Fan Outdoors: Denny Fletcher, Tommy George, Stan Tekiela, Tackle Terry

The Captain is back and he’s joined by Denny Fletcher, Tommy George, Stan Tekiela, Tackle Terry, and Bob St Pierre checks in!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Then from the fish filled Midwest lakes to the deep
woods of the North Upland prairies filled with pheasants, to

(00:22):
the whistling wings of duck ponds. This is Saturday Morning
Fan Outdoors, your show for hunting and fishing tips, topics
and conversations. You can also send us a question or
opinion by emailing us booth at kfean dot com. Here's
your host, the Fans, Captain Billy Hildebraham.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Fifty seconds after the hour of six a m. And
I picked the wrong chair because I'm sinking. Sorry, it's
an inside joke, but I'll fix that up in a minute.
Good morning, Fan Outdoors, faithful, Yes, good morning to you.
A couple of days after Christmas, so it is in

(01:09):
our rearview mirror, and the days are getting longer. And
I just got a blurb on my phone that there's
a potential tomorrow this evening and tomorrow for snow accumulating
five to eight inches and a chance of some freezing rain.

(01:34):
A hippy yahoo, and good for us? Uh how about that?
But we are going to take you someplace right now
that is good for us, because he is a man
right here. We've talked to a number of times before,
and I am a frequent visitor of his when it
comes to open water time. And mister Denny Fletcher of

(01:58):
Fletcher's Bait and Tackle, with people and their noses pressed
against the window waiting for him, is waiting for us.
So we will do that right now and welcome Denny
into the conversation. Good morning, my friend, Good morning Belle
well Is. First of all, you've got winter up there, obviously,

(02:21):
have you got ice? That's good ice still.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
We are in really good shape ice wise. I didn't
like to hear that five to eight inch snow forecast,
so we really don't need that right now. But the
ice right now, yesterday, we have many reports on Sock Lake.
It'll take this lake of a foot of ice.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Oh my good, look.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
At between eleven and twelve inches. And yes, they are
driving full sized vehicles out there. I'm not advocating that yet. No,
I would like to see fourteen inches before they drive.
But people are just chopping at the midden to get
out there, so we haven't had any issues with people
driving on But four x fours and four wheelers would

(03:04):
be probably a better idea for a few more days.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, I agree with you, Denny, are people catching fish?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Well, you know my grandson Hunt, my grandson Noah, he
was out tonight for last Yeah. He went at three
thirty in the afternoon and he called me at four thirty.
He said, Pop, I got my limit. You want a couple.
I said, you can't be done already. He came into
the bait shop. He had six walleys between eighteen and
twenty two inches and I said, my goodness, that's really good.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Where'd you go?

Speaker 3 (03:32):
He said, I'm not going to tell you. He said,
I was on Sock Lake. I was an eight feet
of water and there was lots of weeds, and he
said it was just marvelous. So and him and Hunter
been out a couple times and they've been doing very good.
So and I have a lot of other reports. Sock
Lake Walley bite is really really good right now, and
so is Lake Osakis, as is Lake Renals. So, yeah,

(03:54):
the Walley bite is on.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Okay, And what's the bait of choice, Deddy.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
We've been selling a lot of shiners, and we've also
been selling probably the most rosy red fat heads I've
sold in a number of years. Part of that, of course, Bill,
is we got a lot of people that buy basure
that go up to Red Lake which has been on
fire this winter, and they come in here for the
brassy shiners and the rainbows because they work were really

(04:22):
well up there. But Lake Reno and SoC Lake, the
brassy's and the rosy reds are working really good. But
Shiners is without a doubt my number one cellar.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Okay with when that's with that being the case, Denny,
and you told me there was no snow on the
ice whatsoever was clear and clean, and that doesn't that
equate to warm weeds and weed growth too as the
sun getting.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Through it, It absolutely does. Photosynthesis keeps going on as
long as that you don't get accumulation of a lot
of snow, and we could have if that would continue.
It doesn't sound like it's going to but if that
would continue, you could see these walleys and pan fish
in these in these weeds just about all winter long.

(05:11):
So we'll have to see what happens going forward here.
Very rare, very rarely do we, maybe with last year's exception,
get away with having a whole winter of open without snow.
But I hope your four inch, four or eight inch
forecasts comes out to be about two inches.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I just saw that was no inches, my friend, but
that's just me. I'm yeah, are they pull are they
get some of the guys pulling, or are people pulling
wheelhouses out yet? Or is a little early for that?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yes, it was real yesterday. We had a steady stream
of people on our legs pulling four wheelers out. They
were using trucks and cars and four wheelers and side
by side. So there's a lot of houses going out
on the lakes. U and I'm looking for that to
continue today.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
That that that's that.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Spell between Chris us in New Year's if the ice
is like it is this year, you have a lot
of people going. We were so busy yesterday that we
could hardly keep up. And that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, this is a fun thing for people to get
out to, Danny. And so there are so many lakes
around SoC Lake, and you mentioned Oskas and Renal, but
there's smaller lakes around too. Is that is that given fish?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
We have a crappie bite out here on Lily Lake
that a fairy lily long like changes north of town.
The crappee bite is excellent. But if anybody wants to
venture out there, coming and talk to me first, because
there's one danger spot there with that little channel. There's
a little creek between Fairy and Lily and that's that's
still open and you have to kind of skirt around

(06:45):
that to get out there. So there is a little
hazard there, so be careful with that. And Maple Lakes
sunfish and oh Lake Osaka sunfish have been have been
going good. So usually the sunfish crappie bite doesn't get
going real good until people can drive out there. That
has started in all the last couple of days, and
there's some nice blue gills coming out of Lake Osakas If.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
People don't know where some of these lakes and places
are how to get on them, I assume they can
come into the bait shop in Fletcher's Bait and you'll
give them some some direction too, won't you.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
You bet you we've got we've got a little local
paper map that we have of all the lakes and
all the accesses and all the highways and how to
get to all of them. So we'll be happy to
give you one of them and send you on you
way and get you get you to where you have
to be.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Are people waiting for you. Yes, okay, I'll let you go,
much to my Yeah, I just soon't stay and talk.
But I know you're busy, and and I thank you
for the time you gave us. Denny, we'll talk again
pretty soon too.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
You met good luck fishing folks.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
That's Denny Fletcher a Fletcher's Bait and Tackle. And you
know of him because I spend an awful lot of
time talking with him on the phone in person. Whatever.
But as he mentioned, he wouldn't recommend driving full size
trucks on the lake.

Speaker 6 (08:05):
Yet.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
In fact, there was a gentleman or somebody up in
the Brainerd Lakes area whose truck went through the ice
yesterday or last week. Yesterday or last week. I'm not
sure where I got that. I read it someplace, but
they happened to thirty days to get it out, and
that that, ladies and gentlemen, is an expensive ordeal. So

(08:33):
in my world, I ain't driving on it until I'm
really sure. And I will never be the first people
the first person to drive out on ice, because no
ice is totally safe. And that's just what I'm saying.
But if you want to get out and have a

(08:54):
wonderful time too. I highly recommend it. It's a fantastic
sport to bring kids if you're a family and you
want to go out. And the weather that we're having,
especially today and tomorrow, I believe it'll be cool and
off tomorrow, but today the highs are around forty degrees
up there, and it wouldn't be too bad to make

(09:15):
a trip up into that area and stop at the
bait shop and just get some direction and tell them
what you want to do. But if you've got kids,
goodness gracious, it's hard to beat sunfish through the ice.
And I remember when I was a youngster, and when
Chad and Erik were young too, that was one of

(09:37):
the really really fun things for him to do for
me when I was growing up. I just watch a
bobber and then take off and run, and those fish
should come out of the whole lickety split. When Eric
was younger, he'd stare at his humming bird down through
the ice so intently and catching fish, really nice fish.

(10:03):
And he was almost like an old guy sitting on
a bucket with a cover on it, and he just
kind of move his hind end up a little bit,
open the cover and slide the fish in Old guys
learn how to do that for years and years and
years they've done that. But Eric was pretty good at it,
and he was so concentrated and focused in on this.

(10:27):
People saw him catch fish, and they kept moving closer
and closer. He picked his head up, looked around and
couldn't believe all the people that had snuck up on him,
and they were fishing the same thing, but not catching
him like he was. So it's a fun activity. It's inexpensive, No,
it's cheap. It's really cheap to get out and have

(10:50):
a good time on the ice. So we will keep
that in mind as we move forward and be sure
no ice is totally safe. So we'll take a paw
our first one of the morning and come back and
keep talking fishing a little bit with Tommy George. See
if he's been out on the ice and staying on
top of it. Has you seen him Mermaid lately? I

(11:12):
don't know. We'll ask him right after this. We'll be
right back sixteen minutes after the hour of six am.
Now I have to move the microphone up because I
got a different share. Yes, could be worse. It could

(11:39):
be snowing in here, and it's not snowing outside yet,
but it is a dark and it will continue to
be dark, oh till about probably around seven point fifteen
ish seven point thirty. Let's walk come into the conversation.
Our next guest. That's easy for my mouth, say mister

(12:01):
Tommy George from Angler Tommy George, and he joins us
right now. Good morning, sir.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
Good morning, Billy. Uh, I hope your Christmas is fun
and uh everything everything is is working. I wish it
was what Getny Fletcher is talking about here, but Billy,
it's it's not always that fun. I mean, it's, uh,
it's fun to try, but I've been a couple of

(12:31):
times since then, and uh, to tell you the truth,
I'm not doing well at all. You know, the lake
that i'm fishing is safe to walk. I'm not driving
yet even my four wheeler yet. Yeah, I like I
like a foot of ice for everything. They say they

(12:52):
say there's a guide, you know, at eight to ten
inches for a four wheeler and or side by side
stuff like that. To me, I'm playing it more safe
for now than ever. But anyways, I I've been out
on the lake. All the snow is gone. Make you
say it's very hard to walk on that stuff, So

(13:14):
make sure you have a good set of cleats or
you know, just you can't walk on the stuff. It's
it's way too hard to walk on that on that
water nice it's it's and it's dangerous for us all guys.
You fall a couple of times and you're gonna you're
gonna be in traction. Anyways, it's been slowly with you

(13:38):
mentioned cleats.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
There's a lot of different cleats out there, different styles
and stuff. Do you have any that you specifically recommend.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
I can't think of the name of them, Billy. I
got it from Bruce Wilson and he actually gave it
me as a gift. And it looks like a bunch
of springs your yep, and uh, it's it's they're amazing
and I just I can't tell you you can almost
run on the ice boat even when it's just you know, watering.

(14:13):
That's the worst time ever to try and walk on
ice when there's a lone water on it. Oh man,
it's it's not good. But I can't remember the name
of them.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
So but you could be.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
All you have to do is look at them that
those are the same ones I've got and I got
them purely by accident, too, so I have no idea.
I had no idea what to get. But there there
are so many, and some of them are almost impossible
to get on over your boots, and that too, and
that that makes a differense.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
That makes it too tough to even put that on,
you know. Yeah, and uh, at this pair I've got,
I've got them on a set of heavy duty Arctic
boots and I don't even think them off. I leave
them on. And they're not that hard to put on either.
But once once I leave them on, I mean once
I have them on, I leave them my truck. So

(15:07):
when I get to the lake, I'll slip my normal
shoes off, put them on, and I feel very safe
with them. And but it really I went. I've been
sight fishing, as you know, and you know, I drilled
I don't know, twenty thirty holes the other day, and
I'm looking around for fish and they have disappeared for

(15:31):
the simple fact that, like we said, there's no snow
on the ice. So that does change their attitude.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
You know.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
They can see things a lot better than ices and
fat back yet, so they can see shadows, they can
see things moving up, you know, above the ice, and
that's where it starts spooking the fish out. So if
you find a good spot, like Jenny Fletcher was saying,
really with the weeds, I've been fine finding some nice

(15:59):
you know he weeds, good green weeds. And if you
sit in there, I have seen some sumb sunfish and
a couple of northerns and a few baths and that
was it, and they swim right by you. You know,
you put a beat down there just to see if
you get their attention. They're not interested yet, but you know,
things change. Fish eat every single day.

Speaker 5 (16:21):
Yeah, so I'm not complaining.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
I'm I'm just thankful that everything is working good. I
just wish it was cold or you get more ice.
Now that you said we're going to get that snow,
that's going to change things quite a bit, and it
should change things for the better.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Tommy. I've always thought that when you get clear ice
like this, fisher conditioned to be aware of what's above them.
They have to be because they've got to look up,
down and around three hundred and sixty degrees because that's
how they stay alive. But if you've got clear ice,
and I've wondered why you couldn't take and I've said

(17:02):
this before on this show, I wonder why you couldn't
take a tarp, a fairly heavy duty tarp and put
it down on the ice and U like over or
around your whatever hole you're going to have, and and
acted like a like a little bit of snow on
the ice that they would congregate and find some safety

(17:26):
in start moving a little easier around.

Speaker 4 (17:30):
Absolutely, Billy, you're you're one of my friends Roger Skibaloum
who was pastoring now, but he would do that. He'd
have a tarp and he put it on the ice
and he actually had holes in that thing where he
was going to be fishing. So you can still use
your fish house. I use my fish trap all the time,

(17:52):
and that's kind of a It sends a nice shadow
down there. But more than anything, he would do better
than I would. I was too nervous to sit and
put that down and all that stuff. I'm more of
a faster fisherman. Okay, I drill a hole and I'm

(18:14):
looking around and we would all all site fished. And
like you said, Billy, that's a very good idea. Put
a type down for anything dark and it does cast
a nice, a nice shadow on her for his fish
to come. And that's a security it's almost like a
security blackt forum. And this all salt happens in the

(18:37):
summertime when when you're fishing in the summer in a boat,
remember this fish on a shady shoreline. And I've done
many two times that if you throw a bobera in
your ear fishing fan fish or fishing walleyes, you're fishing anything.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
If you fish on that in.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
That shade where that it's it's just darker than normal,
you're going to see a big difference. And there are
so many times that I've done that and fished in
the shade. And then you can pull your bober out
if you don't cast it just right, or the wind
moves it and it comes out. You don't even close
to get a bite, but as soon as you throw

(19:21):
it back into that shade, it's gone. And the fish
used that as a as a security too, So that's
something to remember trying in the summer. But like you said,
very good idea to put something down on the ice
and it will cast that that shadow that these fishes.
It's like you said, more of a security thing. For

(19:44):
them and they'll come down. But patience is more than anything.
You need patience to do good. And I'm there now
because I say okay and I'll be out. Today's a
better day to take a lawn chair over, Toby.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, well, you know, and that's one of the things, Tommy,
that we use in the summertime fishing bass, and we
always fish trees. But I'm I'm curious sometimes why people
fish trees throwing a sink or a jig or something
underneath a tree on the sunny what it's dark and

(20:26):
cloudy or the sun is still providing shade on that
side of the lake. If you get high sun and
those fish move under the trees, it's a much easier
catch than waiting and trying to fish all all all
shade because they aren't there yet.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yes, I believe, I go along with chair. I've done that.

Speaker 6 (20:50):
I fished.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
I fished some stump fields and you have to fish
on the right side of the stump, as you probably
know being a mass fisherman. You can fish them the
brighter side or whatever, and you're not going to get
anything just fishing. Plastic worms are like ned riggs or
anything like that, and you fish on the opposite side,

(21:11):
and you're going to improve one hundred percent. So that
says a lot about where these fish sit themselves. You know,
they're sitting out of the rays of the sun, and
they're sitting you know, like you said, the dark spot
is their security, and they're still feeding. And you know
this in the little minerals will swim by and they'll

(21:32):
attack them, and they'll do the same with your beat.
But it's it's kind of fun to see what's happening
and how these fish react. And truly that's why I
do a lot of site fishing, and I'm watching these
fish moveor on.

Speaker 6 (21:46):
Well.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
At one point, Tommy, we had one of our guests
was Tom Whitehead from the Brainerd Lakes area, a former
guide and an excellent excellent fisherman too. But he fishes
weeds all all, almost all the time in fairly shallow water.
But he looks for paths and the weeds and holes

(22:07):
in the weeds and then concentrates his efforts right there
on the path and the hole because the fish tend
to stay back in the weeds so they're out of
sight and safer, but then they can dart out and
grab a prey or allure in some cases and attempt

(22:28):
to eat it. And that's just something else that people
can keep in mind. If you're fishing weeds like Fletcher
was talking about, that is a great spot to concentrate.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
On exactly bid there's a fish will use alleys.

Speaker 5 (22:48):
And and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
It's almost like a deer deer path or trail. Yep,
and fish do. Yes, you're right, that's so true. And
I've done that too. There's spots where I've been fishing
with people and they're fishing right close to me, but
I'm fishing on this path or if I was lucky
enough to hit it in a spot like that, you
can almost see where these fish are moving and they're

(23:13):
using it as a as a highway for themselves. But
I've done so good sitting in that spotlight and they're
drilling around me and trying to find.

Speaker 5 (23:25):
Where these fish are.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
But there is situations like that too that really change
a lot. So that's why we do move a lot.
And I just gotta set still in some of these
areas and watch. And you know, like I said, the fish,
fish feed all day, and not all day, but certain

(23:47):
times as a day is better than others. Morning is
usually better. The evening to me is the best, and
it's it seems like it turns on at a certain time,
and boy, once they do, you're going to be in
fabulous spot. So it kind of sets yourself up the
noon noontime bait bite isn't bad either for your panfish, Tommy.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
The the other thing is with fishing, fish don't always
bite to feed. Sometimes they'll bite just on a predator
instinct and they aren't going to eat it, but they're
going to hit it. And if you're Johnny on the spot,
you can set the hook and catch some fish too,
not necessarily just eating. But they will hit sometimes just

(24:36):
because they have to. That's part of part of what they.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Are exactly, Billy. That's that's called a reflex bite. And
that's what happens in the summertime when we're trolling crank
baits and we're trolling right in the middle of the
day for walleys, and like you said, you can if
you see them on your if you see them on
your screen, you're going to probably catch them. But once

(25:01):
these once you see these fish off the bottom, these
are feeding fish. And that's why in the summer I
like I used a lot of cakes. And uh, especially
in fall when it's cloudy and overcast. In the fall,
while you can do just outstanding, you know fishing any
of the lakes that you you know, stay weed lines.

(25:23):
And I'm a firm believer and in wheed line fishing, Billy,
and uh, it'll work all winter long, too.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
So yeah, tellmy I are you going to Are you
going back out to fish sometime soon?

Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (25:39):
You know today is so warm and wet, I'm still
going to do it. I've got the clothes, I've got
the fish house, and that that's to me, that that works.
So I'll just go out there and see if I
can get a few for lunch. And I'll be happy
out there and see it. I'll give you a report
if anything happens. By the way, he's talking to Bruce

(26:03):
Wilson yesterday and I was asking how he's doing, and
he lives over here in Wisconsin, and he said, his
son Max is founding the big sturgeon. I mean, you
should see the size of these sturgeon these kids are catching.
My god, it's just amazing right now. But you know, Billy,

(26:26):
I truly like the fish that I like to eat.
A fish for the fish I like to eat the
way you should say, and so that's why I'm a
pan fisherman, especially in the winter, because they're so plentiful
and they taste better than anything.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
So I agree.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
Good luck to.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Bruce and his kids. And he's still going to do
some hunting, I guess for deer, but we'll see what
happens there.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Well. The pheasant season is open until the fourth of January,
so that too, ladies and gentlemen, is a good good
time to go. Just be quiet when you do. Tommy
will let you go, buddy, have a good I'm and
good luck and do let me know because I'm curious.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
But okay, thanks Billy, and happy New Year for all
you guys, and have a fabulous new year. And as
like everybody else, be safe out there.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, yeah, thanks Tommy. That's uh yeah, You've got to
be safe out there, use your lou use common sense
and you'll stay on top of the ice. That really
makes a difference. But just like Tommy, I am not
driving on it for a while, and nope, I need
some more ice under me. And it's just because it's

(27:35):
frozen doesn't mean all over is the same depth too.
There are things that change that We'll take a pause
and be back with mister Stan Tokila. And I'm looking
forward to our conversation because it's always fun and I
always learn something. We'll be right back. Welcome back to

(27:58):
Fan Outdoors now by author, naturalist and photographer Stan Tequila.
Whether it's in Minnesota, Alaska, or Africa, he's always in
search of all things wild and natural. He may even
know more about animals than they do themselves. And you

(28:18):
thought the cat knew the outdoors. Here's fan favorite Stan
Tequila on Fan Outdoors.

Speaker 5 (28:29):
Stan.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Good morning, sir, good morning.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
How are you.

Speaker 7 (28:33):
I'm doing good sitting at the computer trying to edit
about fifty thousand images done to a manageable size. Oh, Costa, Rica, Costa, Rica,
cost Rica.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
What what do you look for in as far as
the composition and that of the pictures that you keep.

Speaker 7 (28:55):
Well, eye contact is probably one of one of the
top of sharpness is that's crucial, probably number one. But
although there's many, you know, because you do purposeful things
like pan blurs, you do different types of techniques in
the camera in which you can you know, create some

(29:15):
kind of you know, expressive image. So it's not always
the sharpness. But for you know, normal stuff as sharpness
have to have eye contact and the eye has to
be sharp because if you get the tail sharp, the
eyes not, well, that doesn't work, you know again, unless
it's some kind of you know, interesting type of I

(29:36):
don't know what you'd want to call it, artsy type
of image, but that and then from there you have
to kind of look for all the other details. I
wasn't joking, it's I came back with about really close
to fifty thousand images, which is a fair amount. But
the problem with cameras these days is that my camera

(29:59):
shoots thirty pictures per second, so it's easy to rack
up a lot of images very quickly.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
At thirty frames a second. It's like wow.

Speaker 7 (30:10):
And by the way, most standard video is thirty frames
per second. So I'm taking but I'm taking pictures at
thirty frames a second, so it adds up very quickly.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Can you put those together into a video or can
you take a video apart frame by frame to.

Speaker 7 (30:29):
Use you cannot put the well, I suppose there's some
software that you can use to put four or five
frames together to make a gift or jiff or however
you pronounce it right, and or you can take a
single still frame out of a video if it's high

(30:50):
enough quality. Oh yeah, but that's a little tricky to
do that, it really is. I mean, you can get
a low, low quality, you know, picture out of it
of the video, but to get a high quality, usable
image out of the videos oftentimes takes a little bit
of skill.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Well, I remember when I was in school, when I
was teaching, I taught photography. But those are in the
days stand Oh yeah, film, Yeah, I know all about it,
and that's a that's a totally different animal.

Speaker 7 (31:21):
But wow, yeah, you have no idea how different it
is because I started also in film, you know, and
I shot the first part of my career, you know,
in film, and film was you know, I always say
that during the film days, you actually had to know
what you were doing. You couldn't just wing it like
you do with digital, you know. And it was such

(31:44):
a massive change from film to digital. I switched in
the year two thousand, so from ninety nine to two thousand,
switched over. And fortunately what I'm a cannon shooter, always
have and probably always will be. And they did it
really well in that all the buttons were in the

(32:06):
same spot. Everything was you know, the ergonomics were exactly
the same. They just took out the film and put
in a digital sensor and that made it pretty easy
to switch over. It was the after you took the picture,
the post processing, the file management, all that stuff that
was all new and all like, holy Macro, how do
you do this?

Speaker 2 (32:26):
And then, you know, we had about a twenty year
time in which not you know, not much change the
digital imaging.

Speaker 7 (32:35):
You know, the DSLRs were pretty you know, we had
these tiny incremental changes at little you know, increase in
megapixels or an increase in frame rate or whatever it
might be, right up until twenty twenty. So we had
twenty years of you know, from twenty to twenty twenty
we had these small changes. But in twenty twenty they
came out with the mirrorless these mirrorless cameras. And the

(32:58):
reason why they're called mirrorless is because with a DSLR
or an SLR, SLR stands for a single lens reflex
and what happens is the light comes through the lens,
hits a mirror, and it is reflected up into an
eyepiece that you can see so that you can see it.
It's bending the image basically so you can see it

(33:20):
through a viewfinder.

Speaker 6 (33:22):
And with the.

Speaker 7 (33:26):
Mirrorless, they took out the mirror, hence the name mirrorless,
and the image goes through the lens right onto the
sensor and then but what you're looking at with these
mirrorless cameras now, when you look through the eyepiece, that
little viewfinder, you're actually looking at a mini screen nine
thousand excuse me, yeah, I said nine thousand pixel screen,

(33:51):
so it's very sharp, but you're still looking at a screen,
so you're not actually looking through the lens anymore. And
that has changed everything because this mirrors out of the way,
which was a mechanical mirror, so it'd have to lift
up then the then the shutter would have to open,
and then it would have to expose the sensor. Well,
now you're just exposing sensor, no more, lifting, no more.

(34:13):
And that's why these cameras now are completely silent. You know,
there's you don't know if you're even taking a picture
unless you can you know, looking through there, you can
see a little flashing light that you're taking a picture,
and you're taking thirty pictures per second. Some of my
cameras are forty pictures per second, which is insane, and
you have to be And then if you put pre

(34:33):
capture on. Precapture is this thing where you hold the
shutter button down halfway. You're uh, you know, focused on
on a bird, ready for it to take off, and
you know it takes off and you know our human
reflexes are just not fast enough, so you know, you
try to catch it as it's taking off, but you can't.
But when you turn on pre capture, what it does.

(34:54):
It'll go back in time a half a second, which
oka thirty frames a second. That's fifteen frames. It'll go
back in time a half a second before the bird
took off and start storing those images. So now you've
got thirty frames a second plus the fifteen and if
you hold it down for two seconds, you're looking at
you know, sixty five images or seventy five images right there,

(35:17):
just in a two second type of thing.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
So then then you have to sit and edit all
those things, and it is wow, you're boggling my mind.

Speaker 7 (35:27):
Then it's so much some of the cameras now and
there's interesting things, and this is all taken with raw
images too. Raw is like a it's a file format
that where it collects the most amount of information and
when you process that image, you have the most information
to work with, you know, the latest greatest information to

(35:49):
work with it, and you can, you know, really make
your images look even more so because some of the cameras,
like some of them will have in a jpeg for Matt,
they'll shoot about one hundred and twenty five pictures per second,
which like holy mackerel, that is that would be considered

(36:11):
slow motion in video world.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Wow, Oh, Dan, I know, all right, there's a lot
to it. Well, and I think it's probably worthwhile for
people to hear that too, because I think we take
so many things for granted, and we've talked to you
and I have talked about that a number of times.
What we do for take for granted. Yeah, the mechanical

(36:35):
things that go into all these of all this stuff
is incredible when you start thinking about it. You're telling
me about alla frames and it's doing this and as
I got, oh, Hildebrand near mind is not ready here.
I just I'm having trouble. It's not. The technology is

(36:57):
absolutely amazing.

Speaker 7 (37:00):
The now the auto focus systems now when I started
in film days, it was manual focus.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, I think back on that.

Speaker 7 (37:08):
I was talking to my good friend Dudley Edminson the
other day and he and I go back forty years
doing this together. And we used to photograph hawks in
flight up at Hawkridge, and you know, back in the
day with a film camera, which was, you know, with
manual focus. These birds were flying by at fifty sixty

(37:30):
miles per hour and you know, they'd be kind of
zooming in and we're trying to capture these images with
manual focus with a film camera, which would, by the way,
only three pictures per second, and actual, actual pictures, pictures
you know, on the film and we're thinking, holy mackerel,
how did we do that?

Speaker 2 (37:51):
You know, both of us were like, is that even possible?
You know, but we did it, so it was. Yeah,
it's quite a quite an advancement.

Speaker 7 (38:02):
Now, by the way, the auto focused systems on these
things are insane, especially on these mirrorless cameras, because nowadays,
as I lift my camera up and if I'm pointed,
if I've got the camera and lens pointed right at
the animal, by the time I get that camera all
the way to my eye to look through that EVF,

(38:23):
that electronic viewfinder. It's already the camera has already focused
on the eye of the animal. You can see a
white box around the eye. I haven't even got my
eye to the viewfinder yet, and it's on there. All
I have to do is tap the focused button. When
it turns from white to blue, I know that it's

(38:46):
completely you know, locked in and focused, and I can
start shooting.

Speaker 6 (38:49):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
So it does it all for you these days.

Speaker 7 (38:52):
So maybe maybe the cautionary table there tail there is
when you see an amazing image, it's not so much
the photographer anymore, you know, because the the technology that's available,
you can be you know, average person type of thing,

(39:12):
and you're still going to be capturing sharp images with
the focus on the eye, so on and so forth.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
And so maybe maybe temporary you're.

Speaker 7 (39:22):
Oh, my gosh, there's such an amazing photographer with the
knowledge that the equipment is wow, pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
These days, Well, you're taking all the mystic, mystical part
away from it. It's not just always the photographer, and
I always thought it.

Speaker 7 (39:38):
Was, Yeah, it always well, you know, in a certain
sense it is, because there's composition and then it's really
depends on your computer skills because the post processing, excuse me,
the pro post processing for these.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Images is everything, absolutely everything.

Speaker 7 (39:55):
And the AI that's involved in these images is insane
because I've seen it time and time again where you
could cut off the wing tip of a bird, you know,
and it's like it's a perfect flight shot, but the
wing tips cut off or the tails cut off, And
with AI, you can just box it out and tell

(40:17):
it to regenerate and it'll generate the rest of the
missing tail or wing or whatever it may be. So
it's yeah, it's insane, It truly is.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, it sure sounds like my friend, So what are
if you're out in the field, what are you looking for?

Speaker 8 (40:34):
Now?

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Are you? Oh?

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Oh yeah. I just got back from up north.

Speaker 7 (40:40):
I made a trip through northern Minnesota up and looking
for a variety of different things. Winter time is a
great time to be out and about.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I spent a couple of days at the bog, which
is the sexion bug.

Speaker 7 (40:54):
Everybody seems to know about it, and you know, all
usual cast of characters are are there, in particular looking
for boreal chickadees, which were very cooperative and always very
fun and had an opportunity to photograph some black back woodpeckers.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Mm hm.

Speaker 7 (41:13):
This is a it's an unusual woodpecker. They're not in
any high numbers anywhere, and they specialize in burned over areas,
so forests that have had recent forest fires. They are
a specialist food specialist. These these black back woodpeckers are
a food specialist in that they eat the larva from

(41:37):
the bark beetle, which is a beetle that kills pine
trees and so and when you have a fire, it
kind of allows it opens up the trees a little bit,
so it makes it easier for these woodpeckers to get
to these to this larva. The larva is just a
stage in the beetles lifestyle life cycle. And so they

(42:00):
will come in and start peeling bark and finding all
the larva underneath it. And so they these blackpack woodpeckers
go around looking for recent fires and they move into
those fire areas and they just you know, tear apart
the trees looking for this, uh, these larvae and you know,
so there so that was that was a lot of
fun also, and you know, a bunch of just a

(42:22):
regular uh of winter birds. So it was a it
was a fun time. I just got back the day
before or yesterday, and it was it was fantastic, really
was Well.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
The Saxon Bog, isn't that where people were pretty much
loving it to death that there was some concern on that.

Speaker 7 (42:42):
Yeah, And it's a very highly visited area and that's
well known for its owls. So we oftentimes have great
gray owls and hawk owls and boreal owls that hang
out in that area. This is and and the owls
are not a regular occurrence, and they are are eruptive
by nature, meaning that in some years they're plentiful, in

(43:03):
some years they're not.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
This is a not year. There's right now there's only
one hawk owl hanging around.

Speaker 7 (43:11):
So no great grays and no boreals and uh, it's
predicted to not be a good winter for uh for owls,
which will bring the crowds down dramatically because people seem
to be unifocused on owls. I don't understand this phenomenon,
because an owl is a bird like any other bird.

(43:31):
But people, for some reason are kooky over these owls.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I don't know why.

Speaker 7 (43:36):
It's you know, it's like I don't know, loving only
one of your children, not all of them, you know
what I mean. It's just, it's just it's an interesting
I scratch my head every time and just go because
people are nuts about them, and uh, and there are
birds just like any other bird.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
So I don't I don't quite get it. Well, if
they're if they're a special, if if the bird is
special in that person's eyes because they're they're searching for
it and they love to see it so much. And
you're right, it's the same as any other bird. But
if it's unusual and unusually seen, it makes it more special.

Speaker 7 (44:16):
Perhaps, Yeah, But there's plenty of birds like the boreal
chickadee or blackback woodpeckers or Bohemian wax wings are super
special birds. And you don't see people, you know, flying
across the country and you know, going renting cars and
hotels and things just to go.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
See these things.

Speaker 8 (44:36):
You know.

Speaker 7 (44:37):
It's so, yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon. I would love
to study it sometimes as to why, you know, I've
speculated over the years as to why people are so
you know, crazy for owls, and I think part of
it is is that they're one they're nocturnal, so that's
kind of a little bit of mystery to them. But
I think, honestly, the more obvious thing is that they

(44:58):
have eyes in the front of their heads like you
and I, and this is an unusual placement of eyes
in the bird world, and so they and they have eyelids.
They come from the top down, so it looks like people,
you know, like human eyelids, and they, you know, they
just have these characteristics that these physical characteristics that look

(45:19):
similar to our own anatomy. And so therefore I think
people are subconsciously attracted to them. I think, I don't know,
it's an interesting thing, but because you ask people and
they go, I just love owls, and why, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
You're like, okay, Well, what I do know is we
have to take a break. Oh you're okay with that,
so yeah, let's do it, all right, we'll do that.
Our guest is stand Tequila and find him at naturesmart
dot com. We will take that pause and we will
be right back with Stand Tequila after this humid we're

(46:04):
back fan out tours coming your way until the eight
o'clock hour in the building right now, and I think
we are probably two one of each of us alone,
because it didn't look like anybody else was around. One
of us would be our producer Brett Blakemore, who does
a wonderful job, and we thank him for always thanking him,

(46:25):
and you're true, yeah, and I am. I'm here to
unfortunately or fortunately whatever. Our guests stand tequila and we're talking.
Cameras are talking my nature, and we're talking owls and
why he really likes them. But anyway, I'll just leave
it at that. So have has uh spring sprung for

(46:51):
a few speeches yet? Interesting?

Speaker 7 (46:55):
You should mention that I think this, you know, spring
type of thing is a gradual of you know, it's
not like a flip a switch like that. But the
reason why I mentioned this, I don't know if I
think I mentioned it before. I have my flying squirrel

(47:16):
live stream at night, and the other night I was
watching the stream the flying squirrels coming in on one
of the one of the squirrel feeders, and it was
just above freezing. It was like thirty three degrees And
as I'm watching the stream, I see a spider coming

(47:38):
down in front. Because it's infrared camera, so I'm I'm
broadcasting infrared light, which means that you know, you can't
see it it's pitch black out there, but it reflects
off everything. And this spider was coming down a web
thirty three degrees out there, and I'm watching it, going,
how how the heck does that happen? You know, because

(48:00):
there it was, you know, I mean, because it was
about freezing. This spider was moving, and I thought, well,
just I'm always fascinated by nature and all the things
that we presume about it and uh and oftentimes get wrong.
And I just find that absolutely amazing that this little
spider was, you know, operating in December in Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's crazy. Well with with the spider itself. Stand, when
they freeze, are they dead? Well?

Speaker 7 (48:29):
Uh, there was a time when that was a general
consensus that these uh uh you know, spiders or frogs
or salamanders or wherever, maybe when they freeze, they're dead.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Obvious, how could you possibly survive? Be fazen.

Speaker 7 (48:43):
And we've found time and time and time again that
these animals have the ability to freeze and still recover
and continue on after that. And how that's done is
I mean, there's some basic uh you know, knowledge of it,
but truly we don't understand how, you know, the main

(49:03):
question would be how are the cells of that animal
not completely shattered, because in each of our cells is
a minute amount of water, and when that water freezes,
it produces sharp projections, little crystals, and those punk those
rupture the cell walls and and kill the cell. So

(49:26):
it doesn't make any sense as to how they could
freeze and then come back to life and still not
be a bowl of jelly, because that's you know, when
all the cells are fractured and that there's nothing left.
So yeah, it's completely unknown. But we're discovering more and
more all the time that that certain animals can freeze and.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Survive, and it's really truly remarkable. Well, and I can't
think of the number of frogs that as a youth
I took out a really cold water in the spring
and just figured they were dead and yeah, just yeah, fish,
Yeah you're out. Yeah you're out ice fishing.

Speaker 7 (50:05):
I'm no doubt you've seen turtles underwater and uh, same
thing going on there, I mean, how do they although
if the water is liquid, it's above you know, it's
above freezing, so it's actually probably warmer than the uh
air temperature for sure most of the time, you.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Know, and all those things, you know, take them for granted,
stand you, just because because they happen to us, they
got to happen to them too, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 7 (50:31):
And the lack of knowledge is what drives all of
this because we just don't understand it. And uh and
now we you know, we're getting a little bit better
grip on things and uh and discovering these new things
all the time and then being able to disseminate that
information is also which by the way, is a good
thing and a bad thing. But uh, information can get

(50:54):
out to across the world very quickly, you know, obviously
these days. But that also means that bad information, incorrect
information also gets out and zips around the world in
record time, you know, at lightning speed. So uh, you know,
you just have to be discerning what you what you

(51:16):
take in.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Take for for me anyway, stan is I quit believing
anything I see online and social media.

Speaker 7 (51:23):
I just, oh my gosh, there's so much AI generated
stuff now. Fortunately some of them you can see where
it's marked. It's it's labeled you know, AI generated.

Speaker 6 (51:35):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (51:36):
My my version of Photoshop, which is the latest version
of photoshop will uh and light room also when I
have an image in there, it'll tell me if it's
been altered with AI also, or if I altered it
with AI myself. Because AI is as simple as say,
for example, I've got a nice picture, but there's a

(51:57):
stick right across whatever, you know, part of the picture.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Maybe it's in the corner, or maybe it's you know,
near the bird or whatever.

Speaker 6 (52:03):
It may be.

Speaker 7 (52:04):
And with this latest software, I simply just like paint
on the stick, and with AI tell it to remove
the stick and boom it's gone, and and it looks amazing.
But that's AI that and so it's flagged as an
AI image. So there's all sorts of different levels. Again,

(52:25):
it's not like all or nothing. It's there's different levels
of AI within uh you know, the whole AI uh
generated image things, you.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Know, and that can be that should probably be teachable,
just as anything else that is taught. Oh, absolutely, because
I think too many people take what they see for granted,
no matter what it is, but they believe it and
it then becomes truth. Yeah, and that and that's the

(52:56):
true and that's absolutely truth they are.

Speaker 5 (53:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (53:01):
Yeah, you have to have a discerning eye, and you
have to have a discerning uh you know, maybe a
little bit of skepticism in your in your life to
be able to navigate through all this stuff, and it,
believe me, it's a lot to navigate through.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
There's a lot going on that you know, we have
to kind of filter it out more every day every day. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (53:23):
And it's exponential growth too, because it's more and more
and more, and the the software to do this is
becoming easier. I've got I picked up some an app
for my phone, and you know, and AI's been on
phones forever too, built into it, but now you've got
extra ones you could add on to it, so which

(53:43):
is interesting. There's a significant amount of pushback on this also.
I see in especially amuncht of younger people. You see
these trends and people wanting to go back to film.
They want analog, they want something real, something, and I,
you know, I agree. I remember, I don't know how
long ago, quite a few years ago, twenty five or

(54:05):
more years ago, attending a conference with my publisher, and
there was a gentleman on stage who was presenting to
this large audience of publishers and authors, and he held
up this thing. He called it a tablet, and he
held up the verset and he said, you know, books
will be on here, and he proclaimed books will be
dead in the future. And I remember watching this and

(54:29):
you know, attending that that seminar and going, oh my gosh,
we're in big trouble. And I went out right after
that conference and bought a tablet so that I could
figure out what the heck this thing was, you know,
and because you know, the general consensus was that books
are dead, paper books are dead, They're all going to

(54:49):
be on tablets. Well, here we are, all these years later.
Books are not dead. In fact, there's a people liked
the feel of books. They want to have a book
in their hands. They want to be able to i mean,
smell it and carry it and whatever it may be.
That interaction, a physical interaction. Now it's not to say that,
you know, books on a tablet are bad.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
They're not.

Speaker 7 (55:12):
In fact, I've got many myself. But it's an integration
of that to a certain level. Not it's not at
all or nothing type of thing.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
I and we have to go. But there's one one
thing that comes to mind right away, because my daughter
in law is absolutely enamored with popcorn that you make
in a pan and you turn yeah, the old fashioned way, Yeah,
the way we used to do it, that's right. And
the microwave popcorn. She's just kind of a but yeah,

(55:44):
I remember that. I remember that. Of course that was
the only way you made it.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
You turn it and turn it and turn it right.
Oh goodness, gracious, yes, sir. But phonograph records are something
else that comes to mind all of a sudden. There
classical and cassette tapes are coming back to you. I
love it, Stan, Thank you so much for your time. Gosh,
it's fun talking to you, my friend, and I hope

(56:11):
we are stealing you away too much from Oh gosh,
no love, love to be here and everybody. Happy New Year. Everybody.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas. And we'll talk to
you next time. Yes, we will. Thank you very much.
That's the stand Tequila, and once again find him at
nature smart dot com. My grandkids love the whose Butt

(56:34):
Memory Game. I'm just telling you that it's a winner.
Get it, you love it. We'll be right back with
tackle after this. Nineteen minutes after the hour of seven o'clock,

(57:00):
I kin a fan outdoors Saturday morning. It's still dark yep,
it is, and it's supposed to be getting light in fact,
sun is coming up and not too distant future. Let's
check in with tackle Terry and see maybe the sun
is shining bright where he is. I am not sure,

(57:21):
but we'll find out.

Speaker 6 (57:22):
Terry.

Speaker 5 (57:23):
Good morning, sir, Good morning to you, Bill, and good
morning everyone. Know they're still dark. The fog lived it overnight,
so that good names.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, I did. I had some fog coming into the
station this morning, but not a lot. I was just
I was concerned though if it was good, I was
going to drive on some slick spots, and I don't
know if I did or not. I didn't try to
find any.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
Well I've been that's really quite The last couple of
three weeks of December been sort of different, if you will,
versus what we would normally expect to winter.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yeah, Terry talk to me a little bit about tip
up fishing, which i'd I know that a lot of
people do it. I know that my kids do it,
but and I know out in Devil's Lake Zippy Doll
does it also. But there's got to be a method
to the madness, and I'm not sure what that is.

Speaker 5 (58:18):
Yeah, there really is, Bill. Yeah. The fact that I
was out fishing yesterday and there was not very far
away that was using a tip up and tip up
GENI speaking, I used for northern foot walleyes and with
a tip of the biggest factor here is that if
you're fishing for northern pike, and here I do use

(58:40):
most of tim a plain hook or I use also
to a gemini, a lure, a spoon which has sort
of a flat surface to it with a lot of shine,
and sockers are soccers are probably the most utilized for
live bait, but chinas are extremely productive burnt to a
fish biologist. And so therefore then what you want to

(59:02):
do with a tip up is, first of one, you'll
find where you're going to set it up, a deep
weed lines, existing deep wood lines, a rocky weaf, some
rock piles inside terms of the deep white cline are
all good locations. And then what you do want to do.
You want to start about two to three feet off
the bottom f pike and then keep bringing it up

(59:23):
maybe a two feet at a time or foot at
a time, to about three to four feet below the surface.
And then if you don't have any success, then just
leave it about two feet above the bottom.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
And the reason we want to.

Speaker 5 (59:37):
Be bring it up. Even three feet below the ice
is not uncommon. And I just spoke to somebody the
other day in fact, in Christmas Day where they have
pork facing sonar and they've seen a big fish but
they didn't have a chance to recognize what it was,
but it was four feet under the ice, so that
was a big pike. And then the other thing too.

(01:00:00):
Now with walley fishing, you want to stay about right
around twelve into off the bottom, and here you can
new shiner. Small suckers are also very very part They're
so sturdy in the wintertime, so they see really healthy.
And then the biggest factor your build is that when
you're using a tip up, when that flag goes up,
you want to sort of gently walk over to that

(01:00:22):
hole and then lift that tip up real slow and
feel line at the same time because if there's any
tension on that line, that pipe will drop it. That's
a big, big factor generally speaking. Then when it'll stop,
you know, turn the bait around and swallow it head first.
Want stats to make that second run, that is when

(01:00:43):
you want to reset the hook. Now with walleyes, generally speaking,
only that first run as soon as that flag goes
up and you just lift it out slowly and then
uh set the hook. So there's a couple of big flats.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
The biggest thing is just to not create any tension
on that when you bring it out of a hole.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Now it seems to me they're always using like an
old black dockron line on them.

Speaker 5 (01:01:10):
Yes, that's I'm glad you brought that up. I use
a tefroon cold line bill and it works from fifteen
to thirty. I use in the fifteen to twenty when
then the reason being is that that new line, that
plastic coded line doesn't freeze, so that's a big, big
factor too. And then for northern pipe, one thing I

(01:01:32):
shouldn't mention it not football is just using a monopilm
the leader for walleyes or a for a carbon but
for a northern pipe. Some people say, well, can I
use fire iron? Can I use a braid?

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
Use an actual seventh strand wire leader, because a big
pipe will bite bite through that braided line. And you
just lost this issue.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Okay, Well, is it possible to leave it in too long?
A fish? Take it too long?

Speaker 5 (01:02:03):
Well, with a while with a northern pike, probably not old,
but with a walleye. Yes, with a walleye, depending on
the bait and how gressive they are. But yes, definitely.
And the big goal here is to get that hook
set at the right time. And with pike too, it'll
take maybe a couple of hook sets to see exactly
when you should set it. Uh, there's gonna be timeframes

(01:02:25):
with that Northern pike makes a big, fast run and
you should have set it uh a little bit sooner.
But then you can drop it or trip that bait
right off the hook. But here too, yes, espe, you
want to try to avoid getting that fish hook you know,
really got hooked, just like using a distick or a

(01:02:46):
bobber for walleyes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Oh okay, all right. So with that being said, Terry,
there's so many different kinds of tip ups out there too.
I mean, everybody's got their their own mouse trap, so
to speak.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
Yes, you're exactly right. I do use the frable ones.
Their orange cutters really visible and they're instantly on the
bottoms to prevent that whole or that tip up from
freezing in. So that's really a plus factor. But you
are right, there are so many many different tip ups,
and I think you know, really the the instant of

(01:03:24):
the ones that cover the whole whole completely are probably
the best to invest in gear again too, you know,
if you've got the regular shall we say, the old
old style tip up, and you still can ambindment, there's
nothing wrong with them, but they have a tendency to
freeze in.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
The other thing too, is you know, make sure that
your shoulder. The etiquette was using tip ups I required.
I think it was last Winter Bill where.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
Somebody said, a couple of tip ups right alongside a
pollied road on the lake. No, no, somebody just veers
all specter're going to drive right over that tip up.
And then two, make sure that is very visible. You know,
you have to take a shovel or whatever clean around
the hole because many times you're not using if you're

(01:04:12):
using a standard old style tip up, especially black, it's
going to be hard to see.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Yeah, not only will somebody maybe have an issue driving
over it, but your tip up is done.

Speaker 5 (01:04:24):
Oh yes, exactly right, exactly right, and you do need
to you know, if you're using the old style tip
up is make sure that you get that when you
keep that whole completely clean from ice, because if that
tip of freezers down or freezes over, you're going to
have different out time getting it out.

Speaker 6 (01:04:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
As far as reeling it back up when you're going
to put it away, is it different You have to
physically wrap the line around that little school until it's
all up, or is there a different way to do that?

Speaker 5 (01:04:56):
Some of them no, A good question. I'm glad you
brought that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
If I haven't even thought about that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:01):
You know what you do what I do. And that's
another thing too, using this quotas line, it doesn't tangle
what I do. I just you know, set the hook
firm standing up, uh, set the hook nice and firm.
That's why you have to lift that uh tip up
captainly out of that hole and set the hook firm,
and then just pull a hand over hand puting that

(01:05:22):
line in bell something like the drop line under those
kind of condition, and then I just leave that ice
fine way on the ice because you're not going to
get it tangled. Then you can take the time after
you get the fishing landed. I took when you're back
on the school. And another thing too, I should mention
when you're using a tip up, I use these tiny,
tiny little bobbers and I use that as depth ctter.

(01:05:47):
So then if I caught that pike at four feet
off the bottom, that's where I can set that tip
up out. Uh, set the tip up and that becomes
that darker you know exactly where to set it again.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Okay, have you been fishing at all?

Speaker 5 (01:06:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I was.

Speaker 5 (01:06:05):
I was out yesterday and but I didn't happen through
the ice. But a lot of water up of the ice.
Oh there is, Oh yes, and uh work creach. It's
slippery out there. I see somebody go down, you know, so,
but it's it's very, very slippy. There's a lot of
water at me. That's just I hope this weather doesn't

(01:06:28):
we get a lot of heavy snow or anything.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
You know, some of them would.

Speaker 5 (01:06:31):
If it does snow, it's going to abdorver that water,
hopefully a lot of So it's going to be trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Yeah, then it's going to be awful. We don't want that.
We don't want that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:42):
And we don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
We were talking about cleats before and and Tommy emailed
me and told me the yak tracks is what he has.
That's what I have too. What kind of tweets do
you run, Terry? Are you walking?

Speaker 5 (01:06:55):
I generally use the built in cleat corker.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:07:01):
They have a snap on Uh mean it comes in
with a boot, you know, a boot, and then you
just snap on different uh, different traction modes if you will,
a different cleat, or they have the access strap on
ones too. But those are and they're the boots is

(01:07:22):
so warm and they're not heavy. So it's a big,
big factor. But do work cleats right now. It's just
even the parking lot right parked was icy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah. And the soles that the pieces that clap right
out of your or snap onto your boots, those are
like the old stud and tires, isn't it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
Yeah, exactly right, Yeah, And there's different you know, let's
call them the studs bill and there's different lengths of studs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:07:49):
So you can adjust it according to the ice. I
think it was last year, a year before I put
the heavier ones on because it was so slippery and
you want the best bite that you possibly count. Every
thing I like about these kind of cleats, well, uh,
is that I wore a pair of bolts step on
boots and so then I can just take off the
boot when I'm driving the trip. Otherwise, if you are

(01:08:12):
cleats in your vehicle. You're going to scratch up the
door sill or tear up the carpeting or the mat,
and so this is another big puff factor. Or you
do have the opportunity, like with regular creats, to snap them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Off and on your boote. My youngest son was didn't
have cleats on and he slipped and fell, broke his
ankle and now has a metal plate in his ankle.
So not a good thing. You just don't do.

Speaker 5 (01:08:38):
No, it isn't, Yeah, it isn't. I see some people
come out yesterday and they didn't have boots on and
they have to walk in that water, and I thought, oh, brother,
don't doo that you're going to be wet and number two,
you're going to fall.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
Ye ye, you just it's just common sense built but
that to take free twit you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah, I agree. Were you catching anything?

Speaker 5 (01:09:06):
Yeah? I did. I was catching sunfish and Crappie's bilt
some pretty good action but very finicky bites.

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
They were just amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:09:15):
And it had the one thread in your h.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
One wax worm.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
Wouldn't they wouldn't even look at it. Built that I tried.

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
Some other lures wouldn't even.

Speaker 5 (01:09:25):
Look at it. So they had to be had the
jigging action was you know. I would draw them in
and raise them up maybe about eight turning to off
the bottom and really had to work that fish and
try to bring it up more and more. I would
get some to follow up higher, but some would not
come up, and so therefore then I just started all
over for another fish. But they were biting unbelievably light.

(01:09:47):
Even with the.

Speaker 4 (01:09:49):
Sensitive rod. I had to watch for a line movement.

Speaker 5 (01:09:51):
Otherwise or watch the vex fier because once that red
line was gone, I set the hooking fish was on.
It was just amazing how I they were biting, but
also too you know. I talked to somebody coming off
the ice and he was saying, two of these weather,
we just need to get some more stable weather to
get really a good bite. But it was, it was good,

(01:10:13):
But it was just amazing how finicky these fish can get.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Yeah, it's frustrating to terry when they come up and
all of a sudden they're gone again.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
Yeah, it really is. But you know that just you know,
I think many times we see it, you know, more
often than not. Uh, you know where these fish are,
especially when you got and we start talking with just
individually yesterday about the noise factor, how noise is really
spooks these fish just I think so often we and
we had a snowmobe that was running back and forth,

(01:10:45):
probably about seventy five feet away from me, and I thought, oh,
he though or maybe he's running back to get something. Well,
I don't think he was running back and forth on
the lake and that kind of staf it's just not
no oals, but it can be and the people walking
it's you know, especially if you've got no snow and
clear ice and you you've got something to be concerned about.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah, Terry, we'll let you go. My friend, are you
going to fish today or tomorrow?

Speaker 5 (01:11:13):
I'm sure I'll be back out there. Yes, I'm going
to watch your weather for that. He got a big
stowst forecast.

Speaker 4 (01:11:18):
I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
I don't want to even think about you don't want
that to happen. No, okay, Terry, Well good luck to
you if you go, Bud.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Yeah, yeah, happy we are to you and to all
of our listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
There we go. That's tackle Terry. Every other week, he
joins us, and uh, this is that week. So we
let him go and we are going to hopefully catch
up with Bob Saint Pierre right after this. Well, it's

(01:12:04):
the last segment for today. We'll be back again next
Saturday morning, bright and early. Okay. But our next guest, well,
we could probably ask him to make it, to introduce himself.
He's been gone for that long, I think, and we probably.
I'm not sure we can pronounce his last name properly,

(01:12:26):
but we'll work on it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
Are are you there? I got it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
I got it, just slipped my mind again, man.

Speaker 6 (01:12:47):
Captain.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
Same to you, buddy in a happy new Year coming
up too, But but hopefully I'll see you before that,
but we'll see.

Speaker 5 (01:12:55):
I never know, see me after the new year.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Okay, all right?

Speaker 6 (01:13:02):
Is it the new year, like Thursday or something? So
I'll see you on Saturday a week from today.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Next year, yes, next year. Maybe that would be Brett Blakemore.
He's my producer too. Anyway, nice to meet you, Brett,
you too, nice to hear from you. How is how
is vacation? I saw you one time? A picture of

(01:13:30):
you was shotgun in hand and snowshoes on. Were you
able to capture anything?

Speaker 6 (01:13:39):
I have not captured anything other than a very relaxed
good time. I've done a couple of short hunts. I
haven't seen any birds get about a foot of snow
up here, so I don't cover a whole heck of
a lot of ground with the foot of snow. So
I've done some uh, some posts tolling, some snowshoeing, and

(01:14:02):
some cross country skiing. It's just it's been very nice.
I stayed off my phone for the most part, read
a few books, and enjoyed the outdoors. And yeah, it's
been very relaxing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Inquiring minds want to know, did you harness up your
dogs and and take them and pull them?

Speaker 6 (01:14:22):
I have not done any ski jewry yet this season. Okay,
I did go into the into the boundary waters with
them on a kind of a rudimentary ski trail, but
I did not harness.

Speaker 5 (01:14:39):
Myself to them.

Speaker 6 (01:14:40):
Yeah, I decided to live another week.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
I see, I apologize, but I can't get when I
talk about that, I can't get it out of my mind.
So tell us about Rooster road trip. Was it a
good time?

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
It was a challenge.

Speaker 6 (01:15:02):
We were in Central Kansas. We started in the south
south portion of Central Kansas and moved our way up
so that would have been December eighth. I think is
when we got going, and we'll start releasing content next week.
I guess January fourth is the first episodes will be released.

(01:15:27):
And it was a challenge. Kansas is a bit at
the epicenter of habitat loss. Over the last decade, they
lost nearly two million acres of CRP. And also what's
happening across the Great Plains is woody encroachment, so junipers

(01:15:48):
and Eastern red cedars are growing and taking over the grasslands.
So it's actually woody growth is outpaced habitat loss from
land conversion, which is sort of a startling statement for
a lot of people to hear that. You know, just

(01:16:08):
these these eastern red cedars and juniper is just taking
over grasslands across Kansas and Nebraska and moving up into
South Dakota. And so that's part of the reason we
went to Kansas for Rooster road trip is to put
the spotlight on the need to do more burning and
tree removal to keep the grasslands intact and all the

(01:16:31):
critters that live in the grasslands.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
I know that Chad, my youngest, has been out in
chasing birds and it's that's definitely wintertime because when he
finds them, he finds a bunch of them and like
twenty or thirty in a group, but they're they're definitely

(01:16:53):
bunched up. And when you think you've seen you've got
that many birds to pick from. He's shot some birds,
but there's other times that he's he's working pretty hard
on him.

Speaker 6 (01:17:08):
Yeah. Yeah, this is the time of year where you're,
you know, typically not out chasing limits. You're just out
chasing the enjoyment to being in the field with your dog,
and if you can grab one bird for the pot,
that's a successful day. I think I've got one, maybe
two trips to pheasant hunt and southern Minnesota left, you know,

(01:17:33):
over the course of the next week. But then they
don't wrap it up for the year. What about you, Captain,
Are you going to get out again?

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
I might go today, Actually I'm thinking about very good. Yeah,
I think so. I know Eric and Chatter heading up
to his least farm and they were leaving early this morning.
But I don't know if I want to go that far.
But I do need to get bre out because she
is she is pulling at my pants leg to get

(01:18:04):
and run.

Speaker 6 (01:18:05):
And that's how much How much snow do you figure
you have in the cabin country.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Well, there's none on the lake. We were told this
morning by Denny Fletcher. It's absolutely bare. And I asked
him last week on phone if I could get back
into the cabin, which I'm going to try to do
perhaps today, and he said, well, if you can't get
over that initial burm because it's gotten warm and cold,

(01:18:35):
and warm and cold turns into ice, he says, give
me a call and I'll punch it out with a plow.
So I'm not sure. I'm curious. So, but it sure
takes a lot out of a person to be walking
in snow with no snowshoes though, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:18:52):
That's for sure.

Speaker 6 (01:18:52):
Even with snowshoes, it's a lot of work, Yeah, it is.
You know, I think some of the taller hunters have
an advantage of long legs this time year, but that
does not does not include you, and.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
I no, it does not. In fact, that was a
topic of conversation with a person that I had been
chatting with too. And when you got stuck in that
snow bank and had to get lifted out.

Speaker 6 (01:19:22):
Yeah, I'm vertically challenged, that's for sure. And this time
of year it's nice to ride on top of the
snow if you can.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
But yeah, but it's I think I think it's worse
if you've got a crust of snow and you can
get over some of it and all of a sudden
you fall through with a leg and yeah, it's different muscles.
And man, they heard after that.

Speaker 6 (01:19:45):
Yeah, yeah, post tolling through the snow. And that's what
they've got up here is they had nice layer of snow,
but the last two days gotten some freezing rain. Going
to get some more freezing rain today and then I
think Sunday and Monday they're supposed to get maybe three
inches one day and up to eight inches another. So

(01:20:08):
folks that are coming up here for New Year's weekend
to go skiing, and I think you've timed it correctly.
It's going to be a fabulous week to be up
here next weekend. But it's been a little bit variable
snow this weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Yes, and if you look at your weather for down
here tomorrow evening into Monday, we could add some additional snow.

Speaker 6 (01:20:36):
Oh so just looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
There you go, there you go. I'm glad you are.
You can have all mine, buddy.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
Well, it's a good, good reason to get out burn
hunting to day.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Then yeah, yeah, that's my thought. If people are coming up,
what would you recommend for for if you want to
get say you want to get outside. I know you're
up on the gun Flint, but it was fishing an option.

Speaker 6 (01:21:07):
Well, the big fishing open there's two big fishing openers
up here. The Boundary Waters Lake Trout opener is coming up.
I don't have the regulations in front of me. I
think that's January first, okay, and then so you got
to be you can't fish lakes that are partially in

(01:21:29):
the boundary waters for that opener. They got to be
completely into the boundary water. So that's the talk of
town right now. People are getting anxious to get into
the boundary waters and fish Lake Trout. And then I
want to say it's the following Saturday. It might be
two saturdays after that Lake Trout opener. I want to say,

(01:21:50):
maybe it's January twelve, But again look up the regulation
having in front of me. But the Lake Trout opener
or all lakes across Northern Minnesota is coming up. So
that's that's the talk right now. There's I have seen

(01:22:12):
ice fishing activity up here this week, certainly there's been
you know, their Walleyes open and whatnot, but I have
not seen anybody out on the lake now. Granted I've
been on lakes that are more known for Lake Trout
that it is Walleye in the in the if they've

(01:22:35):
had a warmer winter so far, just like we have
down in the city. So it's a very variable ice.
You know, there's you got to be pretty careful because
there's moving water, and you know, some of the lake,
like Gunflint, I think it's only been closed up for
two weeks, so I have not seen a single fishermen

(01:22:59):
on Gunflip. And again that's a lake that's known for
Lake Trout as opposed to Walleye, which is again not
open right now, so that's probably why there's not been
anybody out on it.

Speaker 5 (01:23:10):
But yeah, the the water for the.

Speaker 6 (01:23:14):
Ice conditions are really variable. You gotta know what you're
doing up here, Okay when you go into the boundary.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
Waters, Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. When are you heading back?
Have you an ata are anymore?

Speaker 6 (01:23:31):
We are on the road about an hour after finished
talking to you that we're packing up. Yeah, we got
up here a week ago and so we got to
be out of here by ten o'clock, so we gonna
cook up some breakfast, load the truck, and vacation is
coming to an end.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Oh my, that's too bad. But overall it was fun one.

Speaker 6 (01:23:56):
Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 5 (01:23:56):
It was very relaxing.

Speaker 8 (01:23:58):
I was able to unplug ug from the phone and
the computer, and I would highly recommend that to anybody.
You know, I haven't watched a football game or a
newscast in a week, and life life.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
Still a little better, life still exists.

Speaker 6 (01:24:19):
Yeah. I read some books and uh, you know, listen
to some Christmas music. H just you enjoyed time outdoors
with Meredith and the dogs and her parents come up.
Came up for Christmas for a few days around Christmas,
and it was Its just been a terrific week and wonderful. Yeah,

(01:24:41):
so unplugged, that's my recommendation.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
Well we're going to unplug too, buddy. So I I
thank you for your time and I'll look forward to
see you in your next week. Okay, all right, good
luck today, cat, Thank you, sir, Travel safe, buddy. St
Bob Saint Pierre he joins us usually every week, but
now everybody in three or four weeks. So anyway, I
want to say thank you to Denny Fletcher, Tommy George

(01:25:05):
stand Tequila Tackle Terry, and thank you for allowing us
to travel with you. Keep it right here though it's
in the zone for Brett Blakemore, my producer, for nobody
else but me. I just wish you a very happy
New Year, have a fabulous weekend. Until then, leave you
with Tata.