that says, well, yeah,
but it's not a state record. And same thing in Georgia.
Florida has got twenty pounders. I think I'm pretty sure
it's Florida, Georgia and in California that have them, and

(19:16):
we don't now. The farther up you go, and it's
interesting too, the farther up the continent you go, the
smaller the state record fish. Some of the far northern states,
their state records are like six seven pounds. I can
go to a golf course and catch a seven pounder.
I've gone to a golf course and caught a ten
pounder here. I actually have only have two double digit

(19:37):
fish in the basque category, and darn glad to have
both of them, and caught under entirely different circumstances, but
come to think of it, on the same lure type.
That were both caught on spinner baits, actually one on
about a half ounce spinner bait, the other, ironically on
an eighth ounce spinner bait that was so it was

(20:00):
kind of light and cheap, and I was just using
it to catch little dink bass along the shoreline, and
all of a sudden, this shadowy monster comes out and
grabs it. And now I'm panicking because I've got to
get that fish. Lifted somehow, and rather than just risk
that flimsy little hook lifting this fish four feet up

(20:22):
onto a bridge, I decided instead to lie down on
the bridge and extend my arm as far down as
it would go and see if I could lift the
rod enough to get that big old fish's mouth into
my hands. And I did, and it worked out pretty well.
I've got a picture of her somewhere on my phone.
Back back back probably, I want to say that. I

(20:44):
bet that's been six or seven years ago, now, a
long time ago, certainly back b BC it was about
four years BC. You know what that stands for, Frankie,
think about me, think about bass fishing, and think about
what BC might be. Four cormorants exactly. You got it, yes,

(21:04):
before cormorants, back when there were a lot of fish
in that lake, back when it was really fun to
go out there, because you could catch twenty or thirty
in an afternoon if you knew what you were doing
way back then. BC. Oh, I'm so glad you got
that too. That tells me you pay attention. Paying attention
really matters, and I appreciate you doing that. Seven one

(21:27):
three two one two five seven ninety. I just came
up with that. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna all my
stuff is gonna be timed BC. All my fishing stuff,
and even coastal fishing has been altered by those horrific birds.
That's They're like about as useful as mosquitoes as far
as I'm concerned. They're the They're are the the feral

(21:48):
hogs of the water. They just go in there and
they eat everything and then they go away for a
while if you harass them, but then they come right back.
Very disappointing that the state and federal level, at both
states the federal levels, that nothing's been done to remove
at least some of these birds, or at least release

(22:11):
the restrictions on taking them, because they do make a
hot mess everywhere they land and congregate. On the golf
course out where I play, when the shadthatch happens, there'll
be five, six, seven hundred of them working those lakes,
and they have to stop somewhere to take a break,

(22:34):
and usually it's along the little bridges or maybe on
a short mode grass shoreline something like that, and they
make exactly the kind of mess you would think they make,
only ten times worse. If you're right there looking at
it and smelling it, and yeah, it's just foul. There's
got to be some sort of a potential health hazard

(22:57):
to humans that could be used to gain some sort
of reason and some sort of permission to fin that population.
And I really don't think it would take much. I
think they're fairly smart birds, and I think that if
you were to, if you were to send a few
of them off to the big lake in the sky,

(23:21):
maybe the rest of them would get the message and
go somewhere else. But until then, we'll just do what
we do. Let's take a break, shall we. Kobe Stevens Apparel,
This is my guy. He sent shirts up here to
me and another couple of other guys actually up here
the other day. It was a new style he had
and he was it was a thank you for us

(23:41):
coming out and helping him with his tournament that he
did for what is it called? Oh man, Oh, I'll
get it. I'll get it, and I'll tell you later
because I know what it is. It's just right on
the tip of my tongue. It's a fantastic organization up
in Montgomery County that helps people with mental health issues
and other struggles, similar struggles, addictions and whatnot. Great great group.

(24:05):
I'll get the name of it while we're in the break,
I think, and then i'll go from there. Kobe Stevens
makes golf apparel and some outdoors apparel actually for you,
me and anybody who's any size really up to four
X for the big boys, and it's all great looking stuff.
They have kids clothes, they have women's clothes, they have shirts,

(24:26):
quarter zips, pants, shorts, caps, you name it, they've got it.
And they have a new store opened up on the
North side up there in Spring too. That's been around
now long enough that if you're interested and you want
to go see it, you ought to go ahead and
make a pass through there and just get hands on
with this stuff, get eyes on it, even beyond what's

(24:47):
at the website. The website's got most all of the
inventory listed and noted in there. There's even a little
section off to the side for discount stuff as well.
That's great, great stuff. It's just it's run its course
and there's just a few sizes left. It's like all
these other places that give you an opportunity to grab
something up that's still gonna look good. But man, that

(25:09):
new stuff looks great. That shirt I got yesterday fantastic.
Kobe Stevens dot com. That's the website, Kobe Stephens, cob
Y ste v e ns Kobe Stevens dot com. If
you are interested, even though hunting season's over, it doesn't
mean you can't go shoot your guns. And a great
place to go shoot them is American Shooting Centers. If

(25:29):
you were frustrated by how many times you missed this
pass hunting season, go out there and work on it.
Keep it up and shoot at least once a month
at some place like American Shooting Well. Shoot out there.
That's place I like to go. It's the largest non
military shooting facility in the whole state. There are two
hundred and some odd shooting stations out there between the

(25:52):
three sporting plays courses, and there are ten trap In
skeet Field, there's a beginner's wing shooting area or pop
up fight, five stand setups around the property, and then
all of the rifle pistol from five yards to six
hundred yards, including a little rim fire area where you
can shoot little metal silhouette pop up targets. If you're

(26:13):
still not hitting stuff like you want to hit it.
If you're not punching bull's eyes and breaking targets, get
some instruction they have. They have professional instructors out there
in every shooting discipline. They'll take care of you. They'll
get you hitting what you want to hit the way
you want to hit it. Safe, fun, enjoyable, place, very
user friendly. You'll you'll understand all that when you get

(26:35):
out there and start shooting. American Shooting Centers dot com
West Timber Parkway between Katie and Highway six American Shooting
Centers dot Com seven thirty five on Sports Talk seven
ninety The Dug Pike Show. Thank you for listening. Certainly
do appreciate it. Where do I want to go now?
I took care of it, Sheerloker. I think I've talked
about it enough, and nobody else seems to want to

(26:55):
talk about it unless you have a theory. I would
love to hear somebody's why we don't have a twenty
pound bash yet, because it's certainly not for lack of effort. Now,
especially with the share Lunker program going on, there are
a lot of people in this state, myself included actually,
who would love to catch a fourteen pound bass and

(27:17):
don't mind going out in the cold, don't mind going
out when everybody else kind of wants to stay home
in hopes of catching one of these fish. And now
with livescope technology, I can't say it's easy because even
just a bass over ten pounds is your target. They're

(27:39):
not a whole lot of them out there. There really aren't.
But now that you can actually see where that big
fish is, and we've learned so much about how a
lot of them just kind of get out in the
middle of the lake and just sit on the bottom
and get out of everything else's way until they're hungry,
it's a very interesting new angle to trying to go

(28:00):
catch big fish. And it saddens me for the sport
of fishing that so many people kind of use these
live scopes and and don't even pick up a rod
until they see a big fish. That takes some of
the old romance out of fishing. But nonetheless, if your

(28:23):
goal is to catch a giant and technically you are
catching it, even though you just rode around until you
found one and then just hung a carrot on a
stick and here you go, eat it up, big girl,
And yeah, that's still technically catching the fish. And I'm
not knocking anybody who uses live scope. I'm really not.

(28:44):
It's a lawful means and methods per the Parks and
Wildlife Department, and that means that they don't think that
that technology is going to have any impact on the
fish population, which I think is great, and frankly, I
would love to see saltwater fishermen not start because the

(29:08):
movement has already started, but I would like to see
more of us in the saltwater side take on the
take on the mantra of not not killing any more
fish than we have. To throw a bass up onto
a cleaning table at one of these big lakes around here,
and people will give you the stink eye, they'll say

(29:32):
bad things about you. They'll do it. They won't like
you if you're cleaning large amouth bass. Those fish have
gained this status after forty to fifty years of big
competitions and finally competitions where you didn't have to bring
the fish in, or you have to bring them in,
but they wigh them and then you throw them back
in the lake, and at some point they're gonna more.

(29:55):
I think more tournaments will go to what Major League
bass fishing does, and just have an observer on the boat.
You measure the you way the fish you throw it back,
you way the fish to throw it back. It's a
fantastic opportunity for us to kind of do more of
that in salt water too. And I don't have a problem,
not necessarily with having to put an observer on every boat.

(30:16):
I think that's kind of that lends itself to some
other problems and if there's money on the line, but
I would like to see more of us willing to
just go fishing for the sake of fishing and throw
fish back. And most of the guides I talked to
regularly say that that's pretty much the case in their boats.

(30:36):
And some of the younger guides still think that they
have to put a big old, big old splash of
fish on a cleaning table to have had a successful day,
when what they're doing is actually making it a little
harder to catch fish the next day because you're taking
fish out of the population and get it. Hey, the

(30:57):
next broiled speckled trout file ai E won't be my first,
that's for sure. But I also don't keep a fish
unless I really know that it's going to get eaten
in a day or two. Let me go talk to John.
Let's see what's going on here out in Brookshire.

Speaker 5 (31:11):
What's up, John, Well, your quandary about the twenty pound
Texas bash?

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Huh, that's a question. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (31:20):
Yeah, Does California, Florida and Alabama or wherever they do have.

Speaker 5 (31:26):
Twenty pounders have a share lunker type.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Program, not that I know of, and the I didn't.

Speaker 5 (31:34):
I don't think so either.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah. The thing that California, the thing that most people
attribute California's twenty pounders to, and there have been more
than one, is that they have a very boat trout, Yeah,
rainbow trout. They have a very robust trout stocking program.
And when when you're a fourteen or fifteen or sixteen

(31:56):
pound giant soal female largemouth ass and you're having trouble
catching shad anymore because they're wild grown and they swim
like like lamborghinis, along comes a truck and dumps a
bunch of old seventy six beetles into the into the
lake and loaded with fat, by the way, fat and protein,

(32:20):
and yeah, they just they slop them down. And that's
what I get.

Speaker 5 (32:24):
All that I'm gonna present a different line of thought.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Okay, let's go.

Speaker 5 (32:28):
If you're up in Ohio catching eight pound giant, you're thrilled, right,
oh yeah, make the paper. Okay, Okay, So the sheer
lunker program, isn't that a little akin to altering deer
genetics and turning them loose on high fence ranches.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
It's well, they're not being turned loose on high fence ranches.
They're being turned loose in public water. But right, yeah,
I'm trying to figure out why then, wherever you release them,
why why don't they grow?

Speaker 5 (33:03):
Well? Okay, so, but why not simply be happy with
what's good for your body of water instead of trying
to make things effectively, artificially better by taking up big fish,

(33:23):
you know, in essence trying to alter the gene pool
of our native waters.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
You know, it's interesting because the genetics, the genetics are there,
and the habitat is there, and the food is there
for these fish to make twenty pounds, but they don't.
And that's that's been the quandary for twenty something years.

(33:50):
They just we're doing all we can and we can't
get there. But if you put the deer breeders, look
at them they've figured out ways to road bucks with
three three hundred and fifty point antlers. That's you know,
that's right or inches how point?

Speaker 5 (34:08):
A lot of that, A lot of that involves the protein.
If you turn those deer loose on native range without
uh the protein feeders, that two hundred pound buck's going
to be a a one sixty.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's not going to have.

Speaker 8 (34:26):
Yeah unco So in essence, what we would have to
do is be dumping those truckloads of.

Speaker 5 (34:34):
Tank raised rainbow trout into feed right and and to
what end?

Speaker 9 (34:39):
I mean, it's all about the black Where I hunt,
i'd be I'm thrilled with a one twenty five free range,
non genetically modified.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, that's a good that you when I when I
started hunting, that was a great buck exactly.

Speaker 5 (34:58):
So it's all in.

Speaker 8 (35:00):
So why do we have to have a twenty pounder
when if an eight pounder is great from your body
of water, you know it's all over or you know, well,
I'll go down to Arizona and try to shoot a
one to twenty cows here is you know, if it
breaks ninety, you're thrilled, right, So why are we trying

(35:23):
to make a twenty pound fast when that's not what
our area naturally produced.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, the only reason that just.

Speaker 5 (35:31):
Give it an alternate No, no, no, that's good.

Speaker 10 (35:33):
It's fun.

Speaker 5 (35:34):
I'm just trying to give an alternate line of thought.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, that's great, that's great. I appreciate it. I'm kind
of at a break, but I'll tell you going going
out real quick. I think it's because we do have
the genetics, we do have the food sources for these fish.
Lake Fork Is was at least filled with your giant shad,
and that's how they got so many big bass, but
nothing ever got past eighteen pounds. And I think it's

(35:57):
there's a little a little piece of Texas biologists and
fishermen and all of us who grew up hearing that
Texas is bigger and better. It's bigger Texas. Everything's bigger
in Texas, and dang it, we can't grow a twenty
pound bas and it's just driving us crazy. That's a
great call.

Speaker 8 (36:16):
John, Now you hit I think the real driver. Oh yeah,
we got to be better than those guys in California.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Exactly right. Yeah. I can't stand the thought of Gavin
Newsom being able to brag about his bass out there.
All right, man, I'm gonna take a break.

Speaker 5 (36:33):
Yeah, just trying to get alter in thought.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
No, that's good, that was good stuff. Thanks John, I'll
see man, all right, all right, I gotta take a
little break here. I was enjoying talking to him too.
And it's food for thought, it really is. Are we
doing this to massage our egos and say, yep, look
at here, Texas is bigger and better? Or are we
just doing it? It's just is it just an exercise

(36:57):
in futility? I think it can be done. And let
me get to this break and then maybe we'll talk
about this a little bit more. A Belleville meat market,
why not right on out there today. It's gonna be
a pretty good driving today. It's gonna be cool, and
by the time you get out to Belleville might work
up an appetite. You and the family throw everybody in

(37:17):
the minivan take off between It's been about fifteen minutes
north of Sea Lely, fifteen minutes south of Hampstead on
Highway thirty six. And they, I think you know by
now that I've talked about them for many, many years.
They do deer processing while game processing year round. So
if you got something on four legs that you need
skinned out, boned out, whatever, Well, don't bring just bring

(37:40):
it quartered. Okay, that's the best way they like to
get them. Bring in that quartered animal. They'll process it
for you all year round. In the meantime, they've got
two dozen plus flavors of premium pecan smoke sausage. They
have got beef, chicken and pork cut however you want.
If the lights are on, there's a license butcher in
there who can cut that meat up exactly the way

(38:00):
you want it. They've gotten meals for when you get there.
If you get there early, you can eat lunch. If
you get there a little later in the afternoon, you
can call it dinner whatever you want to call it.
But from ten am to seven pm every single day
of the week, they've got that full menu pecan smoke
barbecue and all the sides to go with it. Oh good.
Having stuffed pork tenders, four three or four flavors of those.

(38:23):
They've got stuffed pork chops that are to die for, pants, sausage,
boot ann la boucherie, stuffed chickens, and anything and everything
else you sauces and spices and all that good stuff.
The only meat market and process or I indorse and
have for many, many years now, because there are a good, solid,
upstanding bunch of people and they got really really good stuff.

(38:46):
There's samples of all those, not all, but samples of
a couple of sausages up there on the countertop every
single day too, so you can try it before you
buy it, and just reach for a toothpick with a
sausage on it in one end and go ahead and
grab for your wallet with the other. You're gonna love it,
You're gonna buy it. Belleville Meatmarket dot Com is a website,
Belleville meat Market dot Com. One more time for Houston

(39:07):
Gold Exchange, where my friend bred Schweiss has dealt in
precious metals and jewelry and such for forty plus years.
We've been talking back and forth about gold, and the
price is really it's on a roller coaster. It goes
skyrocketing up to more than fifty four hundred, right at
fifty five hundred a few nights ago. Now it's back

(39:28):
down below five thousand. But guess what, anything in that
neighborhood three even four thousand even is a lot of
money for a little tiny little palm full of gold,
and you've probably got some kind of pieces you haven't
been wearing, maybe some old change you had from your
disco days. Whatever. If you can get it over to

(39:51):
Brad at Houston Gold Exchange, he'll swap you out for
a check and it'll be a surprisingly nice check. With
the price of gold the way it is is, even
though it's come down this past week, it's still at
stratospheric levels. Never a bad time to buy, never a
bad time to sell. Right now, though, you can sell
that scrap and get some some really good money. Take

(40:13):
that money to the fishing show and turn it into
something you love. Houston Gooldexchange dot com is the website.
They're at West Timer and Darry Ashford Brad's cell phone
number two eight one eight five one thirty nine fifty five.
Two eight one eight five one thirty nine fifty five.

(40:34):
Give him a call, say the song man, Holy Colty,
it's just I'm starting to count them and it's too many. Okay,
Yeah there now, now we heard all we need to hear.
And I would much prefer to talk to Dave, so
I want to go click him on in Dave, what
is going on my friend.

Speaker 10 (40:52):
Well, it's all happening over here on Lake Conro. We've
got a little bit of white captain. But you know,
when y'all we're talking about fiction, the jeanette and doing
a man that's always fascinated me, you know, you know forever,
you know, on different a creatures and uh and insects
and everything. And real quick, two of my buddies are

(41:13):
fishing over here. And I had one of my buddies, Joe,
he called me, and I think here after I get
back to the house, I gotta do some therapy on
my shoulder and my neck. And then right here where
the lighthouse is, we're gonna do some croppee diving over
there off one of the but but they caught a
six foot catfish older.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
No step back catfish.

Speaker 10 (41:38):
Yeah, and link.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Conrad here six feet not six.

Speaker 10 (41:42):
Pounds five and a half, five and a half.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Here we go. Now we're gonna walk it back two pound.

Speaker 10 (41:48):
Five and a half.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Man, I need to see a picture. I'm calling one.
I'm calling blooney on five and a half or six
foot catfish.

Speaker 6 (41:56):
Well, I'll get the picture.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Okay, I'm not I'm not messing with you, but I
mean just I got to see this man.

Speaker 10 (42:05):
Okay, hey, well I'll double I'll double check the fish.
But it was over the phone and everything. So but hey,
but I have seen some that like you're holding up
to your chest and the tail is down to the ground,
you know, so you know they're all big ones that
have come out of Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
But you got to get somebody. You got to get
somebody other than sky Mike to hold it. That's the problem.

Speaker 10 (42:26):
Now you ain kidding there, And I'm hung with him
a few times around him, No, but I you know,
he's wonderful. I mean, yeah, we were. We were in
here in downtown Willis Ain't around at a deal for
about two hours and we had so much fun. Hey
but back to the genetic thing and the Lunker program
and stuff like that in high sense, you know, that

(42:48):
is a very fascinating. If I if I could go
back in time, I think that's what I wouldn't. I
would have been to a biologist in order to study
some more fun that you.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Have to work out.

Speaker 10 (43:02):
We're looking through a microscope, microscope and all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
You know.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Did you have a microphoe?

Speaker 10 (43:10):
Yeah, he call and everybody in junior high school, Yeah,
in junior high school, and we dissected worms and frogs
and everything else. And sure, you know, and all the
all the girls were in there. Hey you know, all
that kind of stuff. But uh, it was it was
very very educational. And and that what was it the
smell that ether smell in there? Oh yeah, you know

(43:33):
that that.

Speaker 6 (43:36):
That brings back memories there, you know, hide it was
it was.

Speaker 10 (43:41):
Yeah, I'm telling you, hey, you know what. The patience
of the teachers back then was remarkable, you know, because
they would they would sit there and they would actually
teach you, you know, how.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
To do this. And well, one thing that's changed, though, David,
I think for the better, And it's not in all
the schools yet, but it's in it's in increasing numbers
of them is the outdoors programming where kids are I mean,
they they get them in high school, they'd take them
off campus and go to some lake somewhere, go to
a hiking trail, and teach them about the outdoors. And

(44:20):
that's just invaluable. And we didn't we didn't really have
that if we were doing it on our own. Back then,
they didn't have to have an outdoors class. We that
was like seventh period at at the end of the
when the school bell rang out, you went and you talk.
We took off anyway to a lake, to the woods, whatever,
to go fish or hunt.

Speaker 10 (44:40):
Right, Hey, what we would do too, Coach Hancock. He
would take us down there off the Little York to
the bowling alley and we bowled. We went to the
tennis court. Yeah, okay, we went to the tennis court
and played tennis. Yeah. But then that was.

Speaker 6 (44:55):
A h.

Speaker 10 (45:01):
Something in the Jets.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
What's his name.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
I would have I would have I would I would
have skipped bowling class and gone fishing. I'm telling you
right now.

Speaker 10 (45:09):
Well no, but I'm just saying. He taught us how
to bowl. But then they would take us to Mayor.
They would take us to marriage ranch and take us
out there fishing on the lake.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
You know.

Speaker 10 (45:21):
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, Circle Lake out there
right past Tomball, you know. And then we were out
there in the woods, you know, right out there. Oh,
and then they were hunting out there too, sure, you know,
so they would be a wonderful time.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Okay, welcome to the hunting, fishing, and bowling hour. I
got you. I gotta I gotta make this top of
the hour, I'll see that.

Speaker 10 (45:44):
Bowling balls float.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Okay, good to know bowling ball's float. I didn't know that.
I'm not even sure of that Houston gold exchanged. Let
me tell you again, I'm not kidding you. This is
this is the man, my buddy bred Swiss, who is
really into the outdoors. I don't think he bowls or
plays tennis. But he was on CCA's board for a

(46:07):
long time, help them raise tons of money to do
what they did, to help us get our redfish back
and help keep things going along here. And now he's
wanting you to take advantage of the price of gold
and bring some of that scrap gold you got around
the house, whatever it is, bring it over to him
and he will. It's a market price deal. And the

(46:27):
market went down in the last couple of days for gold,
but it's still about double and double and then somewhere
it was only a year and a half or two
years ago. Take advantage of that. Get a little jingle
in your pocket. Everybody's having a little rough times now
with money. A lot of people are. And if you've
got any scrap gold that you're not wearing anymore, you

(46:47):
don't need anymore. I'll be pulling feelings out of your teeth.
But yeah, you get some of that over to him.
He'll take good care of you, I promise you. He
buys gold, he buys silver, and he sells all that
same stuff too, whatever it is in the precious metals
and jewelry business. But right now his biggest thing is gold.
And there's never a bad time to buy, never a

(47:08):
bad time to sell because the price is always going
to keep eventually going up. You get your money's worth.
Houston gooldexchange dot com is the website. West timer at
Darry Ashford called him on his cell phone. He's emphatic
about that, he said, I'm not kidding. Give my cell
phone to eight one eight five one thirty nine fifty
five two eight one eight five one thirty nine fifty

(47:29):
five call him now. Eight o'clock hour starts right now. Well,
three minutes ago, Rudy sent me the story. I'd forgotten
about it already, but it's kind of funny really. Up
in Cleveland, police had to track down and escaped kangaroo
uh louse. Kangaroo caused quite a stir in Cleveland on Wednesday,
January twenty eight after it was spotted hopping along FM

(47:52):
ten ten South police chief has said it was a
first in his law enforcement career. Yeah, I would imagine. So, yeah,
it's kind of funny, said, I've wrangled a lot of
animals over the years, but this one made me feel
like I was in the Australian outback. Really, Okay, no,

(48:15):
not really, it's not the outback. I have seen actually,
on a very well known golf course in this region,
in the backyard of a home that is on one
of the five pars on that golf course, about a

(48:36):
four foot tall kangaroo. Now that's when it was. That
was a year ago or so, maybe a year and
a half tops, that might have been year and a half,
two years, let's call it that. And there it was,
just right there in front of us in the backyard,
standing at the fence like a puppy. We didn't go

(48:56):
over and pet it, but we darned sure all got
close enough to take pictures, which I'm sure those people
get tired of seeing people drive over there to take
pictures of their little baby kangaroo. Nonetheless, that's what Rudy sent.
Thank you for that. Rudy. Um, I'm gonna go run
through these really quick, John, See that's how I wound

(49:17):
up on a twenty pound off thren thought, let's see
if John knows anything about the fish kills cold snipped
and again if there had been Yeah, see that's the
thing I don't. I still am convinced that we really
didn't have any sort of significant fish killed despite the
low temperatures last week. And I think most of that's
because it didn't just drop like a stone. It kind

(49:39):
of came in softly and took us down gently to
pretty cold, certainly cold enough temperatures that it could have
killed fish if they'd have been trapped shallow, but apparently
they weren't. Apparently they weren't moving on. I'm gonna get
to you in a second.

Speaker 8 (49:56):
Mark.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Let's see what Rick has say. He thinks it would
take cleaner water to produce twenty pound bass. I don't
know that it's water quality, because the lakes where our
biggest bass are coming from now, the water quality is
actually very good. I would say good to very good.

(50:17):
These lakes, aren't. They're not mudholes rayburn to lead a
bend fork, ohivy. All of these lakes where these big
bass are coming from, they're in good shape now. Mark
sent me the top weight of bass from let's see,

(50:38):
it's the top ten. Yeah, top ten states largemouth bass.
Georgia still has that twenty two and a quarter. That's
been up forever, even way before Very Saint Claire's fish.
I think California's best of twenty one seventy five, Texas
at eighteen eighteen, Mississippi at eighteen fifteen, and then on
down to South Carol Line in tenth place with a

(51:01):
sixteen thirteen. Those are all giant fish, there's no question
about it. But there's six pounds of difference and change
between the number ten bass in the country and the
number one bass in the country. And that number ten
might not be the number ten. It's certainly not the
number ten in the country because we've got a lot

(51:22):
of sixteen pounders too that would fall somewhere within there.
But state by state for state records anyway, that's a
six pound difference. Oh, Georgia call it an outlier. Furnia
call it an outlier. Now the numbers start to kind
of look a little bit better, but our best is
still three pounds and three and a half pounds off

(51:47):
almost of California's best, and four pounds, four pounds off
of Georgia's best. But we're gonna keep trying, you know,
we are, and I hope we do, and I will.
If I die someday and there's still Barry Saint Clair's
record at the top of the list, I'll rest easy.

(52:12):
It's just not that big a deal. And it kind
of like John and I were talking about, it's not
that big a deal that we don't have a twenty
two or twenty three or twenty four, but it sure
would be nice to have it. And I'm guessing that
California when it's just right there peak a half a pound,

(52:33):
just a half a pound off. I bet they're bass
fishermen out there kind of hoping they can get one too.
I hope everybody's looking for twenty three pounds and just
not anybody finding it. And I think if you can't,
you can't expect any state. You can throw out forty
states for having even a remote shot at growing a

(52:53):
twenty pound bass. You can throw forty states out in
these ten states because we have them pretty dog on big.
Maybe they'll have a chance. We'll see maybe someday we'll
see Rick Byce. What's up, man?

Speaker 6 (53:09):
I want to talk a little more about these big bass.
I sent you the comment I just made the single
comment of cleaner water. Okay, Now, if you get a
map out and you look at where these big bass
were coming from Colorado, Florida, Georgia, these these baths, for

(53:33):
the most part, are coming from more what I will
call rural area lakes. Okay, may maybe cor of Engineer
lakes and the and that's cleaner. And here's why. And
the water is a lot cleaner. And here's my point.
I'm gonna pick on Lake Conroe. Lake Conroe, for all

(53:55):
practical purposes, is encapsulated with housing around.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
It'll be I oh, no question about that.

Speaker 6 (54:01):
And some of them are on septic system to the
north of the lake, and some of them are most
of them are on some type of municipal utility district
with some kind of public or municipal and supposedly their
sewage is being you know, retained and not leaking. But

(54:24):
I will promise you a lot of it's leaking into
that lake. But let's facture in something else that these
offici are having to deal with NLA Conroe. Do you
realize how many tons, literally tons I'm gonna use towns
of yard fertilized and pesticides are running off into that lake.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, there's a lot of runoff. There's no question. We
don't know what's running.

Speaker 6 (54:57):
Over well, I'm know they're running off every time it
rains because these people spend all their money making their
grass greens, so they can go cut it. But the
point is the pesticides in the in the fertilizers and
all the other stuff, the chemicals from the gas tanks
that are you know, guessing up the boats and coming

(55:20):
out of the restaurants and you know open I know
there's stuff leaking that cannot that can can't do anything
but inhibit the growth of a fish. Now, here's my
summary of three things it takes to grow them big fish. One,
I'm gonna go back to clean waters one. Number two

(55:40):
it goes back to big bait. And number three, I
think a fish can get huh, they.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Have to eat big food too.

Speaker 6 (55:50):
That's what my point is, the fish food whatever. But
the third thing is you you have to have or
not to have to have. Our water temperature down here
from I'm just guessing from April to September is a

(56:12):
lot higher than the water temperature of those lakes. Is
that fair?

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, it's it's it's warmer, for sure, but that the
warm water is the growing season. We have a longer
growing see than California or Georgia.

Speaker 6 (56:28):
But you got to go back and look at a tree.
A tree will grow harder fast, it goes slower, but
bigger in cooler weather. I think the fish do the
same thing. Personal thing.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah, that's a different, different animal altogether.

Speaker 6 (56:44):
Well, I understand tree and a fish. One of them
you cut down in one of them. I'm an arm.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Go set the hook on a tree and see how
long it says you'll land it. I see I ob
joking with you. Yeah, you know it.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Man.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
I greatly appreciate your input. Thank you, I really do.
Thanks Rick, all right, that's fine, No, that's good man.
See all right, I got to take a little break
here real quick. In whoever that is on the phone,
I'll catch you when we get back. Many Lopez, I've
been talking to Manny, he said. Man, I just don't
know what's going on. These people aren't smoking as many
cigars as they used to. They're not buying them from me.

(57:24):
And I'm trying to help him by helping you learn
what he does and where he is, and how easy
it is to get premier cigars made from the finest
tobaccos available, and you get them right from the manufacturer.
The manufacturer is El Cubano Cigars, owned by Many Lopez.

(57:48):
He and his dad started that company in two thousand
and six, twenty years ago. And what you can get
by going over there is a direct from the manufacturer
price on more than one hundred and fifty different varieties
and blends of tobaccos in cigars that are everything from

(58:08):
super mild to very robust. If you will, what he'll
also do for you is take care of your charity
tournament needs and make specially banded cigars just for your event. Well,
he'll also come to your event if you want, set
up a little pop up shelter, put a six foot

(58:31):
table underneath it, a chair behind it, and sit there
and roll cigars for all of your guests. Do that
at a wedding reception, do that at a charity event,
whatever you want. He'll cut up a good company event.
Somebody's retiring and a bunch of people in the office
like cigars. Get some cigars with your company logo on them.

(58:52):
He did that for us over here at iHeart. They
were awesome and we gave them to clients and the
clients absolutely loved them. El Kubano's Cigar com. He said,
I don't know, Doug, I just you know, I hope
these people will start smoking cigars again. Well, happy days
are coming. If your happy days aren't there yet, they're coming,
and it would be fantastic, I think to celebrate them

(59:13):
with a nice smooth cigar from El Cubano. Elcubano Cigars
dot Com. Get Manny on the phone, talk to him,
ask him what he can do for you and and
help you out with your cigars. Elcubano Cigars dot Com.
Ade eighteen on Sports Talk seven ninety The Doug Pike Show.
I want to get to this call right away because
this is gonna be good. I know it is Christine.

(59:36):
Good morning, How are you good?

Speaker 11 (59:39):
How are you this morning?

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I'm doing all right? This is I think this is
a first. I don't think I've ever had anybody call
from helsman Cali or Florida. What part of the state
does that end?

Speaker 11 (59:48):
I'm sorry, I'm from helsman Ford.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Ford, Helfmanford. That Frankie, Frankie put help Helsman, Florida. Oh no,
that's cool, Chris, tell me about it.

Speaker 11 (01:00:02):
Hey, So I was thinking that that's do most of
their growing between seventy and eighty degrees, Okay, And I
don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
Yeah, I was just thinking.

Speaker 11 (01:00:13):
Texas really doesn't hold those temperatures very long. It gets hot,
it gets cold real quickly. The water temperature is always fluctuating,
quicker than it is in Georgia. Georgia holds those temperatures
for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
That's a very good point, Christine. You do a lot
of bass fishing or are you just really smart?

Speaker 11 (01:00:33):
I got a huston that does a lot of bass fishing.
I just sit at the table listen.

Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Well, yeah, that's that's an interesting point, because we do,
and you and I have lived here, I'm sure long
enough to know we get about we get about what
two weeks of real winter if you add up all
the cold days, and then we get about two hundred
and fifty days when it's a thousand degrees, and then
we have like what a week of spring and a

(01:00:58):
week of fall, and that's it. That's a very good
point that prime growing time might not be enough because
the water may be getting too hot too fast.

Speaker 11 (01:01:08):
It's interesting, and I'm just curious if where they're finding
those baths are in deeper waters too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Now that the forward facing sonar is available, they're finding,
at least here in Texas, they're finding that there are
a lot of really big bass kind of on their own.
These big old soals are just sitting out in the
middle on the bottom in twenty thirty forty feet of water,
just kind of chilling and not really doing much or anything.
They don't need to eat a lot. When they do eat,

(01:01:37):
they'll eat something big as a cantalope. But they're they're
not actively feeding very much of the day or any
of that. So, yeah, they're just out there on their own.

Speaker 8 (01:01:47):
You know.

Speaker 11 (01:01:47):
I'm thinking if I was a fish in the middle
of a pond that was in Texas, I probably wouldn't
do a lot of moving around if it was that hot, not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
In the middle of August. You wouldn't, would you.

Speaker 11 (01:01:58):
No, I'd be sitting in the middle trying to keep cool.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
In a recliner with a beer. That's right, all right, Christine,
it's great to hear from you. Thank you. It's that's
a really good point. We we have the right weather,
but it's just the premiere with the perfect weather for
growing big. Isn't that long a season? It's really not,
is it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:20):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Okay. I'm going with that from here on until somebody
proves us wrong. Thank you, thank you much, thank you,
thank you for listening. Uh huh by bye. All right,
let me click that helfman Ford Frankly, Frankie. It's funny
because I know where that is. Actually, I know exactly
where that is, and I've talked to her before. I'm

(01:02:44):
trying to get a recall handled on my vehicle. Yeah,
it's very interesting. She makes a very good point. I
wonder what her I should have asked her what her
husband's biggest bass is so far. I'd be kind of
curious to know, because most most Texas bass fishermen, I think,
the really serious ones, the ones who are out there
a lot and have done it for more than ten

(01:03:07):
years as adults, those men and women have got at
least one really good bass that they've caught. And by
really good, i'm talking about six seven, eight pounds. Those
are all good bass. And if you're fishing big public reservoirs,
those are really good catches, and then they might have

(01:03:29):
that one outlier that either they actually caught or broke
off but got a good look at that they're convinced
was double digits. And that's that's a good that's a good,
solid start to anybody's ten year bass fishing career. If
you haven't caught a bigger fish than that, just keep

(01:03:49):
fishing in quality water and you will. That's the thing
a lot of people have told me. I'm seeing all
these people catching these ten and twelve pounds bass eight
and nine and all these double digit fish and the
most most of the ones I'm catching are two and
three pounds. Well, in that case, then you might want

(01:04:10):
to regroup what you're doing, because there's there's something that
a lot of fishermen go through. There's steps. First, you
just want to catch a fish. Then you want to
catch more than a fish. Then you want to start
thinking about catching a little bit bigger fish, and then
you start thinking about limits and this that, and you know,

(01:04:31):
with bass there's really no there is a limit, but
nobody's hopefully nobody's keeping bass anymore. Just leave them alone,
let them grow, and we'll eventually get one that a
twenty two pounder. That ate a six pounder for lunch,
and it comes in on the scale as a giant.
But in any event, if you're if you're wanting to

(01:04:52):
catch bigger fish and you're catching a lot of little fish,
you got to change your ways. You got to change
your tactics because what you're doing is allowing is allowing
yourself to be satisfied by the bite and that little
bitty fight with the little bitty fish. Relatively, But if

(01:05:15):
you want to catch bigger fish, you're gonna have to
change lures. Probably, you're gonna have to change where you fish,
You're gonna have to change how you fish. It's a
totally different game. It's come I'm trying to think of
anything in hunting that's that way, but I'm really not
coming up with anything. But fishing definitely is that way.
If you're not catching bigger fish, it's because of how

(01:05:37):
you're fishing and where you're fishing and when you're fishing.
To some degree, if you want to target big trout
right now, you need to or big trout, you need
to be fishing this time of year, and you need
to be fishing with a pretty good sized bait. Generally,
big fish eat little bitty fish, little bitty things they do.

(01:05:59):
But if you're fishing with little lures and trying to
convince yourself that you're going to catch a big fish
on one, now what you have to deal with is
the if you get into him is a swarm of
one pound bass or one pound trout. If you're throwing
a little bitty bait, that ten pounder out there would
eat that thing if it could ever get to it,

(01:06:20):
and fight through all the little ones. But if you
really want to focus on catching a big fish, you
need to be willing to throw lures all day long. Now,
not with ford facing sonar. You put that live scope
on them and you can just wait till you see one.
But if you're gonna fish traditionally, you have to be
willing to cast all day long to maybe get three

(01:06:43):
four bytes all day for three or four bites, and
then you better hope that you stick a hook in
that fish when he hits it, when she hits it.
That's how big fish, big trout fishing works, big bass
fishing works. You got to throw and throw and throw
and out. In California. One of the most popular lures

(01:07:04):
back when the big bas heyday was on one of
the most popular lures out there was a foot long
rainbow trout imitation that was just a very It was
a top water bait. It was a floating bait. But
and it had almost a straight vertical lip on the

(01:07:26):
front of it where you could just as you dragged it,
it would just swim. It was a jointed bait, and
it would just swim very slowly on the top of
the water. And three four five six pound bass even
in that lake wouldn't go near it. But the twelve
to fifteen pounders would. They would annihilate those things. That's

(01:07:48):
what they'd been eating match the hatch. I would be
interested to see if if somebody would manu and I'm
sure there's one somewhere, but manufacture about a solid eight
inch shad imitation well detailed, probably be a twenty dollars
lure maybe more, that you could just lazily swim across

(01:08:12):
the surface. Martin Nichols has some big baits in his
DOA collection that are about that big six seven inches long.
Mullet imitations have that same vertical lip up front, and
you just you have to have the patience of job.
But you just gently work them back to the rod tip,

(01:08:32):
slow as molasses. It's winter. These fish aren't going to
be as active. But if they see something like that,
just kind of lazily swimming back and forth across a flat,
they'll come over and take a look and then they'll
probably eat it. And this is going to be the
same with the bass and spawning season. Get those big
bass up on the on the nests, and if you

(01:08:55):
can keep the little males from grabbing your lure and
drop something kind of big and intrusive in front of
that sow, in front of that female, she'll eat it.
She may she may just pick it up and try
to carry it out of the nest to serve as
a warning, but once it's in her mouth, it's fair game.
Set the hook, speaking of, you will with bass, not

(01:09:20):
so much with trout, but with bass, with tarping, with snook.
I'm trying to think of other hard mouthfish just off
the top of my head, but those three, for sure,
if you'll mash those barbs down, you got a better
chance of getting that that hook point deep into that
fish's bony jaw than you do with leaving that barble
on there, because the barb stops penetration basically unless you

(01:09:41):
just just hammer it and then risk breaking your line
or doing having some other calamity. That's another reason to
mash those barbs down flat, I mean completely flat too.
A lot of fly fishermen do that, tarping fish and
tarping on the fly. Most of those guys are bending
that bar back because of that bony mouth, and you

(01:10:01):
just can't get the penetration past the barb. It's just
too hard to work that angle. Good Heavens, getting close
to a breakdown, Let's go ahead and take it. Seven
one three two one two five seven ninety email on
Medugpike at iHeartMedia dot com. I get to the emails
as fast as I can. Sometimes it's a little bit
later because I get my mouth starts going and my

(01:10:22):
brain stops thinking about email for a little while. But
I do get to them and I'll respond to you
as fast as I can. Air ride bikes. Let me
tell you about Wayne Errington. We started talking about air
ride bikes there. These are e bikes we're talking about,
and he came on board back in the fall when
there were a lot of people scratching their heads going.
You know, I just really wish there was a quieter,

(01:10:43):
less intrusive way to get from from the the from
the bunk house to my deer stand without leaving a
bunch of sin on the ground or without driving a
truck through there. Well, that's where that e bike comes in,
whether it's for getting to the deer stand and not
leaving scent trail by the way, because your feet never
touched the ground. The only smell there might be is

(01:11:06):
whatever the rubber tires put on the ground. And that's
not gonna scare it deer. They don't know what it is.
It's not frightening to them, not nearly like human scent.
And now coming out of we finally get out of
winter and come into spring, I would like to I
may have to try to rent one of those things
from him and take it down to North Padre Island

(01:11:27):
and ride it up and down the beach looking for
trout and snook and little tarpaing and whatnot. I think
that would be a fantastic way to patrol the beach
looking for trout in water where you don't have to
get too far away from your bike. He's in the
Four Corners Shopping Center in Tomball, he's got little commuter
bikes for kids, or maybe for a grown up that

(01:11:49):
just needs to run up to the grocery store and
get a couple of items, maybe go to the drug
store and pick up a prescription for the kids. Whatever
you need to do and you just don't want to
fire up your big old jack up truck in the driveway.
He has got those really heavy duty bikes, the ones
that handle just about anything. They have motors, separate motors
for each wheel, and when you give them the gas,

(01:12:12):
not gas, really the electricity, you turn up the juice,
they jump, they go. A fantastic opportunity for people who
maybe have a little less good balance than average, getting
up in your years a little bit. He has three
wheel e bikes as well, and I bet they do
just fine going through a lot of rough territory. They're

(01:12:33):
pretty powerful and very comfortable and very very reliable and efficient.
He served he handles nothing but the best bikes up there.
Got them. They're starting at a very reasonable price. He'll
walk you through the whole thing, even give you a
little test ride in the parking lot there. Air ride
Bikes dot Com is the website a r r ID

(01:12:54):
air ride bikes dot Com if you are thinking about
getting yourself some delicious Mexican food today, not tomorrow. They're
closed on Sundays. But Berry Hill down in sugar Land,
I've been talking to you about them for quite some
time now, and they have an incredible tex mex menu
that the two primary cooks in the kitchen, each of

(01:13:15):
whom have been there more than ten years. They take
traditional text mechs and then just tinker with the recipes
to make them Berry Hills own. They're fish tacos, for example,
some of the best I've ever eaten in my entire life,
no matter where I've been, and I've eaten my share
of fish tacos. Believe me, everything in there is absolutely delicious.

(01:13:35):
It's a very comfortable family style come as you are
dining on the left side, as you walk in, tables
and booths for family dining whatever, on the right side
more of a sports bar feel. And then outside, which
in a day or two is going to be really
really nice outside dining as well. And you'll see that
right as you walk up to the front door. They've

(01:13:56):
been there a long long time, thirty something years down
there in Sugarland. My wife and I've been eating there
just about that same length of time. Last time I
was in there was less than a week ago. Berryhillsugarland
dot Com is the website. They also do catering anywhere
in town, any size group. They've got the manpower, they've
got the staffing to come take care of your event,

(01:14:16):
whatever it is. If you want to serve up some
of the best Mexican food ever, and be sure to
get some trace letches to chocolate or vanilla or both,
I recommend both. Berryhillsugarland dot com. Berryhillsugarland dot com a
thirty eight on Sports SOX seven ninety The Doug Pike Show.
Thank you for listening. Certainly do appreciate it. Oh man,
I'm gonna get you something I haven't talked about in

(01:14:38):
a very long time. I don't talk about probably enough really,
because I focus so almost exclusively on hunting and fishing
at golf. I mean to do tap into golf every
now and then. I'll be the first to admit that
I like the game and play it as often as
I can. But what I'm talking about is hiking, because
to me, hiking is and I'm joking when I say this,

(01:15:03):
but I'm just understand where I'm coming from. Usually, if
I'm walking through the woods, or if I'm walking down
the beach or whatever, I'm either carrying some sort of
hunting gear or some sort of fishing gear, and I'm
going some place. I'm going to a place out there.
I'm going to stay there a while and do what

(01:15:24):
I'm doing, and then I'm gonna come back later. Hiking
to me, and I've done my share of it, haven't.
I'm not a I'm not a fanatic, but I've made
some hikes deliberately, and they're very pleasant. They're very enjoyable.
And if you take them, especially if you take them

(01:15:45):
at the right time of day, if you either get
out there very early or stay out there very late
as the sun's coming up or going down, you're going
to see some wildlife. And now it depends on how
you hike. And there's a point I'm going to make
here in just a minute. I'm not just rambling on
and on about hiking. But if you're out there and

(01:16:08):
moving patiently and slowly, and there's not much traffic on
the trail at dawn or dusk, you are going to
see some wildlife. You might see some deer, you might
see armadillos opossums hopefully almost any place in Texas you hike,
you're going to see some squirrels, and that's fine too,

(01:16:29):
But for me, it's if I'm going to go hiking,
I want to have a purpose, and even if it's
just hiking a trail, I would almost I'm not doing
this for cardio exercise. I'm doing it to improve my
stalking skills. So I'm going to be the guy who's
not walking very fast on the trail. I'm going to

(01:16:49):
be the guy who's stopping about every fifteen yards or so,
maybe twenty and just looking around to see if there's
an animal that hasn't detected me yet. And that makes
it fun for me. It's kind of a game. Really.
It's not hide and go seek. It's just hide and
plain sight. And if you learn through hiking to walk
through the woods quietly, it will improve your hunting and

(01:17:11):
vice versa. Well, not no, you can't. Improving your hunting
doesn't help your hiking, but improving your hiking skills and
your awareness skills, your ability to detect the difference in
an acorn falling and a deer stepping on a twig
and sound and you can do yourself some big favors,

(01:17:32):
all of which I bring up because, for the fourth
straight year, according to this release from the Parks and
Wildlife Department, Texas State Parks kicked off the new year
January by breaking historical participation numbers at first day hike
events around the state. On January one, the state hosted

(01:17:55):
eighty six different well at eighty six different sites the
state to one hundred and eighty one events where twelve thousand,
eight hundred and thirty five people laced up their hiking
boots and walked a combined Frankie pop quiz You ready, sure? Okay?
Eighty six sites, one hundred and eighty one events, eight

(01:18:18):
hundred and thirty five participants hiking for a combined how
many miles? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Man?

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Uh, I don't know, Am I over one thousand?

Speaker 10 (01:18:29):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Yeah, okay, since you're there, I'll just go ahead and
let you off the hook. I think twelve thousand people
almost thirteen thousand making these hikes, and these hikes are
a few miles apiece. They did a combined twenty eight thousand,
one hundred and fifty four miles. That's that's a lot
of walking, number of sites events, participants. All of that

(01:18:50):
all new records for the four straight year, and the
number of participants actually increased by more than three thousand,
and the miles traveled were up by nearly ten thousand
from last year's total, which means more. This tells me
this is the bigger point of this. More people are

(01:19:10):
going back outdoors because for a lot of years, a
lot of people were told that just living in the
city was where you needed to be, that's where everything is.
But what there's just this genetic need in us, in
our DNA that we need to be outdoors. We need
to get sunshine, vitamin D. We need to see and

(01:19:31):
understand the difference between us and as people who can
live and survive outdoors, people who thrive on outdoor consumption.
And by that just I just mean learning that there's
a bigger world out there than that little, tiny home
you live in. No matter what size your home is
relative to the outdoors, it's tiny, okay. And even even

(01:19:58):
in education, children and are found to score better on
standardized tests when they spend a lot of time outdoors.
Kids who spend time outdoors understand that they're not the
center of the universe. They know that, they know that
there's a lot more out there, and that just brings
us to a point where we can really have good

(01:20:19):
conversations about saving wild places and restoring fisheries and to
their former levels, whatever they are. It's a whole lot
of good that comes from being outdoors, and I'm really
thrilled to see that for four straight years now there's
a return to the woods, there's a return to the beaches,
there's a return to the outdoors, because that's essential for

(01:20:44):
people to understand a little bit more about the world
around them and understand they're placing it good. Heavens, let
me climb down from the soapbox and tell you all
about Houston Gold Exchange one more time. I've been talking
to Brad about this, Brad Schweiss, and back when gold
was about three thousand dollars an ounce, I said, is

(01:21:05):
this a good time for people to sell their gold?
He said, every day is? Every day is because unless
they bought it yesterday and it went down. And now
that did happen. It went down significantly. It was down
significantly this morning, but it's still at a significant amount.
It's a really nice chunk of change and Brad's going

(01:21:26):
to be out there whenever you need him there to.
If you just bring your stuff in there and he'll
weigh it up and he'll there's a device he uses
to find out exactly what the content of the metal
and whatever piece you're bringing is, so he knows how
much gold is there and they can separate it all
by melting it down. It's fascinating. Really. If you need
a good investment for something get you out of the doghouse,

(01:21:47):
maybe go see Brad and you need to sell some
scrap gold and turn it into something that'll get you
out of trouble. If you need to get out of trouble,
turn it into a new boat. If you have a
more than a I got a fistful of scrap gold,
probably buy a decent boat with that Gold's at a
really high price right now. It's a really great time

(01:22:08):
to think about moving that stuff and turn it into
something you can have some fun with. Brad's did good
dude too. He's a boy, he thinks like us. He
loves the outdoors. If he's not in the store, he's
probably fishing, or on the way to fishing, or on
the way back from fishing. Brad Schweiss. That's his name.
To call him on his cell phone. Two eight one

(01:22:28):
eight five one thirty nine fifty five two eight one
eight five one thirty nine fifty five. Shooter's Corner, Palmer
Highway at twenty nine Street down in Texas City, owned
and operated by Jerry and j TK, the father and
son team. I've known for Guy's the better part of
thirty years. At least thirty years, I bet uh no.
I've probably met Jerry thirty five years ago, even down

(01:22:49):
there on the som Burrito chasing deer. Shooter's Corner up
there in Texas City is an old school gun store.
These guys know their stuff. They take their time to
make sure you get exactly what you want, exactly what
you need, and that that's true whether you're a serious
shooter or you're just brand new to the shooting sports.
Shooters Corner is going to get you into the right

(01:23:11):
hardware at a great price. They've got Amo, They've got Camo,
They've got reloading supplies, optics, everything you would expect in
a gun store. There's no footballs, there's no whatever tennis shoes.
It's just shooting stuff. D Shooters CORNERTX dot com. If
you wear a badge for a living, you get a discount,

(01:23:32):
which I think is pretty cool. D Shooters Corner TX
dot com eight fifty one on sports Sox sevven ninety
The Dunpike Show, Chris just weigh in. I'm not sure.
I'm trying to figure out what he's Oh, yeah, carrying
hunting gear AKA or rifle or shot gun that's over

(01:23:55):
the shoulder. I think maybe he was referring to the
when I was talking about air ride bikes up there
in Tomball. These e bikes, they are great for garry
and hunting gear. I guess that's where he was going. Chris,
if I'm off track here, put me back on the
track until Flash I said, hello, he knows what that means.

(01:24:15):
That's his dog. He's a he's a policeman and he's
got a tracking dog, which is really cool, and his
name is It's a big old Bassett looking thing and
his name is Flash. In any event, those bikes are
outstanding for that, and there's actually a little trailer for
at least one of the models, and it's probably could

(01:24:36):
be adapted to a couple of others of the big
heavy duty bikes that are great for hunting and just
lugging stuff a long distance. There's a trailer you can
put on the thing where you could even drop a
good sized buck in there, and maybe even your hunting
buddy and get all three of you out of there.
Seven seven ninety Email me Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com.

(01:24:59):
Thanks for listening, by the way, Chris, I appreciate it, man.
I want to go back to the hiking thing for
a little bit while during the break, I just kind
of jotted down for those of you who might be
considering hiking, there are some great places to go to
right around here. The closest one is Brass's Bend to
State Park. It's a very easy place to just go.

(01:25:19):
Take fifty nine to Crab River Road and then hang
a south and you'll be there in about twelve fifteen
minutes or so, maybe twenty. But it's not a long
drive from anywhere around here. And there are some very
beautiful parks as well. Dinosaur Valley that was the one
that had the most participants in that first day thing
on January one, with nine hundred and thirty one people
signed up for the events there, Palo Duro Canyon that's

(01:25:42):
gorgeous Cedar Hills State Park at six hundred and twenty four.
Palopento Mountains State Park, five hundred and fifty nine, people,
all of whom probably were carrying when they took off
on these very relatively short, comfortable, leisurely hikes, probably had.
You need to have water with you, You need to
have some sort of energy snack these days. How about

(01:26:05):
essentials for a gi emergency. Nobody likes to talk about that,
But you get stuck out there in the middle of nowhere,
two miles out into the woods, and you don't have
anything with you and your stomach gurgles. You're gonna wish
you had thought about that and acted on it. Something
else that you hope you don't need, but you probably
ought to have. I'd say, just a good legitimate whistle,

(01:26:28):
not something you get in a crackerjack box, but like
a referees whistle, something that's going to be very loud
and penetrate that air for a very long distance in case, somehow,
some way you get turned around, because it's I've been lost,
not long, but i've been lost. I've kind of gotten
off the beaten path. I do that all the time
when I'm walking in the woods, I feel like, Okay,

(01:26:51):
I look around and yeah, I can see where I
am here. That's cool. I'm good, and I can get
back to here because I just want to go check
out what's over that little ridge, or I just want
to go check out what's on the other side of
that big thick bunch of brush, and so I'll make
my way around there. And then super cloudy day, there's
no sun to think of, no reference there, and all

(01:27:12):
of a sudden like I'm not sure which way to go,
no wind, no sun. It's very it's very frightening at first,
it's very awakening, like, oh, I don't know which way
is back. And if you if you start walking the
wrong way. First of all, if you if you're really
really in the woods and you're really really lost, don't

(01:27:32):
go anywhere, because you got a better chance of being found.
Two things, if you save the energy you have and
not waste it trying to walk walk, walk, walk walk
till you're just dead tired. And you also want to
make sure that when people come looking for you, they
don't have to they don't have to find where you were,

(01:27:53):
They'll just find where you are. It's a lot easier
and if you got if they bring a dog and
can get something with your on it and pick up
a trails, a lot easier for the dog to find
you too, if you just don't keep walking, leaning into
a little bit longer hike. I would also add, especially
if you're going to be out after about two o'clock

(01:28:15):
in the afternoon, I would add a portable battery charger
for your phone, because if your phone goes, then half
of what you got, half of your chances of getting
found go with it. Maybe consider a space blanket, a compass,
because if the phone dies or you drop it in
a creek or something trying to cross, and that phone's

(01:28:37):
not going to be much good for you. And then
I would have some fire starter or too. Frankie, you
said you did a little hiking when you were younger.
Did you all what was the longest hike you ever
took or do you remember?

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
I mean I did one trip in New Mexico when
I was a scout and that was like twelve days.
I mean we'd hike at least five miles a day probably.

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
Something like that. Twelve yeah, oh yeah, weren't well, it
was summertime, I guess, huh.

Speaker 3 (01:29:04):
It was in uh, New Mexico. Yeah, that was that
was cool white mountains maybe, uh it was. It was
like northern New Mexico. I'm not sure what range mountain
range that was at, but yeah, it got it got
fairly high up for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Do you have any trouble with the altitude?

Speaker 3 (01:29:27):
You you know, you get used to it, right, I
mean you kind of just gotta acclimate to it as
you go and kind of pace yourself. But yeah, at first,
I mean even just driving from Texas to New Mexico,
you're kind of like, oh, this feels different.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
Yeah, it does. You gotta you gotta tug hard to
get enough air in there to get your oxygen you
need huh uh huh for sure. Yeah, I got that
a couple of times on you know, just flying when
I would go fly into some of these places I
was going to do my shows from at ski resorts.
Fly in, I go to Park City. We're flying to
Salt Lake City. Drive to Park City and they have

(01:30:05):
a at least back then, they had an opportunity where
if you fly in and get in by like noon,
you can get a lift pass for free for the
rest of that day. They got three hours and I
you know, we drive into town, go pick up our
rental gear because we had to do that, and then
get to the mountain and go straight up to the

(01:30:26):
top and buddy, that then aired when you just came
from sea level. It's a real eye opener, really is.
It makes you kind of dizzy a little. I had
not real trouble. It's just kind of like you're talking about.
You just kind of have to get used to it.
And I could fight through it. It wasn't it wasn't severe
altitude sickness. But I saw some people who had it

(01:30:48):
and they weren't happy or comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
You have it, all right, let's take that the top
of the hour break. I know that's what you're doing.
That's why you're being quiet, because you want me to
go to break. I get it. I have this sixth
sense that and the way you were kind of staring
at me in the camera. Here. Timber Creek Golf Club
FM twenty three to fifty one in Friends with twenty
seven holes, great variety of holes, very very user friendly,
we'll call it. If you're not a great golfer, you

(01:31:16):
can still have fun at Timber Creek because the penalties
for bad shots aren't quite as bad as they are
on some other courses I've played around town. It's not easy.
Golf's never easy, But if you want to just really
enjoy around, even the first time you play the golf course,
if you just stand on any one of those twenty
seven te boxes and look down down the hole, you'll

(01:31:38):
see exactly where you're supposed to hit the ball. If
you're not hitting the ball there very often by all means,
go across the practice range there to that metal building
that houses JJ Woods Golf Academy at timber Creek. Anybody
in there can help you fix whatever's wrong with your
golf swing. If you're hungry, go into the clubhouse. They

(01:31:59):
got a great grill there with good food. If you
need something out of the pro shop. Anybody in there,
anybody wearing a name tag pretty much is going to
be there solely to help you have a good time.
At Timber Creek Golf Club, twenty seven holes a great
place for a big tournament, big wide range. You can
get a lot of people going at one time. Timbercreekgolf
Club dot com twenty feet twenty three point fifty one,

(01:32:21):
about four miles west of the Golf Freeway in friends
with there Timbercreekgolf Club dot Com. There we go, third
and final hour starts right now. I'm trying to get
down to a website I want to go to because
I want to acknowledge golf. We've got the PGA Tour
season going again. Brooks Kopka's back out there. He's not
playing very well, but he's back out there, at least

(01:32:42):
the Farmer's Insurance Open down in San Diego, California. Where
the temperature right now, A bear in mind, it's seven
o'clock in the morning down there. Let me see, it's
sixty one degrees. That's up from about fifty five when
I got into the office here this morning. So I'm
gonna block this off there. Justin Rose, Justin Rose is

(01:33:05):
not the youngest guy in any event he plays anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:33:09):
He is.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
He's probably getting up to being one of the older
guys who's out there still grinding on the regular tour.
He is at through two rounds now they're playing on
the North Course and the South Course at Torrey Pines.
He is seventeen under par through two rounds. He shot
sixty two. On Thursday, he shot sixty five. On Friday yesterday.

(01:33:39):
I don't know if I was ever that bad, but
I know guys who have shot that for eighteen holes,
a sixty two on the front and a sixty five
on the back, one hundred and twenty seven shots, and
it's been done. He's good. And when these guys get
on a roll like that, the hole looks bigger, the

(01:34:01):
whole looks like a bucket, the fairways look like just
landing strips at airports. And they just go about their
business and they learn, which is something that Jim Murphy
tried to teach me, and it's still in my brain,
but sometimes I forget about it. That when you're playing well,

(01:34:22):
you can afford to go ahead and really maybe take
a few more chances than you would if you were
playing poorly and had to kind of go into defense mode.
When you're in offense mode, you start rolling in a
couple of putts, hey start firing at pins, start trying
to go low, which is what those guys know how
to do better than we do. They actually can do it,

(01:34:45):
and it's all relative. I called him once after the fact.
It was in the middle of a round where I
was like two or three under par, not that many
holes into it. I was just like, Holy cow, Jim,
I can't believe it. Man, I'm just so scared. I'm
gonna hit a make a double bogie somewhere, or a triple,
or hit three balls out of bounds or in the

(01:35:06):
water and mess it all up. He said, get that thought,
Get all that out of your head. Get that out
of your head. You're playing well, you're under par. Go
for it, man, this is your day. Go for it.
And I did that instead, and I actually ended up
shooting one of my better rounds. But if you start
thinking that the wheels are going to fall off, well

(01:35:29):
eventually the wheels will fall off. You'll do something stupid.
You measure your the risk of what you take. You don't.
You don't try to carry two hundred and eighty yards
over water to hit up five par green in two
when you know you can only hit your three wood
two hundred and thirty yards. But if you measure your

(01:35:53):
go ahead and risk a little bit. That's what I'm saying.
Let's move on, shall we. So second place behind Justin
at seventeen is Seema's Power at thirteen, then Joel Domon,
Max McGreevey at eleven. Seawoo Kim is at ten, Danny
Walker justin lower, Michael Thorbornson, Saheith Degala, go Lee. They

(01:36:15):
keep on going Rio He hits, hits it, Soony, Rio
hits it Soony and Eric Cole and Maverick McNeely all
at nine under par I'm not sure where Brooks is.
He was at two yesterday when I was watching some
of the coverage last night. Keegan Bradley is at six.

(01:36:38):
I'm trying to find Brooks Koepka and I'm still scrolling
down and I'm not getting there. I presume maybe I
missed his name. Maybe he missed the cut. Xander Shaffley
missed the cut. Who else Xander Shaffley missed? I'm trying
to I'm looking for bigger names everybody would recognize, not
just a few of us. There's some, but that's not

(01:37:01):
I don't want to beat these guys up. Just because
they miss a cut doesn't mean they can't play golf,
that's for sure. Seven one three two one two five
seven ninety Email on me Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com.
I saw a release or I printed a release this
morning from the Parks of Wildlife Department about how the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission had awarded twenty one point

(01:37:23):
two million dollars in local park grants recently, twenty one
point two million bucks. And I started looking through the
list of where this money's going, and I guess they
either forgot about anything around Houston or the surrounding area,
or they just ignored us, because the closest I'm seeing

(01:37:48):
that's all North Texas. I'm page after page South Texas
is that where we are. There's nothing for Southeast Texas.
There's no designation for that zone. Victoria got three hundred
and fifty seven dollars thousand dollars for improvements at Meadow
Lane Park. They're gonna add shade and surfacing to the playground.

(01:38:13):
They're gonna renovate the basketball court, upgrading sight amenities, lighting, fencing,
and walkways. Man, I wish they would spend some of
that money, honestly on acquiring and leaving alone, if you will,
a little bit more land that we could use for recreation.

(01:38:34):
It's great that the parks get some upgrades and some renovation.
As popular as our state parks are, there's always something
going on that needs help. That there's so many people
in there, things are gonna wear out. And if we
can get more more dollars or get more places to recreate,

(01:38:57):
maybe though those places wouldn't wear out so fast. The
more places that the public can go to enjoy the outdoors,
the better as far as I look at it. Let's
go talk to Stephanie. Shall we stand by?

Speaker 3 (01:39:09):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (01:39:09):
Stephanie? What's up?

Speaker 4 (01:39:11):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
Good? What can I do for you this morning?

Speaker 6 (01:39:16):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:39:16):
I just want to give you some intel on the
need to have on a hiking trip. I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
Let me get my pen out because I got a
hunch this is going to be pretty important stuff. Okay,
I'm ready.

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
It's not too crazy. I think the bare necessities will well,
we'll get you through.

Speaker 6 (01:39:34):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
And what do you consider bare necessities for a hike?

Speaker 4 (01:39:39):
I'm so sorry, that's my daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
I say, just water your your snacks and check the
weather before you go.

Speaker 1 (01:39:50):
Yeah I skipped that part, didn't I You do need
to check the weather. That's so important, and that kind
of dictates what you put in the bag before you go, too,
doesn't it. There's going to be one hundred degrees in
the afternoon and eighty at night, like it is a
lot of times around Houston you don't need a blanket.
You can probably do without that.

Speaker 10 (01:40:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:40:13):
Yeah, And I've always any you know, my husband and
I go to a bunch of national parks in Texas
and around the country, and we're always believers of getting
that hike started early in the morning, so you beat
the sun on the way back.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
To tell me your favorite state park in Texas.

Speaker 4 (01:40:34):
State Park, I think, hands down would be the Well,
I don't know about state parks. I'm more of a more.

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
Of a national let's go national park, but I.

Speaker 4 (01:40:46):
Guess would be a good one. Oh yeah, state Park.
That is beautiful. That's up over there in your Amillo.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
What about the.

Speaker 4 (01:40:58):
Guadalupe Mountains, go man.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:41:03):
My husband and I actually did it. Was crazy. We
did a four day road trips from Houston all the
way down a big bed up to the Guablooue Mountains,
up to Paalolutle and down back to Houston. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
That's goodness. What's the longest a what's the longest hike
in just hours or miles that you've done in a day.

Speaker 4 (01:41:32):
I've done the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
We did.

Speaker 4 (01:41:37):
We we hiked for a little over five hours through
the sand. That was I've ever experience. I'm telling you
the hike the bare minimum of the essential, because we
packed way too much for that. And I mean, you're
hiking through sand. So we've packed an.

Speaker 12 (01:41:57):
Air mattress, We've packed a big old cub the chicken salad.
We packed just an insane amount of things.

Speaker 4 (01:42:04):
I think I had maybe thirty forty pounds on my back.
After that trip, We're like, we're like, yeah, no, how
could you even under very essential? Exactly? Do you had
a mental break down?

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
One more question before I let you go. Do you
do you and your husband do like overnight hike where
you hike halfway or hike out and then spend the
night and then come back or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
That was the only one that the Great Sandube National Park,
cause you have to hike past a certain point to
where you're like in the outback. I guess you can
consider of the sand due. Yeah, And I mean we
we put up our tent and that was the most
beautiful thing ever. The stars were amazing. There was no
light pollution. But yeah, that was the first one we

(01:42:47):
did where we stayed other words, it's usually day trips, yeah,
or day hikes in and out.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
Hiking is such a great way to get just get
all your troubles out of your head, isn't it. It
really is. It's just so.

Speaker 4 (01:43:00):
Relaxing, it really is. It's the best way to clear
your mind and listen to nature because a lot of
the times living here in the city, because I live
in Houston, and all you hear is the hustle and bustle.
You don't get to hear the birds or the trees
or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Sit out next to the freeway and hear people coming
by you a one hundred miles an hour, Yeah, exactly,
all day long. Oh mercy, well, Stephanie, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you so very much. Yeah, I kind of agree
with you. And I'm sorry I forgot the weather. Boy,
that's kind of important. Yeah, I'll put it all right.
Bye bye.

Speaker 4 (01:43:35):
Hey you have a good way.

Speaker 1 (01:43:36):
Yeah you too, buye Oh my word, I forgot about
the weather. That's really important if you're gonna go hiking,
and and things do pop up. I I every time
I go fishing, I look at the forecast. Every time
I go hunting, I look at the forecast. Every time
I wake up, I look at the forecast. Every time
I do an edition of fifty plus, I do a fork,

(01:43:58):
I look at the forecast because I want to know
what's going on. I want to know what might happen.

Speaker 6 (01:44:02):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
I'm not chicken little. I'm not going to run around
hollering that there's a ninety percent chance of drama in
the weather every day, like some of the newscasters do.
But I just want a pretty good idea of what
I'm facing, so I'll know whether it's going to be
cool or warm, or dry or wet, and just pack accordingly.
Phoenix Knives Main Street, Belleville, Texas, fifteen minutes north, Sealy,

(01:44:27):
fifteen minutes south Hempstead. More or less, that's where you'll
find cowboys andmanski. He's been on Main Street out there
since nineteen seventy nine. He's just in a bigger space
now and a lot of room to grow now, which
is what he'd been wanting for several years. He's got
more journeymen out there with him, working and making their
own knives, so that there are plenty, usually about a
thousand from which to choose. In that story is if

(01:44:50):
you want to learn how to make your own knife.
One of those journeymen will help you do that. Take
the family out there, say we would like to learn
how to make a knife, and they will do that
for you. At Phoenix Knives, great amazing custom knives from
cowboys to asking himself. Now they take pretty much take
months to order and get back. So make sure if

(01:45:11):
you've got a special event coming up down the way
a little bit and you want to get somebody a
knife that was made with cowboys hands and nobody else's,
you might want to get that order placed pretty soon.
They are very special pieces that have left that person
in a lifetime. Phoenix Knives dot com is the website
phe nix Phoenix Knives dot com nine twenty one on

(01:45:34):
Sports Talk seven ninety The Dougpike Show, Thank you for listening.
I certainly do appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:45:39):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
Going back to my emails, John sends me an email.
Couldn't help but share. He's got an e bike and
it's rigged up for hunting and low pressure, big old
wide tires on there, kind of like beach tires, basically
nice and soft and quiet. He's got a little basket

(01:46:01):
on the front, no tassels on the handlebars and a
bigger basket in the back. And in this picture he's
got his bow on there stealth riding as it will,
as it were. Yeah, I guarantee you he's getting to
that bowstand faster and quieter. I don't know. E bike's

(01:46:26):
got a If you're going in the afternoon, you can
step around twigs walking and I think you can probably
ride around most of the things that would make a
lot of noise. I think in the morning it would
be a little bit more difficult to be super quiet
either way, whether you're walking or riding that bike. But man,
it's just so much more comfortable and so much more
efficient to get there on a knee bike. And if

(01:46:47):
you don't have one, and you think you can find
room in your budget, and there's something right there that
a little palm full of gold would pay for, is
a nice e bike. Never under to make the power
of a little gold to get you something you want.
That's a pretty amazing looking back there, John, I'm tip
of the cap for you trying one for Oh see, Okay,

(01:47:11):
there's that and that. Okay, goodn't four inch low pressure
fat tires that's how he set up. Yeah, I'm gonna
make a call up to t Wayne and talk to
him about something and see if that's right. That and that. Okay, Yeah,
all my emails are up to speed. Please feel free
to send me another one. Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com.

(01:47:34):
I want to go? Where do I want to go?

Speaker 13 (01:47:36):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:47:36):
I have a couple of things? Oh is he? I
was looking down the whole time? Hold on, let me
get over here. What's up, faux pro?

Speaker 6 (01:47:46):
What's up?

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Man?

Speaker 11 (01:47:48):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:47:48):
Here's the deal? You send me a picture of a
lure that that costs probably the fact it's about the
same amount of money that I paid for my first
Abu Garcia red Reel, the five thousand. I'm not spending
fifty dollars on a lure. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:48:05):
I just well, luckily I got a hookup for I
got a sponsor for that one that actually could do.

Speaker 5 (01:48:11):
I'm not either.

Speaker 1 (01:48:12):
I'm betting you he didn't send you two dozen of
them either, did he?

Speaker 2 (01:48:16):
Oh? No, here's one.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
Here's one and it's slightly used.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
But those things and that's just brand new in the box.

Speaker 1 (01:48:25):
But that's good looking, no doubt.

Speaker 5 (01:48:27):
All.

Speaker 2 (01:48:27):
The first time I put it out that me and
my buddy, are looking at it just kind of we were,
you know, we were over there cursed with the water
is gin clear, man, And you always want to throw
the lure out to see how it looks in the water.
And my buddy said, man, I said, don't throw that
out here again. I'm gonna jump in the.

Speaker 6 (01:48:42):
Water and eat it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
Oh, So tell me what's your thought on big bass.
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
Well, to me, I mean, obviously they're elusive, right and there,
you know, and people don't understand that a big bass
can tolerate more. You know, if you're catching like if
you're catching small bass in a foot of water, they're
less tolerant to change than a big bass. And so
if you're catching a little bass is shallow wark, there's

(01:49:10):
a good chance that the big bass is there. Like
Doug hand and said that the large bass spend their
time with five foot of water less wow, and on
certain lakes.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
I believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:49:22):
And for example, I told it was back in October
maybe is when I posted it. I told Angel said,
I'm going to Houston County Lake to catch one fish.

Speaker 10 (01:49:34):
I know I can go.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
There and catch twenty twenty five pounds sack almost every
time I go. But I want to go there to
look for a bass seven pounds plus. I'm just going
to go out there to scope and look for one.
And I found the tree. Now I was out and
what I want people to understand, when I say less
than five feet of water, I'm not talking about that's
the depth of the water. So this particular day, I'm

(01:49:56):
out there in twelve to fifteen feet of water and
standing timber sticking out of the water. And these bass
were positioned two to five feet suspended on the top
of those trees. In that shout they were you were
still fishing shallow, but you were fishing off shore. And
of course I'm throwing, and I'm throwing the same thing
I throw on the bank. I'm throwing, you know, I'm

(01:50:17):
catching these, you know, three to five pound fish on
the a half pound spare bait. And so I finally
saw one, and the fish was turned. When the bass
has turned a certain way, if you're looking straight at
his head, he looks one way, and if you're looking
straight at his tail with four faces owher, he looks
completely different. So so the way the fish was pointed,
it looked like a big croppy. So I pick up

(01:50:39):
my spinnd rod off my little meadow ten pounds four
throw out there past this tree. And as this minute
comes close to that fish turns broadside. And each division
on the lipscope scale is twelve inches, and this fish
covered two scales. Holy crud. So obviously the fish eats,
the fish eats the meadow and and you know, here
goes the you know, Chinese fire drill around the boat.

(01:51:02):
You know, thinking I'm never going to see this boat
this fish because it breached twice. I only got part
of it on my on my video, but I ended
up catching it. It was like seven seven and uh,
they only caught about six or seven fish that day.
But I succeeded to go catch what I want. And
you find that these bigger bash are more nomads where

(01:51:23):
they'll be. You know that that fish might have been
a fish I caught in the springtime up in the mud,
but then it goes out there, suspends similar depth that
it was at before, but it just goes out in
the middle lake and suspends where it's on harassed.

Speaker 1 (01:51:37):
I wonder if they do that. I wonder if they
do that for light, because light. Light's got to be
important to them to feed, and if you're in twenty
feet of water, it's going to be a lot darker
than if you're in five feet of water.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
Of course, and out there, the way is to spend
on that standing timber, you know, looking at it, you know,
looking at the you know, looking at it in my mind
right now. So they have a standing tree, and it's
usually six inch diameter tree or better, these bigger basketballs.
And I think being out there that being out there shallow,
but in the middle of the lake, no matter where
the sun's at, they can go around this tree and
be in the shade and hide all day.

Speaker 1 (01:52:14):
That's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:52:15):
They just go around the tree and hide. But uh so,
what did you did you enjoy your new guest?

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
Oh? Yeah, man, heck yeah, she gave She gave me
some good information too. You understand that was your daughter,
right yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
I was figure you're gonna give her some grief. But yes,
I heard you talking about hiking just for fun, you know,
just fun grief. But uh yeah, they're big hikers. I
mean they I lived like us. I was telling I
lived vicariously through her. She goes all these beautiful places.
I'm like, you ain't getting me out there hiking up
in the mountain. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
Well yeah, but if we told you there was a
lake at the top of the hill with twenty pound
bass in it, you'd be the first one up the hill.

Speaker 2 (01:52:54):
I beat her up there, I guarantee you. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:52:56):
I need.

Speaker 2 (01:52:57):
I need to get her back on the water. We
did a lot of fishing together with you, little I
have a lot of her first bass and first perch
and all that kind of good stuff. Need to get
her back on the water.

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):
So let me let me get you onto the more
serious topic of a twenty pound bass in Texas. Now,
why don't we have one.

Speaker 10 (01:53:13):
That?

Speaker 2 (01:53:14):
I think they exist? But but when I but when
you look at how much live scope is out there,
now you know where do they exist? And uh, it's interesting.
I saw Mark Zola show one day where you know,
he's thinking these larger bass and I tend to agree,
or maybe even deeper than we think, because say you're

(01:53:37):
fishing twenty feet of water. That sounds like a deep water, right,
But if I stood my bass boat up on it
on the end, that's not very deep. Yeah, twenty feet
is not From the length of a boat, twenty feet
is not deep, I agree, But on the death finders, Like,
holy crapp, these fish twenty feet deep, what are you
going to do? It's twenty the length of this boat,
and we've got to get to the fish's attention. But uh,

(01:53:59):
I'm thinking, you know, these bigger fish, like at Fork,
there's thirty and forty feet of water out there where
I think there's some twenty pound BLUs bass fishing, and
I just don't think the people are are looking at
those fish as much in that thirty to forty feet
of water. I mean it took let me say it
was stuck with Florida bass in the late sixties and
we've only got one sher looker out of this lake
and that was fairly recently here in the last ten

(01:54:21):
years of that fish got.

Speaker 6 (01:54:22):
Caught out of this lake.

Speaker 2 (01:54:24):
But the whole thing I could figure is there is
there is there just deeper. I don't think they're up
buried and cover super super shallow, right, I think they
just live out there deeper and they and they migrate
with these big schools of gisard and threadfish shads.

Speaker 1 (01:54:39):
Yeah, it's almost it's almost like trying to maybe target
schools of mullet when you're looking to catch a big trout.
They're just following the food, and they're they're making it
as easy as they can on themselves to eat by
just lazily following these big schools of shed. Is that
that's the how that might work.

Speaker 2 (01:55:01):
And I don't and I don't think they eat as much.
I mean I can. You can relate, you know, four
faces sodar fishing to duck hunting in a sense where
if you don't lead the duck or if you don't
lead the fish right, you're never gonna You're never gonna
You're never gonna catch, You're never gonna hit that duck
if you don't get out in front of it. Yeah,
and livescope. If you don't get a considerable way out
in front of it and bring that bait to that

(01:55:21):
fish naturally to its nose, you're gonna spook it. And
like a big bass like you say, like you said earlier,
eating bigger baits. You know, he may have just ate
a tennis gizzard chat this morning because at Lake Macaeche
up north of Acadosia's I chased two double digit bass
on a live scope for like forty minutes. Good and
the biggest part of it I could never because they

(01:55:43):
were just swimming. They never stopped. I could never get
my bait in front of them when I did. You know,
they just they went right by it.

Speaker 6 (01:55:50):
Like I ate yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
I don't need just take offering. So but they don't
get that big being dumb.

Speaker 1 (01:55:58):
No, not at all. Man. Well, it's it's time for
me to take another break, sadly, Yes, sir, Yes, good
to hear from you. Yeah, we'll go on a hike
real soon, don't you worry. Oh yeah, Oh my word,
we're gonna take another little break here. Let me flip
these here, Frankie. I'm going to talk about black Horse

(01:56:18):
Golf Club. I'm trying to get ahold of Craig Hicks.
We're working out our trade deal again so that our
sales team here can host our good clients at black Horse,
and it's a very popular place among those clients. Believe me.
We have got black Horse North and black Horse South
and it's been about a year now since the South

(01:56:40):
course went private, and I'm trying to I'm working with
Craig Hicks. I'm trying to get in touch with him
so that he can come on and talk about the
progress that's been made since that transition, and how it's
going out there, and how the membership stuff works. Hear
it right from the man who runs the place. The
North Course still daily fee as it all has been,

(01:57:01):
and it's still a very fun track to play. I
really like it. It's not terribly tried. If you will
and you can, you can pretty much if you're a
sprayer of the t shot, then you can have a
lot of fun out there still and not lose a
lot of golf balls. There's always somebody riding around who's
going to be able to feed and water you on

(01:57:22):
the way through with adult or other beverages and snack foods,
and then there's a nice grill once you get back
into the clubhouse. I'm looking at it right now in
my head. And that's also a very good place to
stop either before the round if it's early in the morning,
grab yourself some breakfast maybe, or a lunch in the
afternoon early afternoon, or when you come in and just

(01:57:44):
kind of grab the whole crew and get in there
and have a beer or so and enjoy the afternoon.
Talk about your games if they're worth talking about. If
they're not worth talking about right now, I would recommend
going to the far far into the range way down there.
It's if you just go out of the parking lot,
go around and then go back up into that area.

(01:58:04):
And that's where the teaching team is at black Horse,
down there at the far end, and they are outstanding.
If you have binoculars, you might see a PGA tour
player down there. There are several teachers who have tour
players in their stables, and every now and then they're
down there. You can also tell because there'll be balls
coming out of there and almost making it to the

(01:58:25):
front of the range. Yeah, I've seen that happen too.
Black Horse Golf Club on Fry Road, just a little
way south of two ninety veryas you'd get to from
the west side up ninety nine or from the north
side up off to ninety always room for more since
they've got that good solid system up there of getting

(01:58:46):
everybody out. I've gone up there on my own sometimes
when I just wanted to go play some place different
than I usually do, and never had trouble at all
getting out. Black Horse Golf Club dot com. Make yourself
to tea time right now, black Horse Golf Club dot com.
Me one second nine thirty nine on Sports Talk seven
ninety The Duckpike Show. Thank you for listening. You know,
for the last several weeks, we've had at least a

(01:59:09):
little bit of discussion throughout the programs about this baiting
stuff with the ducks up in the Midwest. They're hunting
over flooded cornfields and just having the times of their
lives because all the ducks, not all of them, but
a lot of the ducks are staying up north. They've
got water that's being manipulated. They're warming some of the

(01:59:32):
roost ponds, which I think is probably at least as
attractive to the ducks to keep them in a certain
area as the tremendous availability of food. And I got
something from my buddy Jim Level down in Corpus about this.

(01:59:52):
It's the Federal waterfowl baiting regulations and flooded standing crops
historical clarification and regulatory context, and it's really an interesting
read in what they determined to be okay and not
okay and when all that was done. But it breaks
it down pretty well. And I'll try to do it
as quickly as I can and just let you guys

(02:00:16):
think about it and maybe respond to it, It says here,
regulatory framework prior to nineteen ninety eight waterfowl baiting regulations
under fifty CFR Part twenty, ministered by the US Fish
and Wildlife Service, clearly distinguished between standing agricultural crops, which
were legal to hunt over even before nineteen ninety eight,

(02:00:39):
and manipulated or artificially distributed grain, which constituted illegal baiting.
Explicitly legal prior to nineteen ninety eight, hunting over standing
agricultural crops, hunting over flooded standing crops, and hunting over
harvested fields where grain were remained as a result of

(02:01:01):
normal agricultural operations, kind of like when we hunted geese
over harvested soybeans or geese over harvested rice. This applied to.
It says here crops such as corn, rice, milo, wheat,
similar agricultural commodities, blah blah blah. Importantly, it says here,
flooding alone was not considered baiting under federal regulations. Activities

(02:01:26):
prohibited then and now include knocking down or manipulating standing
crops to attract birds, scattering, redistributing, or concentrating gain a grain,
unnaturally adding grain from another source or conducting crop manipulation

(02:01:46):
outside of normal agricultural practices. So ninety eight nineteen ninety nine.
What changed nineteen ninety eight review did not legally lies
hunting over flooded standing crops. That activity already was lawful

(02:02:07):
purpose of the review. By the mid nineteen nineties, the
Service that received substantial feedback that existing baiting regulations were outdated, unclear,
and difficult to interpret or enforce, particularly with respect to
moist soil management and natural vegetation manipulation. It goes, It's
just on and on. So Congress acts in nineteen ninety

(02:02:28):
eight the Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act, And that's where
it comes down to. Let's see, while rulemaking was underway,
Congress enacted that which replaced strict liability for hunters with
a nose or reasonably should nose standard and established separate

(02:02:48):
offense for placing or directing the placement of bait for
the purpose of taking migratory birds. The bottom line is
whatever the rule is now that is enabling them, and
I think it's it's more of the water even than
the grain. If they've been hunting over flooded grain for
that long, I have to step back and ask myself

(02:03:09):
if that's really why those ducks aren't coming down here.
But the other thing that they have to have is
open water to roost on. They can't they can't sleep
on ice. That's not that's not going to serve them
well when the coyotes show up. So I'm wondering whether
the issue is as much grain as it is water

(02:03:30):
as it is water, and I think it's almost maybe
maybe maybe it'spenning out doug It's possibly more water issue
because warming water that would be frozen otherwise, which would
force those ducks. And once you get snowfall on that
on that crop, that's also an issue. But if you're

(02:03:52):
warming the water and keeping it open even when it's
zero degrees, then when the birds can tolerate that, they
can tolerate the temperatures, but they just can't tolerate the
ice and the snow that covers their food, And maybe
we need to look at that as well. It's a
tough situation. I know that because there are a lot

(02:04:13):
of people here in the Central Flyway and a lot
of people in the Mississippi Flyway who are really ticked
off because we're not seeing the ducks we used to
see and there's no reason for them not to be
coming down. There really isn't otherwise or other than manipulation,
and good heavens, I'm running late. Sorry about that, Frankie.

(02:04:34):
I'm gonna take this last break and we'll come back
and wrap her up in a few minutes. On the
way out, I'm gonna remind you one more time about
Houston Gold Exchange. Brad and I, Bradschweiss and I have
been talking so much over the past couple of months. Really,
we've known each other for a very long time, a
very long time, but we've been talking a lot about
gold prices, and mostly it's me going why did it

(02:04:57):
go up so much again today? Why did it go
up last week? Why is it? What's it gonna do
next week? As if I had a bunch of gold
somewhere in my house, which I don't. But the bottom
line is it's He's explained to me. Why, really, if
you want to sell some gold, there's no better day
to do it than today, whatever that day is, because

(02:05:18):
it's gonna be at a higher price. I can just
guarantee you, unless you've bought it in the last year,
it's gonna be at a much higher price than you
paid for it, and you're gonna end up getting to
go get something you really want instead of just that
piece that's sitting there collecting dust in the back of
a drawer somewhere. He also has a lot of precious
other precious metals that he'll buy and sell. He also

(02:05:40):
has jewelry in his store, beautiful watches, but mostly he's
about trying to help you, guys, make a little extra
jingle in your pockets before the fishing show comes along
and you get down there and there's something you really want,
but if only you had a few extra dollars, well,
it doesn't take much at about it's a little less
than five thousand announced that. That's about forty seven hundred

(02:06:02):
I think last time I looked at one ounce of gold.
That's all you gotta find in your house to have
forty seven hundred dollars that you can take to that
fishing show. Think about it that way, Houston, gooldexchange dot
COM's website. He's at West Timer and Darry Ashford. Here's
his phone number, his cell phone number, his personal cell
two eight one eight five one three nine five five

(02:06:23):
two eight one eight five one, three, nine, five, five,
nine point fifty on Sports Talk seven ninety Good Heavens
blown through this one pretty quickly. Frankie, I got a
text from Brad Schweiss, the guy at Houston Gold Exchange,
while I was reading and talking about him, and says,

(02:06:44):
encourage him to call me immediately. Tell him I'm listening
to this show, and also emphasize the gold and silver
coins and bull yon. I can buy a few thousand
or a few hundred thousand. Let them put bigger baits
in the water. Yeah, call him. I'll give his phone
number again. Call him right now. Say look, I got
a little handful of gold here. I'm gonna bring it
over there, and I want a bunch of money, and

(02:07:06):
he'll say, yeah, that'll work, Just bring it all over
two eight one eight five one three nine five two
eight one eight five one three nine five five. He
doesn't think anybody's gonna call, but I bet you bet
you at least one of you will, especially with the
fishing show coming up. He could turn that scrap into

(02:07:26):
into goodies, turn that scrap into fifty dollars lures. Oh Mercy.
Speaking of Captain Scott ways In talking to a buddy,
about that, and we're talking about those fifty dollars lures
that told him, with any luck, I'd hang a mega
jack on the first cast. God that would you know?

(02:07:49):
That's something that I can see myself doing as well.
You're in a place where there's some really good little
tarping or something like that, and maybe gonna catch a
twenty pound tarping on that lure. It'd be a lot
of fun. Probably gonna spit it out anyway after about
three jumps, and then just as the lure hits the water,
a school of jacks pops up, and the biggest one

(02:08:11):
in the school grabs that lure and just heads for
the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. That's what would happen,
you know. I think the only saving grace now is
that with braided line, we're able to use heavier line
on our on our reel, and the the odds of

(02:08:34):
say thirty pound braid breaking versus the odds in the
old days of maybe twelve or seventeen pound mono given
out are a lot slimmer. So I think braid and
better drag systems on good reels, all of the little
component parts, everything that goes into a quality rod and

(02:08:57):
reel gives you a better chance of getting a fifty
or seventy five or one hundred dollars lure back. I
don't know that I'll I'll never say never. But unless
I win the lottery maybe, and I don't even really
play it, but abo'd be once a year when it
gets to a billion dollars or something. I'm not going
to buy any hundred dollars lures. I just can't. I
have a hard time justifying that when I over my lifetime,

(02:09:21):
I've caught so many lures on inexpensive baits. If I
fished for a living, if I was a guide, I
would invest in the best I can get. But as
someone who's not a guide, I love fishing. I fish
every chance I get, but I'm not My reputation as
a fisherman doesn't depend on the fancy lures or anything

(02:09:47):
like that.

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:09:47):
I like quality hooks. I like to make sure my
lure's got a good chance of getting back to me
with quality hardware and line and reel and rod. Nack
it fifty sixty bucks on on one lures. That'd be a
tough pill to swallow, It really would. Seven one, three
two one two five seven ninety email me Dugpike at
iHeartMedia dot com. But dog on, they look good. I'll

(02:10:10):
confess that. I I stop and I look at them
every time I walk by him in the store, and
he's like, M is today the day I'm gonna grab
one of those. And I have to really have to
really resist, and it's not easy. It's just not easy.

Speaker 3 (02:10:25):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:10:26):
I've got time for a caller too. Seven one three
two one two five seven ninety Email me Doug Pike
at iHeartMedia dot com. Let me see if there's anything
new in that basket. Lee wighs in. Let's see he's
looking for a good gunsmith. I'll say no more. Yeah,
I oh, I know exactly where to send you. I will, Lee,
I'll take care of you as soon as I get
off the air. I've got a really good place for

(02:10:47):
you to take care of that. Those guns you're working
on or trying to work on, you need some help
with them. Ah, that's an easy one. I I do have.
I do have access to at least I have a
source list for great gunsmiths for great repair on pretty
much any outdoors equipment. And if you're ever stuck and

(02:11:10):
not sure where to take that stuff. All you got
to do is give me a quick call. I'm not
you know, I'm gonna deliberately not talk anymore about golf
this week or today, maybe tomorrow. I'll go back and
see if Dustin Rose can finish it off. And got
a four shot lead going into today's round, and I'm
going to root for the guy he hadn't wanted to.

(02:11:31):
I don't think it. I think it's been a hot
minute since he's won, so I'm not really sure what
to do. You about to tee him up, Frankie, Well,
he's almost teed up. We're gonna get a call here
to get this to the bottom. Let's see if we
can get it there. It is right there. Here we go,
tee it up, there we go. Good morning, what's up?

Speaker 8 (02:11:52):
Hey?

Speaker 13 (02:11:53):
How you doing?

Speaker 1 (02:11:53):
I got about a minute, let's don't waste it.

Speaker 14 (02:11:56):
I sent you an email the other day about life
experiences at twenty five long list of them. I only
shot you three on the self's just then picked. Did
you get you remember that?

Speaker 1 (02:12:04):
I vaguely do. Yeah, refresh me.

Speaker 13 (02:12:07):
Holding one in Nicaragua.

Speaker 1 (02:12:08):
Oh man, Uh, fishing in front of.

Speaker 14 (02:12:11):
Toronto with my son catching uh salmon and uh shot
in eland.

Speaker 13 (02:12:18):
That was all in twenty five.

Speaker 1 (02:12:20):
That's a pretty good year. Holy cow, What were you
doing down in Nicaragua if you can tell us.

Speaker 14 (02:12:26):
I've got a buddy that has a house and a
resort there. There's two golf courses in the country. I
played both of them. Wow, and it's uh it's the
guy that uh makes.

Speaker 13 (02:12:36):
The rum Florida Kenna on the.

Speaker 14 (02:12:38):
Golf course where the GoPro guys building them, you know,
ten million dollars home there. But there's an exclusive golf
golf course there on the Pacific.

Speaker 6 (02:12:46):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 13 (02:12:47):
I'll take the pictures when I get it. I've got
pictures of.

Speaker 2 (02:12:49):
That too, of course, Oh please do.

Speaker 14 (02:12:52):
I'm on my way back from Rockport with my wife.
Just caught a hog of a flounder Thursday evening.

Speaker 1 (02:12:57):
Nice. How big?

Speaker 13 (02:13:00):
Uh twenty three inches.

Speaker 1 (02:13:01):
That's big, big, nice work.

Speaker 13 (02:13:03):
Welve inches wide and we took it out to eat
that night.

Speaker 1 (02:13:06):
M not much better than fresh flounder. Holy caw. How'd
you get it cooked?

Speaker 14 (02:13:11):
I know my buddy got some big chunk of wahoo yesterday,
sushi last night.

Speaker 1 (02:13:17):
Oh man, I gotta come to your house more often.

Speaker 13 (02:13:21):
Living the dream outdoors.

Speaker 1 (02:13:22):
Yes, indeed, man, thanks for the call. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 13 (02:13:26):
I'll send you those pics. You please send picture always.

Speaker 1 (02:13:28):
Welcome, absolutely absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 13 (02:13:32):
I'll get on it.

Speaker 1 (02:13:33):
We'll see you fix this.

Speaker 2 (02:13:35):
Click.

Speaker 1 (02:13:36):
Yeah, Like I told him in an email, pictures always welcome.
Please please please. I love seeing him, I love seeing
what's going on. I man, if I just I get
bored look at all my own pictures. I don't even
take that many pictures anymore. Although I've got a kind
of an assignment coming up from Saltwater Sportsman, and then
I'm gonna have to break out my camera bag for

(02:13:57):
maybe Scott. I might call on Scott, but I don't
think he's got any pictures of what I'm gonna be
asking him for. At least maybe he could get them
for me. All Right, that's gonna wrap it up for today.
I'll be back tomorrow morning, god willing, eight o'clock right
here in the same saddle. We'll do a couple hours
and talk a little bit more about the outdoors. See
if we can solve problems and make everybody a happier, better,

(02:14:18):
safer outdoors person. That's all I'm looking for. Take some kids,
outside today? Will you, I don't care where you take them,
Take them to a park, take them fishing, whatever, Just
get a kid outside, get a little sunshine for yourself too.
That's it for today. Ideos