Inside the Bassmaster Classic: Fish Care & Biology with Gene Gilliland

Ever wondered what actually happens to the bass after the weigh-in at the Bassmaster Classic? We sit down with Gene Gilliland, B.A.S.S. National Conservation Director and veteran fisheries biologist, to uncover the hidden science of tournament fishing.

In this episode, we dive deep into the conservation side of the Bassmaster Classic. Gene Gilliland explains how fisheries biologists operate within the high-stakes tournament landscape, the incredible lengths B.A.S.S. goes to in order to keep fish alive, and the future of bass conservation in America. Whether you are a tournament angler, a weekend warrior, or a biology nerd, this conversation reveals the massive logistical and scientific effort required to protect our fisheries while hosting the biggest events in bass fishing.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

All right. Welcome to the Foods Angler Podcaster. As always, we are here to talk and hopefully teach you more about bass fishing, and especially on today's episode of The Real Biology with Mr. Gene Gillen. As always, I'm your host, Bailey Eichbrett, but I will not actually be hosting today's show. You guys are actually going to be hosted by the one and only the man in the myth, the legend, Mr. Steve Barden, our fisheries biologist correspondent, if you will. And I just need to start the show off by basically saying it has been a whirlwind, world, world, whirlwind, if I can speak. Obviously, I'm a little bit rusty to this because uh I had a podcast in the past two weeks. I've actually been down in Tennessee fishing the Bassman Chakyak National Championship on Chickamauga and Knickerjack. I also went to the classic and I was supposed to have this episode of last week, and unfortunately, I failed to do so. So I want to start this episode off by saying I am sorry. Um that is a failure on my part, but I wanted to get this out because Gene is awesome. Gene has done some incredible things over his career, and especially for the support of bass fishing, and of course, it is a great episode to tune into. Um huge congrats to Dylan Nutt for winning the Bassmaster Classic, absolutely epic fashion, just freaking hammered them. Uh and we're gonna talk about all of that and a lot more on an upcoming series angular episode, hopefully this week for you guys. So the schedule's kind of off this week, so I apologize for that again, and it's my fault. Uh we are back to scheduled, regularly scheduled programming for the upcoming weeks, but it's been a crazy travel couple weeks for me. And uh so we weren't able to get the episodes up and up on time. So apologies on that. I actually did not sit in on this episode with Steve because you'll hear probably talk about it uh when Steve gets here in a second to kick off the show. I'm recording this intro like two weeks after the fact. Um, the time that Steve had recorded this, I was laying on my couch in a dark, dark room in our house because I was down and out with a migraine. I had an ice pack on my face, and it was just brutal. Could not get myself to even look at my phone, let alone see any sort of light and record a podcast. So Steve was a trooper and got this one done solo. And of course, Steve is he's the brains behind all things for the real biology episode or segment here. So you guys are in good hands. I do want to say, before we kick things off, I do want to say a big thank you to everyone at the Bassmaster Classic that came up and said hello. Uh, got some pictures with some folks and got to talk to you guys, some listeners of the show. And uh I just want to say thank you. It was awesome to meet all of you guys. It is cool to see uh the folks that are behind listening or watching on YouTube, and uh your guys' feedback is uh very meaningful and very highly valued and means the world to me. So to see that you guys, more than just my mother and grandmother listening to the show is awesome. Really awesome. Uh, you guys get to meet my wife. My wife is there, her first Batchmaster Classic. She loves it. She already can't wait for Greenville next year for 2027 Baschmaster Classic. Uh, I'm looking forward to seeing all of you guys down there. But I just want to say a quick thank you. Uh, we have more episodes coming, I promise. We got some fire guests coming on the show. You guys are amazing. Let's get into today's show. So I'll kick things over. Mr. Steve Barden, take it away, Steve.

SPEAKER_05 3:31

You guys are in for a treat this week. Bailey is sick at home. Uh, if you watched the last episode with Bob Lusk, you could tell Bailey was a little bit under under the weather. We're now two days later, giving you behind the scenes, and we're recording our next episode. Bailey sends us a text that he's out. He he just uh he's he's not feeling well and he hasn't been eating his vegetables. If you stayed for the end of last week's episode, you know his mom was complaining because he doesn't take his vitamins, he doesn't eat his vegetables. And Bailey's out for the week. So what you have is me. I am going to be interviewing a bass fishing hall of fame member, a AFS Hall of Excellence member, Mr. Gene Gillin with BASS. He's our conservation director for BASS. Uh, this interview goes a long time. Don't look at how long this episode is. It is worth it. Listen to the entire thing. We don't have any Bailey in this episode. It is just Gene and I having a great conversation. Um, and we don't really even get into that much fish care. You know, you think of a Bassmaster and Tournament Director, and you think we're gonna talk fish care. We don't really get into that. We get a lot more into the history of the sport. We get into how you, as you know, maybe a member of a tournament organization or an angler or even an agency biologist, how you would participate in BASS Vascination, and then we get into details of what's happening at the classic. I think it's a great episode. Of course, you'll hear I have a lot of respect for Gene, um, a tremendous amount of respect for Gene. I just enjoy listening to his stories, so we let him run. We let him give us a lot of information. We certainly are sad that Bailey's not here this week, but I'm excited to bring you this episode either way. Um there's no telling. He may record over this because he may decide he wants a different intro. Uh we'll find out. And without further ado, let's get to Mr. Gene Gillen. Gene, we're live. There we go. The first episode without Bailey of the Real Biology podcast. And uh I'm glad it's with you, Gene, because I think that this will be one of those episodes that we can just have a fun conversation. We don't uh we don't really have a set agenda we're trying to cover. But by the time this airs, it is classic week. So everybody has the expectation we are going to talk Bassmaster Classic. And if we're gonna talk classic and we're gonna talk science, we have to have Gene Gillaland on. That's just you're synonymous. You're a Hall of Famer, um, personal mentor of mine, just somebody I've uh I've just watched over the years and have always been able to ask questions. And I just thank you for coming on to the episode this week with us.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Well, you're very, very welcome. I I uh I follow the follow the podcast uh religiously, and uh I I've really enjoyed some of the guests you've had in the past, so it's uh it's an honor to get a chance to to fill in.

SPEAKER_05 6:39

Now, last week uh uh we recorded it a couple days ago, but but on last week's episode we had Bob Lusk and we did a lightning round with Bob where I just said people's names and he told us stories, and I said your name, and he talked about using your typewriter back in in college. So I I think it's only fair that we start and let you give a give a Bob Lusk story if you'd like.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Well, you know, that that typewriter that that comes to my mind too, because uh at when Bob and I were at AM, you had two different tracks that you could take in your studies. You could go the the fish management route, which is what I did, and then Bob was in the aquaculture side of things. So we had a few classes in common, uh, but then there were other things that that we didn't didn't share uh classes. That's but the the ones that we did share, like I say, you know, when you heard him talking about borrowing my typewriter, uh, and that was way before there were word processors or computers or laptops and things to do your your reports on. And I I think back to some of those uh having to write out long reports and when you'd make a mistake and you had to go back and try to redo it, and it it was just I can't even imagine having to go back and try to do something like that, and like we did. This is 77, 78, 79, and right in there is when we were in college there at AM. So um, you know, unfortunately, as I've gotten older, some of those some of those memories have kind of gotten a little fuzzy. Um, but in some cases I'm pretty sure that's a good thing because you probably think you don't necessarily want to keep in your memory bank that long.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

Yeah, it's not gonna be posted on Facebook forever. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, exactly. What who were some of the other uh other students of that time at AM with you and Bob? Uh remember any others?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Uh in in the undergraduate level where I was, um, uh, you know, I haven't kept up with very many of them. There was a fellow named Steve Hawk who wound up being a biologist for the Kansas uh Department of Fish and Wildlife. Uh Bill Harvey was another one that was in a lot of the classes I had. Bill worked for Texas Parks and Wildlife for uh for several years uh at the uh the hatchery in San Marcos. Um you know, a couple of the graduate students that were there, um, a lot of folks that that might follow this podcast have probably heard the name Keith Jones. Keith Jones wrote uh wrote one of the one of the books on bass behavior uh called Knowing Bass. And he was finishing up his PhD. Uh he had the same advisor that I did uh there at AM. Um, you know, there a lot of the other graduate students. There was um a fellow named Mike Van Denavel who went on to become a professor at the University of Georgia. Um there's quite a number of the graduate students I think wound up working for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Uh unfortunately, when I graduated, there weren't any jobs to be had.

SPEAKER_05 10:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Uh it was a very tough time in terms of trying to find places to get an employment, especially as an undergraduate. And so that's when my major advisor at the time was Richard Noble, and he suggested that maybe I needed to look into graduate school. And so I went on to Oklahoma State and worked on a master's degree there. But um, you know, a lot of the other students, uh it's it's amazing how, well, gosh, we're talking, you know, 30 plus years, 40 years ago now, that uh I've lost track with a lot of them. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them are retired now, and uh not very many are still uh in the profession.

SPEAKER_05 11:05

Yes, sir, of course. And so you went to Oklahoma State for for your your master's degree, and then you started just immediately after that with with the state of Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Yeah, I I finished up my degree in in uh May, and I started my job with the Oklahoma Wild Department of Wildlife in July. So it was a very quick transition. And for 32 years, it's the only job I had. Um I got out of college and I went straight to work as a as a research biologist in Oklahoma at the Oklahoma Fishery Research Lab. And I was originally I had just some sort of projects that they needed somebody to do. And I worked on electrofishing flathead catfish, uh, which by the way got me connected with Steve Quinn, who is one of the longtime writers. People may recognize that name from In Fisherman magazine. Steve was actually a biologist in Georgia, who we met through our common interest in flathead catfish, electrofishing. Uh, I worked on a walleye project. I worked on a couple of striped bass hybrid projects because that's what my master's degree had been working on. But I always had this desire to get more involved in uh black bass research. Uh as a long time bass angler myself, from from when I was you know 10 or 12 years old, I kind of got bit by the the bass bug. And so that's kind of where my direction went. And to their credit, my supervisors kind of let me run with right. If I came up with some good ideas, they'd let me go with it. And and I had a tremendous amount of freedom to do research projects that not only interested me, but that I thought could have some impact on black bass fisheries in Oklahoma and as it turns out in in other parts of the country. So that was really uh very fulfilling that those years that I had with with the wildlife department and and being able to do a lot of uh some really pretty cool research that um ultimately led to uh you know when I when I decided to retire from the wildlife department, that kind of is what led to my position now with BASS. Yes, sir. Just sort of a natural progression. Uh when I retired from one job, I started the other one.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

Well, that's what I was gonna ask is you know, the research you're doing, is that what led to the connection with with bass?

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, I did. Uh, you know, what I started out with, a big part of what I was doing with Oklahoma was Florida bass research. And I started our genetics lab, and I was uh doing all of our genetic testing on our broodstock, and we did a lot of experimental stockings back. This is pretty early on in the in the uh use of Florida bass in terms of the them being stocked in places outside of Florida. Yes, sir. And and so that was kind of my mainstay, but I got really interested in bass tournament issues. As a as a tournament angler, I could see there were some there were some conflicts coming on the horizon. Um and I wanted to see what we could do to to help that. And I started doing some uh what we call delayed mortality studies, where we looked at what happens to the fate of those bass after they're released from bass tournaments.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

And and that was kind of my connection to BASS back in the day. The the research that we did in Oklahoma was based a lot on studies that other biologists had done around the country. None of the things that we were doing really weren't all that new. Uh, Dr. Hal Schram was one of the people that had done a lot of work on that in Florida. There were studies that had been done in Texas and in Mississippi and in Minnesota and a bunch of different places, and they all, all of these other studies came to the conclusion that, well, you need to do this and this and this and this to help uh improve the survival of released fish.

SPEAKER_04 16:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

What we did was we went and tested those those recommendations. So we worked with a bunch of bass clubs and tournament organizations and actually got the anglers to do different things in those tournaments. We had some that we said put ice and salt in your live wells. We had some that we said just turn your aerators on and let them run. We had some that we didn't tell them anything. We said just do whatever you normally do. And then some that we said, you know, don't do these, you know, told them things not to do.

SPEAKER_05 16:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

And so then over the course of several years worth of studies, some in the spring, uh, a lot of them in the summertime, with tournament groups that ranged from 20 or 30 boats up to a hundred and something boats, we wound up with a pretty big data set that said, here's what we think can really make a difference in the survival of fish after they're when they're released after bass tournaments. And I published that at the Black Bass 2000. I know on previous previous uh episodes of your podcast here, you guys talked about the the Black Bass 2025 uh summit that was held in San Antonio back last fall. Well, 25 years ago, Black Bass 2000 was in St. Louis, Missouri, and I presented that information on um what to do to keep bass healthier after tournament releases, and in the audience was the conservation director for BASS. His name is Bruce Shupp. Bruce was uh formerly the fish chief in New York, and Bruce came to me and said, We've got to get this information out. And so he and and BASS at the time commissioned Pal Schram and I to write a little booklet called Keeping Bass Alive, a guidebook for tournament anglers and organizers. And if you're watching the podcast scene's getting wide right here, this 43-page booklet, BASS, this is back when ESPN owned bass, they printed up tens of thousands of these sponsored by Triton Mercury Yamaha Skeeter, and distributed those to state fish and wildlife agencies all over the country, bass clubs, tournament organizations. This became what I call the tournament fish care bible.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Um, and so the the information that we that Hal and I were put into this little booklet became the basis for uh how I would say the majority of bass tournaments run their fish care operations now. And um so that got me very connected with BASS. Uh I had been coming to the Bassmaster Classic, they they started bringing me to the Classic back in 1993, I believe, to help with fish care issues. And I've been I've been to every classic since then except one. Um I came as a what I called an unpaid consultant. I still worked for the state, and so they would just bring me to the classic to help out with fish care issues and and uh help work with the local uh state fish and game agency, that sort of thing. In January of 2014, they started when I retired from the state and went to work for BASS, started doing a lot of the same stuff. Now I was getting paid for it.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

Yeah, that's a better deal.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

So that was a kind of a cool deal. Um worked out pretty well, but uh it's been a uh a long relationship with with bass. Um I I've got a a photograph, I wish I had it handy with me. Um the the original is at the bass fishing hall of fame, but in 1972, is how you figure out how old I am. Um my dad drove a friend of mine and I from our home in North Texas, in Gainesville, Texas, to Lake Eufala in Oklahoma to a BASS tournament that was being held at at Eufala. And that was the first year that BASS was doing the catch and release idea. Before that, they kept all the bass, they had big fish fries, they donated fish to charity. That's where you see all the pictures of the guys with these huge stringers of bass or a John boat full of fish that were weighed in after tournaments. But that year was the first year that they started doing the catch and release. Uh Ray Scott called it don't kill your catch. That was the catchphrase. And they had a trailer with about a, I don't know, maybe a 750 gallon, maybe even a thousand gallon. It was a big tank on the back of that trailer that they put all the fish in after the weigh in, and then they would back that trailer down to the boat ramp and open the valve and turn all the fish loose. And so I've got a picture of me and my buddy. And Ray Scott in front of that tank. And I think back and thought, you know, here 50 years later, it's like, wow, was that was that some kind of a foretelling moment in my career?

SPEAKER_05 22:34

You know, but yeah, was that something that put an impression on you? Yeah. Exactly. You just drove towards that path at all times. That's an amazing story. The original tank that you saw, was it aerated? Did you have oxygen or was it just a tank of water?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

You know, I I really don't even remember. I suspect that they probably had some sort of aeration or oxygen bottles or something in that. Um, you know, I think they were learning as they went because it was brand new. Absolutely. This was the I don't this wasn't the very first tournament that they did that at, but it was real early on in that process. So they probably hadn't used that tank more than two or three times.

SPEAKER_05 23:15

Let's see, they did uh the first was in Florida, yeah, a Kassimme chain. And then the second one was in Georgia. Because I've read the mortality studies for both of those. Uh, because both agencies did a mortality study at those first two, because agencies didn't buy into don't kill your catch. Like, this is not gonna work. You don't know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

It was new stuff.

SPEAKER_05 23:37

Absolutely. They were worried about a thousand fish floating dead after the tournament, and that would look a lot worse than you than you eating them. So uh it definitely evolved over time. Do you do you happen to remember what year they moved from a a trailer tanker to a live release boat?

SPEAKER_02 23:55

The the first live release boats were actually developed by Shimano in Canada in the uh the late 1990s. And uh uh a guy named uh there was two guys, um Brooks and Moorlock were the were uh both worked for Shimano Canada and they came up with this idea of using a pontoon boat with tanks on it. And for many years, Shimano had a fleet of those that were all around North America, and so Bass and other organizations could just they they'd loan them out. Uh Shimano did it at you know for the the publicity, uh the the advertisement purposes. And and eventually, though, that as as tournaments grew and the organizations grew, they decided we need to build our own, and so they started building uh boats on their own. Now, the like the fleet that Bass has now, most of those built boats were built in 2006, okay, back when Triton still had an aluminum uh aluminum boat manufacturing facility. So, you know, at that point it really caught on, and a lot of organizations started utilizing that concept of of releasing fish, whether it was with trailers or boats or something to to get fish away from those those high traffic areas. But I'll tell you another another kind of interesting story about that first tournament that I went to as a kid. I remember after the tournament, Roland Martin won the tournament. Okay, and Roland is down on the dock in his boat talking to Forrest Wood, the the owner of Ranger Boats. Yes, sir, and they were talking about how to put a live well in that boat. That's right, because up until then, the angle this is such a new concept. The anglers were doing anything they could to figure out how do I keep my fish alive in my boat, and so they were using coolers, they were using wash tubs, you name it. And and I just I remember them talking about the idea of building a live well into the boat so that it would uh make it easier to keep their fish alive. Because early on, when Ray Scott first started the whole catch and release uh concept at tournaments, he gave bonus points if you had a live fish. Eventually, over after a year or so, they changed that around to where you got a penalty for a dead fish, kind of flipped it around. But early on, it was a real bonus if you brought fish in that were alive, you got extra ounces, and so there was a a lot of incentive to keep those fish healthy. And and here was Roland and the manufacturer of ranger boats trying to figure out how do we make this thing work. And Forest ended up patenting the live well uh originally, so that recirculating process of yeah, getting getting water in and letting it overflow and going back out and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_05 27:21

So you knew you were right there at the start of bass fishing history.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Kinda, kind of was, yeah. You know, I think back on it now, and it's just like me standing in front of that tank. I'm sure at the time I I had I I thought this was a cool. I'm standing next to Ray Scott.

SPEAKER_05 27:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

I didn't think that much about the tank that was behind me and and what that might mean to my future.

SPEAKER_05 27:49

That's amazing. So we we do fast forward 2014. You joined Bass officially as the conservation director. There had been conservation directors before, uh, four of them. You want to enable? I don't I don't want to I want to miss one.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

The first one was Al Mills. Al Mills was hired, but this is back when Helen Severe owned BASS.

SPEAKER_05 28:14

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Al was a biologist for the Forest, U.S. Forest Service, and his original title was environmental director. And at some point somebody said, I don't think we want to call it that, because the there's some negative connotations when people think about environmentalism and environmentalists. Yeah, it kind of has a little radical term, you know, associated with it. So they changed it to conservation director. The second one was this Bruce Schepp, who was the fish chief in New York, and when he retired, um, he had had built quite a relationship with Bass because Bass was doing having a lot of tournaments in New York on the St. Lawrence River and Lake Oneida and so on. So he got to know them and they they hired him. And Bruce did that for about 10 years, I believe. And when he retired in 2003, I actually interviewed for the position and turned them down. Um, I I felt like I just wasn't ready. Yeah, I wasn't ready enough for it at that point in my career. So uh they wound up hiring Noreen Clow. Noreen had been a uh a career uh employee for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and had worked uh worked her way up uh to be like an assistant regional director um in in Washington DC. Very, very familiar with the the policy and the political side of things. So this is this is when ESPN has owned bass during that period. Umreen did that for about three years. Now, while Bruce was there, they had hired an assistant conservation director. They called it the conservation manager, I believe. They hired a young black bass biologist out of Arkansas, a guy named Chris Horton.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

And Chris was the assistant, so to speak, conservation director for a couple, three years under Bruce, and then for that three-year period when Noreen took over. When Noreen decided to retire again, Chris stayed on as the conservation director. So we went from two people down to one person from the department, and uh Chris did that for about three years, and he learned he had learned an awful lot about the whole policy thing and how he he felt like there could be more done, more good done working with state and federal agencies and and and uh with legislators and working on the policy side of things. So after about three years, of course, now ESPN is getting ready to sell BASS. Chris leaves the job and goes to work for the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Jerry McKinnis, Don Logan, and Jim Copeland buy BASS from ESPN. And Jerry McKinnis at some point he said, We we've got to have a conservation director. That's just part of what that's that's a key tenet to what Bass is all about. And he knew Noreen from her previous stint doing that job and asked her if she would come back for a while. And uh this is when when uh Bass was in the process of moving from Florida back to Alabama, right? Well, Noreen lived in Florida and she said, Okay, I'll come back, but I'm gonna work from home, I'm gonna stay here in Florida, I don't want to have to move to Alabama, and they said, Okay, and so they they hired her again for another three-year stint. At the end of that period, Noreen says, Okay, I'm done. I'm gonna I'm through, I'm gonna retire for the third time, I guess. All right, and at that point, she and I had been working together quite a bit. Um again, she had this tremendous policy uh knowledge and intuition uh dealing with with some pretty high-level politics, but she didn't have as much of a real nuts and bolts bass biology background. So she I I I became a kind a kind of an advisor in that role. Right. When she when she decided to retire from BASS at the end of 2013, she just said, hire that guy.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

I love that guy.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

That's me. And so I I retired in December of 31, December 31st of 2013, and went to work for Bass January 1st, the next day.

SPEAKER_05 33:35

And uh you didn't even take a vacation.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Yeah, 12 uh 12 years now that I've been doing this.

SPEAKER_05 33:42

And it seems like every conservation director has kind of put their own mark based on, like you said, kind of what what they're uh you know really good at. Because whenever I think about BASS, I don't just think about fish care, I think about a lot of the policy things that have happened over the years. And uh, you know, even even like saving rivers and looking at at pollution, and I mean there's so many facets to what BASS does. Um and I could see how you just walking through each one of those individuals, how they really played a role in a lot of those efforts.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, it it you know, of course, Ray Scott started it. Um Ray used to have this analogy of a three-legged stool that that the company was built on, the the concept of of tournament fishing, of you know, let teaching anglers how to catch more bass, but also involving youth, and then also having conservation as one of those key principles. And you got to have all three legs of the stool for it to stand up. And so Ray was very involved early on in a lot of uh pretty controversial issues, and this is back in the day when when the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and some of those monumental pieces of legislation were going through Congress, and and Ray was a very strong advocate and did a lot of politicking, testifying in Congress to try to get those things passed, and so there was a a lot of involvement there as Ray uh eventually when Ray sold the company um Helen Severe, who uh she and her investors that that bought Bass, Helen had that same that same really strong environmental conservation ethic. And Helen got very involved in uh in doing a lot of the same kind of things that Ray did, maybe a little less of the testifying in Congress, but she was very involved with with some pretty high-level policy issues. And one of the things that Helen was was very involved with is an organization called the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council. This is a group of people taken from obviously the fishing and boating uh community that advise the Secretary of Interior on things related to sport fishing and boating, and that council has done over the years done all sorts of really good things, and Helen was very instrumental in getting that whole process started and was a key player in that council for many years. And the conservation directors and my predecessors were assigned to to sit on that council as a representative, not just a representative of BASS, but a representative of freshwater anglers.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

And so, you know, we we certainly are a voice for bass and bass fishing, but also part of that responsibility is to be a voice for for anglers uh when it comes to some of those uh national level kind of policy issues, and and that's you know, a lot of those kind of things nobody really sees or hears about it a lot of times. Um, there there are things that go on at the state and federal level, and even the local level, that uh when it comes to the political side, the policy things, that have a pretty big impact on people's fishing, but they don't always recognize what's what's going on behind the scenes. That's that's that's one of the things that we that we're involved with.

SPEAKER_05 37:48

Yeah, let's unbox that for just a second, Gene, because I'm aware because I see some of it. I'm I'm not aware of the totality. So give us an idea of how many organizations and meetings do you attend that are not BASS tournament. They're they're ancillary things that, as the conservation director, you serve on a board, you serve on a committee. Give us how many do you attend, how much time does it take, and then give us some names of some of them.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Well, um, let me let me back up a little bit and kind of define what my job is. Um a lot of people, you know, we talked about the fish care stuff. That's that's one that's one component. There's really three parts to the job of the conservation director at BASS. One of them is is working with tournament organizations, whether it's internally, our staff, or anybody else that asks, you know, we we will assist with with advice and and counsel on on tournament fish care. So that's one of them. The other part of that is as I mentioned, this this policy stuff. The um a lot of that can filter down to state levels. So I work a lot with our state chapters. Each one of the state bass nation chapters has a state conservation director who's just a volunteer. It's a bass fisherman that cares a little bit more about the resource. And most of those guys and gals don't have any formal biology training. They haven't dealt with politics much. So I kind of help guide them through some of those minefields that they deal with at the state level, uh, with their state fish and wildlife agency, with their state legislature, helping helping them deal with with local issues, uh, whether it's um Rodman Reservoir in Florida, or it's stocking XYZ fish in New Mexico, or if it's spraying vegetation in Minnesota, whatever. We've got this this uh group of state conservation directors that that have local problems that they're dealing with. And so I try to help them navigate some of those issues. Then to the third point, what where you were kind of headed, was at that policy level, there's a lot of things that happen at uh on the the national scale that the conservation director has to deal with. The American Sport Fishing Association, one of our strongest allies, they're the trade association for the fishing industry. They have a government affairs committee, and Bass has had a seat on that committee for forever, I guess. Uh they do a lot of work for the fishing industry. The Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council that I mentioned earlier, although right now it's kind of in limbo because when the new administration came in, uh it's been kind of put on hold. So I'm not real sure exactly where that council is going to be going. But um the uh Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, we work with them very closely. Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which is a kind of an umbrella organization for a lot of different conservation groups. Uh they have a thing called the Policy Council that we have a seat on. Uh so there's there's several of these what I would call national level policy organizations. And then, of course, on the science side, there's the American Fisheries Society, which which I've been an AFS member since I was, I don't know, 18 or 19 years old when I first started getting into college. Uh, we've been very involved with AFS over the years, especially in our case, the Southern Division of the American Fisheries Society. Um, simply because there's a lot more bass-related uh research and management going on in a lot of the southeastern states. But even at the national level, uh like the the Black Bass Summit from last fall uh in San Antonio, that was a national level event. And so I've I've always tried to stay plugged into the science as well as the other the policy and the you know the other parts of it. But uh the AFS has kind of been my connection to the to staying up with what's going on, the latest and greatest in in terms of research and management. And and also it's always AFS has always been a good place to just bounce ideas off of other biologists, other scientists. And as as I'm since I'm not actively employed by a state agency anymore, uh the American Fisheries Society has been a great way to stay connected to those organizations. And they in turn, some of those state agencies have um called on on me to be an assistant or be a a voice, I guess, for bass anglers. Um you and I both are are have been working with the state of Tennessee, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, on their new black bass management plan. Uh I assisted Arkansas with something similar to that a few years ago. So uh there's there's times when a state agency will call on me and say, hey, can you you know be part of this discussion to lend the the BASS perspective to whatever the the topic is.

SPEAKER_05 43:57

Yeah, absolutely. And that's uh and you have so many, so you didn't forget any, but National Fish Habitat Partnership, your oh yeah, board member there. Um of course, you know, as we as we roll down to the accomplishments at some point you have to bring up bass fishing hall of fame, and so it's not just policy and and it's not just uh science. it's there's also just the interaction with anglers and recognition of English success.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Sure. And that's you know the the uh national fish habitat partnership and friends of reservoirs you know I I've been very involved in that organization since it started um you know habitat is such a key element to to you know having more fish and uh the the fish habitat partnerships are a great way that grassroots organizations and clubs and lake associations can get involved and and make a difference in in the habitat in their lake and and really see some benefits from it. I've been on the the national board now for a few years and um it has given me a little different perspective. The the reservoir partnership is only one of 20 different partnerships most of the other ones deal with a a specific part of the country or a specific species the reservoir partnership is the only one that really is nationwide because there are reservoirs in in all all the states and uh so it it gives us a chance to to interact with with people from all around you know the bass fishing hall of fame is something that I um I actually got involved with it uh on the board of directors 10 or 12 years ago uh when I was asked to to kind of lend some science some biology uh kind of a little different perspective because the hall of fame for for many years was was pretty much focused on professional anglers and and media representatives so we wanted to try to broaden that out a little bit and so I've been involved in that organization uh even even before I was inducted into the hall and and so I've become very uh I'm very passionate about that organization and that and trying to um broaden the scope of the hall of fame uh trying to preserve the history I guess as I've gotten older that's uh that's something that really resonates with me is is going back and trying to figure out okay who's who are some of the founders of the sport of bass fishing people that a lot of anglers may not even recognize the names but they were very influential in the founding of this sport as opposed to you know who's the flavor of the month in terms of the the hottest tournament angler that's going at the you know right now so that's that's part of why I've really liked to stay involved with the Hall of Fame is to to keep it grounded and keep it uh to to look into that history and and uh look back as to see where we came from uh I just love it I this is why I can listen to you talk for hours every time we go to a meeting I just like to be a fly on the wall um and listen listen to your stories I want to go back real quick you mentioned state directors and I want to I want to see if if you know when did that position when did that role start to develop kind of that timeline you were giving us when did it develop and then for our maybe our scientific and our non-scientific viewers how do they get involved at that state level and even if they want to work towards that conservation director role how do they do that? Well the second part of that's pretty easy um you just have to express an interest yeah uh out of the out of the uh the the 40 48 states and one canadian province that we have Bass Nation chapters in there are still several states that don't have a conservation director because they can't get anybody that's willing to step up and volunteer their time to to do that job. It's pretty thankless uh you don't get a lot of notoriety and a lot of times it's you're dealing with politics and stuff that most bass fishermen could just care less about. And you know that's if there's people that have an interest in that sort of thing uh I think really the the thing to do is to contact the state president and say hey I I want to help uh I want to make a difference and uh now there may already be a conservation director in that state that's fine they can all use help uh they they can all use assistance or in some states uh that maybe you're spread out where you know the conservation director lives way over here and they've got issues way over here in another part of the state having having a team is a great idea and so it's just a matter of contacting the leadership within that state and saying I I want to get involved and I want to help make a difference. So that's to me that's that's a big part of it is just being willing to step up and uh you know see what you can get involved with. It doesn't mean you have to go to every meeting and sit through every council meeting and you know deal with all of that kind of stuff. That's where having a team is really nice if you've got some people kind of gravitate towards that political side and they really kind of get off on that stuff sign them up. Get them on your team you got other folks that maybe all they want to do is work with the high school teams and go out and put out fish habitat. Great that's you know part of the team yeah it's always going to work better with that. And it always works better if you work in concert with your state fish and wildlife agency I I get so frustrated that people that say well my state agency is a bunch of crap they don't know what they're doing. They're a bunch of goof offs and all they're there is to get a paycheck you know I and I think I've heard you say this too that we don't know biologist one that's out there just to to get a paycheck almost all of them are anglers. Yep they have no reason to make fishing bad they want fishing to be good. You know the when fishing's good people buy more fishing licenses and that that is what helps pay the bills. Right but um you know they're they're all working for to make fishing better and um you know people that with the advent of social media everybody wants to compare this state to that state without knowing enough of the details and I'll give you a perfect example is that here in Oklahoma for for decades we've always been compared to what's going on in Texas and there are just some things that we can't do in Oklahoma. For one thing there are there are more fishing license buyers in Texas almost than there are people in Oklahoma. So the whole scale of things is different. Right um and then you look at things like climate and and other natural resources that some states are blessed with and others aren't and and uh I think a lot of anglers are quick to fire things off on social media without really knowing the the whole story. And sometimes that's pretty frustrating when I hear and read things uh where my my peers and my colleagues in the fisheries field are are getting uh getting blasted for for things they've done or not done uh in a lot of cases without a lot of justification.

SPEAKER_05 52:44

Absolutely yeah as I'm as I'm maturing into that conversation as well I'm starting to realize you know the the vocal voices that are saying my agency isn't doing enough probably are the ones that need to learn that it's not that your agency isn't doing enough it's that your agency probably doesn't have the resources it needs and that's when you need to take up an arms and go to Congress go join these sportsmen's groups and start to generate the resources that their agency actually needs. I I think of Arkansas as the perfect example Arkansas has some of the best resources some of the best biologists in the country they have the desire to make bass fishing better. You know what they need they need a budget. That means they need BASS MLF every team tournament trail everybody to travel to Arkansas show up do the tourism part buy the fishing license participate in the sport within that state so they can generate more revenue because they have the desire and that's that's just what they're lacking.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

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SPEAKER_02 54:15

Well and and there's a lot of a lot of movement now that I'm seeing where state agencies are getting a little more receptive to the idea of organizations working with them. And I'll give you a perfect example is the the the Florida bass stocking that's going on right now a lot of people have probably seen this on Facebook in the last few days in at Lake Boef B E O U F in Louisiana it's a it's a group that went to the state and said we got a problem with this lake uh the last hurricane or two really has knocked us back and to the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife's credit they actually created a black bass biologist position hired a guy who's a tournament angler for one thing and they did some research they figured out yep we got a problem here and that stocking fish might be suitable. Now stalking doesn't fix everything I think you know we've all heard you know as biologists we've all heard uh you know the the thing that says you know stalking won't get you out of a a problem but in this case they think it will it will help it's not going to cure it but it'll help and so they started raising money and they've had banquets and they've had all sorts of you know raffles and stuff to to raise money and in the last I think week they've been stocking 30 something thousand I don't know how many uh advanced fingerling Florida bass into this lake and so you know that was all citizen driven yep but it's in concert with the state fish and wildlife agency um and and it's it's those kind of success stories that that I think are really great to see.

SPEAKER_05 56:17

Now that won't work everywhere and not every place is going to be suitable for for those kind of stocking things but that doesn't mean you can't help with habitat projects and getting involved in in a friends of reservoirs chapter or something of that nature where you help raise money to buy moss back fish habitats uh and you know it's it's a it's a matter of having having an interest and then a passion to get things done getting organized and then building those partnerships with other organizations that have similar goals working with the state agency and you can do a lot of really good stuff if you get on a lot of people working together stalking is one of those controversial topics but whenever just like you whenever I'm with an agency that's asking for advice uh or with them when I'm with an angler group and we're approaching an agency I find stalking at minimum to be an equalizer to where we can bring people together and open up a conservation conversation if we if every to my agency audience right now if every time you're asked about stalking you say no you're shutting the door on somebody who was willing to participate on somebody who over time as you develop a relationship and a partnership with could be educated that would create effective change and I look at what they did in the Chafalai basin raising Cliff Crochet has raised probably$35000 over the last over the last four years to stock fish but also that has morphed into a discussion on what should we do with Army Corps of Engineers and the sediment that is coming down into the basement what should we do about some of the the more widespread issues that if they're not addressed we're gonna lose this fishery and it's it's just this great venue to have those conversations. You have those banquets you get to talk to two or three hundred people who want to participate and you get to talk to them at one time and then yes stalking fish a lot of times doesn't provide a benefit because we can't see those fish grow through each growth stage and end up as a trophy bass. They they get in the system and they get consumed or whatever happens to them. But it brings the people together and I think that's a a hidden art in the science of fisheries management. And I I think there's there's more state agencies these days and I think we saw this at Black Bass 2025 there are states that are have not traditionally been real heavily involved in black bass management that are are getting more involved in it as bass fishing and tournament fishing have uh grown in popularity a lot of states that that really didn't put a lot of emphasis on it are now kind of rethinking a lot of that and to me it's a perfect time for for anglers to reach out and you know what what's the old saline uh you know it you're better to to bring solutions than complaints um if you've got a an idea that something is is wrong or that there could be made better don't just complain about it um go to the agency and said I want to help what can we do to make it better well a lot of the agencies can't go into the community and raise money they can't fundraise yeah no that's just not what an agency is able to do uh but but setting up a friends chapter with friends and reservoirs or nonprofit now you were able to raise sponsorship dollars in that community get the local mom and pop tire company involved and those dollars can be used for a lot of conservation activities and then and then and then those dollars raised by a a group can be leveraged um sport fish restoration dollars and so sometimes the agencies can match them and it really turns out to be a a better system and it it builds us that when when you start talking and you get on the same page yeah you're gonna have disagreements you're gonna have arguments but if you're willing to sit down uh and and as as we've one of our favorite sayings is you've got to have a seat at the table you've got to be in the discussion uh if you're not on the bus you're gonna get run over by the bus and and so it's I think it's imperative to to get involved in those discussions with your state agencies and don't just throw stuff at them on on Facebook or Instagram and complain about things but reach out to the biologist start with your local biologist and and perhaps you work up and you know one of the things I always tell my state conservation directors is that you need to be on a first name basis with the chief of fisheries in your state so when he sees your phone call coming in he'll pick up and he'll answer because we want to be partners with the state agency in making fishing better. Yeah one of my favorite things to do is uh is whenever we we have an agency doing a stakeholder meeting around Black Bass I love to attend those meetings listen to the presentation by the agency and take notes and then listen to the anglers that stand up and give their public comment and always ask to go last. And then what I do is I I say everything that you both said the agency and the anglers both said in common but they're just using different language to say it. And I will even offer that as a report back to the agency afterwards. I'll give you what what I saw the English were asking for and what you were asking for and how those were the same. And I find most of the conflicts actually have nothing to do with the agency. It's more of a lake authority something homeowner association like those are the real conflicts and if you can get English and the agency in the room together and start doing those those kind of comparisons uh we find that we have more in common than we have apart.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Right and very often as you said the the state agency doesn't even have the authority to deal with uh controlling aquatic vegetation.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:37

It might be a completely different agency that that has some other constitutional uh authority uh but the the fish and wildlife guys are the ones that seem to get the blame because that's who the anglers kind of know right but they don't know it they don't know it deep enough to understand that that it might be somebody else that's really the ones we need to to start working with so yeah those are all kind of things that uh and I I think um you know we've got a lot of a lot of anglers that that are willing to get involved I'm I'm starting to see a little bit more of that um we just got to get them off of Facebook and into the meetings and and get them to sit down at the table and and have those discussions and and learn about the people that they're going to work with and build those partnerships.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:34

Well I think this is great this is uh we appreciate your leadership on kind of fostering these the you know the vast nation conservation directors across the country and hopefully we can continue that and I think that what is coming up at the classic really showcases the next level next step of that and I would love for you to tell our audience a little bit about your conservation summit and maybe some of the history of that once again and then we'll get into what are you what are you going to tackle this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

Well uh the conservation summit is something that Bass has hosted for decades really uh going all the way back to to when Bruce Shep was a conservation director back in the 90s every few years we we bring together uh experts and anglers to talk about issues now in in our case uh we've been doing these uh every other year it's a pretty expensive proposition to to put on one of these summits but what we do is we invite the state bass nation conservation directors from each state and we invite the fisheries chief from each state now a lot of times the fish chief won't come himself he may he may uh or herself and may uh may designate a black bass biologist or or somebody else uh in their agency to to be that person uh and we don't get all of our conservation directors you know again I like I said they're all volunteers their state may or may not have the funds to get to to help them travel to the meeting now once we get them to the meeting uh we pay for Most of their lodging and a lot of their food and stuff like that, so it really doesn't cost them that much once they get to the summit. But we do it every other year. This year in Knoxville will be uh one of the years we do our summit. We've got almost a hundred people coming this year. Okay, the the summit this year in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Classic, we've got about a hundred attendees from about 30 different states. Um conservation directors and fisheries professionals.

unknown 1:06:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:53

And this year we picked out two topics to tackle. Uh one of them is going to be uh using social media, using podcasts, using social media influencers to help not just the state conservation directors, but the state agencies tell their story better, to tell the the wider angling public about the good stuff they're doing to make fishing better. And we've got a number of different podcasters. Steven, you and Bailey are gonna be uh on on our panel. I've got uh a couple of biologists that actually have podcasts, they're gonna be talking about kind of how to how to tell the science side of things a little bit, and then I've got us several other social media, what I'll call them experts, that are gonna kind of try to give us some tips and tricks on what to do to get your your your social media post shared, how to get more likes and clicks and all of those things that help get that information out to more people.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:02

Yeah, I love it. Taking the inside spiral.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:05

We've got about I think I've got eight different speakers that day. Yes, sir. Um now the summit it we only run we end from about eight o'clock in the morning until about noon because we want to have time when we're through at noon that people can go to the outdoor expo and they can go to the weigh-ins. So we have half day sessions. So then Sunday, the next morning, we've got some potential fireworks. We're gonna be talking about aquatic plant management. Okay, and I've got some speakers coming from chemical companies, I've got speakers coming from uh people that do some of the application, the actual uh herbicide application, and then we've got some people talking about specific problems that they have in their state or their region, and some of the challenges that they've run into in working with either a state agency or a homeowners group or something like that. And then we've got a couple that have been pretty successful in kind of what we were talking about earlier, putting together partnerships with the anglers and the agencies, and the people doing the spraying and the homeowners groups, and getting all of those people together talking, and how that has the kind of successes that they've had in uh changing things for the better. And what I'm kind of hoping is that as we come towards the end of those talks, we can take what we learned the day before with the social media folks, and how can we apply that and do a better job of communicating real facts about aquatic plant management and not just the rumors and the arguments that get thrown out on social media so often that that may not have a whole lot of grounding in in real truth. So that's kind of our goal is to learn a little bit about social media, learn a little bit about aquatic plant management, and then see how we can blend those things together. And that's the the other thing that we do uh every year or every other year when we have our conservation summit is on Saturday night we will have a banquet where we will award our Conservation Director of the Year awards. That's that's sponsored by AFTCO. AFCO is our presenting sponsor for this summit. We've we've got a number of other great sponsors: the uh Mercury Marine, Yamaha Wrightwaters, um, Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, American Sport Fishing Association, Aquatic Plant Management Society, Mossback Fish Habitat, all of those folks that that feel strongly about supporting conservation have stepped up to with with some real money to help put this summit on. Because we don't charge, there's no registration fees, and we're paying the lodging for most of our conservation directors. So uh it's I've had some of my conservation directors say over the years that these things are one of the things they really, really like going to because it recharges their batteries.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

It gets them refocused on here's what I can do in my state. I learned something that I can take home and I can make a difference at home, and that's that's what we're looking for is trying to build those relationships with the fish and wildlife agencies in your state and learn something you can take home and make fishing better.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:06

I love it. It's uh I'm excited. It's my first conservation summit that I was invited to, so I'm excited to attend one. I've been to the classic several times, but I've never never got to go to your meeting. So excited to attend. Um looking forward to it's kind of like a family reunion in a lot of ways, because you know, we see these people in a lot of places, and then to bring them all together, um, you know, your clash of your anglers and your and your your angler family and your agency family come together, and that's uh that's a fun little room. But you are tackling a pretty tough topic that second day, so it'll it'll be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:44

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SPEAKER_02 1:13:13

Yeah, I I uh I thought about maybe do we need to hire some referees or something for that one, but uh I think I think everybody will be uh be on their best behavior. Um you know, and I've I've talked to my speakers, I've got it, I've got a little bit more to do this week on coaching them a little bit on on what to expect and and what what we uh might expect out of them. Uh, because it especially on the aquatic plant side, it it is a it's a people are like this. It's like you're forward or against it. There's not a whole lot of middle ground, unfortunately. And that's where we need to be, is we need to be more in the middle and understand that there are uh appropriate times when herbicide application may be necessary. Um, but there's times when maybe that's not the best thing. And uh I think that's the way we find out about those things is to sit down at the table and talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. That's what we hope to do, is get get some of those discussions started.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:22

Well, that's what both Bailey has said it multiple times on this show, and then Kim Duke has told me the same thing is attending Black Bass 2025, one of the things they were most impressive impressed with is how we all communicated disagreement without argument. Um, you know, I there's a lot of examples, uh, but one of the presentations we saw was a a younger uh grad student that was presenting on putting ice in a live well and saying, we don't think this is a good idea. And and you were able to stand up and say, listen, we've been doing this you know for 35, 40 years, and we have proven that it's success. Tell me more, you know, give me more information about why this is what you're thinking. And and she was able to articulate a point about you know, if you bring the temperature down too far and then put the fish back, it's harder for them to acclimate. And you know, I think that that is research into the extreme, and but that is what this is all about. That is moving your science forward, backwards, and and just looking at it from all perspectives and doing it in a respectful way. I'm sure your meeting will go without a hitch. There will not be any true arguments.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:34

Well, and you know, that's that's one of the things about in and I know you've seen this at any any professional meeting you go to, you sit through these presentations. Sometimes it's death by PowerPoint, and sometimes it gets really, really old. But then you have a coffee break or you have a lunch break, and you can get out in the hall and you can talk to people one-on-one, and you can ask those questions that you didn't get a chance to ask sometimes in the session, and you you have a chance then to really talk about it. The the the example you gave of the young lady that gave the talk about using ice, her professor came up to me that night at one of the social hours, and we got to talking about, you know, he was supervising her research, and we got to talking about um some of the little nuances of when when do you use ice in live well and when do you not, and how much, and some of those kind of things that in her research, which was was granted, was kind of narrowly focused, and she didn't she didn't look at all of these other little things um that they do in Texas versus Canada, you know, some of those kind of things. So, but that's the really one of the things that we really part of the reason that our summit doesn't go all day long is we want to give people a chance to get together at a coffee break or at lunch or at dinner that night or whatever and and talk about some of this kind of stuff, and uh, and hopefully that can help you know everybody learn more and and uh come away with with a lot more information they can take home with them.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:20

Yeah. And then I mean this this brings us right back to the beginning of this episode where you showed us the Keeping Bass Alive handbook, and we said, you know, this is always evolving, so I assume that you're on to another edition of the handbook and you're on to incorporating new information into the handbook. Is that going to be announced of the classic? Has that already been announced?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:41

Is well it's it's uh it it is it's it's an evolution, it's constantly evolving. The original booklet was written in 2002. Uh, we updated it in 2008 when it went on the website. Um, we've got a new version that is waiting to go up on the website right now. Bass is kind of redesigning some of their stuff on their website. Um, this year we are going to be doing a lot of video work with uh our uh video team of the JM Associates folks out of Little Rock at some of our tournaments, and I'm also going to be working with the Oklahoma Wildlife Department Communications Division, who wants to do a bunch of video work. It's very similar. We're kind of on parallel tracks at one of the elite tournaments in Oklahoma and one of the MLF tournaments that's coming to Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

So we're going to try to get all of that video stuff put together so that we can tell the story in video and not just in written text, because we know that unfortunately, younger younger anglers don't go to websites, they don't read booklets. If it's not on one of these on YouTube, they're probably not going to get that information. And so our goal is to transform a lot of the information that's on our keeping bass alive text versions and photographs, static pictures into video that perhaps is uh better consumed by college and high school anglers, especially.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:33

So that we can we can really try to drill down and and start educating those those younger anglers um on better ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:45

That's gonna be great. I think I think that'll be a much needed resource. It's a good update. Um, I can't wait for the next edition to come out. Uh, I know that you and I have spoken about it, and there's gonna be a lot of resources for organizations and even I think whatever you said college and high school, I think about the college fundraiser tournaments, and how do we how do we make sure that those are successful events as well on the fish care side? So I'm excited about that. At the at the classic, you're doing the summit. Are you also in charge of fish care there?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:18

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Uh well, I I say that in in concert with Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, TWRA. Uh, everywhere that the classic goes, we work with the state agency, and they actually are the ones that haul the fish back to the lake and release them back into the lake. So they will have their fish hauling trucks backstage. And I will have uh a handful of our uh conservation directors back there helping get fish from the the scales to the trucks that are backstage, and then TWRA staff will then take care of those fish and get them back uh to release in the lake. And we don't have anything to do with the release part because we don't we don't want to know where they go. We say you you turn them loose and and you keep that secret. Um, you know, that way we don't have to worry about somebody saying, oh well, bass told this angler where all the fish were released, or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:25

So let's clarify, they will go back into the same competition water.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:29

They're not Tennessee is not moving these fish around the state, they're bringing them back to where they're they will be going back into Fort Loudoun and Telico, those two lakes now. Um, you know, I I don't know how many places they will try to release fish. I know in in past classics, uh some of the agencies have gone to great lengths to release fish in 10 or 12 different places around the lake, really spread them back out. Um in Fort Worth at Lake Ray Roberts, we actually had our live release boats on hand at Lake Ray Roberts. The Texas Parks and Wildlife hauled the fish from Fort Worth back to the lake, then we put them on our release boats, and then the release boats went out and scattered those fish around the lake. So we we always work with the state agency on on uh taking care of the fish. And um, we have a college and high school uh tournaments at the classic, uh a little invitational kind of a thing. Uh on those on those two days, the weigh-ins are actually going to be at the lake, and so TWRA will have um will have staff there to um haul those fish and and release them back in in the lake right there, right there close by wherever the weigh-in is.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:55

I think this is a a great point because if I were going to say that I hear any negative about the classic, it is always why are you transporting fish an hour away from the lake and doing away and then transporting them back? Uh, isn't that increasing mortality? And and I I've always kind of disagreed with that thought because I know on the back end, all the things that the agencies in your team are doing. It is not a traditional weigh-in, as in those fish are not sitting in a bag for an hour making that transport. They wouldn't make it. They're in a live well. I've heard you talk about, you know, especially that that classic that you did in the summer, how you know you you check dissolved oxygen, you put ice on those fish. Like there is there's immediate care being done when the angle comes off the water. Then there's care that's being done post-tournament in an aerated fish hauling equipment that is professional equipment, like what I use every day to haul fish across this the state to stalk into people's lakes. And then when they get back, there's there's of course the live release boat. So there's yes, the fish travel quite a bit. Travel isn't necessarily harmful to fish. Like it if you had to, if I put like feet to fire here, Gene, what is the stressful part of a tournament for a fish? What do you think the one stressful, most stressful part would be?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

Actually, I when I think about that, I think, well, the the action of being caught. There you go. It's pretty stressful to them, uh, you know, when uh when they're when they're uh when they're first hooked and they're they're fighting and trying to you know get the fish in the boat. But uh, you know, the the how the fish are cared for in the live well during the day is what is really most critical. The weigh-in process is so quick, and as you said, it's it's bang, bang, bang, bang. We've got these steps that the fish goes through. Uh they're kept in water pretty much the whole way, other than just those brief moments that they're on the scales. But what the anglers do to take care of their fish in the live well for four, five, six, eight hours, depending on how long they've got them, that's what really makes a difference in my mind. And at the classic, there's a few things that really play in our favor. One is that it's in the spring when the water's cold, and that makes a huge, huge difference. The other thing is that you're dealing with professional anglers that have the very best equipment, the best boats with the best aeration systems and such, and they're fishing for$300,000 and the in the classic title, they want to make sure that their fish are in good shape too when they get back because they don't want any kind of penalties or anything. So um that's that's why the classic is a little different animal than than just your typical bass tournament. Now, you know, going back to what you were talking about, the the travel, the number one question every classic I've ever been to, people want to know, are those fish going back to my lake?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:22

Because people that live around there that fish those lakes, they're kind of possessive, those are their fish. Of course, and we always tell them, yes, they're going home. Now, we know that some of those fish may not survive, but it's usually a very, very tiny percentage. We have had uh several classics where we've had 100% live release. Uh, it's always been above 98%. Right now, we know that some of those fish may die a few days or a week later, but with the anglers doing their job at taking care of the fish, the state agency and and our staff taking care of them at weigh-in, the numbers of fish that that die as a result of even those long-distance transports like we had in Fort Worth, uh, to Ray Roberts or at Grand Lake here in Oklahoma, right? Those percentages are so tiny that uh you know it's it's really insignificant numbers of fish that that may die as a result of it. And you know, our hope is that other organizations, if they're going to have you know, typical weigh-in type tournaments, can learn from the way we're doing things because any number of state agencies have held fish after the classic and looked at that delayed mortality and basically said it's not a big deal. You guys are doing a good job, and so what you know, we've got that validation that what we're doing is working, and uh other organizations I think can can pattern after that. And that's one of the things we want to do with this the keeping bass alive, the the video series we're going to try to put out is tell you know the local bass club that has a Tuesday night jackpot um here's some things you can do to help make sure that you're doing things. Better. Or if you've got a hundred boat tournament, there are things that you can do to make things better. And you can learn from that. And uh a lot of that comes from the experiences we've had at the classic over the past you know 30 years.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:37

Yeah, whenever I read a delayed mortality study, I always look at what organization or what tournament did they collect the fish with. Because it is unfair to take a BASS, MLF, and FLW historically, uh, one of their events that's on the professional level with all their equipment that they have, and then try to say this is how all tournaments results are going to be. Because I think that whenever I think about what is the most stressful part, I I love your idea. The fish actually being caught is probably the most stressful. Then the the live well, and then the third component is the weigh in line and how you regulate the line, how you regulate the number of bags, the type of bags, get the fish through. I've I've been involved in those Tuesday, Thursday night tournaments or weekend tournaments, team tournaments where you you go to weigh your fish and you look at that line and you're like, This is not going to be the best for these fish. And you know it. And you know, I've I've put fish back, or you know, I've made snarky remarks to the tournament director, like, well, my my fish were alive before I got in your line. Like, I've done those things to try to prove the point. And I'm sure you've done it too, where you know an organization calls and you go you go to a club meeting or a you know, an awards banquet, and you give the presentation on fish care, and you try to talk them through those components, but it's just a different beast. Fish care is different at the level you're doing it because it's it's not just a science, it's a business. And whenever it comes to some of these local tournaments, that's why this keeping bass alive guide is going to be so instrumental in the videos, because um we both have a lot of relationships within the industry, sponsors of the organizations. Uh, they want to be involved, they want to help these local local uh groups put on a better way in. And I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:36

And that's that's one of the things that we're I'm really hoping that we can get across in this new these new versions of keeping bass alive is how do you step down from a hundred-boat elite series tournament to a 10-boat bass club tournament? You know, what obviously the the 10 or 20-boat bass club tournament, they're not going to have a release boat. You know, they they may have waiting line tanks, maybe not. But what we're gonna try to incorporate into our information is the what are the principles that you need to follow. Even if you don't have the money to buy all this equipment, there are still things that you can do to make a difference. And so our goal is to try to say, okay, if you've got a big tournament, you're gonna do this. If you've got a medium-sized tournament, maybe you don't need all of those things, but here's the here's the basics.

unknown 1:31:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:32

And you get down to even like a little club tournament. And you know, one of the things that's been it's been in that booklet since it was written, is the concept of the catch-way and release tournaments. The the Bass Pro Tour has used for for several years now. We used to call them paper tournaments because that's we wrote down the weights on paper. Um, you know, that's that's always an alternative in there, is is something whether it's a catch-way and release or catch photo and release, like a lot of the kayak tournaments are doing now, that those are alternatives to a traditional weigh-in. Or maybe there's a mix. Um, my club in Oklahoma City, our our club is set up to where when we get into June, July, August, and September, those really hot months, we switch over to a catch-way release format.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:27

The other times of the year when the water's cool and we feel like we can keep fish healthy, we do a more traditional weigh-in. So there's there's ways of kind of mixing those things together. Uh, and it's just an idea of knowing, you know, when's it time to make the switch? Um, and it it's uh it's just an educational process. Um, you know, Hal Schramm and I talked about you know preaching the gospel of fish care now for for 40 years. Um and uh and I will say that that tournament organizations as a whole do a better job now than obviously they did. I mean, I'm I'm old enough to remember when we brought them all in on stringers and we had a fish fry after the tournament.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:15

We didn't we didn't turn anything loose, but gradually that evolved and we we uh changed the way we do things, and and I think that is gonna be a continuous evolution process for who knows how long.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:32

I totally agree. And I this is what always gets me is bass fishing is is such tradition, it's all about the tradition. And we think about weighing five fish. Weighing five fish is a tradition, but that tradition is based on krill limits and the number of fish you could put in your boat. And I think back to Ray Scott, and I always just had this conversation in my head of if race if bass fishing didn't exist, tournaments didn't exist, and Ray looped onto the planet today and said, I have an idea, it's a tournament. What would that tournament look like? Because I I question like a lot of the things that we do traditionally, if they would look very different. Because from what I've learned about Ray, if it's about the show, it's about you know it's about making it a product that the masses would enjoy. Like I think that there would be a lot of components of what we do now that does exist, and I think some things would look totally different.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:33

Yeah, well, you know, the the the limit has changed. You know, when fast started, it was like a 10-fish limit, then it went to seven fish, then it went to five fish. Um, you know, there are there are a lot of organizations now that in the heat of the summer they go to a three-fish limit. So uh it's constantly going to be changing. And um I I don't honestly see the the catch-way and release format catching on in mass um real soon. It's it's a again, it's a very slow evolutionary process. So, you know, we've been talking about you know using paper tournaments for for 20, 30 years. Um but and and a lot of organizations, bass clubs, especially on the smaller scale, have adopted that sort of thing. And and there's now there's getting to be more technology available with some of the the score tracker type uh apps, uh the scales that that are Bluetooth and all those sort of things that that make those kinds of changes easier.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:39

Uh that I think uh again is you know it's like any kind of technology, it's gonna take a little while for for broad adoption of it to really take hold. But uh, you know, outside of uh you know state agencies mandating some kind of changes, uh it's gonna be a slow process. And uh I think that uh that legacy thinking, you know, is is gonna gradually is gonna go away, and and you know, there'll be there'll be new ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:15

Yeah, we're gonna have to evolve into it because it's yeah, even for somebody my age, it's gonna be a culture shock to change everything you've been doing. Um all right, Gene. So you talked kind of the history of the career moving into Bass, uh, the conservation summit. I I want to know now what are we looking forward to? What what about the classic is just exciting to you? Do you look forward to every year?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:44

You know, the the uh the years that we have the conservation summit, like I mentioned earlier, that's my a lot of my conservation directors say it recharges their batteries, so it kind of helps me with that too. Um you know, it's the one time of year when we can get a lot of them together, face to face, and we can talk to them, talk to each other. You know, I have communications with a lot of these folks over the course of the year, and we we do periodic conference calls and those sort of things, but but actually getting in a room and talking to people, you know, and and learning a little bit more about, you know, I've got some new conservation directors coming in that uh they just got elected or appointed to that position, so I'm I'm anxious to learn more about them as a person, find out what they're what they you know like and don't like and and and where they kind of fit in with within their organization. So that's always that's always something great. And the other thing that that I think has really stuck out in in my mind uh when it comes to successes from these conservation summits is the relationships that have been built between the anglers and the state agencies.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:04

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:05

And when you when you get the conservation director, the angler, and the fish chief or the black bass biologist from that same state that may have never met each other, and they get a chance to be together in this meeting and they can talk and they can start building that relationship that down the road really helps pay bit dividends. Those are the kind of things that that I I really enjoy seeing what comes out of these meetings at the end is that we've we've built some relationships, some partnerships that down the road, two, three, five years, whatever, um really start to make a difference. And uh you you know, we're building a trust between the agencies and the anglers. So we're not just doing this all the time, but we're shaking hands and we're agreeing, like you said, we can agree to disagree on things.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:09

But it it really is fulfilling from my perspective to see that sort of those sort of relationships get built as a result of this meeting. And then as I mentioned earlier, a lot of some of these states that are not what I call from the traditional bass happy southern states are starting to get more involved in black bass management. And those biologists or fish chiefs that come to our meeting, it's an eye-opener to them. Yeah, part of why we bring them to the Bassmaster Classic is because it is the biggest show in fishing.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:45

And it's an attraction. If we didn't do it at the classic, they might not even come. But you bring them to the classic, and then you got, hey, let's go to this meeting, and maybe we can learn something, maybe we can teach them something, maybe we can build a relationship with that state uh that might not have happened otherwise. And I've seen that happen several times over the years, where a state would send their fish chief or a black bass biologist, or maybe they didn't even have a black bass biologist, it was just the guy that got appointed to go to the summit. But they go home and then they say, Wow, I I learned some stuff. And I saw that some of the results of that at that summit, the the Black Bass 2025 in San Antonio last fall. There were states that sent biologists to that meeting that have never been to a black bass meeting before.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:45

And I think some of that was a result of their fish chief coming to a summit about four years ago and saying, we need we need to have people at these meetings. And and that to me, that is that bodes very well for the future of black bass management when you've got that kind of involvement.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:10

Do you have any time to walk around the outdoor expo? Like, do you get to actually enjoy being at the classic?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:16

Every other year I get to go to the expo. Okay. On years when we have the conservation summit, um, if I'm lucky when we get out at noon, I'll have maybe an hour each of the days to go um through the expo. I about all I have time to do is just make a lap just to see what's there before I have to get over to the arena where the weigh-ins are.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:45

Don't you mean you have time to make a lap and sign autographs?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:49

No, I don't even have time for that. But uh it's uh but the in between years when we're not having a stomach, then then I've got a lot more time to go and and look and talk to people and browse and and I very seldom buy anything. Um but I I get a lot of ideas, you know. Um but it's uh it's fun. I I love going to it and uh you know the the expo itself is is always such a a treat just to see all the new stuff and uh all the things that I really don't need but would like like to get you know get a hold of at some point. But uh, you know, because uh I think right off the bat I mentioned about you know me being a fisherman. I'm I uh I'm maybe not eaten up with it quite as much as some people. Uh maybe that's just because I've gotten older and slowed down a little bit. I don't fish tournaments much anymore. I'm still a Bass Club member. Uh if I get one or two tournaments a year in, that's about all I my schedule really allows sometimes. It seems like our our tournament director of my local club seems to be really good at scheduling things right on top of when I've got a meetings or something that I have to go to. But uh, you know, as far as just fishing, uh bass fishing, you know, I'm still just as passionate about that as I was when I was 10 or 12 years old. So absolutely. And the classic is certainly a place where you can really get charged up on it.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:34

Yeah, it really is. And that's most of the time, whenever you text me, it's it's not about tournament stuff, it's about a fishing question, and it's always fun that our relationship has kind of gone outside of tournaments. I remember um in 2018 at an AFS meeting, uh, you know, I had been talking to Major League Fishing, and I you were so gracious to me and sat and talked with me about what challenges I would face trying to communicate with anglers and talk science and those things. And you've just been uh a really big asset in my life. I can't thank you enough for all the things you've done for me. I hope that I can repay the favor over time. Um and and really, I think that my audience today has heard that you are a huge asset to bass fishing. I think it's very appropriate that you're in the bass fishing hall of fame. I look forward to seeing your leadership bringing more people. Um I'm very hopeful that Hal Schramm um gets inducted this year. We'll we'll see how that vote vote goes. Um but I'm just I'm so grateful to know you, Gene. I'm so thankful you came on to the uh the podcast this week. I'm sorry Bailey wasn't here. I know he would have like some real fishing questions to ask, but you've you've been an amazing guest. I can't wait to see you at the classic as people are watching this. We'll we'll be together. Um I look forward to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:59

Well, thank you, Steven. I appreciate it. And it uh appreciate those kind words. It's uh you know, it's a labor of love, I guess, you know, over the years. Absolutely is. Uh, you know, you have a passion for for the sport, and somewhere you develop that passion for the science side of it, right? And then it's just a matter of how do you blend that together to make a career out of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:23

Yeah, and I think that you said something really important. Um earlier in this episode, you said as as you as you kind of aged, you you've become more of a historian, more interested in the history of bass fishing. And I think that, at least from my perspective, that that is the evolution. You know, whenever I was young, I really wanted to catch every fish. Then I wanted to learn the science of why they grow. And and as I've matured in my career, and I have employees and uh, you know, other biologists that work for me, and I travel the country, I care a lot more about how do I get a copy of that blue keeping bass alive handbook because I need that for my history collection. I care a lot more about those things in preserving this, uh, you know, so my four-year-old nephew can experience bass fishing like I did.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:11

Well, I I I think I I think I know where I can get you one of these.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:15

So yeah, but I need mine, I need mine signed by the author, so I'm gonna have to get my own so I can bring it to you with a big Sharpie.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:22

There you go. There you go. I'll I'll bring some to Knoxville. I'll bring some to Knoxville.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:27

You're the man. Is there anything I missed? Anything you need to say to our audience?

SPEAKER_02 1:46:32

No, I I think uh I think we've we've probably hit on all the high points. It's uh you know, again, it's uh I appreciate the opportunity to to get on here and and talk about stuff. Uh you know, most most of the time, and I know a lot of the other podcasts and stuff that I've been on, all they want to talk about is fish care stuff, and that's that's kind of what I've been known for, you know, because of that booklet and so on. But this this job and what our state conservation directors do is so much more. Absolutely. And uh, and I think uh you know we can always use help, and so if people are are are have that kind of passion for really protecting the resource, I think that's where we need to direct them is you know, get involved and uh you know you'll make a difference.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:25

We're gonna have some resources, uh, links in the description of this video. I'll make sure that Bailey puts in uh the BASS conservation Facebook group. I'll make sure that we get uh the link to the current Keeping Bass Alive. Sorry, we won't have the updated, but we'll have the current one on. And um, you guys have a great conservation page. Uh you can find Gene's email on that page as well. You can get a hold of Gene if you want to volunteer, get a hold of your conservation director. I'm sure we've got a link to that conservation director state list down in the description as well. So Bailey's got a lot of work to get this to you. But if you want to be involved, BASS has a spot for you, I promise.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:08

Great. We appreciate it. All right, Gene. See you at the classic. All right, thanks a lot. I appreciate the opportunity to do this.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:16

Okay, there it was. The episode of all episodes, almost an hour and 45 minutes of just Gene giving us the knowledge, the information, and the history of Bassmaster. Um, we are probably at the classic by the time you're watching this. Hopefully, Bailey is doing well. Um, hopefully he didn't record over this and do his own intro and outro. We'll find out when this airs. Um, I'm sure he liked it. Maybe we should maybe we should play with Bailey a little bit. We don't have a like hotline question this week because of course I'm running solo and I don't really have access to those. Um so maybe we should play with Bailey a little bit. Why don't we why don't we put some comments um in the comment section about how much we enjoyed it without Bailey here? I mean it it it went well enough. Um we didn't have any stream crashes, we didn't have any any big issues. I think I think this was successful. Um you guys wouldn't wouldn't even understand how much I had to learn to mix and match this episode and and just record it. There's a lot of things that Bailey does on the back side that I had no idea. I have a lot of respect for what he's been bringing to the podcast, um, because he's got a lot of moving parts back here. But another episode in the books. We really appreciate everybody for listening to the real biology episodes on Sirius Angler. Um hopefully, if you do have a question, you know to email uh the email addresses that are somewhere in the description and get us those link hotline questions. I'd love to get back to answering those. Uh of course, if you want any time, give Bailey a hard time. Watch all the other Sirius Angler Network podcast, um, and the of course the Be the Fish uh YouTube channel where Bailey is chasing hardware and you know giving us the uh behind the scenes as he travels across the nation as a as a kayak angler. I think that there's a lot of great content uh that that Sirius Angler and Bailey are putting together, and I just hope that you all enjoy it and you watch it. And we'll see you guys back on another episode of Real Biology in two weeks.