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Diaries of a Lodge Owner
In 2009, sheet metal mechanic, Steve Niedzwiecki, turned his passions into reality using steadfast belief in himself and his vision by investing everything in a once-obscure run-down Canadian fishing lodge.
After ten years, the now-former lodge owner and co-host of The Fish'n Canada Show is here to share stories of inspiration, relationships and the many struggles that turned his monumental gamble into one of the most legendary lodges in the country.
From anglers to entrepreneurs, athletes to conservationists; you never know who is going to stop by the lodge.
Diaries of a Lodge Owner
Episode 114: Manufacturing “luck” through time on the water
What if “luck” isn’t your enemy in fishing, but the spark that starts every great pattern? We dive into the messy, humbling, and unforgettable moments that turn random bites into reliable tactics you can repeat—from a dead-herring stalemate to a flutter spoon inhaled on the drop, and the day a kid’s toy-sized inline spinner produced a 36" pike that fed an entire camp.
We unpack the real formula behind those storybook catches: preparedness meeting opportunity. That means tightening the weak links you can control—premium snaps, fresh leaders, clean guides, solid knots—and then putting in the time that multiplies your odds. It also means staying loose enough to hear what the water is saying today. You’ll hear how a painful snap failure reshaped gear discipline forever, why post-frontal fish often slide shallow into skinny weeds, and how small, subtle blades can outfish “right” baits when conditions go flat. We revisit the “stump trap” and show how to keep principles—current, shade, wind lanes—while letting go of dead-end spots that once produced a unicorn.
Guiding lessons and campfire honesty run through it all: belief keeps you casting with focus, guests’ confidence baits can unlock stubborn days, and time on the water is the only true luck-multiplier. Whether you chase muskies, northerns, walleye, or lake trout, you’ll walk away with a playbook for turning accidents into patterns, patterns into confidence, and confidence into more resilient, joyful days on the water.
If this conversation made you rethink luck, subscribe, share it with a fishing partner, and leave a quick review. Then tell us: what “lucky” moment became your favourite pattern?
When I refer to luck, I'm not talking about the moment the fish bites. Yes, that's out of our control, I get it, but it's when you kind of don't have a pattern, you don't know what you're doing, and and you're just sort of living in the moment, plinking along, and some something happens that you could then employ that over and over. Now it's the furthest thing from luck. So for me, when I say I'd rather be lucky than good, I mean I want to be in as many positions as possible to get lucky because the more luck you experience, the more skill you can apply later on.
SPEAKER_06:This week on the Outdoor Journal Radio Podcast Networks, Diaries of a Lodge Owner, Stories of the North, we're diving into one of the most debated forces in fishing: luck. Every angler has their story about the one that bit or the one that got away. And today we're exploring just how much luck plays into those unforgettable moments. On this show, we sit down with Pat Tryon to pull back the curtain on the roll chance really has out on the water. For those days when everything aligns, the weather, the fish, the tackle, to the ones where nothing seems to go right. We ask the question: Is it skill, preparation, or just pure luck? So if you've ever wondered why some anglers seem to be in the right place at the right time, or if you've shaken your head after a surprise trophy shows up on the line, stick around. This conversation will make you rethink just how much control we really have when chasing fish. Here's my conversation with Patrick Tryon. Welcome, folks, to another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner, Stories of the North. And I say this every time, but this time I really am excited about our next guest and no stranger to the show. Folks, we have Patrion in the house. Welcome, Patrick. Thank you, Steven. How are you doing, brother?
SPEAKER_11:I'm good. Listen, it's always a pleasure to be on the show. You know I love the show. I love listening to it. And uh every so often you and I have a conversation outside of the show that sort of uh leads us to wanting to do a podcast together. And I think this is one of those times because uh that's just that's where we're at.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, yeah, it's one of those times for sure. And um it usually is uh uh these these ideas uh come to us um when we're sitting on a boat or on the deck at the cottage. And uh this time in particular, we we uh sat on that deck, and uh I wish I had had the switch flipped that day because um that was a uh was a epic podcast uh discussion that we had. And I and I don't even remember all of it. I I don't I barely remember any of it.
SPEAKER_11:That's how you know it was a good one. Is is you know what? We were both so into that moment and that conversation, and there's something magical about the cottage sitting on the deck and the wind is blowing, the trees are the background. I mean, we just got so lost in that moment. And many of the topics, I believe, that we're gonna discuss today definitely came up because uh we were discussing sort of this idea of luck versus skill, or you know how I like to put it. I I would rather be lucky than good, because good, you know, quote, good, I think the origins of all good, the origins are luck. I mean, you kind of have to get lucky, especially in fishing, before you can be good. You gotta start somewhere, right? And a lot of times the, you know, established patterns that we benefit from over the years, they start out of luck and just sort of a series of events that take place somewhat randomly, or I should say outside of our control. And that luck leads us to the glory. So anyway, it's a great topic. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, well, I can tell you, probably the first 15 years of my uh my fishing experiences were all due to luck. And I'll tell you, um, um those uh those experiences, like I mean, back in the day when we used to fish Key River and Lake Nipigan and uh and um Lake Kippewa and all these these foreign places to me at the time, um we didn't have any fish finders even. Like, I mean, we would just go and get in a boat and uh drive around and uh uh you know, on uh Lake Kippewa, um the biggest lake trout that I've caught to date, which isn't all that big, you know, it's it it was probably close to 20 pounds. Um, but when I was a kid, it was a monster. And for a little while, about you know, not long enough for me to get it back from the taxidermist, it was our group record. Um, and uh that come from a total luck situation. And I might have been, you know, 18, 19, if that. And uh, we were fishing a place called Chalet the Ord. And um uh there was one place that the owner, Ron, I'll never forget them, Ron and Mary, and um old Ron, he would uh when you booked, it was uh housekeeping. So there was no meal plan or nothing. But what Ron's deal was, is um when you book a trip with them, it included free beer. But the catch was you had to you could only get free beer at um, I don't even want to call it a main lodge. It was more like their residence with a office on the front of the of the uh of their house, kind of there, a bigger cottage with uh, and and there was a room with a table and a and a cooler full of beer. And as long as you wanted to sit there and talk to Ron, you would feed you feed you beers. But as soon as you got up and left, you were on your own. So we would go and uh we would go and uh enjoy two or three beers with Ron every morning for breakfast before we decided to go out. And uh he would tell us where to go on fish and where to try. And um this one day, and you gotta understand back in those days it was a different experience. Um we would go out and um literally you could see the the lodge or our cottages from where we were. We were across the other side of the lake, and uh we'd pull up and fish with dead herrings, and um it never worked. Like, I mean, it never really worked. Um, we tried, but we would drop these dead herring in like a hundred feet of water, and then with our little 9-9 engine on these big like 18-foot fiberglass kind of um cedar strip looking boats, we'd back up into water where we could throw the anchor. So, you know, we'd have 150 feet of line out, maybe 200 feet of line out. As we're letting line go, we're slowly backing up so that our baits would stay way out in the deep water where we originally dropped them, and we would back the boat up to where we could get an anchor hold in 40 feet, leave the spool wide open, like the bale open so that the line could just free go freely wherever it wanted. And um we'd play poker in the in the in the uh boat, and then have a couple of of um uh cold beverages, and uh and we'd sit there for hours playing poker in the boat and just waiting. And uh this one time in particular, I just decided that I was sick of letting the line go out. And you know, uh later on we had a little bit of success um in years after that, but you had to the story at the time was you know, you you let this herring go, and then you'll see the line peel off your spool, and that's a fish that's picked it up, but you can't set the hook yet. You gotta wait for it to stop because the fish would pick up the like the lake trout would pick up your your dead herring and carry it away from the school, and then it would drop it and grab it by the head. And then once you saw that line moving for the second time, that's when you close the bail, reel up all the slack line, set the hook, and you got one. And uh, we did make that work later on. But this time in particular, I had won a poker hand, and I thought, you know what? I'm done with this baloney with this dead fish. But what kind of fish is gonna eat a salted dead fish? So I grabbed, I had an ultralight rod. I reeled in the one rod that I had with this dead herring on it, had an ultralight rod, and I picked the only spoon in my box, and I put it on this ultralight rod, and I remember I crawled up onto the bow of the boat, I sat right on the bow with my feet dangling in the water and dropped this spoon, and it was a light flutter spoon, like it took near 15 minutes to go down, and I'm watching this my my my line going off the rod slow, and I'm just peeling it and and watching it. And as I was intently watching this spoon slowly flutter down, and I couldn't see it, I don't even know how deep it was, but the line started to go faster instead of slowing down, and then it was going faster, and I thought, geez, I wonder what's going on here. I ain't even realized that it was going faster because a fish had grabbed it on the flutter down, and I'm watching my line and watching my line, and I said, Holy shit, Eric, I think I got one, maybe. He said, Well, flip your bale over. So I flipped the bale over, and sure enough, I caught this big leg trout. And uh, like I say, I don't even know how much it weighed. It was like 18 pounds-ish. And um uh I was king shit that day. And for the rest of the uh the uh summer, that was our spring trip until Eric uh decided he was gonna go to Lake Nippigan. And um uh Ray and Eric, my good buddy, Eric, Eric Poole. He's the he's the fellow that uh that um tragically died in a car accident. Uh but anyway, Ray and Eric uh later on that year decided that they were gonna go to Lake Nipigan. They asked me with like three days' notice, and I couldn't get the time off work, and off they went to Nippagin, and man, did they ever hammer them. They caught like eight Lakers over 20 pounds. It was ridiculous, crazy stuff. Uh, and that's where my love for uh Nippigan was born. But luck. Luck, luck. And those those lucky moments are the moments that you remember and talk about forever. But you know, you know what um what you have to do to be lucky? You gotta go out and fish. You gotta go spend the time. And that is um that's key. That is key for anybody to and that's that I think truly is what builds an amazing angler is the love to go out and fish, regardless of what happens, because that is that's that that is where my love for fishing was born. You know, you I I see it in Rayburn right now. My son Rayburn, he's been working with you, Patrick, and you've been mentoring him in the muskie world. He is at the point where he's a young guy and he's fixated on the catch, on the adrenaline rush, and on all that. And I remember I I was there at one point, but um once I got out onto the water and uh realized that um there was um uh just being out there was amazing. And uh I I kind of lost the um not I shouldn't say lost, but the importance of catching fish dwindled a little bit for me. I just loved being out there. And those lucky moments, those moments when magic actually happens, then that kind of makes them real special.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, does it ever? And you know what? You said a few moments ago, you said some of those lucky situations are the ones you remember forever. And you know what? It's true because a lot of times those are the genesis events, those are those are the moments when you get, quote, lucky that build these patterns for you to then go enjoy for the next 20, 30 years. Yeah, you know, imagine imagine, I mean, how many lake trout have you caught or have we caught even vertically jigging a variety of different lures, not just spoons, but like if you think about it, you getting lucky and and slinging into that lake trout so many years ago, that's sort of the foundation of what we're doing today to keep, to continue catching lake trout. Precursor, yeah. Yeah. And I'd argue, I mean, if you if you really broke down the elements of fishing, luck is always the first thing to occur. You know, if you if you're a brand new fisherman and you say, I just want to go fishing, you go by and you get a rod and a reel and it comes pre-tide and it even comes with a little shiny lure with a hook on it. You know nothing about fishing except you have a desire to get out there, which you said that led the way for you. It's I I I'm compelled to be out on the water, as many of us are in the early days. It's enough just to be there.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:You you're not even thinking necessarily about catching. You want to catch, don't get me wrong, but just to be out there, that's the calling. Well, you you show up to a riverbank, say, and you cast your lure all over the river, and you know, you end up casting it behind a rock that's sticking out, and boom, you catch one. That's luck. I mean, you didn't know, you didn't know there would be a fish there. But the savvy angler now says, Well, that's interesting. And if you're very savvy and you're really paying attention, if you if you're taking in all of the information, you might notice the current has changed behind that rock. And then you look upriver and you see four or five more rocks sticking out upstream. And then over the course of a day, you go out and you catch five or six fish out of fishing 20 of those rocks, and you say, Wow, I've got myself a wonderful day on the water. A negative-minded individual hearing this story would say, Well, you just got lucky because you got that first one out of the rocks and they happened to be on the rocks. And maybe that's true to a point, but but again, it's in taking that initial piece of luck and then applying the newfound data you've now now taken in to now, now it is not luck. Now we are actively working a pattern. I would say that is as far away from luck. Yeah, the fish have to bite. I get that there's always that element. But when I refer to luck, I'm not talking about the moment the fish bites. Yes, that's out of our control. I get it. But it's when you kind of don't have a pattern, you don't know what you're doing, and and you're just sort of living in the moment, plinking along, and some something happens that in some cases like yours, and in this theoretical situation of fishing behind the rock in the stream, you could then employ that over and over. Now it's the furthest thing from luck. But at the end of the day, it all boils back to that origin event, which you could say was luck. So for me, when I say I'd rather be lucky than good, I mean I want to be in as many positions as possible to get lucky because the more luck you experience, the more skill you can apply later on and build upon that luck and you know, work a pattern or refine a pattern or dot dot. I mean, the list goes on and on, but it all starts, you said it perfectly. You have to go out there. Like the first step in getting lucky is taking action. If you I'm I'm not gonna catch fish sitting on my couch at home. I I have to get out and put myself in position. And as we talk about in other aspects of life, how do we, you know, Earl Nightingale is this one of the original sort of mindset coaches from from way back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. Yeah. What's his definition of luck?
SPEAKER_06:Well, Earl's definition of luck is um uh when opportunity meets preparedness or preparedness meets opportunity.
SPEAKER_11:Exactly.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, yeah, those are wonderful words. Those are wonderful words.
SPEAKER_11:You can define luck a lot of different ways, but uh I mean, even if you were to say, uh, let's talk about gambling in a casino, which is not unlike fishing, right? In order to get lucky in a casino, you gotta go to the casino and make a wager. I'm not suggesting you do that. I'm just saying, even to experience any level of luck, you kind of need to be out and about doing something.
SPEAKER_09:Yes.
SPEAKER_11:That is sort of the preparedness, right? We're gonna we're gonna tie our hook on, we're gonna put ourselves where we can make the cast. The opportunity is the fish happening to be there that decides to eat our lure. I get that. And then as competent anglers, we then try to say, how can I now recreate the situation and and that you know, circumstances to now skillfully work luck into our favor and take an advantage as an angler. And that is, I mean, at the heart of fishing. And as we will see, there are lots, yeah, there are lots of examples to support that origin event of luck going on to create a good pattern, but that that's the beginning of patterning. That's exactly right. And unless you accept that right out of the gate, you will always be an inferior fisherman. If you don't, if you lean into this idea that we are so smart as humans, we can outwit the fish and we can, you know, I'm gonna use my superior intelligence, you've already lost. I mean, sure, maybe a lot of times you can through sheer experience. But how many times have you heard, especially in tournaments? And I used to be a tournament angler in San Diego, how many times at weigh-in after a tournament, you hear guys say, Man, in pre-fish, I was whacking them and I knew right where they were. I knew their depth, I knew exactly how they were gonna bite, and then you show up on the day of. That does not, you know, come together. That's right. See, it's the good anglers. Now, if you have a enough experience that you've seen similar experiences, say it's a cold front that shuts them down, but you've experienced this and you know how to go about making the change to then catch them. Great. That's that's a skillful angler, and that's what does separate the very best anglers, especially in the tournament level, from the more novice anglers, is that wealth of experience. But hey, man, let's not downplay the fact that on any given day on the water, anybody who makes a cast out into any section of water has the potential to catch fish that would be uh a life-changing fish from a memory perspective or in a tournament, a tournament-winning fish. I mean, again, it still comes back to that preparedness, meeting the opportunity. So I've tried in my life to lean into those times where the, let's call it the conditions or the circumstances have fallen completely out of my control. Because ultimately, as intelligent as we are as humans, and as much as you'll hear people, myself included, talking about how well we've patterned these fish, ultimately it's all out of our control. Certainly the weather is. So a big weather event that is ripping the consistency and control right out of your hands. And the world's saying here, buddy, go figure it out. You're so smart, you go figure it out. And I'm here to tell you from years on the water, going all the way back to when I was just a guest of the lodge with my mom coming up from San Diego. One thing I had a lot of was opportunity to be out there fishing in order to be prepared, to be presenting my bait. So of course, luck found me more than the average angler. The only difference, Steve, is because I was out there. It's not like I don't know that I experience a higher percentage of luck, if you could even refine that to a statistic. It was simply that I was out there to be in position while a lot of times you had more time.
SPEAKER_06:Your percentage of luck probably is the same across the board. Agreed. But you but if you play the game three times more, uh uh three times longer than the guy beside you, you've got uh two-thirds of your of the time to be lucky that he does not. That is exactly right. So more more time on the water, the more lucky you're the more luck you're gonna find. And um the one the one old adage that I like that that fits in this is you've got to be good to be lucky. And again, all that is, is that's nightingale's um um preparedness meets opportunity. You have to be good to be lucky, good equals prepared, right? Um, and and opportunity uh is the lucky, right? So you you you you have to be good to be lucky, not all the time, you don't always have to be good. Everybody can be lucky, everybody. Absolutely. But if you go to the if you go to the casino um five days a week, you're gonna talk about more luck than the guy that goes to the casino once every five years. But that's not that doesn't mean that the guy that goes once every five years doesn't throw his five dollars in and win the progressive jackpot for a million bucks.
SPEAKER_11:Exactly. You just never that's the that that's totally out of our control. Yes, we can go spend more time at our craft, but the big like that level of, I mean, that's completely out of control. But in both instances, they both took action and they were in the right place. I mean, they were both prepared.
SPEAKER_06:Yep.
SPEAKER_11:And the opportunity showed. So, you know, it's funny too, because luck goes the other way and it has even more positive implications for learning experiences, even though you'd consider it unlucky. And I know we haven't, we haven't discussed most of this ahead of time, but I want to put you on the spot because I'd like you to tell me about the time that you put the cheap Chinese-made terminal tackle snaps, okay, on your line. Because yes, the the putting yourself out there and taking action in that preparedness, sometimes you're putting yourself out there, but you're not as prepared as you ought to have been. And the quote, unlucky situation then molds you and teaches you how to be how to be better prepared.
SPEAKER_06:So I'm curious about Well, I think to be honest with you, uh, those unlucky situations, if you want to call them that, um resonate a lot um higher in your memory as far as learning and never forgetting. Um, and that time that you're talking about, um, yeah, to this day, it's uh I'll never forget it, ever. And um I'll I'll I'll start by telling you, telling all of you folks the lesson I learned. And the lesson I learned was you're only as strong as your weakest link, right? So the situation was um we went to Lake Nippigan, and this is after the Kippewa days, and um um I think Eric had just passed, and uh I was up there with uh Ray, Rick, Claire, um um um Wayner, um, my buddy Mario, anyway, the whole crew. And what we would do is we would uh get on a um, well, Captain Dan called it a cabin cruiser, but uh it was more like a glorified tugboat, probably a 50-footer, you know, 20, 20 feet wide. It would sleep seven of us, and we would pull three boats behind us. And we would go to Nippigan in spring, we would leave Orient Bay, live off of the um cabin cruiser, and um, and jump in our our 14 and 16-foot boats that he towed out behind this boat and fish from there every day. And uh this one morning in particular, we were um, and Dan would put the cabin cruiser, because Nipigin, for those of you who don't know, is the um is the largest lake inside Ontario borders. So that's the largest lake that's not a great lake, which is massive, and the water gets huge. Like it's not a lake to mess with. So every night um um he would harbor in a safe area, and then we get up in the morning and jump in our wee boats, and Dan would say, Okay, boys, go out and fish uh along that shoreline. You know, you catch uh brook trout here, and and uh, you know, there's some walleye or northern or whatever, and and you see that point over there, you see Cook's Point, I'll meet you at lunchtime right around the other side of Cook's Point, and off we'd go in our boats. Well, this one morning in particular, it was um it was pretty rough. And um, all the boys, uh, we were in uh uh the mouth of a creek that was protected by an island, and um everybody jumped out and they said, Ah, we're gonna go fish walleye up the river. And um Mare and I are getting ready to jump in the boat, and uh Dan's like, uh, what are you guys doing? And we were like, Well, I said, I don't know. I guess I'm gonna go and fish walleye. He's like, You guys are a bunch of pussies. You go out, you come here, spend all this money, and you're gonna go fish for dank walleye when there's world-class brook trout right out and around the corner. And I said to Dan, I said, Yeah, but look at how rough it is. He said, Don't worry about rough. Go out there, take it slow, you know, go across the shoreline, ride the waves, you'll be fine. Don't worry, put on your life jackets. Everybody should wear a life jacket and go and catch world-class brook trout. So I looked at Mario. I said, I'm gonna do that. Uh that that sounds like a plan. Like, I don't want to catch little dinky walleye. I I'm here for world-class brook trout, man. We called them specs. And uh Mayor's like, Oh, yeah, Steve, let's go. We'll get some uh world-class brook trout. Yeah, let's go get some specs. Yeah, okay. So we jump in this little boat, and like I said, we didn't have fish finders. The one year I did, I lost it. That's a different story. Um, so Dan would always tell us um, troll in 15 feet of water. The guy that runs the boat, you you troll a spoon, and if you're not hitting bottom, you're not in the right spot. And uh, and the other guy sits in the front of the boat and casts either marabou jigs or little spoons up at the shoreline. And these shorelines, man, they're like massive cliffs and rock piles. Like they're a couple of the shorelines were beautiful. There were like a thousand boulders the size of Volkswagen big beetles rolling on a steep slope right into the lake. And this was what that was like. And I quickly said to Dan, and this was before this time because I had already known, but Dan told us, you know, you're in 15 feet of water because you can see 15 feet down. That's how clear, that's the clarity of the water. So if you can see the bottom, you're in 15 feet. So just kind of drift out a little bit so you can't see the bottom, come back to the bottom. And sometimes we were like 25 feet off the shore is was 15 feet, and this one time. In particular, Mara and I are out, we're in these big rollers. It wasn't they weren't breaking. It was just, it was, it wasn't overly intimidating. Dan was right. You take it slow, you be careful, we're good. And um I marked um a fish. And um Mario, well, actually, the way it happened, Mario was in the in the front and he was casting the rocks like we're supposed to. And he started squealing, Steve, Steve, I saw the biggest, biggest speck I've ever seen. Oh my god, it was 10 pounds, blah, blah, blah. And he's going on and on and on. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, Mayor. You know, we were just we were young. Like I'm we were in our early 20s, maybe. And um I'm like, how do you even know what a 10-pound brook trout looks like? No, no, Steve, I saw it. I saw it. It was huge. It was huge. It was the biggest brook trout I've ever seen. And as he's telling me this story and I'm arguing with him, I mark, I actually we did have a little uh uh fish finder because I marked it on the fish finder. There were there were a few years when we had the portables, must have been before I lost. Anyway, so I marked that fish on the fish finder, and I said, Oh, I marked it. So when I marked it, I was just being a dick to Mare. I'm like, okay, Mare, get ready. Here it comes. Three, two, and I didn't even get to one, and whack, I I hooked into a fish. And uh Mare's like, oh my god, you caught it, you got it. Oh, Steve, it's good, it's massive. I know it is. Oh my god, you're gonna catch it. And he was pumped, like he was pumped. And I'm like, uh, I'm I'm thinking in my head, well, first of all, I didn't believe Mario saw a 10-pounder. Second of all, um, I'm I'm I'm feeling I'm fishing and I'm holding on to this fish, and it did feel big, like it felt really big, but the waves were going and everything else, and and I had a fairly ultralight rod, and um um, but man, it pulled and pulled and pulled, and I fought and fought, and Mario squealed and squealed, and uh we got it close enough to the boat that I caught a glimpse of this fish and Mare saw it again, and um I think he might have been right. I think I uh uh uh I think he might have been right. It was it was a giant to say the least. And uh now that I that I caught enough of a glimpse of this fish to know that the potential of it being a fish of a lifetime is actually there. And the the the the force that I'm feeling this fish fight with, I really I I kind of got buck fever. Um and as I'm as I'm sitting here thinking about this whole thing, I I just slightly pulse trying and it's pulling drag and I'm trying to fight back and it's pulling drag and I I I made I I got it close again and it just took off on a run.
SPEAKER_08:And then all of a sudden, mid-run, my rod tip just went and there was nothing there, and Mario's like, oh my god, Steve, you lost it, you lost it.
SPEAKER_06:I'm like, I didn't do anything wrong, man. I like, I mean, I I I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened, and because I'm and in that split second of a moment where I felt even before Mario saw that I that I lost it, I knew I lost it because I felt the rod just go limp. And I knew that it wasn't it wasn't a break. It didn't because the line, you know when it breaks the line, it didn't break the line, and I'm like, what? And I thought that it, I thought that the hooks just come out. And anyway, I reel in the line, I look at the situation, and my snap swivel, the snap part, straightened out. And in that moment, I am now replaying all of the money that I spent to get there. All the money that I spent on booze, on gas, on fishing equipment, rods, the the portable fish finder, the the the the trip itself for Dan, the uh floater suit that I bought, the the the spoons, the everything, all of the shit, all of the money that I spent to come up to majestic, massive, trophy laden, Lake Nippigan, and I lost my trophy over a five cent snap, and that I would like to be able to sit here and call it bad luck. I really would, but it's not, it's the preparedness, and you can think you're prepared, you can think that you're prepared, but it takes a situation like that to show you and sometimes show you in a way that is very painful. To this day, I still feel the heartbreak and the look in Mario's eyes, and that look was oh my god, Steve. Well, it wasn't even a look because he told me that look, he told me right after, and when I looked in his eyes, and he said, Oh my god, Steve, if I was holding on to the rod, I would have got it in.
SPEAKER_08:I'm like, you son of a bitch, Mario.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, but those that's the best part of those memories. But um, I'll tell you what, to this day, um, I'm not even talking about muskie. I'm talking about any kind of bass fishing, any kind of walleye fishing, whatever fishing that I'm doing, and I need a snap swivel, I'm spending two and a half, three dollars each because I want the best. Because I'm never gonna have a snap swivel straightened out like that again. And that is that that I was gonna say, the old Paul Harvey, and that is the rest of the story. But you didn't know the first part of the story anyway, so I can't do that.
SPEAKER_11:Well, listen, you it it it rings true. This is part of that preparedness, and you are now forever better prepared because of that. So you know, even with that, of course, dealing with unlucky circumstances is not great and it hurts us, but it still makes us better fishermen as any positive luck would. It's just that in the positive luck, we get that final, yes, here it is, here's the fish, here's the the payoff. And and that's that doesn't even account for all future fish that you've put in the boat or have caught because of that learning experience, whether it was good or bad, right?
SPEAKER_06:Well, and I I would still say that um that that situation that um I learned that lesson in. You may not learn that lesson if you get lucky and catch that fish. Exactly. Exactly. Lucky and you catch that fish, and maybe it's a bigger fish that you learn the lesson on, right? So I I would I would dare say that that one lost fish probably put a hundred more in the boat because that never happened. And not only that, that that taught me that it's not just the snap, it's the weakest link is is as uh you know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And that could be the snap, that could be your line. You know, I run into a a situation uh on one of the shoots this year where, you know, I uh and to be fair on my end of things, um it was uh it was a situation where uh the line, the leader material, I think was left in the sun. And it just whatever happened to this this one, it might have been bad leader material to start with, but the knots looked good, everything looked good until you actually grabbed it and and give it a snap, like pulled it from uh put it in your two hands, left a little bit of slack, and then snapped it, and it was breaking on me. And I lost a real good fish. I and and uh there was a lot of pressure. Um, thank God Peter Bowman put the uh put her together and and uh really pulled the team through on that one. But I lost a TV fish that uh we couldn't afford to lose because of that line. And um again, it doesn't have to be the snap, could be the line, it could be your rod, it could be uh um one of the eyes, you know, the the the little um the guys inside the eyes uh could be gone. The insert may have fallen out and you don't notice it.
SPEAKER_11:Or chipped and you don't notice the little chip and it's fraying your line. And on the on the on mono, especially braid, you might notice the fray, but mono, it just cuts so clean on any kind of sharp edge, and you could lose it there.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, you just never know.
SPEAKER_11:The list goes on, but that's part of the preparedness. That's right. You you you check those guides, you run a pair of nylons through the guides, and if they catch and run, you can isolate this one, it has a bad insert. But see, you only learn that through experience.
SPEAKER_06:Yes.
SPEAKER_11:And that's what we're hearing. And heartbreak, I might add. But that's experience. Yes. Because now you know what you don't want, you know. Now I don't ever, I don't ever want for you. It's two pieces on this on that big snap trout you lost from the snap. Yeah, it's one, I don't ever want to feel that way in my in inside the heartbreak. And two, I don't want to give Mario that piece of, you know, now he gets to look at me and point to me and say, Steve, you lost this. Yeah. And that can be as motivating as anything. And and you know, it's funny because as a guide, right, uh everything kind of comes back on the guide if it's negative at all. Where the positives, a lot of times now the guest gets to sort of claim that glory, which is how it should be, right? That's what a good guy does.
SPEAKER_06:He takes on all of the uh negative and uh serves up the positive to the guest on a on a on a silver platter.
SPEAKER_11:Silver platter, baby. Here you and and they're the talk of the restaurant. It's not the guide that took. Now, in reality, there's a lot of times, you know, I would I would go say trolling for muskie. It's all, it's my equipment, I'm throwing it in, I'm driving the boat, I'm doing this, the rod goes off, the guest wheel does in. You you could argue that the guest had little to do with that outcome, and they deserve all the glory, and rightfully so they get it. Um, but you know, it happens sometimes. It happens in a way where the guest is the reason for the success, and the guest is the reason why you got lucky. And and in some instances, that luck has then made me a far superior guide. But again, the the genesis, the seeds of that future success all lied in that luck event.
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SPEAKER_06:Can you talk about a couple, one, two events that that led you to um a um a proven pattern and the genesis of that was just a luck event?
SPEAKER_11:Swan by guests. I would love to, yeah, because this one in particular taught me, I don't want to say it taught me more than any other event about, like, because it's how do you quantify what? But I will say the long-lasting effect it had on my success out there was so big, and I owe it a great amount of it to that luck event. And so I'll so I'll share. So I want let's let I'll have to take you back a little bit. So so I want you to imagine that we're on a weed bed, and this particular spot is a saddle. It sticks out from shore where it's kind of a cliffy area. It drops down, but it's only about five feet deep, and it's a big weed flat that sticks out maybe call it a hundred yards offshore where there's actually a rock that you could hit, and then on the, oh, you know, with your boat, and on the back side of that, it goes into deep water. But up on the shallow side, it's really just this big weed flat. It's shallow. There's there's not a lot going on. Uh, and and I want you to imagine this. I would say he was maybe 12, 10 to 12. He's about to make the yep, yep, yep. A 10 to 12 year old kid who's about to take his first cast on this weed bed. Okay. And it is it is about it's got it's gotta be 130. It it might even be closer to two. And I know that because this whole situation, the reason why we're casting this weed bed is set up because of this. I am doing a guide with a family. I have four on my boat, and Billy Commander has six or seven on his big boat. So we are going to be meeting for shore lunch, right? And the whole day, I and I don't, I I unfortunately I don't remember his name, but this young lad who is as fueled and passionate about fishing as I can imagine, who is, to be completely honest, has annoyed me to the end of the earth because we're jigging walleye through this day trying to catch fish for a shoreline, right? Yeah, and he has like a seven-foot ultra heavy spinning rod with a walleye-sized reel that's got about 50-pound monofilament on it. And he's got like a one-inch rooster tail inline spinner, like that you would use for trout. It's probably got, you know, like a number six treble hook, you know, tiny and like a number one blade. This in every spot that we are, by the way, vertically jigging walleye in 40 feet. He's asking if he can cast the stupid lure, you know? And I I'm being very patient. I'm I'm I'm frustrated as the day's going on, more about the fact that we are not catching walleye. And I don't even mean we're not catching walleye. I mean they're not even there. We're driving around every shoal. It's just one of those days where they are completely scattered, they are not anywhere clustered up. And if if that were to happen today, I've now seen that enough that I've lucked my way through to figuring out how to catch them. But at that point, this is going back, I don't even, this is 10 plus years ago.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:I've got no idea how to catch them. And in the back of my mind, I keep saying, well, by golly, it's a good thing we've got Billy Command on the other boat because he always catches fish. He always catches fish. He taught me, he's he's got it figured out, I'm sure. But this is this is right when they have switched the regulations from it. Used to be a slot where you could keep them below 15 and three-quarters inches or above 23 and 5'8. You let them go in the middle, but catching smaller fish wasn't really difficult. You just needed to catch enough to feed the crew. But now it's gone to 18.1 inches, 46 centimeters or bigger. Right. So, so I, you know, we're we're not only not catching them, I've got no lines on a big one, yet alone even catching the small schooling fish, right? I'm in very big trouble. So I say, well, let's let's, I was on the lake. I said, let's go, let's go slide back in the river, let's go find Billy and let's see how he's looking. Because at this point, it's like, you know, 115 and we have zero lunch, 130, maybe. So, so we go in, I see Billy. I I don't, by the way, have any control over where Billy is. He's just sitting on a random point, on a random shoal in the middle of the French River, right? So I'm pulling up to the boat and I'm thinking in the back of my mind, you know, I'm there's this weed bed right on the back side of this island. We could go throw for northerns, if nothing else, right? But Billy's gotta have us covered. So we pull in, I say, hey Bill, how how you looking, bud? You know, because I'm trying to get a line on. Does he have six keepers in the boat? Because because now we've got enough for lunch, right? Because I have zero. I have nothing. And Billy says, Well, we got one. And I'm looking at my watch and it's one third. You know, I mean, it's at the point of the day where you gotta do it. Yeah, even if we went in right then and ate what we did have, which is one keeper. And by the way, there's like 12 of us, because I think they've got 10 or 11 family members plus Billy and I, which we don't need to eat fish for sure, but we've got fries. We could do it. It would just be pitiful. And I'm like, oh no. I said, I said, well, we don't have any, but we we might go take just 10 or 15 minutes and go cast. We're just gonna go cast real quick. And we're gonna, I actually what I said was, we're gonna go try to pick up a quick northern. And I remember it happening because the one of the other guests from the same family scoffed and said, Look at, and by the way, they've had a very slow day too. If you can't tell by the one-keeper in Billy, like they've had an extremely slow day. No, nobody knows where the walleye are at this point, right? So everybody, I think, is a little upset. And the guy on the boat, on Billy's boat, scoffed and said, Oh, just gonna go pick up a pike, are you, Mr. Fisherman? No stradomus, he tells me, right? Yeah. So I'm like, I'm like not getting involved in this one. I'm gonna let Billy handle that and I'm gonna just sneak away. But it's important because had Billy been one shoal further down river, this weed bed wouldn't have been the one I went to. It would have been the other one down that way or whatever. I I mean, it was completely random. All I knew, there's some shallow weeds there. Maybe we can go pick out a hammer handle or two and save lunch, right? We can clean the northerns in a way that keeps the bones out. You could do a lovely shore lunch with northerns. Absolutely. You you know that. But you gotta catch them, right? So as I'm starting to putt away, right? Billy says, Hey Pat. And I said, Yeah. And he goes, You only need one good northern. And I said, All right, Billy, I'll I'll you know, I'll go do my best. But like I've caught about two fish this entire day and they were both tiny. I I I I'm I'm just gonna go see what happens. Well, buddy, from Billy's mouth to God's ears, we pull into this weed bed, and little bro on my boat says, Hey, can I cast this? And I said, Well, shit, if there was ever a time for you to cast your little piece of crab spinner, in by the way, it's an inline spinner. This isn't even a spinnerbait to come through the weeds, but I ain't fighting it. I'm tapping out. I got nothing left in me. I don't know what's happening. I know so little at this point about the French River. This is what I'm telling myself. You, you know, you get down on yourself, you're like, you know, you can't even catch a walla, you know. So, so, buddy, he grabs this the first cast, he throws it out there. And I mean, I'm telling you, 18 feet from the boat. It's 50-pound mono, Steve. I mean, there's no, there's no leader there, and the the the whole lure is probably weighs three-eighths of an ounce, right? So he flicks this and the the line's coiling off his his reel, and I look over the smile on his face. He was happy just to go cast, which, by the way, sidebar taught me better how to read guess because then when I could see somebody so passionate, I would lean into what they wanted to do and figure out how do I make that work.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:Because now they're happy no matter what. But that's a side conversation. He flips this thing out about 18 feet from the boat. And I am pervert in my, if I could have mentally rolled my eyes harder, right? I would have caused eye dam. I mean, in my I didn't roll it in my eyes. I was, I was a demi-professional, but I was so, I'm like, kid, you are so, you are never catching a fish. What what are we and buddy? The wake that came out of the water from about 30 feet further than he coming towards it. And by the way, everybody on the boat is now watching because the kid is finally getting to make a cast, right?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:So he whips that thing out there. Everybody, which I believe were both of his parents and a brother, are watching, and we all see the wake coming from about 30 feet further from where he cast it. And I was in the in the in the moment, in my mind, I'm trying to say, slow down, slow down, because I'm trying to give the fish time. But what I said was nothing because I was almost in shock. I it was weird. Yeah. So I'm watching and I'm and I do remember saying, Oh my God, here it comes. It's like the last thing I remember. Buddy, this northern come flying through the water just under the surface as he's reeling in this ridiculous lure. And the the line has coiled around the tip of his rod right before he gets to the boat. The big springy coils have tied him in a knot. And he's trying to reel, but he can't. I mean, it's the whole reel locks up because it can't start. It's why not around the loop, that around the eye. Yeah, that's right. So I I'm not, by the way, I'm watching this. I am not, other than, oh my god, here it comes. I've said nothing. I have not, I have not helped him. And it happens, you know, like in a fraction of a second, this whole thing. Well, he's he he's trying, he's realizing something's going on. And he's he's now not he, and by the way, I don't think he saw the fish coming. I don't think he has any clue what's happening. Everybody on the boat saw it, but he, I watched his eyes go to the tip of the rod and he kind of jerks the rod a little, trying to straighten it out. Well, he basically does a figure eight while this is happening, and he and he looks down and the lure is fluttering down like the blade's not spinning, it's not, you know, moving. The lure is just sort of fluttering weakly down. And buddy, a 36-inch northern T-bones it right under the boat. And he lifts up. I mean, he had he was a natural. He lifts the rod, and but the it's still coiled around the tip of the rod. So he's sitting there with two hands holding this northern that's digging down, trying to go under the boat and go everywhere. But because there's about four feet of line out and it's effectively now tied to the end of his rod, this thing hangs on there. And man, to I don't know how this little tiny trout hook stayed hooked on this fish because he's got four feet of 50-pound mono effectively tied to the end of a super stout rod. And this pike cannot throw it for the life of him. It gave me enough time to grab my walleye net and dig the head of the northern, and it's one of those you pull them into the boat, and half the fish's tails flop. Meanwhile, all I'm thinking is we've got lunch, baby. We've got lunch. So I'm stoked. This everybody's hooting, hollering. I mean, you want to talk about a core moment in fishing. Yeah. First cast, this buddy gets to finally fish his lure combo because mean old Pat wouldn't let him use it out on the 40-foot walleye shoals, right? And he catches this beautiful giant northern, I mean 36. It was not a whale, but you know. Great eater. Like, and it and to beat everybody. So we do the photos, we do this, we do that. So now it but it has been five minutes, and we come puttering back around the corner where Billy is pulling the anchor of his boat now, and we come rolling up, and bro, by the way, the northern is just sitting on the deck of the boat, right? He grabs the thing and hoists it up to point to the uh to to show the other boat, and everybody on the boat starts screaming and what whistling and uh like the cheers. I mean, it was glorious, bro. I had nothing to do with like if you want to talk about luck, I had I had no involvement. I maybe drove the boat to the to the backside of the Wii Island, yeah, but I didn't I didn't pick the spot. Billy effectively picked the spot that I fished because that's where he was anchored, and I just went around the corner.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:The guest, I mean, I did nothing, bro, nothing. And Buddy catches the fish of a lifetime, which by the way, before we go on into how that then changed my certain my my experience post that date, in that day, it fed every single person, right? Yeah, Billy and I got to share a lovely moment because we we cooked, he he filleted the fish with wonderful care. And he very carefully took the liver out and he was explaining to me how the nutrients in these older fish are all housed there, and it's this extremely beneficial thing for us to eat. I mean, he was sharing with me some of the native traditions, like it it the whole experience beyond the fish getting in and us successfully having the shore lunch, yeah, them going back and then being the literal hero of the lodge that night at dinner. Because Everybody had an awful day on the water except one kid. And I'm telling you, that the genesis of that happening was 100% luck. I had no knowledge I was able to put forth that lended that fish happening. In fact, it went against every knowledge I did have. And yet, he's the hero. He is the hero.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I think I think the one thing that uh this little fella had um that um a lot of people don't think about at all um is belief and and that that confidence that um you might call it um young night niativity out there. And uh for him to go out and and be just asking to use that, hey, can I use this? Can I use this? Because buddy, I know I'm gonna catch with it. Can I use this? Can I use this? And then finally getting the opportunity to put all of that um those positive emotions to work. You know, I I there's there's there's no way of measuring whether there's actually something to be said for that, other than I feel like that sometimes too. And uh, and I think that that had something to do with it.
SPEAKER_11:I would agree with you fully. And the best part is it it proved the power of that belief, even above skill and experience. You know, we were not catching the fish. We, and to be fair, we hadn't spent a lot of time fishing northerns that day. It was really one cast and we got the one we needed. But but the fact that even with Billy struggling, everybody in camp, that was the one person that day who believed he was gonna catch. Is it a coincidence that he was the one? I would argue just like you, probably not. Because how often have we seen that level of belief in all aspects of life, not just fishing? That belief as the core of the maybe the belief is the fuel to continue trying. That's the that the belief is what keeps you putting yourself in position to have the opportunity, right? And and if nothing else, I can buy that. I can buy that. You believe it's gonna happen. It means you're more willing to try and you're more locked in while doing, you're not just going through the motions. Yeah. You are you are locked in, right? And and that goes a long way.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:That goes a long way. So so wonderful story.
SPEAKER_06:I don't think in all these years uh I've ever heard you tell that story.
SPEAKER_11:Well, here's the funny thing about that story is there might have been a time I didn't want to share a story like that because I wasn't the one responsible for catching. You know, like you almost, when you're young, especially, I noticed that a lot of people they try to make their success on the water about them and how all the wonderful things they did and how they made this change. They noticed this. I I happen to notice that this was going on. And again, I'm not taking away that that happens. I I've done that. Like we on the water with you, we've seen conditions changing and made changes that led to fish. But you almost diminish yourself, or perhaps you diminish the ego when you lean into a story that's that luck laden. But but so important to do so, I find in my own personal journey is I've been trying to really reflect heavily on any big victory I've ever been a part of, and really taking an honest look at my involvement from a thought perspective. Like as fishermen, we all want to believe we know what to do. Or like, again, it's our superior intelligence or it's our superior experience on the water. It's our additional experience compared to these other guys that make us, you know, quote, better. But that's all ego, man. You're you're you know, you're you're really you're on the same playing field on the day of. It's what do you do with it? And as we've said on the onset of this, I would rather be lucky than good because that luck event, we'll call it, rooted in the belief of the young lad and all of the circumstances that led to us being on that weed at the time that the fish was very clearly ready to eat, man. So I I I looked at that day later, and and on a very similar day, I was with a gentleman named Paul, and you will know him because he got a picture. He got a 43-inch northern. Yeah. Okay. And this was on a day that nothing is moving. Nothing is moving. I remember. And buddy, uh, this little spark, maybe see, no, he I gotta be careful because this is the ego saying, in my superior memory abilities, I remembered this lucky event that took place. But again, that's the patterning. That's the that's simply recognizing, hey, I've been here before and I know what to do. Okay, well, I didn't know what to do, but did you go with the 40-pound uh flower? No, no, I I drew the line there. What I what I did do was use the proper, what I consider to be the proper equipment. Let's call it 50-pound braid with a reasonable leader. However, interestingly enough, I went to a spot that sets up identically. It wasn't that exact spot, but it is a literal sort of a cliff coming in. There's a big weed flat, and then it drops into deep water. And you know what? I had this gentleman Paul put on a tiny little rizzo whiz, which is a tube for the for any old school musky fishermen, they'll know. But the new guys don't know the old stuff. I don't think. This was a tube, like a bass tube, on a straight wire inline spinner with like a number four French style blade, like a MEP style blade. Yep. They look ridiculous. There's not a lot, it's just a Wii blade.
SPEAKER_06:You have a couple.
SPEAKER_11:That belong to you, I'm sure. Well, you know, can I tell you why I bought why do you think I bought those to begin with?
SPEAKER_06:Well, probably because you wanted to uh you wanted to catch uh some muskies.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, well, I needed some small inline spinners after seeing this kid crush this musk.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, so you bought those after the kid.
SPEAKER_11:Absolutely, buddy. I said, Well, I guess I should invest in some small spinners because there's definitely a time where small baits catch big fish. So we snap one of these things on and we go into this identically set up weed, and he gets a 43-inch northern, which by the way, was on like the last day of his trip, and they had had absolutely no luck. And on a whim, I was available in an evening, like post a full day. And I remember the morning. Yes, they're like, What can we do? And he said, Let me. I think you'd said, let me see if we can get Pat this after. Because I got back not knowing we were going. Yep. And I'm told I get back and say, Hey, Pat, can you do a uh like take a box dinner and go do like a half day after? I said, sure. So that was the that's what set up this day, which is you know uh months later. Well, yes, I this that situation of going guiding was luck. And we go there, and and the funny thing is, I was doing walleye earlier in the day and we struggled. So again, I'm like, I've been here before. That's the Twilight Zone. I'm like, what are the so and by the way, I've gotten, I've never used a Rizzo Wiz at this point. Never, I've bought them because I needed some small spinners. I've never used one ever. And I and we put one on, we go out there, and he smokes this thing. 43 inch northern. Uh, he ended up getting a beautiful replica done on it, a two-sided replica that he put like in his bar, like a glass-paned bar top. Anyways, uh, though I cannot say this clearly enough. That fish came because of my recollection of having experienced that luck experience with the with the young lad on the 36-inch northern. So, yes, I guess I should credit myself to some degree because I I put it together. It said, Oh, I've seen this before, let's go try this. But man, the genesis point is luck. So I have to always shift that. Any accolades that would fall on my decision to do it, hey man, the root of it was this kid who taught me a very valuable lesson about downsizing in in especially post-frontal conditions and fishing a little bit skinnier water than you might have been catching them, you know, previously, or in or even in the days prior to that. But those fish just slide up into those weed flats. And man, the number of fish between not just pike and musky, but big walleye. I'm talking like not the schooling size walleye, but the the 20 plus inters, the number of those big fish that I have been lucky enough to contact with guests and myself personally on postfrontal days in the skinny water on very small lures. I really got to give a lot of that credit, man, to that luck origin event with the kid. And that is a pattern I have been lucky to consistently replicate over and over and over across multiple species because of that one event. So that's an example. You ask for an example of how does a luck experience play into your future success as a guide. Man, I owe that kid. I if I knew who it was, I would write him a thank you letter because he taught me something that day. He taught me a lot of things, including the guests. Well, well, I'm still learning that, brother. But but but yes, all so many things. And I owe it, I owe it to those circumstances where all the control slips out of my hands, or what semblance of control I think I have slips out of my hands, and I really just have to submit and surrender into the day. That those are that's why it's the core memory because you're almost like your back's against a wall, you got nothing else, and boom, it happens anyway. So glory to whatever circumstances are far beyond me that set that up because that was a foundational day in my experience of being a fisherman.
SPEAKER_06:Wow. Thank you for that. That um um and that story, um, along with the couple that I that uh that we talked about really uh kind of ties this conversation up. You know, you'd rather be lucky than good. But I I think to be good, you need to be lucky. And they go hand in hand. And those origin experiences, hey, a lot of them are luck. But um I really appreciate you um you coming out today and talking to us about um the origins of luck and um and quoting um um preparedness needs opportunity and that is that is luck, right? And and really understanding that, you know, you as a person, all of you folks out there listening, in any situation, you can to a certain extent control your luck because you have to put yourself out there to be lucky. And then once those moments happen and you learn from those moments, then your luck will grow. And I'm not sure luck is the right name for it anymore. What what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_11:Well, you know, I like it because then you can always fall back on, hey, we just got lucky today, you know? I mean at the end of the day, but but maybe it's manufactured luck, but that that diminishes it to an extent.
SPEAKER_06:I because I think it's it's putting yourself in situations where the universe can make wonderful things happen.
SPEAKER_11:And that's I would definitely agree. That I would agree with that. But but what if you really think about it, is that not how we should be living our life every day?
SPEAKER_06:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_11:Because the reality is we're given this experience on this planet to go and we get to spend our day sort of how we want. You know, I mean, we have to work or we have to at least have money to be able to pay for housing and food. Like I understand there's an element of things we may not choose to do, but every day we are given a certain set of circumstances that are different than every other day. Even if it feels like I go to the same job and I work nine to five, nine to five, every day is the exact same. It's not. Your commute to work is different. There are different people next to you on the road, there are different circumstances. I know that the big cycle appears to be sort of, you know, going in revolution and you're just yes. However, to the discerning eye, there are a lot of nuance every day. And and the difference, if you if you really start to study sort of success stories, which is what turned me on to Earl Nightingale to begin with, when you say luck is preparedness, meeting opportunity, you're absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head when you said, put yourself in position to be lucky. You have to go out there and do it. And you could even reduce that further down to put yourself in the mindset to be open to new experiences, regardless of what that experience is. Yeah. Because the majority of us, we we say, oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I love to learn and I and I want to better myself. Well, the the problem with that is in reality, when it comes to actually learning new things, you have to go through the painful period of it not going well. Like on that day on the water, we're not catching walleye. Yeah. Now, now my ego has been impacted because I'm having to cower in to the boat where Billy is tied up with zero fish. Billy only had one. So it wasn't like, you know, it was some crazy day, but we just, but you know, you you gotta, you have to be vulnerable and that hurts.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:But but had I been closed-minded and and said, no, don't cast that bait, or no, use this instead. Does the fish bite? I don't know. But what I do know is by just me getting out of the way, it all worked out. So, so now it's looking at that with the discerning eye to say, okay, now how can I can I replicate this luck, right? Can I, can I sort of resituate to be able to be lucky? But I you gotta be careful because even that is trying to control the dynamic, right? I'm trying to control where I go, what I use, how I present the bait in order to get like that's still me trying to control the outcome. But that's you gotta pick something to do. So why not, why not go with what you think is the best? And since we had learned this valuable lesson about downsizing, going to skinny water, and and you know, putting yourself in position, that is what led to the success on and on and on. And and it does go past, it's it's really no longer luck. Even if the Genesis event was purely luck, that's right. You are skillfully, yes, you're skillfully targeting fish due to your previous experience. But what I would caution people is to not be so conditioned to a certain style of fishing or a certain application that you're close to what that day is trying to tell you. Yes. Because even though yes, oh my gosh, brother, even as a guide who back then, bro, I knew everything. At least I thought I did, I know I did. But I say it from the the pat of, you know, early 2010s, that that decade, buddy. I knew everything there was to know, as often kids do, right? I now know I knew nothing. But but in those days, you know, if you if you know everything and you go out there and then you get your head kicked in, you gotta learn. Though that's the painful growth. But if you can skillfully apply the memories, the past successes, and what's happening now in this moment, you just might get lucky again. But none of that is to suggest that you can control anything because ultimately, man, it's kind of all luck. The fish have to be there and they gotta bite. And I don't control that. I don't control that.
SPEAKER_06:Wow. This is like uh I'll I'll tell one quick story. I think I've probably told it before. And this speaks to that um sometimes you're just in the right spot at the right time and you're lucky, and there's not a pattern to be had, right? And and this happened with uh with Ray, good old Ray Pool. When he walks into a bar room, they say, There's here comes Mr. Poole. But anyway, Ray and I and Eric, we were fishing the Key River, and uh there's this bay called Genesee Bay, and there was a bit of a narrows kind of I forget, I haven't been there in years and years and years to get in there. And we went in and Ray cast this one tree stump and caught a beautiful largemouth bass, probably one of the biggest ones I had seen at that time, like you know, four and a half, five pounds. And um for the next decade we went to Key River and for the ten trips we were there, we burnt half of our first day fishing that stump trying, trying to catch the four and a half pound bass. And just ask me how many four and a half, how never mind four and a half. Ask me how many bass we caught on that stump after that first after that initial fish.
SPEAKER_11:Steve, how many bass did you catch on that stump after that initial fish? None, none, not one.
SPEAKER_06:And how many times did you fish it? Oh, every time, every time. Uh, for for a decade, we went back. And I would say, Ray, don't we don't have to go back to the stump, do we? Oh, well, Stever, we're you you remember that bass. We'll get them this year. And I was like, oh, okay, okay, buddy. And uh, so listen, sometimes you can just be lucky and leave it at that, right? Learn from that. I learned and I learned a hard lesson after a decade of going back to that same spot. Sometimes, yeah, there's no rhyme or reason.
SPEAKER_11:Yep, it is luck. But hey, even still, with that said, I would still rather be lucky than good. Because see, Ray's trying to make it him, he's trying to be good by fishing that. I'm so I know the fish is there. Well, brother, it's not there because I know for one reason or another. So, you know what? It it's still, I'd rather be lucky than good.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. And I I and not uh uh I don't mean to throw Ray under the bus because I I'm guilty of doing that too. Uh you know, uh there's spots for you.
SPEAKER_11:How about your how about your channel fish? Uh the the one sitting in the middle of the channel on the on the tree that you went back for how many years?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, that was the tournament fish. That was that um um big shoot uh on uh Gloucester Pool. We uh Glenn Berry and I fished a bass tournament and I lost a freaking monster right off of a single stick, right in uh a little channel that uh took you back into a bay in front of uh the uh lock, the big shoot lock. And uh yeah, I lost a big one. And um uh that was right by Scottie Hamp's cottage, our our buddy Scotty Hamp, uh who's up at Obavaca right now. But um I went back there. How many times? How many times? I don't even know. Every time I was there, every time.
SPEAKER_11:So see, we're all one and the same, man. We're all living the same experience, we're all trying to figure it out. And it's also, by the way, you gotta, when you're first starting fishing, you gotta lean into past success to as a starting point. But but the the wisdom comes when you gain enough experience to say, you know, based on the conditions today, maybe we ought to be doing this. But how can you not go back to a place that produced such a big fish? Because you know what? The way my mind thinks is if there was one there once, yeah, there's gotta be. There's gotta be another good one there eventually.
SPEAKER_06:So on that, on those two instances, it never did prove out. But um, and you can ask me how many times did I look for a stick or that log that Ray found, or the the the the the tree or stick that I found. Ask me how many times I tried to go and find another one. Yeah, none. I didn't, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't. I uh that was when I was younger, right? I I never thought about well, hey, maybe if there was a stick here, or or at least break down the situation and say, okay, well, there's current in this channel. Is there another place where there's current? Maybe it's the current, or you know, is there just trying to pull out the factors that may have held it there and apply it somewhere else? And um, back then I was totally fixated on that spot will hold fish because I got one here. Damn it.
SPEAKER_11:Yep. That's the discerning eye I speak of when I, you know, if you if you or like raise the stump inside the wee bay. How many other stumps are there inside other similar bays that may be holding at least it and listen, you might hit 20 and you catch zero, but at least you're learning along the way. Yes, you're learning along the way.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:So, you know, it's it's it's a wonderful journey. There are a million different ways to fish. There are a million different strategies behind fishing. And I know people to this day who go out there, they cast a lure, they stick it into a rod holder, or they, you know, they cast a piece of bait out from shore, stick it in a rod holder, and they sit in their chair and read a book. I mean, if a fish bites, great, if it doesn't, great, they're just happy to be out on the water. It's like when you make it too serious, that suddenly it's a problem to not catch fish. When not catching fish, that's the that's what fishing is. Like fishing is not catching fish. You know, catching is catching. That's right. That's right. So we all say, we all say, well, I want to go fishing, but then then we're not okay with not catching fish. And that I think that's a lesson that can be gleamed, especially like with Rayburn, as him and I have been working on muskies specifically. It's it's what it's really setting a an understanding that, man, you you just you don't catch so much more than you do catch. Get used to not catching, be okay with it. Be okay with it. Don't get panicked. Don't don't be running out of time because, you know, or you you only have six hours left of your trip and you gotta go. So you, you know, stay calm, stay true to the course, keep learning, and take what you can from a from a knowledge perspective away every time, and you will always get better. You may not always catch, but you will always expand your knowledge base. And that is time and time again. You talk about the best fisherman on the planet, whether it's musky bass, you know, you talk, you talk about like the Kevin Van Dams of the world. The guy was at the top for so long, it's almost egregious that one person could be that dominant for such a long period of time. But you know what? Maybe he thought differently than the other guys, maybe he fished differently. He definitely had the most experience out on the water. So at the very least, always keep yourself in the game where you can get lucky by being out there and to the best of your ability. Get out of your own way and lean into what the world is telling you that day. Because it doesn't matter how you caught him in the past. What matters is what you're doing today. And I think that that's something anybody can become better at. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're just starting fishing or if you've been a guide for 50 years. You can always get better at the sport, especially with if you have an open mind. And that's where I've come in lately, like in the last maybe like this phase of my fishing. I mean, I'd kind of had success and caught all the big fish that I'd wanted to catch. I'd kind of achieved a lot of those goals. I had hosted television shows, I had written magazine articles. I, you know, I kind of did a lot of the stuff that I thought I wanted to do. And I along the way forgot that I really just like being out on the water in the moment. And when I got back to that, I just kind of put myself back in position to get lucky. And I've been enjoying it so much more. And the big fish still come. The because you don't you never lose the experience. You're always adding to it. But what I stopped doing was thinking that I knew how it was gonna happen. You know, uh on the drive up to the to the musky fall trip when we used to talk about, you know, we would be out there talking about how we're going to catch them. And I we it never worked that way. You know, like because at the end of the day, you you always gotta figure it out. So I think leaning into that and just like really enjoying the time on the water and just continuing to be prepared so that when the opportunity strikes, you make the most of it. And that I think is really the the next step for me as an angler is getting out of my way. I don't know at all. I really don't. I people ask me all the time, they still they people say, Pat, I'm going up to the fringe August 14th to the 23rd. Where what where should I be fishing? I'm like, bro, I I have no idea. You know, like like where where are the where's the bait? Well, how are the weeds growing this year? What like, you know, you you you gotta, even with 30 or 20 years of experience out there, I don't know how they're gonna bite, man. Uh and then when I go and fish, what what I think is gonna happen, it almost never does, but we always figure it out, or generally, because we keep an open mind. So anyway, um, that's all my my biggest piece of advice I would say. Lean into being lucky, get yourself out of the mix, you know, like put your all-knowing Nostradamus mind. The buddy called me Nostradamus. Can you believe it? Like before we caught it, because and I'm telling you, I just well, we're gonna go try. We're gonna go try to catch a northern. Okay, Mr. Nostradamus, you go try to catch a northern. Well, by golly, we did.
SPEAKER_06:So it worked. You proved to be that.
SPEAKER_11:No, hey, back day we were. Well, it was my little fella. No, the little fella made you look good. Because I'd have I'd have said it was gonna bite a spinnerbait, which again, maybe it would have, but I it would have bit a certain way. It went the exact opposite way that I and also key, key. The reason I was fishing that spot is because I thought there'd be hammer handles. I wasn't looking for a 36-inch northern, right? I was, I was, I was trying to go catch some small fish up in the shallows, the little ones that you avoid because all they do is tear up your plastics. Like if you're fishing a shadzilla for muskie and a 24-inch northern eats, dude, a 24-inch northern does more damage to my plastic muskie bait than a than a 55-inch muskie does. You know, I mean, I mean, so you avoid those spots because the northerns are small. I go there thinking they're gonna be small. And and you know, one thing that's haunted me to this day, it's it's Billy saying, and Billy's a man of very few words. You know that.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_11:As we're putting away him getting my attention and saying, hey, Pat, it only takes one good northern. We only need one good northern that'll feed everybody. And I don't know if, you know, because Billy knew I was a pike guy when I was a kid as a as a as a guest of the lodge, pike was you know what I did before Muskie, right? So maybe he's saying, Pat, go somewhere where you know there's a big pike or you know, go lean on your yeah, but I had, bro, I had no way to even guess that there would be a fish of that caliber on that spot. And yet, as I said earlier, the number of quality fish from spots like that that I've caught since that time has shows me in reflection, that version of me knew nothing, bro. So, you know, put yourself. I mean, what I was was prepared, I guess. Cause uh, you know, we we we put the boat there and the kid made the cast. So the opportunity struck, and I'll never forget it.
SPEAKER_06:On that note, Pat, thank you very much. Um, it's It's been all about preparedness meets opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Nightingale. Um folks, uh, go and listen to some of Earl's stuff. It uh it has been um uh wonderful, wonderful listening for me. And um I uh I want to thank you all for getting to this point. I really appreciate you listening. Uh thanks to uh Anthony Mancini, our producer, he always does such a wonderful job. Uh Lakeside Marine in Red Lake, Ontario. Uh those uh those fine folks up there, uh they do such a good job uh looking after everybody that comes through their doors. And if you're in the area, don't hesitate to stop in and tell them Steve sent you. And uh um again, I think we've come to that time. And you know, Pat, that time, unfortunately, because I love it when we get together, we're gonna have to do this again. Um thus brings us to the conclusion of another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner, Stories of the North.
SPEAKER_08:I'm a good old boy, never meaning no harm.
SPEAKER_07:I'll be the whole you ever saw. I've been reeling in the hog since the day I was born.
SPEAKER_08:Bendin' my rug, stretching my line. Someday I might on a lodge and that'll be fine. I'll be making my way the only way I know how. Working hard and sharing the north with all of my plows. About a lodge and live my dream. And now I'm here talking about how life can be as good as it seems. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Hi, everybody. I'm Angelo Viola. And I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Ann and I will be right here in your ears, bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm. Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
SPEAKER_10:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors. From athletes.
SPEAKER_00:All the other guys would go golfing. Me and Garden Turk, and all the Russians would go fishing.
SPEAKER_10:The scientists. Now that we're reforesting or anything, it's the perfect transmission environment for line with these.
SPEAKER_04:If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated for you will taste it. And whoever else will pick up the phone. Wherever you are, Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_01:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Olette, and I was honored to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as Chaga, a tree conch, with centuries of medicinal use by indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials, and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession. And I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. Find Under the Canopy Now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.