Ep. 905: The Life of a Crabber

00:00:08
Speaker 1: If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten.

00:00:14
Speaker 2: And in my case, underwear. Listening toast, you can’t predict anything.

00:00:20
Speaker 3: Brought to you by First Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First light build, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com. That’s f I R S T l I t E dot com.

00:00:43
Speaker 1: You’re joining us from the Walleye grounds of Lake of the Woods, Ontario, but we’re here to talk about the life of a crabber in Chesapeak Bay back in America. Uh Luke McFadden, thanks for coming on the show.

00:00:57
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.

00:00:59
Speaker 1: First question for you, though, before we get into crab and we’re here for the Fish Eater Classic Fishing Tournament. You’ve been spending a couple of days in a boat with dirt myth any takeaways.

00:01:13
Speaker 5: I like him, man, he’s cool.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, he’s man.

00:01:17
Speaker 4: He’s like Not only is he like, you know, doing all the filming and this and that and has somehow been able to like Bob and weave every single hook flying past his head, he’s also like you know, he’s part of the team.

00:01:28
Speaker 2: Man, he’s keep morale up.

00:01:29
Speaker 5: He’s like he’s doing it every situation.

00:01:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find that every situation is better with dirt round. I agree. So you’re you’re you approve of the cameraman, I agree, I do.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: So tell me, like I’ve followed you for a long time. We’ve talked before, and I know the kind of like the basic outline is that that in Chesapeake Bay, like in the in the blue crab world, that tends to be a thing that.

00:01:57
Speaker 2: That people kind of inherit.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, people come up in it and their kids come up in it.

00:02:03
Speaker 2: Is that true?

00:02:03
Speaker 1: Like it’s a thing that’s like there’s a little bit of a I don’t know, man, like it gets handed down generation to generation, that lifestyle.

00:02:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:02:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could call it like a hereditary disease in a lot of ways. But yeah, it’s, uh, it’s generally like a generational you know. So it’s mostly like you know, you do it because your dad did it, and he did it because his dad did and he did it because there was no other option.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: You know what I meant, I got it, but you didn’t inherit it.

00:02:31
Speaker 1: No, no walk me through that, like, because I mean, because you’re a professional crabber, yeah, and have been for how many years?

00:02:39
Speaker 4: I mean this is I started on my own boat when I was eleven years old, or no, when I was sorry, eighteen years old. I’m thirty. So it’s my I think this is my eleventh crab season. Got so it’s been a little while.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: I think I’ve got my ten thousand and how many of those seats?

00:02:55
Speaker 1: Like not that there’s a lot of similarity between crab and writing, but in writing, like you write for years with side jobs. Yeah, a lot of people do you write for years with side jobs and all of a sudden you’re.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: Like, damn, yeah, I don’t need the side job anymore, right, I mean, was it was? It was? It was it when.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: You’re crabbing, you’re all in and that’s just what you’re doing. Or did you have to kind of like did you have to kind of trickle into it?

00:03:20
Speaker 4: So, I mean definitely, like in the beginning, I mean it was like just a disaster for a very long time. Oh yeah, dude, it was it was like, you know, a lot to learn quickly, steep learning curve, but you know, I was like it was like I was basically working in the winter time to be able to go crab it again in the spring, you know what I mean. And I was just hustling anyway. I possibly could, you know, to continue to go in the beginning, you know, but I was just kind of committed to it, you know, I was like not going to let it fail.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: So why did you Why did you want to get into that anyway? What were you seeing that made you want to do it?

00:03:56
Speaker 4: I mean, I I started helping on a crab boat and I was like twelve, Just guys started taking me along, you know. I was just cutting fish and stuff like that, and I don’t know, I just liked it out there. And when I was eighteen, I just decided I wanted to, you know, do it.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: And all when you were helping out, how would you get compensated?

00:04:14
Speaker 4: I mean I was getting paid, you know, not much, you know, pretty much nothing.

00:04:21
Speaker 2: You know.

00:04:21
Speaker 4: When I was a little older, like sixteen seventeen, I was making a little bit more.

00:04:25
Speaker 5: But I mean I think the most I got I made.

00:04:28
Speaker 4: Like when I was breaking off to go do my own thing was like I think I was making like eighty five bucks a day or something like that. Okay, so you know, it wasn’t much. It was cash, but it wasn’t much. Yeah.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: Like, so you were you surrounded by where you grew up? Were you surrounded by crabbers?

00:04:45
Speaker 5: No, there’s not many krabbers around at all.

00:04:47
Speaker 4: Like the area that I’m from, in particular, Pasadena is like there’s a few, but it’s not it’s not common whatsoever. I think, like we did a headcount of the fleet. I think, like, guys are you know, out there making their living doing it? I think there’s like six or eight of us left going out of the whole town. Oh no, there’s some more north of us. There’s a few south of us. There’s a lot more on the Eastern Shore. Like I’m on the western shore of Maryland. On the eastern Shore, there’s a lot more cravers. It’s you know, way more common. But there’s a whole you know, there’s a lot less job opportunity over there. You know, it’s a lot less developed, and you know, there’s a lot more low country and whatever. So historically there’s always a lot more crabs on the Eastern shore.

00:05:34
Speaker 2: Got it? But in your town, sixty eight guys go out, Yeah, there’s not many. Yeah, tell me like, how are you guys?

00:05:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I’ve gone getting blue crabs little ways, like I mean, I’ve gone from just walking around picking them up, stringing the chicken necks and all that.

00:05:49
Speaker 2: How are you guys doing it?

00:05:50
Speaker 4: Like?

00:05:51
Speaker 2: What does your day look like? How do you catch them?

00:05:53
Speaker 4: So we’re crab potting?

00:05:55
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:05:55
Speaker 4: So there’s basically like two ways to commercially catch crabs around that, and it’s one is a trot line. So you got that long, you know, line with inline baits, you know, and then you’re running along with a dipper or a net.

00:06:09
Speaker 2: And I’ve done that with guys.

00:06:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don’t know, one.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Hundred chicken necks on the string yea, yeah, I got it. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that, you know.

00:06:19
Speaker 4: That’s a great way to go, And that’s how everybody starts usually because not a lot of overhead you can do by yourself in the beginning.

00:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, good? And how many? How many? How many baits are beyond that line that you’re running.

00:06:31
Speaker 4: Usually like you’re running like you know, some of the bigger guys are running up to five thousand foot of line. Sometimes they’ll break it up into like thousand foot or twelve hundred foot sections and then you know there’s debate on how far you want your bait space, and you know there’s some signs to it in terms of like you know, guys will have different lines with different space baits for different bottom, different times.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: Of the year all that.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you’re talking that deal where like just for people listening, like it’s the big long line with every what distance.

00:07:03
Speaker 4: It’s usually like I would say the average I think ours are like seven foot seven or eight foot okay, seven or eight feet, no hooks, yeah, just bait.

00:07:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:07:10
Speaker 4: So they either put in line like they’ll either use like that old school like twisted like hemp line almost and they’ll just push it together and then put the bait in the line. Yeah, that’s like the old school way of doing it. Or now like a lot of guys like to run snoods is what they call it. So it’s like a piece of bungee like probably six inches with a piece of like gas line, you know, you tie you tie it out in the end of the bungee and then double it over and stick the gas line over the loop. So it’s like a you know, like a you can sent it down with the baits on it.

00:07:40
Speaker 2: I got it. That’s kind of like the newer way to do it.

00:07:42
Speaker 4: A lot of guys like to run clam bags and all that stuff called called a snood.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: That’s what comes off Turkey’s head.

00:07:48
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I guess so right, And then.

00:07:51
Speaker 1: You string that sucker out and they’re not hooked, they’re just hanging onto the bait.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:07:55
Speaker 4: Crabs are kind of about a stubborn as the guys that go catch them, So they’re just like, you know, they’re in it for the They’ll hold onto that thing all the way up.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: Man, you can you raise the lineup and just nab them off there as they drop free.

00:08:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, you got like an arm that hangs off the side of the boat, and then you pull up. There’s a booy on either end. You pick up the buoy and put that on the arm, and then you drive the boat down the line. And as you’re driving down the line isn’t really moving, but you’re picking the line up, you know what I mean?

00:08:23
Speaker 2: Are there dudes that do that by themselves?

00:08:26
Speaker 4: I would say most guys that do that do it that way, do it by themselves.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: Driving the boat.

00:08:30
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean I I did it by myself. Most guys do because you ain’t got to pay a helper, you know. So like a lot of times we will set the boats up kind of different, like I got a little trout line and boat. You Yeah, we got one that we built for like some of my helpers and everything they’ve been wanting to go.

00:08:50
Speaker 5: But like we even have it with it. The console is just an eight by eight piece.

00:08:54
Speaker 4: Of aluminum square two and you stand on the right side of the boat in between I mean, you know, the console on your left side, and then your rollers on your right and the steer wheels actually on like facing the starboard side, so that you can stand there and just run it steer with your left hand and then dip with your right hand, and then you got the call box in front of you, you know what I mean. So’s you can run it as a one man band pretty easy. But they’re like you’ll see some goofy boats, but it’s like there’s always a reason they’re set up kind of weird, you know what I mean. It looks strange you’re facing forward, you know, steering like this, but it allows you to do it by yourself.

00:09:31
Speaker 2: But then but your the main deal is running crab traps.

00:09:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I’m potting. I’m crab potting, which is kind of some guys would argue, but it’s I guess the more industrial, like larger scale. So I got gang lines, you know, we call them underwater lines, and it’s twenty five pots connected to each other with a booy called a hawk on either end. So it’s a like a booye with a five foot piece of PVC pipe through it with a weight at the bottom and then a f lag at the top, and then what’s the term we call it a hawk?

00:10:04
Speaker 2: I have no idea.

00:10:06
Speaker 4: I’ve always wondered, because like a long lining, like deep sea long line, and they call it a bird, you know, and we call them hawks.

00:10:13
Speaker 2: I don’t know why, you know.

00:10:16
Speaker 4: But yeah, there’s seventy five foot in between each crab pot. Each pot’s on snap gear, so you know, it’s got like a almost like a twenty four inch leader basically with a like a metal clip, and then every seventy five foot on the main line, there’s like an overhand loop tied in the main line, and so each clip gets clipped onto the loop. So when we go to pick up the crab pots, we actually picked the entire row up stack them on the boat, and then you know, like I’m putting the line on the winder and the winers hauling it into a barrel. And the barrel I have a piece of PVC pipe, you know, screwed to the side of the barrel, and so as each pot comes up, I break the snap off of the mainline and then stack all the loops on the PVC pipe in order, you know, and then all the line goes in the barrel. And then each pot as it comes up, I’ll break it off the mainline. And then the shaker, who’s kind of like your right hand guy, he’ll open up the top door, flip the pot up, open the bait door, shake the crabs out, put a new bait in it, close the bait door, and then put it into like a hot water tank that’s like kind of behind us.

00:11:27
Speaker 2: And that’s clean.

00:11:29
Speaker 4: Strange deal there, man, Yeah, it’s like ninety crab in though, just keeping gear clean in the summertime, you know.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: Because because well, I got a bunch of questions. But to tell me that real quick, explain that hot water deal. So what you’re cleaning off, we’re trying like crabs.

00:11:46
Speaker 4: Everybody thinks they’re just like dumb scavengers, right, But I mean there’s a way you can go out there and catch crabs. You can go out there and make a living catching crabs. And the devil’s in the detail, right. So we clean every pot every time it comes over the rail, and we don’t let them sit more than like four days in the summertime, you know. So what we’re trying to prevent is these pots growing things like algae, barnacles. We have this like brown stuff. We call it hair. It looks just like hair, but it’s technically kind of coral. These little arthropods that we get, they’re like little shrimp we call them, and they it’ll look like you’re pots covered in like grains of brown rice. They build these little huts that they live inside of, you know, and then the stuff, the algae and things like that will catch on their little huts and start to grow.

00:12:35
Speaker 5: So we’re just trying to prevent any of that stuff, you know.

00:12:37
Speaker 4: So if you see my pots, ideally they look like they’re brand new. They look like they’re not dirty at all, But it’s because we hit them every time. We’re literally trying to kill it, like on a microscopic level.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: Are you trying to do it like the longevity of the pot.

00:12:52
Speaker 5: I’m trying toforms of the pot, performance of the pot.

00:12:54
Speaker 4: They don’t want to trap up in a dirty pot. They don’t even like a slime on it or nothing.

00:12:59
Speaker 2: Really they want like that.

00:13:01
Speaker 4: I don’t know, man, I really don’t because you’d think, right that like it looks a little more natural to the bottom or something because.

00:13:07
Speaker 2: The bottom is all the bottoms.

00:13:09
Speaker 4: All covered in that stuff.

00:13:10
Speaker 2: I know.

00:13:11
Speaker 4: It’s crazy. I don’t know, but yeah, we’re trying to keep it.

00:13:15
Speaker 2: They don’t want to go into a dirty pot.

00:13:17
Speaker 4: Now, man, they don’t want to. But they also don’t want to go into a brand new, freshly set pot or a brand new pot because it might smell of yeah we yeah, exactly. Like we paint every pot every year, so we dip all the pots into it like a vat of paint to you know, give them them a fresh coat. But like a freshly painted pot. I’ve seen it where they do like it. But ninety percent of the time they don’t want a freshly painted pot. So you gotta let it weather, you got, yeah exactly, But you got to fish it through too. You gotta like let it soak and then fish it through, get new fresh bait, and it usually it’s like a week two weeks and they’ll really start to catch, right, Man.

00:13:53
Speaker 2: That’s so like not how you think of a crab.

00:13:55
Speaker 5: Man, I know that’s what I’m saying.

00:13:57
Speaker 4: Man, everybody thinks of crabs is like they’re these dirty scavengers or just you know, they’ll eat whatever, and you.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: Think it will and you think that’s like you’re convinced that that’s right. I mean, he doesn’t want to go in a dirty pot.

00:14:08
Speaker 2: It’s facts. I mean it.

00:14:10
Speaker 4: You know, it’s a I go three insane amount of effort to keep here clean. I mean, that’s the whole job in the summer, is keeping gear. And I mean anybody like.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: You could look at it like you’re trapping crabs or you’re cleaning gear. You look at it like I look at it.

00:14:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, I look at it. I literally look at it like I’m cleaning gear and I’m hoping there’s grabs in it.

00:14:27
Speaker 2: You know.

00:14:28
Speaker 1: Like, so tell me how like you put in a hot water bath and you agitate.

00:14:32
Speaker 4: It or no, no, just I mean since we’re hitting them every time every day, like we’re kind of keeping ahead of it, you know, so they just sit in there for I think cycle time is probably seven to twelve seconds on a pot. You know, the water one hundred and forty five degrees, so it’s not like super hot.

00:14:57
Speaker 2: So the air is already real hot and you’re hovering over that day bucks.

00:15:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it’s yeah. I mean, and we’re wearing you know, rubber slickers of rubber boots. So there’s some brutal days out there, you know, when it’s like stupid humid, like heat index over one hundred.

00:15:13
Speaker 5: This tank one hundred and forty five degree waters.

00:15:16
Speaker 4: Right behind me, there’s a diesel burner heating it, like right next to that.

00:15:19
Speaker 2: That’s that’s what heats that.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:15:20
Speaker 4: I built it out of like a heat pump from a house, like a Becket heat pump basically runs it through.

00:15:26
Speaker 2: Like a coil.

00:15:26
Speaker 1: What I’m saying like, I know what that means, but I don’t know what the back of heat pump is.

00:15:30
Speaker 4: What heats your house if you have like an oil furnace, Yeah, I got you the same kind of deal. Yeah, My runs off car back golf cart batteries. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, it can be definitely be pretty brutal.

00:15:43
Speaker 5: Like the other second day of fishing and whatever everybody was or the first day, you know, everybody’s like dying of the heat.

00:15:49
Speaker 4: And I was like, man, this ain’t so bad. I was like, it does suck. I was like, yeah, well, I mean it. You know, obviously I’m not loving it, but I was like, at least I ain’t wearing a trash bag on the crab boat? Yeah?

00:16:00
Speaker 2: How many? How many of those? How many? Well? How big is your how big is your crew?

00:16:04
Speaker 4: Me?

00:16:05
Speaker 2: And three We’ll come back to that. So it’s four guys in the boat.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in a day, if you’re going like all out pulling pots, Yeah, in a day, how many traps are you gonna check?

00:16:14
Speaker 4: Five hundred and seventy five? Okay, and then to twenty three rows?

00:16:19
Speaker 1: What’s a I’m sure it’s seasonal, but just give me like, like they’re working right now, right your crew’s out there right now, Okay, So right now, July, a pot that has blank crabs is exciting, and a pot that has blank crabs is disappointing, Like what are the blanks?

00:16:39
Speaker 4: I mean, I’m so like, right now it’s pretty hot. Yeah, So I mean, like, right now, if I see not all crabs are created equal, right, So I’m looking for big market sized crabs. So I would say if I had a pot with six nice, big, heavy market sized crabs, good grade, that’s a good pot.

00:17:01
Speaker 5: You do that five hundred and seenty five times.

00:17:03
Speaker 4: You know, you’re looking all right. Right now, there’s a load of crabs around, which is a good thing, but it’s also can be kind of a pain, you know, Like you would pull up a pot’s got twenty crabs.

00:17:12
Speaker 5: I’d say the average pot has ten to fifteen crabs in it right now, got it?

00:17:16
Speaker 4: But I would say, like, right now, there’s a load of little crabs around, a lot of light crabs, all that kind of stuff they’ve shed out. You know, there could be more than half of those crabs could be small or you know, we gotta squeeze every one of them to check the grate on them.

00:17:33
Speaker 2: You know.

00:17:34
Speaker 4: So like we gray crabs by the density of their shell, which indicates how much meat is inside of them, and that is from when they shed out.

00:17:42
Speaker 2: You know.

00:17:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, the denser the crab, the more meat, right generally, yeah, yeah, why is that? Like I see that with dungeon ass Like m hmmm. I don’t know, if you’re familiar with that crab.

00:17:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I’ve seen them.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: So when you get one, it’s soft. Yeah, it’s just water inside there.

00:17:57
Speaker 2: Why is that.

00:17:59
Speaker 4: It’s because they ship when they shit, you know, so they’ll go to slough their shell obviously have extra skeleton, right, They can’t grow their skeleton, so they have to shed out of it, so they grow a larger skeleton inside their shell, and then they’ll back out of the back of their shell and be a soft crab. But it takes them a little while to get that new shell hard, so they kind of fill it out full of water inside of them, and then all their energy is going to getting that shell hard as fast as they can then to be able to defend themselves, you know. So they’re absorbing like calcium through the water and all that kind of stuff to get their shells harder. A lot of times we’ll find light crabs on shell bottom, hard bottom because they’re hanging out on the oyster beds and things like that, picking up the shells, you know, trying to get right to be hard enough to defend themselves. And then after they do that, then they’ll start to fill their their insides out, you know what I mean. It’s like all their energy is going.

00:18:58
Speaker 2: To then they’ll starting impacting on an actual meat. Right.

00:19:01
Speaker 4: But you’ll notice like female blue crabs, I don’t know if it is the same with dungeness, but female blue crabs will get their shells harder, like twice as fast as a male. Because the only time a female crab is gonna shed. A female blue crab is gonna shed or is uh yeah, it’s gonna shed is when they shed from an immature female to a mature female. And then that’s the only one time they’re gonna mate in their whole life is when they are a mature female soft crab. They’re gonna do it one time, but then after that they’re like their shells.

00:19:35
Speaker 2: No, that’s when they mate. That’s the one time they make one.

00:19:37
Speaker 4: Time they mate. So when they’re an immature female, we called them a sally, right, and so it’ll be a little crab like you know, maybe that big, and they have a pyramid shaped apron, and you can tell that that immature female is gonna shed into a mature female because their apron will get like a purple pink hue. So that’s when the that’s basically when they’re in heat. Right, So the big dominant male crabs will go and we call them doublers. They’ll double up on these little sallies and carry them around on their belly for like a couple of weeks and defend them.

00:20:12
Speaker 5: And then all the big crabs are fighting with each other, and.

00:20:15
Speaker 1: That crab grabs onto that girl crab toats her around a couple of weeks fighting off other guys, yep, and she just she kind of goes along with it.

00:20:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, she’s just happy to be involved.

00:20:27
Speaker 2: I think, you know, defend man. Yeah.

00:20:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:20:33
Speaker 1: Is that common just across crabness or is that like a blue crab deal.

00:20:37
Speaker 4: I don’t I’ll be honest, I’m not real familiar with anything blue crab. Yeah, it’s pretty dialed on the blue crabs. But besides that, I’m not.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: Really toats her around yep. Yeah, he’ll tote her around.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: Basically like I said, with them, Yeah, yep, but don’t like the crab. I don’t know how it works, but I’m sure it’s similar with animals, like they’re I think that Sally is giving off something that you know, indicates that she’s in heat, right, Like we look at her fins to tell a peeler crab like that. We’ll look at their inside second swim fin and they’ll have a white line at first we called a white sign, will go to orange.

00:21:11
Speaker 2: And then red. You know.

00:21:13
Speaker 4: Once they’re red, we say they’re rank so, which means they’re gonna shed the next day or two. Okay, that’s how we tell a peeler on the boat which will shed the salt crab.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: The moment is a peeler good or bad for you?

00:21:24
Speaker 5: A peeler’s good for me, So you’re allowed to keep.

00:21:27
Speaker 1: You’re allowed to keep a female Yeah that hasn’t bred yet, yeah, okay, yeah.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: Just generally all year long.

00:21:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, the size changes. It starts at three inches across the top of the carapace, and then at July sixteenth, he goes to three and a quarter inches, I believe, for three and a half inches across for the for the sally you know, for I mean for a peeler. Yeah, normal blue crab starts at five inches, goes to five and a quarter for keep.

00:21:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:57
Speaker 1: Okay, so that crabs coming up getting bigger, bigger, bigger, and then she gets where she’s gonna molt or shed, and then she’s gonna get the guys gonna carry around breeder and then she’s gonna turn into like then she’s gonna breed.

00:22:13
Speaker 2: Produce eggs. Yeah, and then she’s gonna live for how long after that?

00:22:18
Speaker 1: I I don’t really know, but she just is hanging out and is never gonna have babies again.

00:22:22
Speaker 4: No, no, no, she’ll so she’ll carry you know, she’ll carry it around with her the whole time after they’ve bred, you know, for the rest of her life.

00:22:31
Speaker 2: Oh, she like has like delayed implantations. Yeah.

00:22:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so they that’s blow.

00:22:39
Speaker 2: In my mind.

00:22:39
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, it’s a common misconception that she fertilized one time. Yeah, and then she will she’s juice.

00:22:46
Speaker 2: Is that juice is her for yeah? Yeah, the rest of her life?

00:22:50
Speaker 4: Yep, yep, And so she’ll sponge up. I’ve always heard six to eight times, you know, but who knows.

00:22:56
Speaker 2: I don’t really know how old is the old crab?

00:22:59
Speaker 4: I mean I don’t. I mean, I don’t really know for sure, but I would I think they say in old crabs like four years old, you know. But the thing that usually kills a crab besides getting caught is they go to shed and they can’t ship. They don’t have the energy.

00:23:16
Speaker 5: So like male crabs just keep getting bigger, bigger, bigger.

00:23:19
Speaker 4: But a female crab, since they only shed from an immature to a mature female one time. Once she’s a mature female, she’ll never shed again. Okay, so she’ll never grow. So if she’s that big, is a mature female, she’ll stay that big.

00:23:33
Speaker 2: If she’s that she’ll stay that big. Yeah.

00:23:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then they’ll sponge up, so they get like I’m sure you’ve seen them before, like when.

00:23:39
Speaker 2: You pull the tail thing back and there’s like eggs and air. What do you mean.

00:23:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, so like on a blue crab, her apron right on the bottom, she’ll get this big sponge crabs.

00:23:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep like, I keep picturing dungeies. That’s just kind of the crab by massive. Yeah, I keep picturing dungees. But I know what you’re talking about.

00:23:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:23:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they’ll get like a big egg sponge. Say it’s you know, two to eight million eggs per sponge. When they’re really bright orange they’re new, she’ll carry them around for like two weeks. As time goes on, they’ll get darker in color, and by the time they drop off, their like real dark like brown, almost black. They’ll drop off as larvae and then they kind of float around to the tide. And then those larvae are going to like change kind of like their form, like like twenty there’s almost like twenty different stages before they even start to look like a blue crab, right, And then once they start to look like a blue crab, then they’re shedding once a week, you know, once every two weeks whatever, you know, just until they get to a certain size, like maybe half the size of your thumb something like that. And then you know they’re shedding less and less frequently as they get older, but they’re trying to like it’s like it’s a it’s a sprint to get as big as you can so you don’t get eaten, right, you know what I mean. And then once they get to a certain size, then they’re a little safer and they’re only gonna shed a few times a year.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: So when you’re what’s the most valuable one you can catch? And I got another question for you, What the hell’s this? Like, I know what a soft shell is. He just explained it. But that’s good for you or bad for you. That’s gotta be good for you, right.

00:25:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, So soft shells are good for us. You know, I can sell them for a bunch of money individually. They’re like a delicacy, you know where we’re at. But the best soft shell crabs I get are crabs that I catch as a peeler and then I put into tanks and then I monitor the tanks and then pull them out as a as like a perfect soft crab because they’re.

00:25:37
Speaker 2: A little bit like a semi aquaculture deal.

00:25:39
Speaker 4: Yeah something like that.

00:25:40
Speaker 2: You know.

00:25:41
Speaker 4: So I got like tanks and all that where I I bring them in and put them in the tank and then you know, check on them like every couple of hours, because.

00:25:48
Speaker 2: Once every couple of hours.

00:25:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, like once a crab sheds, uh, you know, only have like two hours to get it before it’s you know, too hard to be a soft crab, too soft to be a hard crab.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: It’s ours.

00:26:01
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Oh yeah, dude. Like when we get these peeler runs, we’re up all night, you know, we’re up checking tanks.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: I got like.

00:26:07
Speaker 4: Cameras in my shedding tanks and all so I can see when they’re shedding and all that stuff.

00:26:12
Speaker 1: Wait, yeah, dude, I mean it’s they’re not like synchronized though, is there a way to synchronize them.

00:26:17
Speaker 4: They’re not necessarily synchronized, but I’ve noticed that there is definitely cycles where they will all shed at one time.

00:26:27
Speaker 2: It’s kind of weird, and I don’t know exactly what it is.

00:26:29
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of people claim moon phase, a lot of people claim tied all this kind of stuff. But you know, they’re in an isolated tank. You know, it’s not like I’m keeping them in a live box. They’re in an isolated tank, and they’re still somehow kind of all in the same cycle and a lot in a lot of ways. It’s kind of weird, Like I don’t even know what they can man for like, yeah, every two hours?

00:26:53
Speaker 2: Are you serious? Yeah?

00:26:54
Speaker 4: Man?

00:26:55
Speaker 2: How many those how many of those things? Unless let’s just I don’t want to ask you question, like like how much is in bank account?

00:27:00
Speaker 1: But how many those things you can how many putting in a tank at a time.

00:27:04
Speaker 4: I mean I just built new tanks this year, but I mean I can put a couple of hundred in a tank.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:27:10
Speaker 4: So I usually have different tanks and as they’re in different stages of shedding, I will move them into different tanks because they will kill each other, you know. So if you have one that’s too remember house at a white sign earlier. It’s got that white line, so you know that crab still got a couple of days until it sheds. But especially the immature females are the meanest. Like if you have them in a tank as a white sign, she’s too early with a bunch of males that are going to shed, she’ll just go around and kill them all, you know, eat thember kill them. They just kill them. I don’t, they don’t. They don’t eat them. They just kill them. They don’t really eat when they’re going to shed. Like we know people always like, what do you feed them in the tanks. We don’t feed them anything. They well, I’ve put different stuff in there just to see if they’ll eat it, and they never do. The only thing they’ll kill and eat is each other sometimes.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: So if you when you go in and get a when you go into when you’re out in that neck of the world and you go into and you see in a restaurant soft shell crab, there’s a better chance that some dude halfs that thing and a monitored that thing in a tank, yeah, and plucked it at just the right moment then there is that you caught it in a pot.

00:28:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we do catch them in the pots, but.

00:28:18
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of times they’re pretty beat up, you know, and they don’t make it too you know, be in a live soft crab or something like that. A lot of times those ones will go to fit either fish bait or be cleaned and frozen, you know, sold as a frozen soft crab.

00:28:33
Speaker 5: God because you know, you pull up a pot and you got one soft.

00:28:37
Speaker 4: We try to be really careful with them, you know, like if I pull a pot, you know, I can usually tell which ones, you know, if there’s a soft crab and there as soon as it breaks the surface, and if there is.

00:28:45
Speaker 2: You know, I’m going to open up the pot.

00:28:48
Speaker 4: I’m going to try to you know, jimmy the other crabs around and reach up in there and try to get her out of there, you know, without her getting tore up, because that pot is the surface and it’s game on. All them crabs are just locked onto each other and they’re.

00:29:00
Speaker 2: You know, oh yeah, so like they don’t know what’s going on.

00:29:03
Speaker 4: They’re all, yeah, they just get stressed and they’re all fighting each other. So but like they see a soft crab in there, and they’re just you know what I mean, it’s like, oh no, they just killed ten bucks. It’s a bummer.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: So tell me, like, because this is a lot of this is new to me, walk through.

00:29:23
Speaker 2: The different crabs.

00:29:24
Speaker 1: You Okay, so there’s there’s just there’s gotta be somewhere in here.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: We’ll start with this. There’s like the big old male, hard ass shell that’s like a crab.

00:29:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mean like they’re kind of the different grades. Yeah, yeah, all right, So on my boat, we’re calling crabs like shorting them. We call it calling into we got extra larch males, right, and then we have.

00:29:47
Speaker 1: Them and that’d be like what like if you go to if you’re steaming crabs, dumping them out on the table, and everybody’s picking crabs and eating them, that’s who they’re eating.

00:29:55
Speaker 4: Well, if you got you know, if you just spent a bunch of money, if you spent one hundred and fiftywo hundred hours, it.

00:29:59
Speaker 2: Does Okay, Yeah, that’s the high grade.

00:30:02
Speaker 4: That’s the highest grade crab.

00:30:03
Speaker 5: It’s like, uh, you know the xls and the.

00:30:06
Speaker 2: Jumbos, how big are they point to point those you know.

00:30:09
Speaker 4: I’ll call mine at like six and three quarter inches big. That’s big, you know.

00:30:13
Speaker 1: And and that’s an expensive high dollar.

00:30:16
Speaker 4: But you know, we don’t we’re not catching much of those. So like, for instance, we might catch you know, like the other day we have thirty bushel of crabs. Two bushel of those were exls.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: Okay, so that’s one grade.

00:30:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s like top tier.

00:30:27
Speaker 2: That’s what I’m looking for.

00:30:28
Speaker 4: You know. I try to take as good a care of them as I possibly do.

00:30:32
Speaker 2: It makes you most happy, yeah, exactly.

00:30:34
Speaker 4: I love seeing a big, nice, big flat crab come with them up in the pot, and then we have our number ones.

00:30:41
Speaker 2: Monkey back up one see. Yeah, what’s that big ass crab worth?

00:30:45
Speaker 4: I sew them at my place live a hundred bucks a dozen oka, and I could get more. I mean in the times of the year when we have like the really big giant crabs, like you just see them, You’re like, holy smokes, that’s a giant.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: You know.

00:30:58
Speaker 4: I get one hundred fifty bucks a dozen, but we might get two dozen a day.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: People are buying those to throw down like on a nice yeah party dinner kind of thing like that.

00:31:09
Speaker 4: At you know, people are like one hundred and.

00:31:11
Speaker 5: Fifty bucks A doesnen that’s insane.

00:31:13
Speaker 4: You know what.

00:31:13
Speaker 5: I’ve never been stuck with one single time one hundred.

00:31:16
Speaker 4: And fifty dollars dozen crabs, man like the first to go.

00:31:19
Speaker 2: I mean, people line up to go, try to pay one hundred fifty bucks. But they comment on it.

00:31:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, everybody’s got something to say about it.

00:31:24
Speaker 4: And it’s kind of funny because like there’s some people that are just like in a position to do that, and there’s other people that like it’s almost like Maryland Brad.

00:31:34
Speaker 2: It’s almost like bragging, right, people.

00:31:35
Speaker 4: Like I paid one hundred and fifty bucks. You know these I paid one hundred fifty bucks. It does for these ones, you know what I mean, I knew a guy to get.

00:31:41
Speaker 2: Crabs like, so it’s expensive, but they sell.

00:31:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like you can’t go into a restaurant and get crabs that are that great, even if you’re paying more.

00:31:49
Speaker 2: Like those are the crabs.

00:31:50
Speaker 4: We call them the the Noah Guy crabs, you know, because really you got to know a guy to get crabs like that, you know what I mean. Okay, So then we have our Number ones, which is like the primary that’s the biomass I want to target is your number ones and that is your we call them at five and three quarters to six and three quarters.

00:32:10
Speaker 5: But that’s your like market sized crab.

00:32:13
Speaker 2: Huh.

00:32:14
Speaker 4: That’s what I’m shooting for is to get the most amount of those the bread and butter. That’s the bread and butter crab. That’s I got good margins on all those crabs. They live pretty good and they fill up baskets, you know. There, that’s the large you know, and that’s the crabs that you’re probably going to see at a crab feast or something if it’s just your buddies, you know. Yeah, and then the next tier would bember and those are going for how much it does? I think right now I’m at seventy dollars a dozen on them, and like four hundred bucks a bushel, which is six dozen.

00:32:45
Speaker 2: Crabs hundred bucks of bushel.

00:32:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, it costs a lot to catch the well.

00:32:50
Speaker 2: No, I’m not. I’m not hacking on the market.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: Just one time we went out we had I don’t know how many got we had enough guys in the boat that we.

00:32:57
Speaker 2: Went out with one of them onlines.

00:33:01
Speaker 5: Is that what you’re when you were filmed sick in your hunt?

00:33:03
Speaker 2: I think I said we had like a bushel. Yeah it was cool. Yeah, yeah, it was no joke. I mean, but pull up a bushel. Yeah.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: So that’s four hundred bucks for the crabs. Yeah, in today’s price as well.

00:33:12
Speaker 4: Yeah for yeah, for me, I mean a lot of places are a lot more and some places are cheaper.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, got it.

00:33:18
Speaker 4: I never claim to have the cheapest crabs.

00:33:20
Speaker 1: And those go to Are you you have restaurant clients?

00:33:25
Speaker 4: No, not anymore. I I used to.

00:33:27
Speaker 2: That’s all.

00:33:28
Speaker 4: I sell all my stuff direct to consumer now, but that’s very uncommon, I know.

00:33:33
Speaker 1: But within that isn’t that direct consumer? There’s no like, there’s no consumer for you. That just happens to like, use some crab in a restaurant. It’s like people taking it home to eat it.

00:33:45
Speaker 2: You know, they can do whatever they want with them.

00:33:49
Speaker 4: But they’re priced out of being middlemanned. And that’s almost a little bit of that’s on purpose, you know what I mean. So it’s at a price point where you’re not going to have somebody. If somebody were to be buying those crabs for a restaurant, there would be no margin. Differently, Yeah, you know, I’ve had people that have restaurants or something like that, and they’ll come and pay whatever because they you know, they want to be like, oh yeah, we got crabs from the crab guy, you know what I mean, on YouTube or whatever.

00:34:17
Speaker 1: Just yeah, so the way like just the you’ve developed a certain market, you serve a certain clientele, or you’re just out of the restaurant business and you’re selling.

00:34:26
Speaker 2: Two people serving food to their friends and families.

00:34:29
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yep, yep. And you know I used to sell to restaurants and things like that, but once you go to selling your own crabs, you almost get blacklisted in a way, you know what I mean. So you know, I had been selling to restaurants and purveyors for like seven years, you know, and I’d built good reputation. You have a lot of contact with them exactly. So you go to sell your own and they don’t want to buy from you because, yeah, your competition, but also they’re always going to assume that you’re going to be skimming the better grade off. That’s really the big thing, you know what I mean, which like I truthfully never did because I was, like, you know, I was in a position when I started where like there was no market for me, so I had to like be you know, I had no family in market. I had you know, I had nothing, so I had to like have a little bit of an edge on the other guys. So like I always I never did that, and I always sold like you know, I was like a tryhard I was trying to sell like a better product than the other guys, which I know now like kind.

00:35:33
Speaker 2: Of screws up the market status quo, you know what I mean.

00:35:35
Speaker 4: But also at the times, like I did what I had to do to get a foot in. But yeah, I mean I sell everything direct to consumer now, which is I say, it’s like three times the money for five times the work, you know, I mean, cause you’re it used to be I’d catch crabs and you drop them off to the done. Yeah, yeah, you know, I’d be driving around the truck for two three hours, you know, after work.

00:35:59
Speaker 5: But it’s like I didn’t have to worry about it.

00:36:01
Speaker 4: I tacked up a you know, a ticket, I picked up a check on Monday, you know, and we we’re just throwing crabs in the baskets.

00:36:08
Speaker 2: The more they die, the more they buy, right, you know what I mean.

00:36:11
Speaker 4: But now I’m like, oh my gosh, like we got you know, like every crab goes in the basket, up right.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: I mean we’ve always tried to do that.

00:36:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, ye, we’ve always tried to you know, take good care of the product obviously, but you know, it’s just kind of the joke. It’s like now I’m like, now I catch them on a Monday or Tuesday, and I’m like, all right, now, I got to keep this thing alive till Saturday. We’re only open two days you’re at the retail spot.

00:36:31
Speaker 1: So okay, So we got the XLS is that what you call the YEP excels?

00:36:35
Speaker 2: And you got the bread and Butter crab.

00:36:36
Speaker 4: Number one, my favorite crab, and then we got number twos, which are going to be your smaller crab.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: And this doesn’t matter like these are at this point. These are all males, Yes, all males.

00:36:49
Speaker 4: And that’s gonna be like, well before the sixteenth five inch crab to five and three quarter inch crab.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: You just know it when you’re looking at it, you’re not putting.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: The most part, for the most part. I mean we do have sticks. Obviously, we’re putting them to the stick and all when we got to, but you know, for the most part, I mean I’ve seen enough crabs, I can pretty much just call them by eye. So we got number two’s. Those are gonna be our smaller crabs. But so remember number two’s number ones in excels. These are all crabs that are better grade. They’re all hard, okay, So like we squeeze them, shells are hard. Crabs will meat and then we’ll have light crabs. We call them trash crabs in the industry. Another grade, which is what we call a straight call, which means, if it’s legal, it goes in the same basket. All the same sizes get mixed right on a straight call. But it’s going to be we call them lights when we sell them. In the industry, we call them trash crabs. So it’ll be a straight call trash crab, which is thesed. We need a chart.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: It’s because it’s a it’s a size issue.

00:37:56
Speaker 5: Is something different, it’s something different.

00:37:57
Speaker 4: So it’s when you squeeze.

00:37:59
Speaker 2: Them, can be a trash crab.

00:38:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s when we squeeze him, right, And so they’ve we can and we can tell that they’ve shed, but they haven’t yet filled their new shell out.

00:38:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. But so even if he was.

00:38:10
Speaker 4: If he’s eight inches, he’s going in the light basket. If he’s five and a quarter, he’s going in the same basket.

00:38:16
Speaker 2: I got you. That’s then they’re all straight same value. It’s just a per pound or whatever.

00:38:21
Speaker 4: Dollar a crab.

00:38:22
Speaker 2: Baby, Oh that’s how that goes.

00:38:24
Speaker 4: Ye yeah, yeah, so we don’t Okay, so I don’t keep a lot of lights. Usually you pitch.

00:38:29
Speaker 5: Him back, yeah, which is very uncommon.

00:38:33
Speaker 4: But also it’s because I don’t have I’m my own market for lights, you know what I mean. And I try to you know, I try to keep the value of the product up. And I have some customers that prefer light crabs. Right, They’re easy to pick, they’re super cheap.

00:38:46
Speaker 2: You’re great for.

00:38:47
Speaker 4: Kids and things like that. But my kind of outlook on it is like, you can only kill a crab one time, right, sure, and I would much rather throw that crab back and give him a chance to kill him when he’s worth.

00:39:00
Speaker 2: Let them be all, yeah.

00:39:01
Speaker 4: Ten dollars crab instead of a dollar crab.

00:39:04
Speaker 1: But if I came to you begging for a basket lights, you’d oblige me.

00:39:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we they don’t live real good to walk in either, so we’ll usually keep like two bushel on a Friday, just because I have some regulars that like they prefer those crafts.

00:39:18
Speaker 1: So no one you’re gonna sell over the weekend. On a Friday, you’d keep something.

00:39:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, I’d keep a couple, but I you know, I’m not keeping I ain’t gonna keep ten bushel of them on a Monday. You’re just gonna kill him for nothing. You know, there’s no sense in killing him for no reason. And even like taking them to a picking house or something like that. I mean, what are you gonna unload him for, you know nothing, twenty dollars fifteen twenty dollars for a bushel of crabs. I mean, it seemed to me it’s a little counterintuitive when you try to, you know, catch themselves.

00:39:49
Speaker 2: If you let two of them, if you let that, whole bush will go.

00:39:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and two of them, two or three of them come back to you as ones seles or whatever.

00:39:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was worth it.

00:39:58
Speaker 2: It was your money, right, Okay. So that’s another grade.

00:40:02
Speaker 4: And then we got females, and then we sort females just into mediums and largest. We don’t get a ton of them, little tiny mature females. You can only keep a female if it’s a mature female, and there’s no size limit across the carapace, you know, no point to point limit size on a female crab. It’s just if it’s a mature female crab, you can take it.

00:40:23
Speaker 2: So not everybody, but overboard.

00:40:25
Speaker 1: There’s the mesh on the pot such that it’s it’s already sorting itself.

00:40:29
Speaker 4: So in a lot of ways, yes, So crabs, male crabs under five inches are going overboard most of the time. Lights are going overboard. Immature females that are not peelers are going overboard, although that’s kind of uncommon any light females. We don’t keep any light females because remember how I said the females, their shells get harder twice as fast, but they’re twice as empty inside, you know. But yes, in pots, I have different mesh size wire yeah. Uh. And that does a lot of the calling forests.

00:41:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:41:06
Speaker 4: And then we also have call rings, which are plastic rings in the sides of the pots.

00:41:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:41:11
Speaker 4: And so I have different size call rings that I open up at different times of the year, you know what I mean when, because it like right now there we have that mail shed early this year, and so there’s just a load of crabs. But there’s a load of these cookie cutter like four and three quarter and five to five and a half inch little mails and so I have you know that’s a legal crab, right, you know, five and a half inch crab, a legal crab. But I don’t want to dump thirty of those in the box, and they have to go through thirty of them each pot. You know, it’s just it’s going to slow already down. You’re getting bad up, so you use the right rings. Yet I put bigger rings in there so i’ll you know, I can let a legal crab out, but I’m not I’m not really interested in catching two. So I’d rather catch a pot with three ones than a pot with ten twos. You know, any day, it’s less work to call through them. You know, they’re not getting pinched up. Like little crabs will kill big crabs in the pot. And once little crabs go in, big crabs don’t want to go in there, you know what I mean.

00:42:09
Speaker 5: Like big crabs trap big crabs. Little trap little.

00:42:11
Speaker 4: Crabs trap little crabs, and females kill everything. They they’ll they don’t trap any males, yeah, mature females. They usually run together in a pack, so you’ll pull pot’s got thirty.

00:42:21
Speaker 2: Of them, which they killing males.

00:42:24
Speaker 4: Male goes in there, he’s dead, dude, They’re they’re gonna tear him up.

00:42:28
Speaker 2: Gole man. You’d like to ask him why they’re doing it. Competition or something.

00:42:32
Speaker 4: I don’t know, man, they’re just vicious. They’re they’re unassuming, you know what I mean. I think they lure them in there and then kill them. The kind of been dead, I guess there or something. I don’t know, daddy issues, I guess.

00:42:44
Speaker 2: So these dudes, like does it work for you?

00:42:47
Speaker 1: Do you got the same guys all the time or is it just like a are they like freelance camera guys?

00:42:51
Speaker 2: You just go grab one or grab one and.

00:42:53
Speaker 4: A lot of ways they’re like freelance camera guys. A lot of times they’re like freelance camera guys. But like right now, I’m very fortunate to have a good crew, which you know, some of these guys have been with me for a while, multiple years. That’s pretty uncommon in a lot of ways. You know, I’ve done a lot of years where you were just trying to get anybody that’ll show just warm bodies, you know, and it’s it’s it’s honest as it’s getting a lot of guys out of the industry. Is that the extreme lack of help the rising cost of operation. But you know, it’s just it’s a pain to try to train a new guy.

00:43:30
Speaker 2: You know, you got your way, you like it, and they did it on another boat.

00:43:36
Speaker 4: That’s yeah, but there’s only one way to do it’s the way, you know what I mean, on my boat at least. So I’ve put a lot of time into trying to dial the system, you know, and make basically the system a like almost like an assembly line, right with interchangeable parts is, you know, and people are the parts. So I try to make every job on the boat, every step something that basically a monkey could do if he’d be you know what I mean, skilled guy.

00:44:08
Speaker 1: And then all the guys learn the different roles and so if you jump into blank roll or whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:13
Speaker 4: So they kind of work their way up the totem pole. They’re going to start as usually a stacker, so they’re going to be pulling the pots out of that hot water tank, stacking them three high, pushing them to the back of the boat.

00:44:23
Speaker 5: It’s kind of the low man on the totem pole job.

00:44:26
Speaker 4: And then I would say, depending on the boat in the area, your second guy is either going to be your call man, you know, the guy that’s sorting crabs, or your shaker. For me, like in the upper Bay, it’s always been a shaker, but like you go to other areas and they regard their second mate or their first mate as their caller, you know, because they’re in charge of their right.

00:44:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:44:50
Speaker 1: Like then yeah, I don’t know, based on based on me knowing nothing, I would think that that would be like the right that’d be the important job.

00:44:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is, you you know, And when I sold the market, it was a more important to me. It was more important to have a more skilled guy on.

00:45:06
Speaker 2: There because you were giving him a second look.

00:45:09
Speaker 4: Right, But now you know I have I can afford a little bit of buffer in that area because you know, we’re the only ones touching the crabs and they’re going to call them on the boat, and then my guys at the crabs stand are also gonna as well, exactly, And so that’ll afford me some days. If I got a mix mixed mass crew or you know, something like that, I know, well maybe I could pull you know, if we got to make up some time. Maybe I could pull my guy off the call box, put him on the rail to shake, you know, put a guy that maybe doesn’t know quite as much on there to just to get through them. And then you know, I’ll just let the guys of the stand no, you know, I’ll tag them and say, you know, just pay attention when you go through these particular attention to make sure grades right on him.

00:45:48
Speaker 2: What’s the average age of a crew guy in the in the industry, In the industry, I don’t know, man.

00:45:55
Speaker 4: I mean, you’ll have you got a lot of high school kids, college age kids. That’s what I have mostly. But then also there’s some straight lifers we call them, you know what I mean, guys that are you know, they look like they’re one hundred, but they’re probably like thirty five. Well maybe you someday, yeah, probaly, I mean, I’m definitely a lifer. But I mean, you know, for the crew, it tends to attract not all the time, but you know, it is common that it attracts a certain crowd of folks. Yeah, and maybe don’t already have a job, you know, I mean, maybe they got more toes and teeth a lot of times they may have a habit that you know, requires them to make quick money with physical labor, you know what I mean. It doesn’t require bringing your own equipment except yourself.

00:46:42
Speaker 1: You know, because you because you allow so much visibility through through video and other stuff, you lost so much visibility into your how you get your.

00:46:55
Speaker 2: Product and sell your product.

00:46:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, do your crew guys come to you.

00:47:00
Speaker 4: Because they want a job? Yeah, they do. And it’s kind of funny because like I used to have endless problems with getting crew. Now I have endless amounts of people that want to help. But as the stuff online has grown, I keep the circle a lot tighter. You ain’t getting a job on the boat because mostly just some guy that wants to say he did it, or some guy that wants to you know, I’ll almost paranoid, like you know, they’re they’re gonna want to try to sue you or something. You know, Like, yeah, I’m very guarded. So like, if you want a job on the boat, I either have to be real desperate, or you gotta know somebody that’s already helping me or something like that. I do a fair amount of vetting, you know, just because you know that or at some kid that just wants to put it all over snapchat story that.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: He and he’s not gonna be any good anyway.

00:47:51
Speaker 4: So I try to find seek out crew members that are like not interested in what, you know, not not interested in the in video and whatever else.

00:48:00
Speaker 2: They’re not trying to be like a crab exactly.

00:48:02
Speaker 4: They’re there for the income, not the outcome, you know.

00:48:04
Speaker 1: I mean, well, let’s talk about the infrastructure minute. So you said you got to you got a trout line boat that.

00:48:11
Speaker 2: You keep for crew guys to use or whatever. Yeah, you got your main you got you got one main boat.

00:48:17
Speaker 4: Yeah we’re building another one right now, but yes, one main one that we’re running all.

00:48:21
Speaker 2: Them tanks, retail location.

00:48:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, fifteen hundred crab pots sitting in my front yard.

00:48:28
Speaker 2: You’re not here.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: So that’s what I’m saying, Like it’s got to be I mean, I don’t know I’m getting. I mean, like we’re for capital investment.

00:48:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, it ain’t worth it in a lot of ways.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: You got for capital investment?

00:48:41
Speaker 1: Is it more or less than buying like a sweet house in your town?

00:48:46
Speaker 2: I mean it would be.

00:48:51
Speaker 4: Probably not everybody’s rigs created equal, But I mean we could just go through some kind of numbers on on, you know, in terms of equipment. So you know, I got a commercial nine hundred pot license.

00:49:03
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you gotta buy that thing.

00:49:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bought mine a lot cheaper because it was a long time ago. But I mean now, I would say that license is probably worth thirty thousand dollars. And then you got to pay two thousand bucks a year to hold it to the state. So we got like thirty grand there. And then you know, if you were like my boat, it’s not worth a load of money. The new boat I’m building is you know, the new boat that I’m building that I probably will never hopefully have to build another one. By the time it’s all said and done, it’ll be like quarter million bucks.

00:49:35
Speaker 5: Crab pots fifty two dollars apiece finished out.

00:49:38
Speaker 4: So I got fifteen hundred of those. I have another commercial license, a three hundred pot license that I hold, so that one’s probably worth ten thousand bucks fifteen dollars.

00:49:47
Speaker 2: You hold it now.

00:49:49
Speaker 4: We will run them both on the boat sometimes when there’s limits, because you can keep two limits with two licensees. You know, we got a retail location that I own, you know, commercial property that I owned with a little stand on it. We got refrigerator trailers, we got trucks, you know, boats, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of infrastructure.

00:50:12
Speaker 2: But it’s stuff you just accumulated though.

00:50:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s mostly stuff that I built out of whatever was around, you know, because the thing is with crab and it’s like the margins ain’t there too to go and you know, buy all the stuff and just go.

00:50:27
Speaker 5: You’d like it would take you forever to the money backs.

00:50:29
Speaker 1: So you get something, you make a little money used to buy parts, yeah, come assembled together, and then all these years later, what like twelve years later or something.

00:50:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sit back, you’re like.

00:50:39
Speaker 4: Damn, yeah, you got the whole deal. But it’s like it’s because you know it one day and to start to I mean that wouldn’t never make any sense, yeah, exactly. So it’s like and see, and that’s another reasons generational. A lot of times it’s because these guys, you know, the sun gets into it and he doesn’t have to go buy a one hundred thousand dollars boat and he doesn’t have to buy a license, you know, yeah, or if he does, you know, know, they have a lot of that back end infrastructure. They have markets already in line. You know, some guys there is some guys out there fighting a good fight and just kind of build it out. But it’s very uncommon these days just because it’s such a grind, like you have to reinvest every bit of capital, every bit of work. You know, you have to make up for your deficit with just basically unpaid labor of yourself.

00:51:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s a cattle ranching in the West where you have this like diminishing number of generational ranching families. Yeah, but there’s a romance to having a ranch. So now people make money in tech, they make money in the oil. Yeah, they make money. Oh really.

00:51:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, they’re like, oh, I want to retire and go crabbing.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: And I’m like, that’s the thing in crabbing, the retire from And then they’re like, buy a ranch.

00:51:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, identify as a rancher.

00:51:48
Speaker 1: But the ranch doesn’t make money and they made their money elsewhere, but they like get to pretend to be a rancher. I was gonna say, in crabbing, there’s there’s that’s not a relaxing occupation people.

00:52:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, but there’s a misconception. People people like romanticized, you know. Yeah, And I’m like, dude, you’re lucky to you know, crabbers don’t retire like you’re lucky to retire as you know from crabb and they die. Oh yeah, no, they think, you know, they think of the pictures of the sunsets and the you know, the sound of the engines going out.

00:52:20
Speaker 2: They’re romanticized.

00:52:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean like, meanwhile, I’m like half those people you’ve seen, they’re they’re freaking high, you know what I mean, Like they’re going out to get their butt kicked, you know what i mean.

00:52:29
Speaker 1: Seriously, I had no idea people to think that that would be like a like a like a quaint occupation.

00:52:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it’s kind of it’s like there’s not many guys getting into it and a lot of the guys getting into it or like guys like that.

00:52:42
Speaker 2: Last No, I we actually.

00:52:45
Speaker 4: Don’t mind it because I’m like, they go out and buy a bunch of nice stuff. You know, they’re buying all new pots, they’re paying whatever, they’re just writing checks for it. And we always kind of jokeer like keep an eye on that one because two years we’re buying our I’m a biasorraic I promise, you know, we’re like making vets for like two years. Boat could be mine, you know what I mean. I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna go get his number because he’s gonna need that license and exactly half because they’re gonna be like this is a hot disaster. You know. I’m best way to you know, become a millionaire crab in store with two million you know what I mean, star with two million bucks, you can be one millionaire crabber, you know what I mean. Uh yeah, it’s kind of it’s interesting, like it’s a bunch of you know, not everybody, but it’s a lot of you know, rich kids or you know, guys that think they’re.

00:53:33
Speaker 5: Gonna retire and get into crabbing.

00:53:36
Speaker 4: And it’s just funny to watch because it’s like they go in there and they’re all like, oh yeah, not gonna let any push me around. I’m gonna be the guy. And it’s like, all right, buddy, good luck.

00:53:45
Speaker 1: You gotta just like you gotta just be the kind of person that could just work though.

00:53:49
Speaker 2: Dude, Yeah, you gotta.

00:53:51
Speaker 5: I’m telling you, man, you gotta be a little stubborn like you know it.

00:53:55
Speaker 4: Literally. That’s why I didn’t mind the muskie fishing yesterday because I was like, I’m literally I.

00:53:59
Speaker 2: Make a living doing this, doing the same thing.

00:54:01
Speaker 4: Over and over and over, expecting the expecting a different result.

00:54:05
Speaker 5: Like literally the definition of insanity.

00:54:08
Speaker 4: Is grabbing you know what I mean? Like you you’ll go crazy, like and I am a little crazy like you just you gotta we joke, but you gotta be a little nutty to you know. Ye just go do that.

00:54:22
Speaker 1: But how long do you think you’ll do it?

00:54:24
Speaker 4: I’m really trying to set myself up to be able to do it as long as I want to and as long as my body will allow.

00:54:30
Speaker 1: But does it get like do you how do you thirty? Okay, so let’s jump like when you’re forty? Yeah, are you still on the boat every day?

00:54:41
Speaker 4: That’s my goal really, which is kind of.

00:54:43
Speaker 1: The lot of guys out and then you’re just then you’re just like the kind of dude sitting back like with calculat.

00:54:49
Speaker 4: Really I like doing it. I like just keep you love doing it? Yeah, I love doing it. I Yeah, I love you.

00:54:56
Speaker 1: Don’t aspire to you don’t aspire to get off the water because your system’s so dialed and you got such a good marketing apparatus.

00:55:05
Speaker 4: My my goal is to not get off of the water. Like my goal is to be able to do it. But also, you know, I’d like to be in a spot where, you know, if I have a family someday, or you know, I have health issues or something. I’m married, Oh you’re married, Oh yeah, but no kids.

00:55:24
Speaker 2: Not yet?

00:55:25
Speaker 4: No, But I have things in place where like I don’t have to go out there if I don’t necessarily want to, or you know what I mean, Like just in terms of like, you know, a lot of guys there’s no other option.

00:55:36
Speaker 5: Man, Like they’re they’re they are literally dying out there.

00:55:38
Speaker 4: They’re in their sixties and seventies because they’ve never set anything up on the back end, and or they just really want to do it, you know. But a lot of them like they they got no other option, man, so they go until they can’t. You know, a lot of them have health issues and things like that. And I’ve grown up being a younger guy, significantly younger guy in the industry. I’ve grown up and seen a lot of that. And I’ve seen a lot of these older guys get sick and then getting hit hard spots because they got nothing. They got no insurance, they got nothing else. They can’t go to work. You know, they suffer, their family suffers. So like, my goal was always to get it to a point where like I love the water, I love being out there, I love crabbing. But if something, you know, my body, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to run my body into oblivion just to have to pay my mortgage.

00:56:25
Speaker 2: When’d your first run into your wife?

00:56:29
Speaker 4: My wife is actually from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I met her because my mom and stepdad and moved to Lancaster at the end of my junior or of high school. They moved there and I was in eighteen, so I had to move with them. I lived there in Cornfields for a couple of months til I turned eighteen, and then moved back to Maryland as soon as I could.

00:56:50
Speaker 2: You met her when you were there.

00:56:51
Speaker 4: She was the neighbor.

00:56:52
Speaker 2: Okay, well she think of the whole crab and things. She like it.

00:56:55
Speaker 4: She likes it. Yeah, she go out on the boat with you and stuff occasionally. Kind of funny because like you know, when I met her when we were like seventeen, I was like, yeah, I’m moving back to Maryland, like, you know, I’m gonna go be a crabber.

00:57:08
Speaker 5: And she’s like, what the heck is that even me? And then we ended up getting married like ten years later.

00:57:12
Speaker 2: You know what. It was just like it wasn’t part of the program.

00:57:14
Speaker 4: She was just like what yeah, yeah, yeah, no, dude. It was a kind of a wrench in mind.

00:57:18
Speaker 2: Well, she don’t mind you being in that business.

00:57:21
Speaker 4: No, no, she don’t mind it, but you know, but she don’t mind it. But she also, you know, she got into this understanding with an understanding that you’re married to it, you know what I mean, Like you marry me, you marry the life.

00:57:32
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, you’re pretty clear about what you’re going to do. Yeah yeah.

00:57:35
Speaker 4: And she’s always known me as that, and so you know, she’s she’s always been very supportive of it, which is great. That’s important, I think because it’s a lifestyle.

00:57:45
Speaker 2: Man.

00:57:46
Speaker 4: I mean, like I said this here this week is the first time I’ve ever been away.

00:57:49
Speaker 2: In the middle of something that’s weird.

00:57:51
Speaker 1: We’re literally meaning some of the guys were last they were talking about you were on FaceTime or something with your career, trying through some.

00:57:58
Speaker 4: Issues the middle of like the fishing tournament.

00:58:04
Speaker 2: There.

00:58:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the first time my crew’s ever gone and anybody’s ever gone on my boat without me.

00:58:10
Speaker 1: What time you guys hit the water when you’re out four thirty four thirty am?

00:58:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, you usually meet at four thirty. Uh. Sometimes when it’s like stupid hot, we’ll go earlier later in the season, like October. It’s you know, we’re meeting it because the sunrise doesn’t sunrises later. We’ll meet later, and we can only crab from half an hour before sunrise eight hours after that we.

00:58:32
Speaker 2: Can haul gear by regulation, by.

00:58:33
Speaker 4: Regulation, yeah, because if not, then guys would just go out there fish as many pots as they you know, they go fish one thousand pots in a day if they could go all day and night.

00:58:43
Speaker 2: Oh huh. That’s interesting. She keeps it a little bit humane too, for.

00:58:48
Speaker 4: The crew, I guess.

00:58:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, here’s here’s the last couple questions. Just last thing I want to explore with you, like you’re thinking about you if we’re talking about okay, you’re forty years old. Whatever is is like, is that resource so well managed that you can kind of comfortably plan on a future of crabbing, or is there anxiety about the resource and from from management issues, from disease issues, from climate issues, you know, I mean, or is it like there’s always been crabs.

00:59:23
Speaker 2: There are always be crabs. They’re very you know, they’re robust.

00:59:27
Speaker 4: No, there’s definitely management concerns, which is what has pushed me to diversify my business in the way that I have, really with the social media and with the retail and all those kinds of things. You know, so like and I like that you said, not just the resource itself.

00:59:44
Speaker 5: You know, some people don’t think we’re just like pirates out.

00:59:46
Speaker 4: There, but like you know, with the management of it, with this and that, with environmental and ecological changes and all those kinds of things, is all factor into like what you’re saying. And yes, I have concerned with that, you know a lot of the laws and things like that, and the fluctuating crab populations and outside market too.

01:00:05
Speaker 2: You know.

01:00:05
Speaker 4: That’s why I’m gone to sell in my own because it was kind of like farming before, where I didn’t set the product or the price for my own product. I wanted to have a little bit more control over the price of my own product.

01:00:15
Speaker 2: Is that a voweltile market yeah, definitely.

01:00:18
Speaker 4: I mean because now like shipping’s gotten so good that you know, a lot of our eighty percent of the crabs sold Maryland are coming out of Louisiana.

01:00:25
Speaker 2: And then our crab.

01:00:27
Speaker 4: Meat market, you know, the pick meat is overseas. You know, a lot of that is a different species of crab that’s just like our crab that’s being picked and shipped over from overseas.

01:00:38
Speaker 5: Shipped to you, not to I mean I don’t sell no, no, not you.

01:00:42
Speaker 1: But you mean, like you’re in Maryland, you think you’re in like blue crab country.

01:00:46
Speaker 4: You’re probably eating a venezuela and blue swimmer crab. What if you eat if you buy so you.

01:00:51
Speaker 1: Don’t know what you’re doing, and you just went into whatever and bought some crab, you’re not even getting crabs from local dudes.

01:00:57
Speaker 2: There’s a chance you are.

01:00:58
Speaker 4: But if that crab cake is less than thirty five dollars, there’s a good chance it’s not from this country. So we you know, in our area right in Maryland, a lot of the Eastern Shore, a lot of those lower grade crabs would all go to picking house, right and then those crabs are getting sold generally by the pound, of the pick and house and then they are picking those crabs by hand and pasteurizing the meat. And then that used to be the crab meat market, right, and so that gave us something to do with every crab that came over the rail. But nowadays it’s not you know, it’s not really like that. So I you know, I wanted the retail spot to be able to kind of control my own market a little bit. You know. My theory is, like I said, you’re gonna only kill crab one time, you may as well get it. Well, it’s worth the most and you kind of have to have value added to the product, I think. So I think the name of the game going forward for the future of the industry is getting the most amount for everything that comes over the rail. And so for me, it’s not only selling the crab, but also the story. So that’s like I said, you can only catch a crab once, you can sell the story time and time again. And it also helps with the marketing of the crab, you know, and all those kinds of things.

01:02:13
Speaker 1: So feasibly in the future, like if you play your cards right, in the future, you could be processing half as many crabs but still making a living.

01:02:26
Speaker 4: That’s what I’m doing now really. I mean, you know, obviously we’re shooting video and things like that, but I’ve kind of it really truly kills me. But I’ve had to dial my operate crab operation to scale it back a little bit. You know, instead of running fifteen hundred posts, we’re running less than a thousand now, which is like super bizarre to me. I’ve never I’ve always just gone, you know, five days a week and ran a load of gear. But now there’s only one of me, you know, and I got a lot of hands, a lot of things that right now that I’m trying to figure out how to do and build.

01:02:59
Speaker 2: I’ve kind of of.

01:03:01
Speaker 4: Lean more into the marketing side of the crabs, you know what i mean, selling less crabs and getting better money for him, kind of premium money for them. But it’s also you know, we sell a really good product and a lot of people want to There’s a certain percentage of people that are less mindful of the price of they know exactly where.

01:03:19
Speaker 2: It’s coming from.

01:03:20
Speaker 4: So we kind of try to tell the story that a lot of transparency as to where your product comes from, what goes into catching that product, and then also giving people, you know, telling the story of the product and the people that catch it and the whole kind of how everything works. And you know, there’s enough people out there that are you know, really interested in that, and they just like a good product. They know our crabs come from Maryland. I don’t buy crabs from out of state, which is a real pain. I know I could make a load more money if I did, but I am just I’m committed to you know, I’m not going to deceive people to try to make a couple extra bucks.

01:03:59
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.

01:04:00
Speaker 4: What kind of the stick that I have is that you know is the transparency part.

01:04:03
Speaker 2: You know, you know where it’s coming from.

01:04:05
Speaker 4: You can see it, like we just did live stream and ship crabs and so like you know, i’d write your name on a crab, you get that crab two, you know a week later.

01:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got buddies, acquaintances, buddies, black cod, salmon, bison, cattle. I could probably go on that have adopted the model you’re talking about of being like here I am. Here’s how I do what I Here’s how I produce my product. You can come out, you can come to my ranch and look at it. You can come on my boat and look at it. Here’s the people that are doing it. There’s this guy, this guy, this guy. We go out. Here’s how we catch what we do, Here’s how we process what we do. You can come visit the damn Kyle if you want. And in the end you buy what you know from people you know. And you saw the whole thing happen.

01:04:55
Speaker 2: Yep.

01:04:56
Speaker 1: And all of them have achieved some level of liberty through through through the transparentity of their operation. They’ve atrieved a level of freedom from the market, meaning oscillating stuff. They have a client tele and it’s a luxury or however you want to look at it, but they have a client tele that’s like, it’s worth a couple of bucks to me to get.

01:05:23
Speaker 2: It from you.

01:05:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, because.

01:05:25
Speaker 1: Because I like how you do it, and I like the things you think about, right, and I like the way you treat everything, and I’ll just pay a couple of bucks more.

01:05:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, And right now, that’s where I’m That’s that’s how I’m making it work.

01:05:37
Speaker 2: You know.

01:05:38
Speaker 4: I don’t know if it’s always going to be like that or where that side of my business is going to go.

01:05:42
Speaker 2: But right now.

01:05:42
Speaker 5: That’s you know, that’s it we’re doing.

01:05:46
Speaker 2: There’s a lot more.

01:05:46
Speaker 4: Work man on the back end, and you I mean you got to be one hundred percent committed to everything, and there’s you know, you’re responsible for every part of that process now, you know, which is a humbling experience. You know. I when I got into it sell my own, I thought like, oh man, all the crab buyers, they make all the.

01:06:01
Speaker 2: Money, you know what I mean. Like, and then you become the guy.

01:06:05
Speaker 4: Selling retail and you’re like, holy crap, I gotta keep these little basherds live all the week. I’m dealing with a bunch more people. I got a retail operation to keep up, you know, Facebook pages to run ads to me.

01:06:17
Speaker 5: You know, it’s I mean, it’s nuts, man.

01:06:19
Speaker 4: It’s like you know, it’s every every part you know of the vertical integration you’re responsible for. You know, which is good in the long run, I think. But it takes a lot of time. There’s a steep learning curve. But it’s funny because as you mentioned, like you can come visit the cow. So my retail spot the crab stand is it’s called Bocking Points Seafood. But I it was just a grass lot, right, So I started, there’s just selling crabs out of the bed of my truck. And I bought this little grass lot for cheap in the next town over, and I put.

01:06:50
Speaker 2: Some gravel down, and then I got a refrigerator trailer.

01:06:52
Speaker 4: I was selling out of that. And now, you know, especially since I’ve kind of leaned into the whole story of it. To build the crab stand, I bought a like a forty one foot like wooden crab boat. It was sunk, and tore it all down and rebuilt, took the engine out, just decked the inside, built a canopy and turned it into like my retail spot, and then I dug a hole in the ground and put the boat into it so it looks like it’s sitting on the waterline. And then we backed their fridge trailer up to it. Because everybody that would come to the crab stand was like had a story about Krabber’s other granddad was a crabber, and you know, they used to buy them off the boat, and everybody wanted to come see the boat, and so that’s not really feasible, but I just thought it’d be cool to like bring the boat to the people.

01:07:36
Speaker 2: So now you can end.

01:07:37
Speaker 4: The boat’s got a good story, you know, we tell the history the family that owned the boat. You know, they’ve come and visited it like they were just really glad to see it, not out to pasture, you know. So it’s a little unique, but it’s one of those little things that people really like, you know what I mean. They like to be able to come and see an actual, real legit Wooden Deltaville built crab boat and then buy crabs off the boat, you know, you know, and take pictures with it and whatever. And it’s a good landmark, you know what I mean. You can’t miss the forty buried in the ground, you know what I mean.

01:08:08
Speaker 1: The only one you get a landmark, it gets education.

01:08:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I have stuff there that I’ve set up with, you know, different kinds of commercial fishing equipment, just that you know, for people to look at and check it out and you know, stuff like that.

01:08:21
Speaker 1: That’s great, man, The whole thing’s cool. So here’s the last question for you. It’s day three of the tournament.

01:08:30
Speaker 2: I don’t want to.

01:08:30
Speaker 1: Get into who’s doing what and who’s getting what day three of the tournament. Every day there’s different rules, different objectives, right, different fish you’re supposed to catch?

01:08:44
Speaker 2: What’s your I’ll tell you what I.

01:08:48
Speaker 1: Think, then you can tell me where this is. Where I’m heading with this. Of all the days of the tournament, today’s rules set is the most exciting to me. Yes days was the least exciting. To Where do you sit?

01:09:04
Speaker 4: I I don’t know the rules for today?

01:09:08
Speaker 2: You better find out?

01:09:09
Speaker 4: Well, right, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve heard like a bunch of different things, so I don’t know exactly what you know?

01:09:14
Speaker 2: What is gospel would be?

01:09:15
Speaker 1: Would be that won only give you a tip, a competitor tip, friendly tip between competitors. Yeah, it would be very wise for you to dig in on the rules for today, yeah before you gead out.

01:09:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no doubt.

01:09:26
Speaker 2: I mean we just days. It’s pretty simple.

01:09:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I mean, well, that’s what I’m saying.

01:09:30
Speaker 2: Like we’ve heard.

01:09:31
Speaker 4: Last I heard, you were still making them up, making them up so you could I still win today.

01:09:37
Speaker 1: Listen, I’m want to be clear about something. I had nothing to do with these rules. How you know that what I’m saying is true? I would never in a million years have made yesterday Yeah?

01:09:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yesterday was tough man that.

01:09:52
Speaker 1: I would never in a million years have made anything to do with muskies.

01:09:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m anti musky. Yeahs.

01:09:59
Speaker 4: I thought about that, but I was like, you know, I get it. We’re you know, we’re at Lake of the Woods and it’s known for muskie. So it’s like people would be bummed if you didn’t involve them in some way. But also if you were to make them like the main course, you know, it would have been a real boring day. It would have been a real radio silence. I mean, yesterday there wasn’t much going.

01:10:18
Speaker 2: On well the evening well yeah, yeah, I.

01:10:22
Speaker 4: Mean so today, could it be anybody’s game that I think.

01:10:28
Speaker 1: That today there’s a lot of point opportunities. Today, it’s a day where there’s a lot of different specialties could come into play, a lot of different approaches and tactics could come into play. And it’s a day where like the kind of guy that can go out and just catch a lot of kinds of fish, it’s his day, right, this is not a specialist day.

01:10:53
Speaker 5: I’m glad to hear that I get a fish in the boat.

01:10:56
Speaker 4: It’s hard to catch like dial on one thing yes on the boat.

01:11:01
Speaker 1: Was yesterday It was like the most specialist of all specialist days. It is a generalist day. And when it comes to hunting and fishing, I’m a generalist.

01:11:13
Speaker 4: Same jack of all trades, master and none.

01:11:16
Speaker 2: That’s what I like to hear.

01:11:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you’re a crab specialist with it. But you’re a generalist and you have a.

01:11:21
Speaker 4: Doctorate in crabbing, but you know a minor and everything else, minor in generals general collecting of crustaceans and other various critters.

01:11:29
Speaker 2: Well, good luck for today.

01:11:30
Speaker 5: Appreciate it you too, man, Thanks for having me.

01:11:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, thanks for coming on next to.

01:11:34
Speaker 4: Finally talk face to face and hang out a little bit.

01:11:36
Speaker 2: You know.

01:11:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate it, and I’m good to hear about crabbing and good to at tonight at the awards ceremony.

01:11:44
Speaker 2: Hope he’ll be the guy with a huge check. Yeah, yeah, actually got a huge check.

01:11:47
Speaker 4: Did you actually you actually got a big check to.

01:11:49
Speaker 2: The actual big check.

01:11:50
Speaker 4: Nice. That’s cool.

01:11:51
Speaker 2: We had to carry that on the plane rolled up.

01:11:53
Speaker 4: Oh nice?

01:11:55
Speaker 1: All right, man, Thanks, stay tuned if you want to find out what happened with the fish Eater classic, stay tuned. It’s it’s it’s gonna be the videos are gonna start dropping on YouTube. Just pay attention. Fish Eater Classic Fishing Tournament filmed up here in beautiful Lake of the Woods, Ontario at the crow Rock Lodge, which I would highly recommend to anyone that wants to come and have like a a.

01:12:20
Speaker 2: Fresh water fishing bonanza.

01:12:23
Speaker 4: We ain’t roughing it really. The food is really good.

01:12:26
Speaker 1: I mean this place, it’s great fishing, great great resource, great fishing.

01:12:32
Speaker 2: Check it out crow Rock Lives. Thanks guys.

01:13:00
Speaker 4: Yeah,