Episode 225: Your "Smallmouth" Might Not Be a Smallmouth

Is there really more than one species of smallmouth bass? This week on Outdoor Journal Radio, the crew dives into groundbreaking research suggesting the fish we all know may actually be made up of four distinct evolutionary lineages.

Plus, University of Victoria PhD candidate Wesley Greenree joins the show to explain how everyday anglers are helping scientists study Chinook salmon by collecting stomach samples, revealing surprising changes in the Pacific food chain and what they could mean for the future of our fisheries.

Also in this episode:

•  Could British Columbia produce the next Canadian record largemouth bass? 
•  Clearing up misconceptions about Apple AirTags and Bluetooth tracking 
•  A fascinating Northern Ontario walleye tournament format 
•  Proper tick removal and Lyme disease prevention 
•  The latest Fishing Canada updates and new merchandise 

Whether you're a hardcore angler or just love learning about fish and conservation, this is one episode you won't want to miss.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

This episode of Outdoor Journal Radio is brought to you in part by the Invasive Species Center, protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species. Freedom Cruise Canada, rent the boat, own the memories. And JMB Cycle a Marine, your home for all things power sports, boats, and equipment. And now, another exciting episode in the adventures of Outdoor Journal Review. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Be seated. You can have a seat there. There you go. Oh, they're standing for you. They like you, eh? Yeah. Welcome to the program. Uh Mr. Beater. You beat her. You brought her here. You beat her. Jesus Peter. Oh, that one may hurt. That one may hurt. Nice one. Thank you. Anyways, if you hear a bleep, you know that whatever he said wasn't uh usable. My name. It's my name. Welcome back to the show. We missed you. Thank you. Missed you. You guys did one on the road, eh? We did one on the road. How'd it go? Um, it was okay. Yeah. It was okay. I don't know. You know, there it was very commercial because we we uh did it uh from the sales floor at GNB Cycle at Marine.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Sweet. And we were very beat up. When I watched the footage, it was evident.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

It was some sunburn and you can see that we we me and Grandpa look a little rough. Row it hard and put away wet. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

But uh we did it anyways.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

Impressive place, eh? Impressive little spot up there. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

He's got a good as an ex uh former retailer. I really appreciate what uh Rob and the gang have done up there. I mean, oh my god, what a great store. You just want to hang in there and you could want to look at everything and pick everything up. Yep, unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Did you find out about the Mercury uh the uh digital throttle?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

This is okay, yeah?

SPEAKER_04 2:28

Yeah, oh wow, there we go. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

We're good to go, so I didn't have to do anything.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

We did have other problems, we'll talk about them in a minute. Okay, uh, but certainly not that one. Um so yeah, uh wonderful episode. Uh, gentlemen will be joining us by the name of Wesley Greentree shortly. He's uh at the University of Victoria, he's a PhD student. I'd love to be able to say I was a PhD student.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

I'm sure there's three words in there, P H and D that you could we could put on you pretty quick. I would love to get it for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I'm I might still go for it. I'm thinking about it. So, anyways, uh he's focused studies focused on uh salmon ecology and migration behaviors, and what they're doing, they're uh using the services of anglers out in the west coast of Canada, and they're uh getting them to supply them uh samples, stomach samples of the fish that they catch throughout the course of the season. And those samples are analyzed and from right from the sample for Chinook salmon. And from those samples, they determine uh various uh things, which we'll find out here very shortly from Wesley, Wesley Green Tree. Uh, the store, store manager, what's the update? Are we just about ready to uh call?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

I have just spoken with the powers that be. Yes. And um, we're sending in for the new stuff to arrive here. Yay! Very soon we're gonna have our first ever um okay. You know what? I'll give I'll give the uh listeners a little more or viewers a little more information what it is. We have revamped now all of our species hoodies. Um you guys love them, we love them. They are by far the best selling thing that we got, so we're we prettied them up a little bit more. We're introducing muskie, smallmouth bass, and pike. So we're gonna have those up and out and available to you guys as soon as possible. It's all in the works. Stay tuned. Shop.fish and canada.com. It's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

And also a sidekick to our standard uh that's a bunch of bullshit t-shirt. That's right. Thank you very much. Jimmy Jimmy. This is uh your creation. I love this. I absolutely love this, and and it's a simple question. We it happens all the time, you know. When you're talking to somebody about fishing, uh, especially in northern Ontario about walleye, inadvertently the word pickerel is always thrown in there, right? Always everywhere. It seems like uh folks are convinced that walleye is just a sub-term for the fish that they think is called a pickerel, and it's not. That fish that they're calling a pickrel is actually a pike. So it's not a walleye. So we come up with a great t-shirt, and it says, When is uh walleye a pickrel? When it's a pike. That would be a great way to uh to put that out there clear clear it up, clear it up once and for all. So that'll be available coming up very shortly. So if you know anybody that is constantly calling them pickerel, pickerel, pickel, this is a perfect gift for them. Uh all available in the store. Season number 40 nicely underway. For those of you who haven't tuned in, uh check it out. Uh Saturday mornings, 8 a.m. nationally, except the West Coast. Uh they are 10 a.m. Uh, but between 8 and 10 a.m. somewhere in this country, people are watching the Fish and Canada show. And then they're watching it again and again and again, and then they're watching it on YouTube because once it airs there, it goes to YouTube and it sits there in perpetuity. You can watch every episode that we've ever produced, I believe, uh almost within reason, uh, there on YouTube.

SPEAKER_05 6:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Uh, it also goes to the Sportsman's Channel and uh Southland Border WFN. We uh we had a nice uh uh uh uh fan write to us in the US from the US saying they watch the show all the time, but they can't get any of our merch down there. So I don't know what's up with that, but we probably got some kind of trade embargo going on with the lots of tariffs on there.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Tariffs.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

So I don't know. Well as soon as we get soon as soon as cooler heads prevail, we will make the merch available to you folks as well.

SPEAKER_04 6:47

You don't before you go on, you could remind me of something, and and Dean, we I need you to look look into this. You said the West Coast. Apparently, I've seen a little video on this too. There has been a largemouth bass caught on Vancouver that was 12 pounds. No, say it ain't so. I'm just saying that I've heard so Dino, I think you got some investigation to do there, but I've caught largemouth there, but they're tiny. They were always like like a big one. It's always been said by I mean, even Angie and I have talked about the next Canadian record should come from BC from BC because the growing season, right? Growing season. And uh I do believe the fish was released from what I've heard a little bit, but I don't know anything about it for for real. If it was released, it's not the Canadian record because you have to catch it, kill it, and key, you know, and keep it, unfortunately. That's crazy. But but it's uh at 1040 something, 1041 is the current Canadian record. That 12-pound largemouth doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Doesn't surprise me. Really doesn't surprise me. Yeah. I think the only reason that we haven't already established a new Canadian record in BC for largemouth bass is because we just don't have enough hardcore bass anglers pursuing them. Yeah. Right? Just not enough yet. And as that changes, I think more and more big um not double digit numbers, but certainly yeah sevens, eights, nines, and then we'll be pushing 10 pounds for sure.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Yeah. Anyways, just threw that in there. Yeah, I heard the West Coast.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

What was that great place that we fished out there?

SPEAKER_04 8:20

The Oxbows on Lake Ossoyos. That was insane back in there. That was cool. Wow, that was so neat.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Wow. I I'm just harken back to those days. Yep. Anyways, uh, check it all out Fishing Canada YouTube channel, the TV show, etc. Or go to fishingcanada.com, the gateway, the portal, to your next fishing adventure, and it will guide you uh through the archive and the library of all the shows.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Listener feedback, Mr. Bowman.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

So this is in response to our podcast about the tournament cheater, the uh the Canadian dude that was down in the U.S. Oh, right. Uh to spy on a on a guide.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Through a guide, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

This is from at collin camping 3547. Just an FYI. Air tags do not use satellite, as was said in the episode. So we must have did one did we guess at that or something?

SPEAKER_03 9:16

Yeah, so we uh we assume that because the full story was that uh the guide found the air tag wrapped in tinfoil, right? Right. So we figured, and you said that they must have had the tinfoil the wrong way, which is why it would work, and the tinfoil was designed to block the signal so that the guide wouldn't know about it. Right. But this guy, uh a few people were wrote in to correct us and say that's not the case.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Okay, so it says it uses it uses Bluetooth specifically, a low-energy protocol that allows it to communicate with any nearby iPhone without pairing. Okay, stop right there.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Stop right there. I gotta know right now. So we just came from a shoot where we were using these air tags.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

And Dean, correct me if I'm wrong, uh Nick, correct me if I'm wrong. We said that the reason we couldn't find them is because there must not have been a phone connection.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

So yeah, they the air tag itself works by having a phone nearby, right? So the air tag is gonna give the signal off through the phone. The phone gives the signal to the the the universe. Right. So when they weren't working for us, it's because the the think of like the tag as the microphone and the phone as the transmitter. The transmitter didn't have any signal, but it was receiving from the air tag. The air tag, the phone couldn't give it to the world. Hence why we weren't why we couldn't get the signal until they hit those small patches on that stretch of lake that had signal, and then all of a sudden all six of them are right there in a line, and then they die out.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

You said you said that that was the worst reception you guys have had, eh?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Well, I I was the only one with uh cell service until later. Until you didn't until you didn't permanently the lake the lake provides, but the lake takes. That's right. You get banned up. Yin and yang, baby, yin and yang.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

So, okay, sorry, go ahead. I just marked it.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

So without pairing, I don't know why they covered why they'd cover it in foil because blocking Bluetooth would render it useless.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Right. So there you go. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 11:24

And then another one from Adam Woodhouse, correct on not satellite. I have one in my own boat linked to my account. My guess is covering it with foil was to make it look like a piece of garbage that got stuck between the seats and not make it obvious that a round electrical device was wedged in there.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:41

That makes sense too.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

You know, they just some debris blown in there.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

Cover it up, but the but obviously it's if it blocks Bluetooth, you're kind of defeating the purpose, right? It'd be useless. So huh. Wow. Well, we learned all about um air tags now, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

You learn something every day, don't you?

SPEAKER_04 12:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Uh we're gonna learn right now because it's time uh for a conservation corner.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

It certainly is, Mr. Bowman. It's uh uh as we can see behind us right here, and we talk about it week after week after week after week because we're very we're still very worried about it. The Invasive Species Center uh uh puts our concern to grass carp. Um yeah, they're they've been noticed here in Ontario for sure. Um any other provinces to be here in the case. They're in Quebec pretty bad, I think. Yeah. So um just cut and dry. If you go to the website, um invasivecarp.ca invasivecarp.ca.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

You and I could never get it right. Well, you know why? Because for years it was called one thing, and then you change it on us, and now I I gotta retrain myself.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

I did ask Dean to put it in this part. He's got it in this part, but it hasn't do this and update this, and that would be really nice for us. But it would be because then I wouldn't look like a total moron every week, just most weeks.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

No, you're only the the weeks where you're here.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

I look like a total moron in the mirror, I look at like I look at myself and I say, God, why did you create that? What is going on here?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Uh speaking of which, where have you been?

SPEAKER_04 13:11

I've been in La Belle Belle France. Uh were you out looking for carbon? Uh yeah, I was looking for suckers too. Cards. How'd that work out for you? It was a fantastic trip. You tell you, okay. I was I I've been to uh Quebec City in the wintertime many times at the Carnival, and uh it was very hard to communicate back then. This is 30 years ago. Modern day, they speak as good as English as we do. Wow. Bilingual, everything is a beautiful city. I mean, beautiful, the and the people were fantastic. We had a riot, and food was amazing, so that's where we were. What were you doing there? Just uh Lisa wanted to go there. So my wife wanted to go. Yeah, so she said uh for our anniversary, let's go to Quebec City. So we're lovely. We didn't drive because it's a seven-hour, eight-hour drive, and it's a 10-hour train ride. So we flew. We we decided to fly, and it was an hour and a half. Beautiful. Um great trip. It was a really good trip. Nice four days in and out.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Nice.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

Yeah, it was beauty.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

And you had a friend that actually took the train, you said.

SPEAKER_04 14:10

No, yeah, we had a friend and we didn't even realize they were there at the same time we were. It took them ten hours to get home. So I mean it's over.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

We ran into them up there.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

No, we didn't. No. We ran Lisa called her mother and she said, Oh, uh so-and-so is here and they just left yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Oh, wow. So it would have been pretty freaky seeing them, but it's nice that you still, you know, are celebrating anniversaries and stuff. Hell yeah. That's good. Good too. Why wouldn't I? No, I'm just saying a lot of people you're age. You don't remember when it is. You can't remember, but you the fact that you even actually, you know, uh did some.

SPEAKER_04 14:44

My wife doesn't care if I remember as long as I can take her somewhere. That's nice. You know, that's nice. This episode is brought to you by Angler's Leaderboard and its photo measure feature. Angler's Leaderboard makes every catch count by integrating seamlessly with our patent pending AI-enabled fish measurement board. Now you can automatically measure catch length and detect species in seconds just by using your smartphone camera. It's fast, accurate, and reduces handling. So now you can release healthier fish and keep fishing for the big ones. Learn more at Anglersleaderboard.com.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Uh, in the news, although that was newsworthy in itself, we could we could have, you know, put the JB uh news piece right over top of that little beauty.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

Yes, it's quite newsworthy.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yes, my news brought to you by JB Cycle, your outdoor superstar where uh the three of us, because we were working while you were vacationing.

SPEAKER_04 15:37

It's called JB Cycle and Marine. Don't say JB Cycle. So the name.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Uh the three of us, Nick and Dean and myself, we were working so that you know we we could send you to these wonderful places.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

You guys could pull something off. I have to, you know, my apprentices are they're coming of age now.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So and uh we were at J and B. Yes, you were. I can tell you uh what a wonderful, wonderful opera. You folks in Timmins, you have no idea how fortunate you are to have that company in your community. That's all I gotta say. If you're into the outdoors, you have no idea how fortunate you are to have a JMB cyclamarine right there in your hometown because it's a wonderful place. It is good, and uh, we were there doing the um their their tournament, the NOWT championship event, which was uh out of uh a small little park southwest the cash campgrounds the cache campgrounds, uh southwest of Timmins.

SPEAKER_04 16:37

What lake was that on, boys? Anybody have a oh it's a long big lake.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

I'm not even anogamy sea or something. I probably fished that lake before. We did, yeah. Yeah, yeah. How'd you do? God, it beat us up bad.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah, I'll tell you, there's some big we saw them on scope.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

I remember seeing them. Yeah. It was just not our time.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

They had the first day they had four fish between eight and nine and a half pounds, and second day they had three fish. Uh two of them were over ten pounds.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Huge fish.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

Those are nice northern Ontario walleye.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

But it's an interesting I absolutely loved the concept. So what they do, so the regular possession limit of walleye in that uh jurisdiction is three fish uh under 18 inches and one over. Okay. So they got three unders and one over. So the tournament runs exactly the same way. So you can weigh in three unders and only one over.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So you can you you can imagine the even though you you could the boat could have six and two if you got two anglers, right? But this is the boat has to have only three and one. And um the the challenge there is uh at what point do you think your over is uh good enough?

SPEAKER_04 18:04

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah because you don't want to keep them in live well too long. Hence the first morning we had somebody weigh in I think at both mornings, somebody weighed in within an hour.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

It wasn't even I think it was like twenty-six minutes.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Twenty-six minutes that somebody weighed in their over at 9.6 or something. Right. But at what point do you make that commitment? Because once you weigh that big fish in, then that's it for big fish. And for that matter, even your unders. You know, once you've you've got you know, your 17 and a quarter-ish fish, you know, at what point do you say, okay, that's that's gonna do it for me.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

And I think that would have been a concern the first day, because the waves were nuts. Oh, you had to find the things. You wouldn't want to be going around with fish in your in your well. No. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying.

SPEAKER_04 18:51

Especially for them big ones, you want to make sure they get it.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

And if you kill a fish there, like it's done. It's over, uh, you're you're out. So it's very serious. Out of the tournament? Well, not out of the tournament, but you some there was something severe. Do you remember, guys, Nick, Dean? I think you might forgo. So, like, if you killed your over, I think you don't have an over now. You don't get a chance for an over, period.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

So there are there was just penalty for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Like, not only do you lose the weight of that fish, but you zeroed out, but you will not have an over. You have a three fish limit uh that day, a bunch of three unders, yeah. Which means you you've automatically lost. But on a day like that, though, with that weight is absolutely wonderful that uh that they ran it that way.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Because there was a strategy, like I know some anglers were saying they would go get all their unders and then bring them in and then spend the whole day just looking for an over, where other anglers were trying to get their over out of the way so that they could just like they didn't have to worry about the live while they could go out and find their unders. So there is some strategy, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Right, and it was a game of ounces because the unders are were every bit as important as the overs. Sure. You know, if you can get three 18-inch fish, and then I'm sure there were guys who were looking at that 18-inch fish and determining was that one fatter than that one, yeah, right? For sure. So just great strategy.

SPEAKER_03 20:11

It'd be kind of scary if you came in with one that was right on 18, because if they determine that like an over, you're screwed when you go in, right? Did that not happen?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I thought that happened.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

I know there were some that were really close.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

I think that happened. Somebody got dinged for an under was their over.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah, that would suck.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Anyways, I found it fascinating. I've never been exposed to that type of event, and I'm liking it. I'm liking it. And I also like the uh I like the whole look of it, the look and feel of these guys, these anglers, these walleye anglers. It was very cool. Like, talk about high tech too, huh? Yeah, yeah, I'll bet you like these guys are they're all live scoping.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

Obviously. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, you're not even in the game if you're not live scoping on this. Yeah, for sure. And their tactics, the um, the um just their watching, because we went out obviously to drone these guys uh on the second day when we could. First day we couldn't even get out, it was so bad. Um but on second day we went out and droned them, and um we were able to watch how they were working their baits and stuff, uh, a lot faster than I would have thought that that uh a wall angler would fish deep water. Yeah, yeah. You know, we're more vertical when we're scoping, we're we're we tend to want to get as close as we can to those fish, yeah, not these guys casting long ways. They were casting long ways, right? So they're seeing that fish 50, 60 feet away from the boat. They weren't trying to get to it, they were trying to cast to it. And so, anyways, fascinating. Uh, and congratulations to everybody up there for putting on a fantastic event. Congratulations to the competitors for being just a a first class bunch of guys. Awesome, absolutely first class, great. Anyways, I I I digress. Uh JMB, uh, your outdoors. Superstar brings you the news. The news.

SPEAKER_04 22:04

The news uh this week is interesting as hell.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah. The most interesting news I've seen on this program uh for a long time. The title? No reflection on the newsgatherer.

SPEAKER_04 22:15

Well, you're not you're not you gotta you gotta watch what you're saying now.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And no reflection on newsgathering.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

I know the newsroom does doesn't already take offense to that in their own you know personal.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Oh, and by the way, before we get into the newsroom, I just want to also comment on uh I had an opportunity prior to going to Timmins to spend a couple of days in the boat with our two young friends here that are part of the podcast team, uh Nikki V over there and Dean Taylor over here. And it was uh a wonderful experience for me to sit back and watch them do their job.

SPEAKER_04 22:55

They shot it up showing because you spent time with them on the water, but I see what you're saying. So you had them, they were hosting a show?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

They were hosting a show. I was uh a casual observer. They allowed me to go on the boat with a DOP. And a DOP too.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

I forgot the E in that one with them. Okay, come on.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

And uh boys did a great job. They were uh fishing the uh red pine Ivanhoe Lake. Ivanhoe Lake, but what was the name of the red pine? No, no, but the river. No, it's not check it out. Okay, check it out. It's not Ivanhoe River. There's another name for it. I promised myself to remember it, but obviously I failed again. But it was a 32-long, uh, 32-mile-long river that is the only inflow, the only incoming water to the Ivanhoe Lake itself. Wow, and so uh yeah, we we ran up this uh big, long, narrow stretch of water. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

Typical northern Ontario beautiful stuff.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

It was spectacular, absolutely spectacular. And the boys, uh the boys uh caught some fishes. They caught some fishes, beautiful, they did her good. So that's an episode uh for next season, the 41st season of the Fish and Canada show. And it's also the first episode, I believe, that you two actually shot from top to bottom, right? If I'm not mistaken. So, yep. Well done, boys. How how was the experience for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Uh I'll start. Um, I'll start off with saying it is the Ivanhoe River, also known as the Kinogama River. That's it. But that goes into the Ivanhoe River first. All right. Secondly, it was an awesome time on Lock and Lie. Dean and I really I think we killed it. We saw some really cool fish. Those uh I I'm gonna say it. Can I can I am I good now? Sure. Are we good now? Dean got the biggest blue walleye that I had ever seen. Um, because I had never seen a blue walleye before. That would make it pretty hard to know because I had caught a little dink one before. Okay, and then we got another small one, and then all of a sudden, this big one appears.

SPEAKER_04 25:05

How big is a big blue walleye?

SPEAKER_03 25:06

It was uh probably 19 inches, which is close to 20.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah, yeah, it was a nice looking fish and just really blue, just really cool. There's uh a lot of smallmouth we got. It was an awesome time. The river, the river was challenging. What was the water up there, boys? It remembered 50 to 60. It fluctuated. That's how much fluctuation was.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

It had come up probably 15 degrees from the week prior. So it was all the information we had and we're gathering, everything was changing as we were there. Every day, every day. So we were it was hard not to be tempted with smallmouth because we knew they were moving in, but the walleye were still kind of hanging on in there, like the end of their prime, like after the spawn. So it was uh and the it was hard to decide on what to actually do.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

The actual temperature outside, too, was pretty crazy. Day one, I got a sunburn. Day two, I was in Long Johns, day three, I was changing out of both. Like that part of it alone was just we got real beat up, and uh, one point in that river, it gets down to like a foot depth for the entire river. Oh, so it was a little hard to navigate, but we got right up to the rapids, and it was back. I'll say, despite all the challenges, all the the BS that we had to kind of go through to get the episode done, um, it was a really fun time. Nice, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

I agree.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Excellent. There you go. Can't wait to see it, boys. Can't wait to see it.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Uh, this though is big news now. Yes, this is big news because I did not know this. And at my age, I should know just about everything there is to know. Anyways, in the news you should, yes, you should. Yeah, apparently, bass aholics, smallmouth bassaholics. Apparently, uh, there is not just one species of smallmouth bass, is what the story says.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

Why?

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Are you were you shocked at this? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

Well, well, not shocked, because if you look at the big thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

I'm talking genetically different species.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

Yeah, but if you look at like the bass, all of a sudden you're thinking there's just smallmouth, large one, and spotted bass, but then you got Guadalupe bass, you got uh Guadalupe.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

You like that? That's your favorite.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

There's so many on that list that you go, what the hell are these? And they're just subspecies, Alabama bass, blah, blah, blah. So there's so many subspecies that this doesn't surprise me. I didn't know it, but it doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

It surprises the hell out of me.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Uh a new scientific review suggests that what anglers commonly call the smallmouth bass may actually consist of four distinctly distinct evolutionary lineages, uh, and potentially four separate species species. That's the difference. It's not just a byproduct of, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Four separate species. The review published in the Journal Transactions of the American Fishery Society examined nearly thirty years of genetic and genomic research. Uh genomic. Genomic? Genomic? How do you pronounce that?

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Probably genomic. Genomic. I think I got it right the first name. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Anyways, uh, they're stating now that they have evidence to prove that there is a northern smallmouth bass, which is the one that we're obviously been exposed to all of our lives. The Neosho bass. Neosho bass.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

That's what we get a lot of times. The no sho for us. Skunked again, Edge. Damn it. We must be getting the last third.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

The Ocheta bass and then the little river bass. And these are apparently four distinctly different species, which blows my mind still as I say that. It's a great article, and you need to check it out. It's on fishing canada.com. Um, and it will uh oh, not that it'll make any difference in your fishing, but all of a sudden you'll look at a smallmouth bass and just appreciate it for what it is, right? Got some pictures here.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

So, in a lot of the pictures that I was looking at, you can't really tell. I mean, these ones, this is an illustration to try to demonstrate the main difference. Like they're lighter in color, right?

SPEAKER_04 29:04

This is a normal uh northern strength, correct?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Yeah, and that's the neosho. So the neosho, I think all of these are mostly um just limited to very isolated bodies of water. That's why they they diverge. And the whole the whole point of classifying them is they're trying to say that with traditional stalking programs, you should be paying much more close attention to the like the strains you're using. And the the largemouth guys have already kind of figured that out.

SPEAKER_04 29:32

Yeah, it's the crossbreeding. They don't want to crossbreed. They don't want to crossbreed.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Yeah, yeah. Um here's the Uwashita, which is a walleye.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

It looks like a walleye. That's awesome looking. Look at that.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Yeah, like the dorsals is it skinny like that in any other pictures? The pictures I saw, they seem to be. I mean, it's hard to tell because the body of water is small, so you could just get like that. Could pay even this way more sharp that is.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

Yeah, that's like a walleye. Yeah, it's just like a walleye, isn't it? And that that mouth goes way back. Um three-quarters through the eye. That makes it almost a largemouth mouth. Wow, that's a cool looking fish.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

And then I've got the the little river and the owashida are pretty much the same. They're in the same state in Arkansas and up in the mountains. Right. Yeah, so this is just yeah, rounded here. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Like they're very subtle differences.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Yeah, we wouldn't, if we caught that out out, you know, wherever it was, we'd say, oh no, there's a smallly. That's just a regular northern strain smally.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

I do wonder up here. Um, I mean, I guess bass haven't existed here quite as long. Um, but it does kind of emphasize that if you're dealing with like an isolated body of water, you should definitely be stalking the right species or even just from a similar body of water because they seem to adapt pretty quickly to where they're from, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah. Maybe that's why if you remember a red pine, we were catching different bass that look they were all smallmouth, but they look totally different. Like one was gold orange, the other one was dark green, the other one was light green. Could those technically be different species?

SPEAKER_03 31:03

I think you well, you you need a lot of isolation for long periods of time to actually like genetically isolate. So that's why these things are pretty unique. They've been there forever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:14

So we got like Angela and I have experienced so many times on Lake Ontario, the Duck Islands, stuff like that. And I'll talk to Nick more than anything on this, um, because I think Dean already knows. But we'll get you get two large or two small moat that are five pounds, and one is completely light colored or faded, but some, you know, a few black markers, and then you get another one that's just totally black almost, like just uh hey, it's so dark like it's almost black, and that's the same fish, it just takes a different color phase, so but it's the same species, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

They're great chameleons. Smallmouth bass probably change as quickly as any other. You put them in your live well, they'll try to get it. But this is different. These these are genetically a different species. And some of the markings we just saw would lead you to know that that's definitely not the smallmouth that we uh know up here. Yeah, for sure. Anyways, it's an interesting study, it's a good read. Uh, check it out, and it does open your eyes a little bit on this whole uh fish thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Dan, question of the week comes to us from uh Stefan Mellor, 7059 via YouTube. You know what that means. Contender. A heavyweight contender. We should have like a drum roll, shouldn't we? For those. Oh, all right. That's a drum roll of from another mother. There you go. There you go. Did I mind it? Uh Stefan goes on to say, I found a tick on me last night. Ouch. I was pretty freaked out. I tried pulling it out with tweezers and only got the body out. Oh, I hate it when that happens. Uh fortunately, I was able to get into see a doctor first thing in the morning. I'm on meds now as a precaution. I brought what was left of the tick to analyze. What are the best ways to remove a tick? Wow. Um obviously, tweezers. Uh, you do want to try and get the whole tick out all at once. That's apparently the best way to do it. In most cases, the head breaks off inside. They they do sell tick removers. Yes, we yes, they do. Um, they do like a tweezer.

SPEAKER_03 33:33

It's it no, it's almost like a bottle opener, but it's like narrows down really skinny to like the shape of their like their head almost. So you like you slide it out.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

It looks like the back of a hammer if the back of the hammer was reversed. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 33:48

Like the claw?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Yeah, like the claw part of the hammer. And uh yeah, you can get them.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

They're uh they're eight bucks on Amazon. Yeah. The only thing that I would say, regardless of what you're using, what method, just be really, really careful. Don't try and just yank it out because you'll break it. If you break it, it gets worse.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

And the other part is a lot of you see a lot of stuff like pour alcohol on it or burn it or put whatever on it. The thing that actually causes the Lyme disease is them like regurgitating up in your body. So pouring alcohol on it or all that stuff, you don't really want to mess with it because that can cause it to do that, from my understanding.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

But not breaking it in half, maybe cause it regurgitates.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

I think it would think it would as well. But if you if you pull it out with the head and everything, it might not, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Before it does that, right? You slowly try and back it out before it gets overly uh excited, I guess, and throws up into you. I don't know. Wow, it's pretty nice. And with these word choices, disgusting friggin' animals isn't in this world, uh yeah, very slow and steady, and uh take your time. That's all I can say. And and you know what, most of the time you're not not gonna succeed, you're gonna break it off. So uh don't don't be able to do that. So in this guy's in this guy's case, in Stephen's uh case. So he broke it off, went to a doctor. Doctor probably didn't know as much about it as he should have, but the one good thing, and I'm assuming it was the doctor that got him on the antibiotics right away, uh, he did as a precaution rather than because see what happens, you bring the sample in, and then the sample has to go away. Yeah. Right. So that could take another, I don't know, day or two. The critical uh cycle here is forty-eight hours. If you don't start on some kind of a program within 48 hours, your chances of complete recovery start really, really, really getting low. So you've got this 48-hour window that you've got to start. The best thing to do, and which obviously this particular doctor must have uh told him the best thing to do, just as a precautionary measure whether the tick was infected or not, let's just put you on the uh antibiotic uh program. Yeah, yeah. That's the best thing to do. If you got bit by a tick and you have evidence you've got the tick out, and it's it's I would just go to your doctor and tell him you want to go on the um I think it's oh how long is it next 16 days? Oh my god. Oh, I think it was more than that. Oh, it was a good, it was a good sixteen days of uh antibiotics that it might be sixteen days straight. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

This was it was it was three pills in the morning, one pill in the afternoon, and three more at dinner time for two plus weeks straight every day.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Seven, seven but it's worth it for us. It's it's worth it. We did we did it because we didn't want to take a chance. I didn't really care at that point whether whether the results came back positive or negative from the tick. I just wanted to be sure that we were in with a 48-hour window to to be on top of it.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Oh, that's a tiny little insect, eh? Oh that that's insane.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

This episode is brought to you by Sale. Sale is proudly Canadian and stocked with over a hundred Canadian brands you know and love.

SPEAKER_04 37:06

From rods and reels to sonars to kayaks and every last lure you've seen on the Fish in Canada show, Sale has all the gear to get you on the water.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Drop into one of 12 stores across Ontario and Quebec and talk to the real fishing specialist or gear up online anytime at Sale.ca. Sale, the ultimate destination for your outdoor adventures. This episode is brought to you by Anglers Leaderboard and its Spot Mapper feature. Spot Mapper connects your catch data to your spots, allowing you to view your catch history. With Spot Mapper, your locations stay completely private. Only you can access them. So your favorite spots stay your secret. Learn more at Anglersleaderboard.com. All right, our guest uh Wesley Greentree, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, uh university uh PhD student uh focused on salmon ecology and migration behavior. Uh recently published a study using anglers to help understand the BC salmon food chain and the fishery.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

That's a brilliant idea, isn't it? That's a brilliant idea, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I think it's wonderful. Why not use anglers? Why? They're out there anyway. Uh welcome to the program, uh Wesley. Thank you for having me. How are you? Good, thanks. Uh interesting work. First of all, you know, let's deal with that. Let's deal with that uh right off the bat. The concept of using anglers to bring you the data. Is this something relatively new uh in salmon research? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

We've we've seen scientists collaborate with fishers for the last couple decades. Right now, here in British Columbia, it's something that is becoming a key way that we do research because getting the water in a large, expensive scientific vessel is you know, it takes a lot of time, it's expensive, we can't cover all the areas we need to, and so by partnering with local fishers, we can collect a lot more samples and learn more just by people being on the water as they always would be.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

You have to like um you put out a tender, like how does it work? You you put a notice in communities and ask for anglers to jump in, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 39:21

We've done it a few different ways. Uh, we've put out uh articles in our local fishing magazine, Island Fisherman. We have connection with anglers that we know directly. Uh Will Dugan, who you'll talk to, is uh a former fishing guide before he did his PhD, and so that's been a great connection for us. And then sometimes we also just go to the dock and chat with people there to collect samples.

SPEAKER_04 39:47

Wesley, fishermen, anglers, fishermen, fisher women, anglers in general are a very secretive bunch a lot of times. Are you do you have any hesitation or are they, yes, here, we want to give you all this information? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 40:02

That's a good question. Here in DC, we've been able to ride on a lot of momentum on this front. We at the same time are really respectful to not share people's personal fishing spots and not you know, we we try to keep a balance of not showing where all the fish are and better for science and anglers keeping their their best spots.

SPEAKER_04 40:32

Okay. So the anglers have no problem then really giving you like you're looking for more scientific information, anyways, are you not? Like bait and food and etc, etc. Or is there more to it?

SPEAKER_02 40:43

It can be a mix. Sometimes we want to know where fish are themselves, other times we want to know what fish are eating or what their health is. And so it varies, and so I think we have to tailor how we handle the study to what our questions are and what the interests are of the local anglers.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

So the basis of um the research was uh uh from what I understand, uh at the University of Victoria, uh you basically they took all of the um stomach content of a number of fish that you guys were able to uh to collect. And then based on what they had been eating, they analyzed not only, I'm sure, the fish's health, but probably movement in terms of uh migration and all that stuff, all from content, stomach content.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

That's right. So we partnered with more than 250 anglers in PC to collect the stomachs of adults who can coho salmon. This project has been happening since 2017, and with anglers, um, especially with many guides, we've collected 7,600 stomachs so far. Wow. In the study that we published, we took sugar salmon as a novel sampling device because sugar salmon are not picky eaters, they eat whatever fish are available to them. And so that way we can understand more about what fade fish, like herring, anchovy, or the fish called the sandlands, and we can understand where they are, what time of the year they are most available to salmon. And based on those results, we've learned more about the migration and uh life history of these foreign fish that are important to salmon.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

So 7600 samples, you said? So then I'm assuming that these were fish that the anglers kept for themselves as a meal uh for sustenance, I I would assume. Yeah. Are they taking the stomach contents out of the fish and sending it to you? Like, I'm just trying to picture all these things, all these would-be uh doctors understand.

SPEAKER_04 42:58

Because otherwise you'd have to be they'd have to be experts in the bait, right? Half decomposed uh bait fish, you might not know what it is. So they must be sending you how yeah, how do they do that? Freeze them, cut them out and freeze them, or what's the deal?

SPEAKER_02 43:11

That's exactly it. When they when they clean their catch, they cut out the stomach and the intestines. We work with different tahoo shops who will take the stomachs from them and put them in their freezers, and then we'll go pick out the stomachs later. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

That's hell. Some of the uh some of the anglers I know wouldn't even know where to find the stomach. Yeah, never mind. Uh collect it and put it in. No kidding.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

That's that's brilliant, though. And then I'm assuming when uh when Angelo Viola submits a stomach to the local bait shop, they say Angelo Viola caught in the strait of so and so, and they have little details on it, et cetera, like that.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Yeah, the anglers have waterproof data cards that we give them, and we even if anglers are interested, we will mail them nice ziploc bags that won't fall apart, and these waterproof data cards. And so then they they fill it out themselves. And it's it's they're really dialed in. Um I really appreciate it because it is it is tiring at the end of the day, you've been out all day, and then you have to clean your cache, fillet your cache, and also collect some scientific data. It's it's really appreciative what the engages do.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

So, what was the highlight of the research? What did you guys find out that you went, whoa, that came out of left field. I didn't know that. What was the big deal?

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Well, it's interesting here in BC, we know that herring are the most important to salmon. And that was just the result of the study was that salmon eat a lot of herring. But there were some oddities. One was that northern anchovy became important in salmon diets. We've been comparing our research to studies that were conducted in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and 60s. And anchovy weren't present in coastal British Columbia often during that historical period. But starting in around 2014 or 2015, anchovy have started to establish in the Strait of Georgia, which is between Vancouver Island and Vancouver. And with that, we've seen that in the stomachs. And so our stomach program was part of a bigger partnership between many different scientists to understand when anchovy have started to establish in BC waters. And to me, that has been one of the interesting findings is to see this fish that we didn't expect become quite important in the diet of salmon in certain certain areas.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

So there was no commercial fishery for the anchovy in uh in that area? Wow. No, this might this might start a new uh a new business.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Yeah, it's it's an interesting one. It's still quite new, so we we don't know I don't think we know enough yet to look towards a commercial fishery there. But we've also seen other other trends, like for example, in the mid-1900s, uh Pacific sardine were common in salmon diets in British Columbia, but with the kind of collapse of the sardine fishery, the sardine population doesn't come up into British Columbia waters very often, and so correspondingly we don't see them in salmon diets, kind of showing how these salmon are uh an early detection system for for changes in the marine food chain. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 46:33

And did you find that the you guys thought the herring was the number one, and and you did include or you concluded that it is still the number one food base? And is that based on they're a bigger bait fish, or they're just more of them, or salmon prefer them?

SPEAKER_02 46:48

That's a good question. I think that there are more of them than other species. What we tended to see was that herring were important everywhere, and then in regions where there was another prey, we would see that prey also being fairly important. So with anchovy, they prefer uh areas that have some freshwater influence, and so the the really large Fraser River flows into the ocean near Vancouver, and so that's where we would see anchovies in the more brackish waters next to the Fraser River. Right. Similarly, we have this fish called the sand lance. It some people call it needlefish, and they uh they're really skinny and they can actually dive and bury them into sand. Which is quite a quite a way to live your life as a fish, is in the sand. Um and so in areas that have good sand for these fish to bury in, we'll see them in salmon diets as well.

SPEAKER_04 47:48

I would prefer to be a sandlance because at least then you could hide on a salmon. Obviously, 35 pounds chinook. Well, some of them are getting away with it, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 47:59

There's some speculation that the schinook can actually uh dig in the sand and look for sandlands. In some areas, you'll see a lot of scratches on their head. Oh, really? So that's that's a uh hypothesis in the adapting.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Wow. So what are you hoping to get from uh when this is all said and done? What are you hoping to get from this uh this effort? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Our big goal is to use salmon to better understand the ocean where we live, especially because these forage fish like herring, anchovy, and sandlands, are tricky to catch using other methods. They often are found in places that are hard to bring a big net through, or in the case of sandlands, they can wriggle through the net because they're so skinny. That means that salmon give us a really interesting perspective on how our ocean might change. And so our goal moving forward is to keep the program running as a long-term monitoring program to detect changes in the ocean that we're expecting to see with climate change and with other factors happening in our area, such as human impacts.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

How long you uh plan on running the program?

SPEAKER_02 49:17

So this is our tenth year. So we are really happy to have had great funding through Pacific Salmon Foundation, DFO, and a few other organizations like the World Wildlife Fund. Uh, we have two master's students who are working on the project, and so I'm hopeful that for at least the next two years we have a really great reason to keep the project going, and then after that, we'll continue to assess what the best way to keep the program moving forward is.

SPEAKER_05 49:46

Good for you.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

If nothing else, you're helping an awful lot of anglers know what bait to choose, right? Obviously, with this kind of information. I mean, we'd kill for that on most inland.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

Like I said, anglers are secretive, but in the same sense, they'll give up some information to get lots of information. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

I mean, in this case, we know exactly what to do with that info. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 50:06

Go back and going back to the bait fish, the herring, anchovies, and the sand, what was it called?

SPEAKER_02 50:11

Sandlamps. Sand lamps.

SPEAKER_04 50:13

If we were to take a a pound of each, wait-wise, is there a higher protein base in one than the other? Or, you know, or is that like would it help the salmon ultimately grow bigger if they had the same amount per, you know, is one better than the other?

SPEAKER_00 50:29

That's a really good question. He's full of he's he's it's all he does is good questions.

SPEAKER_04 50:33

I'm full of a lot of stuff, buddy. Answer tells me I'm full of it every week, every day, pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

He's just a whole PhD on that question. There you go. I would say that herring, because they are the biggest, have the most value because you know it takes energy for a salmon to to catch one of these small fish. And so the herring would provide the most bang for your buck. One interesting thing is that anchovy contain an enzyme called thiaminase, which it's a big word, but it it's an it's this chemical that breaks down vitamin B1. And so anchovy are actually quite deficient in vitamin B1 and can lead to vitamin B1 deficiency in salmon. Interesting. And so there's been a lot of work with anglers in California, led um by Nate Mantua at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, who's who's worked in Anglers to collect samples to understand how salmon are being affected by eating anchovy. Uh, and and here in British Columbia, there's some work at the University of British Columbia uh led by Brian Hunt, is working on that.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

So are you saying sardines are not necessarily a good source of food for the salmon?

SPEAKER_02 51:53

Anchovy. Not always the best food, especially if they're eating them in higher amounts than they would have in the past.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

Huh. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Yeah, especially if they become more prevalent. Yeah, then then it becomes another issue.

SPEAKER_04 52:08

Yeah, those certain areas, and then the salmon, obviously, they don't know, right? They wouldn't know. There's yeah, there's there's a let's mow it down.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

There's all kinds of anchovy here, but do you uh do you put a limit on the number of anglers in each area? Or you just is it wide open?

SPEAKER_02 52:23

No, we're very happy to take as many stomachs as we can. We've we've been really fortunate to have full-time staff on the program for the last five to eight years. And so the more stomachs we can get, the merrier.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Let's uh set the record straight. I just thought of something. These anglers are abiding by all of the local rules and regulations and laws. So, in other words, this is not uh a get out of uh jail card for them to go out and poach fish and and catch more than their limit uh in the name of science. Yeah, right? Yeah, that's correct.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

No, anglers are only allowed to keep 10 shit of salmon per year in British Columbia, and so that's that's the limit for samples there.

SPEAKER_04 53:08

Interesting. I didn't know that either. Is there what's the weirdest thing you've seen in a salmon's stomach? There's gotta be something there. Somebody said, Oh my god, check this out, Billy, you know?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Oh that's sometimes you see odd things like rocks or snails, right? Okay, pieces of seaweed. At a larger scale, we see this weird fish called it's called a lantern fish, and it has these kind of spots along its side that that light up, and it it's typically found quite deep in the ocean, deeper than 200 meters during the day. But these lantern fish can be about 20% of the diet of salmon in certain places. We think what's happening is that we have really strong tides in our area, and these tides our guess are our guess is that the tides are pulling these deep sea lantern fish. You know, at night they come to the surface over deep water because they want to be able to feed in the light, but hide from predators that can't see them at night. And then typically they would go back down to really deep areas where salmon can't eat them. But we think that tides are pulling them away from those deeper waters they'd like to hide in up into the shallower areas that a salmon can eat them. And they're not fast, unlike a herring, they I don't think they move quickly. Like they'd be quite a nutritious, high fat meal for for salmon.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Interesting. Interesting. Can folks uh access uh all of this data somewhere?

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Yes, so we've done a few different things um to help with access of the data in in the paper. We we provided the data in an Excel spreadsheet, but we've done other things. Uh we've included our data in the Pacific Salmon Foundation has a data guide. Um, it's a map where you can click on different data sources. And so we've included our data in a summarized form in there as well.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

Okay. So if somebody wants wants to get information, they they can get it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

Yeah. And the anglers who participate in the program, we make them each a customized report of what was in the stomachs that they caught. And so hopefully that is helpful to them, both in understanding their area as well as perhaps picking the right lure next time they are on the water.

SPEAKER_04 55:30

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

Any chances on working with uh other species in the future other than uh Chinook?

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Yes, this is brand new. Um, we are gonna go collect some tuna this summer. Nice in species juvenile albacore tuna migrate north up into BC waters. And so in most years they're found very far offshore, you know, 60 kilometers away from the coast or more. But with climate change, it seems that tuna are becoming more common close to the coast. And so there are some derbies for tuna on Vancouver Island. They call them the tuna shootouts. And so we're gonna collect some samples that way and hopefully get some samples from other places up through the throughout the coast based on some partnerships we have in our big one um out of Tefino, I think, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:27

At one of the one of those events, a very large one. A buddy of ours uh used to run it, actually. Uh Pete Maychak.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we're we're really excited to see the tuna. They're they're such a different species than salmon, um, and they they've moved throughout the entire North Pacific Ocean. And so we're quite curious to see what they have in their stomachs compared to a schnook salmon.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Yeah, that would be good. I think they'd be a little more pred well, maybe not. Schinooks are pretty predatory, yeah. They're they're they're mean little beasts.

SPEAKER_04 57:01

Yeah, they don't think they are, but they're nasty.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

They can be a toss-up between them and uh and uh little uh avocado. Yeah. Wonderful. All right. Uh great work, Wesley. Uh certainly a lot of good information. And what's really great about it is that you're using anglers because I love it. I love that idea. What are I wonder if there's any inlack inland studies being done using anglers?

SPEAKER_04 57:26

Well, I know when we used to fish opening day in the Bay of Quint, they always had a s a census that whole weekend, and they just went around and they just you know they asked us this. It was very basic. Yeah, but you know, they just went and you asked you, you know, they knew where you were and what you know the the date and the temperature and all that kind of stuff. And so maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Yeah, it it interesting.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Even just records from fishing derbies can be really valuable. There are fishing derbies that have been going on for more than 100 years in some places, and so those can be some of the best records of how fish health has changed over a long, long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Excellent job, Wesley. Uh, keep up the good work, keep us informed. We'll reach out to you uh periodically and see how things are going.

SPEAKER_04 58:13

And especially say how they how the people can get a hold of that information. Is there a website or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Yeah, we have a Facebook page called the Southern BC Adult Salmon Diet Program. And otherwise, we have an email. It's uvic salmon diet at gmail.com. And we're very happy to partner with anyone who wants to collect salmon stomachs or tuna stomachs this summer.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Beautiful. Excellent. Thank you, my friend. We appreciate it. Keep up the good work, thanks. Take care. Uh Wesley Greentree, University of Victoria, PhD student. Hey, putting that educational.

SPEAKER_04 58:53

You gotta admit, if you're ever gonna go to school for something, well, this is what we'd have to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:58

How can we is there is there anything we can, you know, maybe reach back in time and get from Napany uh schools that tried to educate you. Is there anything there that we can pull it?

SPEAKER_04 59:09

Well, I don't know what the PhD nowadays. I'm sure it was like back there was grade 13, right? And I couldn't really even spell 13. So no, I got my grade 12. I got my grade 12 then, you know. I decided not to do 13.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

So I don't know if I could have got into the PhD level, but you know, it'd be fascinating though to see all those uh 7600.

SPEAKER_04 59:29

Oh my god, the stomachs? That'd be cool. Like it really would be because I I do it all the time. I know Dean does a lot of time too. It's kind of neat to do that.

SPEAKER_00 59:36

I think it's it's a kid thing, right? You you you want to dissect it as soon as you you rather than just dump it out, you let me cut that open.

SPEAKER_04 59:42

But when you it's basically like when you see the stomach, and all of a sudden you see it and you and then you feel it, you go, Oh, what the hell is that? I gotta get my knife in there and you do these tools. I think pike are the best.

SPEAKER_03 59:51

If they if they did a study on pike, I think they'd find some pretty weird stuff. Yeah, they need absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 59:56

I've got no lately. I've been seeing those water dogs in pipe, and they're this, you know, they're decomposed to this long and that big a round. It's like, oh, it's the most hideous-looking thing you've ever seen. They're already ugly to begin with. To start with, never mind the boot. It's fun. I like doing it so.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:09

Anyways, fascinating. Um Dean, do we need to finish off with anything? You have everything in the mind.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:16

I think the store manager, this is a good time for the bonus code. We do have a 16-inch Garmin Echo map on the uh the Ultra 2.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

The Ultra 2 button. Is that now?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

That is now, and I think people would love a bonus code for that. Oh my god. Store manager, pressure's on you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:32

Pressure's on pressure's on I'm hearing stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:36

I'm on the lantern tomb, lantern fish. Lantern tomb. That'd be a tough one, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:42

Chinook. Chinook.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Chinook would be named after the Chinook hoodie.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

Oh, there you go. There's the uh there's the connection.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

That's what the uh the spirits have told me to make the bonus code this week. All right, so this week Chinook Chinook. All capitals and spaces.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

If you need to know how to spell that, you can go to the store.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Exactly. It's uh go to the uh the hoodies section. It's blue. You guys are ruthless. Okay. And um while you're there, I mean, hey, while you're there, while you're looking at the spelling, yes. You you know, uh I got some sizes still. I mean, hey, if the math makes sense, the math makes sense. You know, if you do this and then you win the live scope, you can take your live scope money and you know get a Chinook hoodie.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Perfect. I'm just saying, guys, okay, I hear you. I hear you. There you go. Chinook. Special code. You get 10 free bonus ballots for the uh wonderful Garmin unit that is being given. When is it being given away, by the way?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:40

It's being given away in August.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

In August. So you still have plenty of time to get a few more ballots in there. August 15th or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:46

It's you'll be a little surprised at the size of this unit when you get in. It's gonna be like, whoa!

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

And Dean, I haven't mentioned this for a while, but are you guys still putting all of these ballots in the 45-gallon drum? How does that or have we evolved from that?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

We still do it. You haven't mentioned it for a while, so I kind of forgot it was back there, but yeah, we do put them all in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

All right, okay. Just checking. Just to make sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

We could get a bigger drop. We're getting a lot more. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

With this giveaway, uh, you maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

I feel like we might need uh an upgrade here, people. An upgrade.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

All right, that are it. Enough rambling on like a bunch of idiots. That's what we do. You have to show you much. Ramble on like a bunch of idiots. Uh behalf of the entire group, uh, Mr. Peter Bowman, Nikki V, and the Dean Dean, the dancing machine over here. Come on now. I'm Angela Vilder. Thanks for joining us, folks. We'll talk to you soon. This episode of Outdoor Journal Radio has been brought to you in part by the Invasive Species Center, protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species. Freedom Cruise Canada, rent the boat, own the memories, and JMB cycle a marine, your home for all things power sports, boats, and equipment.