Untamed Pursuits
Embark on a wild adventure like never before with the groundbreaking podcast, "Untamed Pursuits."
Join the intrepid duo of renowned author and outdoor enthusiast, Ridr Knowlton, alongside the seasoned professional fishing guide, Jamie Pistilli, as they traverse the globe in pursuit of the world's most exciting fishing and hunting destinations, and the fascinating creatures that live there. From the lush rainforests of the Amazon to the icy depths of the Arctic Circle, each episode promises heart-pounding encounters, captivating tales, and invaluable insights into the natural world.
With Ridr's profound storytelling and Jamie's unparalleled expertise, prepare to be transported to the front lines of adventure, where every roar, splash, and rustle ignites the senses and leaves listeners on the edge of their seats. "Untamed Pursuits" isn't just a podcast—it's an adrenaline-fueled odyssey that will redefine your perception of nature and leave you craving more. Buckle up for the ride of a lifetime!
Untamed Pursuits
Episode 16: Unexpected Catches: Tales of Muskie, Bayous, and Family Traditions
Have you ever hooked a fish you weren't expecting? Ryder Knowlton and Jamie Pistilli certainly did, recounting their unforgettable muskie encounter while on a mission for gar in the Ottawa River. This unexpected twist showcases the unpredictability and excitement of fishing across unexpected species in new areas. Join us as we chat with them about the art of adaptability amid shifting weather, the array of species reeled in, and the differences between Canada's brisk fall and the mild southeastern U.S. autumn.
Seth Vernon takes us on a vivid journey through Louisiana's bayous, where family traditions and adventurous tales come alive. From duck hunting escapades in South Louisiana to fishing narratives that include alligator gar chases, Seth's stories offer a nostalgic look at how his family's deep-rooted love for the outdoors shaped his personal and professional life. No adventure is complete without the backdrop of childhood memories, and Seth's are full of humour, heart, and the occasional gar-induced adrenaline rush.
Our exploration doesn't stop there; the world of invasive species, bayou culture, and guiding in diverse ecosystems awaits. We discuss the impact of nutria in Louisiana and share the intricate dance of life among alligators and resilient watchdogs.
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 3:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching.
Speaker 2:You so confidently?
Speaker 1:you said hey, pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the next episode of Untamed Pursuits on the Outdoor Journal Radio Podcast. This is Ryder Knowlton with my trusty partner, jamie Pistelli. Jamie, good morning, how are you doing, man?
Speaker 4:Hey man, what's going on? I'm good we finally got summer up here so I'm really pumped that things got hot and calm. Conditions have been favorable for Gar, so I've been out the last couple of days getting uh, I guess the last week of my prehistoric friends and uh, yeah, so crazy thing. Yesterday we're. I was with an older gentleman and we're prowling the flats in search of gar and I look up and I see something. I'm like that's not a gar, but it's pretty good size fish, like what is?
Speaker 4:it is a carper and then it was just a muskie's just staring at me, no kidding no, and I went oh, he sees me, I see him and it kind of darted out to the side. And then it turned and was looking at the boat and I was in the front and normally I don't fish, but I had a fly rod in my hand so I just tossed one cast over and I hit in the front and normally I don't fish, but I had a fly rod in my hand so I just tossed one cast over and I hit it on the head and it snapped and hooked. Anyway, I grabbed the fly, set the hook, gave it to the gentleman we fought it, got it beside the boat and a quick little water release. It wasn't a big fish, but it was the 30-inch sight-casted muskie, my first ever Kind of weird dude.
Speaker 2:Dude, a muskie is a muskie. I can't get over that. That's what an amazing thing to go out and come across.
Speaker 4:That's fantastic and it was in a place I've never seen one on the on the ottawa. So it's a an area stretch of the river that's not known for muskies at all. So I'm glad to see one in there and hopefully I'll get a get her again in a couple years.
Speaker 2:But Tell me, about tell me about the cast and the take. So you know, musky are so finicky, they're so funny. So the guy you said was it was it a good cast? Did the fish help you at all, or did your client make a good cast? How did it? How did that go down?
Speaker 4:I actually he had a spinning rod and I had a fly rod and basically he said, hey, if you see a fish that I don't see, you cast it and give me the rod which you know sight fishing for gar. He was an older gentleman and his sight was not very good. You could not see some, some fish. So he said I just need to hook one. Anyway, we're looking for gar and I saw this fish dart out to the side and I just kind of lobbed a cast. It wasn't the most.
Speaker 4:I'd like to make up a big story that it was a 90 foot cast into the wind, but it really wasn't. It was maybe 30 feet from the boat and it just hit him right on the head and it came up and snapped and then I thought it was a pike. Just because it was just, it just hit it right away. And then when it jumped I went, oh, that's a muskie Like, and then fight, fight, fight. It was a great fight, get it to the side of the boat and then away we go. So it was nice.
Speaker 2:Now, where are you in the? You guys, obviously you're out there, looking, looking for Gar. You'll find him. Leave it to that. So where are you in the season right now? Because I know your season is obviously shorter than our season down here in the in the Southeast, southeastern US.
Speaker 4:Where kind one. We record this so it'll be a little outdated. But you know, right now you know early fall, so normally it doesn't get this warm and we've had so much wind this season that conditions for garb have been tough this year. So I saw a little window, made it happen and yeah, it's one of those fishing days you kind of got to go with whatever weather conditions are in front of you and sometimes you got to switch it up and mix up the species. So it's been a good week Lots of smallmouth, lots of largemouth and had a family trip for catfish. So a little bit of everything. You know the boat needs a pressure wash when we're done this, let me tell you. But it's good man.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's fantastic. You know, you guys you call it a kind of a, you know, maybe a late summer season up there we're getting our guest is from the Carolinas and he'll attest to this. We're feeling fall here. I mean we had last night we had one of our first, like legit little you know, fire pit fires last night, you know, watching the Georgia Bulldogs almost get beat by the Kentucky Wildcats and you know, but it was like a real fall day. I mean we're feeling it in the southeast. You can tell it's the next season.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's good. And you know what? Our guest today, Ryder, I'm hoping you're doing well he's still recovering from the great Bolivia experience. It's funny.
Speaker 2:Seth, he was our first ever guest.
Speaker 4:He kind of broke us in and we were talking and the inbox maybe once a week, once every 10 days we get a question about Seth, so we're able to pry him off the boat and get him in for a little chat here, which I'm pretty pumped about.
Speaker 2:Well, I tell you, seth is a very modest guy. So for our listeners that might have missed the first episode, let me give some context to who we have this morning. We're so excited about this and when you try to get somebody back, you know they're a great guest. And you know, and when you try to get somebody back, you know they're a great guest. So when we moved to the Carolinas, I was reading an article in one of the fly fishing magazines and Seth would never bring this up because he's too modest, but I will.
Speaker 2:I was reading an article in one of the fly fishing magazines and it talked about 10 fly fishing guides that you have to fish with before you die. And what if? I mean if that article doesn't get your attention, I don't know what does. So of course I'm reading it and you know, and, like you'd expect, you know, there's a couple of the old timers, probably from the Northeast. You got some of the, obviously some of the big river guys out West. I'm sure you're going to have a couple of Alaska folks, but you know there were. And then, of course, you're going to have a couple, you know, I'm sure there were a couple from the Keys in there. Well, right there, at like number seven or eight, was this guy from Wilmington, north Carolina, and I said holy cow, and it started talking about Seth Vernon of Wilmington, north Carolina, one of the 10 guides to fish with before you die. It's just an amazing, you know, an amazing article and what a list to be on. So I said, I said I got to meet this guy. Oh my God, I got to meet these guys right here, right here in Wilmington.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, you know, over the next month or so, seth and I, you know, got a chance to meet each other, introduce each other, immediately hit it off as guide and fisherman but, more importantly, immediately hit it off as friends. And we've fished a ton together over the years. We've spent time, we've shared stories, we've had days where we've gone out and just sat and enjoyed the marsh and just told stories and then picked it up, you know, and then picked it up and and anyways, you know, we, our, our guest is a neat guy because he's not only he's not only a fly fishing guide, of which he is one of the absolute premier fly fishing guides in the Southeastern US, if not, if not in the US and but he's also incredibly respected as a conservationist. You know, if you talk to guides around the Southeast, you know you've got a lot of activity going on in the Everglades improving water quality, a lot of efforts on coastal, southeastern, coastal US. And our guest today is so highly regarded in the world of conservation. He's a photographer, a videographer, probably a writer. He's one of those people that we could have 10 shows on and each show talk about a different thing, but just an all-around fascinating guy and a great guy.
Speaker 2:Folks bringing back for round two Seth Vernon from Wilmington, north Carolina. Seth, good morning.
Speaker 5:Hey, good morning. Writer Gosh, it's so good to be back with you, and Jamie, thank you guys.
Speaker 2:Hey, welcome back. It's great to have you back. Oh yeah, welcome back. Hey, listen, we're going to on our first show, which is, to this day, one of the one of the shows we've probably gotten some of the most comments back. As Jamie was saying, because we talked about you know, your involvement in the ever. Even though you guide out of Wilmington, north Carolina, you're you're involved down in the Everglades. I follow the stuff on Instagram that you're supporting the Clean Water efforts in South Florida. And then, of course, you heard one of these crazy people that goes out and tries to tame the giant python of the Everglades.
Speaker 2:Anybody who might've missed the first episode, go back and listen to Seth Vernon, number one, and it's a fascinating episode on Seth's experiences and trying to catch some of those giant invasive species of the Everglades that are harming the native species, including these giant python that now live in the Everglades. But, seth, for this next episode, what we thought we'd do is talk a little bit, obviously, about your home waters. But, man, before we do that, tell us a little bit about how you, of course, got into the guiding business. But I even want to go further back than that, because I know you have got just fascinating family history you know from your, really your family history. It takes you back to the bayou, back to the Amy River in Louisiana and the real bayou and tell us, if you will, a little bit, maybe about your family. Let's start with that. Tell us about your family's history in the bayou and how that might have, you know, maybe sparked your interest in living.
Speaker 5:You know living a life in the outdoor world. Yeah, absolutely, ryder. So, like my dad's side of the family, my paternal side of the family all born and raised Baton Rouge. I'm sure if Jamie and I got on, you know familytreecom we're probably related.
Speaker 4:You know most of those. I have 10 fathers.
Speaker 5:That's a side bit, I'm sure we are but we know that my dad's side of the family, you know, left for religious reasons from France to Canada, from Nova Scotia, canada, that area down to you know Arcadiana, uh, and then South South Louisiana. So I was super fortunate to have um, a family that loved the outdoors like you both do, and uh was committed to raising all the extended cousins and kids in the outdoors. And the things that I remember most are duck hunting in the marshes of South Louisiana, the sights and smells. I remember thinking that that's what duck hunting was, these epic days with high limits, everybody in the blind shooting an entire box of shells or more, and thinking to myself I understand why these guys love duck hunting. And then, of course, as I grew up and hunted other areas, I realized not everybody grew up with that kind of waterfowling but that was deeply entrenched in the blood of my family Huge, huge, passionate waterfowlers. My grandfather, james Elan Vernon, my dad's dad, retired at the age of 40 from Ethyl Chemical Corporation in Baton Rouge where I believe he was like the plant overseer. In those days you could retire at 40 years age and have pension and go on to do other things with your family. We didn't have inflation like we have today. So he put his boys through school, retired at the age of 40, and the lawyers for Ethyl Chemical Corporation were big waterfowlers and he worked with them.
Speaker 5:I wish I could tell you exactly where it was, but I know it was in and around Dulac, louisiana, near the oil and gas infrastructure. In and around Dulac, louisiana, near the oil and gas infrastructure. And so they found some marsh near the Roosevelt Refuge that I want to say. It was like 5,000, 6,000 acres in size and to the average person it was just wetland. It didn't have any real appeal, and these guys leased it. I think they had like a 100-year lease.
Speaker 5:They had floating camps. They had duct lines scattered throughout that were all well-maintained. They had GoDevil mud motors. For people that don't know what that is, those were made in Baton Rouge. These are surface-drive air-cooled motors that allow you to run in really shallow water or heavy vegetated water and you can just skim through all these shallow marshes and mudflats. And I just remember that growing up and then summertime was all about fishing and family fish fries and pulling crawfish traps and gathering up as a big family to have jambalaya or crawfish boil, and we spent a lot of time. As you mentioned one of the places that really formed a basis for my love of fishing and that was on the Amite River, which feeds Lake Pontchartrain, and so we had a family member with a river camp down there, uncle Frank, and we would run around in all the Cypressville backwaters and oxbows catching bass and Cypress trout, what we call bowfin today, gar Jamie was talking about gar in your intro. That was probably one of the scariest fish I remember seeing as a young lad, big alligator gar.
Speaker 2:Seth, I remember a story. I remember you telling me about your sister or your cousin water skiing and seeing a great big alligator, gar. Tell us that story.
Speaker 5:I remember you telling me about your sister or your cousin water skiing and seeing a great big alligator? Tell us that story Right yeah.
Speaker 5:I remember some weird things from my childhood but I remember skiing as a family was a big thing. We did a lot of water skiing. If we weren't fishing Again, the whole family was embraced in the outdoors. My dad was a very talented water skier so he taught all of us. We were skiing on the Amite River summertime, hot as Hades, just deep South Louisiana, humidity, heat and my sister had just planed out slalom skiing she's a phenomenal water skier, like my dad and there was a gar literally chasing her.
Speaker 5:Now, looking back as a guide, it's possible that the disturbance that the boat was making, the disturbance that her ski was making not unlike a lure, might have been like macerating some fish on the surface or some little shad or something that was there. And the gar were just up in the wake, the way that pompano skip in your wake when you're running a boat. But it looked like this big alligator gar was chasing her down and I just remember there being a lot of hype around this event, Like nobody had ever seen anything like that. Nobody had ever experienced anything like that and I'm sure she wasn't in any harm. But to see a big alligator what?
Speaker 2:an image. I mean that's alligator gar. I mean Jamie, you know, jamie, I obviously you know literally guides for gar, but the alligator gar, that's a different animal, right?
Speaker 5:I mean, that's a massive that's a massive fish. Yeah, and I'm sure I mean you guys are sportsmen, you follow all the same stuff I do on social media, but there's been some record gar setting in Texas in some of those muddy rivers and I mean those things are yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's on the list.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah that's one of our bucket lists. Jamie and I have been talking about the Trinity River in Texas probably as long as any other trip. This will be interesting to see it and I'm curious to get Jamie's reaction to this. I mean, there's so many things we can dive. We're going to keep going on this bayou thing because it's a fascinating. There's so many fascinating stories. Tell us about eating garb, because you know, I know, and Jamie, I don't know if you guys have come across that in Canada or not, but in the Bayou. So, seth, tell us about that because I know, I remember it's bittersweet. I mean it's an interesting thing, but I know you were never a big fan of the taste.
Speaker 5:No, so the guys down there, you know we call them affectionately Kunas, right? So that's your blue collar guy living off the land down here in Southeastern North Carolina or anywhere in South Georgia, places that we've tromped around, we would say redneck, and that was your family in the bayou, totally yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and we would say that affectionately. Um, you know, if you were to approach one of my family members as a stranger and hear that deep South Louisiana drawl, you'd say, oh, you're a Cajun, right? That would just be the natural thing that you would think. And they would back up and say, oh, no, no, I'm not a Cajun, I am a Kunas, and John, I am a Kunas. And a lot of people would take offense and think that this was some kind of slur, you know, but they affectionately embrace the fact that they are well-rounded sportsmen, they know their way to live off the land, they're very proud of their heritage, they speak a lot more French than they do English in many circles and they're the kind of folks that would literally give you the shirt off their backs. You know, um, they extend fairness and trust and respect to anybody, first and foremost even outsiders. Uh, until you give them a reason not to respect them, you know, they always start with a good foot. So really, really phenomenal people, very, very much in tune with their environment, which goes back to 200 years, of those folks living off the land in those deep bayous and cypress swamps. Just a wonderful family upbringing, surrounded by love, surrounded by people and pets and hunters and fishermen and all around outdoorsmen, men and ladies that were just comfortable in the outdoors.
Speaker 5:And gar was not really a staple of our family, but there were a few individuals in the family that they were setting catfish lines like what we call trot lines or jugging. You would come up with an alligator gar occasionally. If the jug and string was tough enough, you might have a gator on the end of that the gar. The way I remember it being processed is that they would flake the meat. I remember gar being very bony, the way I've seen them processed, and so they would almost shave the meat off.
Speaker 5:You're not getting a filet like you get from a nice mahi-mahi or some other saltwater game fish or even a freshwater fish like a crappie. So they would flake the meat off, almost shred it into a bowl, and I believe that they mixed that with some other compounds, so there might've been some flour or dough. There would have been a lot of seasoning in that, and then they would fry these gar balls. They basically made them into patties like a meatball. I don't remember that tasting very good, but it was something that you know. Every now and then somebody would eat and or process Jamie.
Speaker 2:I see a shore lunch, Jamie. I see a shore lunch on the side of the Ottawa River with gar balls. Huh, Jamie Pistilli and his famous gar balls. I think that could be fantastic.
Speaker 4:Oh, you know what? I've researched it before and I saw how to fillet a gar, and the video from Louisiana is like 24 minutes.
Speaker 5:I'm out. Yeah, that's like it's a long process.
Speaker 4:I mean it's not like a little trout or like a crappie, like you said, a walleye, it's like long process. I mean it's not like a little trout or like a crappie, like you said, a walleye, it's like cut cut, flip cut done.
Speaker 2:You need 10 snips. You need a machete, that's right a machete. I don't even have a machete. You know.
Speaker 4:But hey, you know what, wherever there's protein and there's people that can live off the land and eat what you got, right, like we've talked. We've talked about Ryder eating some strange things and all over the world and hey, you got to eat what you got.
Speaker 5:So you think, with the culinary things I was exposed to as a lad, I would have been a much more adventurous eater, and, ryder, I think you've got us bested on that. I think you're way more game to go native, but we did. We had some really beautiful food. I remember the smells of both my grandmother's kitchen and I remember the smells of my grandfather's outdoor kitchen on the Amy River. I mean, those guys would cook up just about anything and it's fascinating to me when I'm around people from that part of the world that I interact with here in my local community. I've been so fortunate to meet some of those folks. Those smells are definitely in the memory bank. You know somebody's cooking jambalaya in the kitchen.
Speaker 2:I know that smell when I walk through the door and it almost brings tears to my eyes, one of my good buddies you guys are going to laugh talk about Kunas, of which I I I'm the Carolina slash Georgia version of that and my family absolutely is. One of my buddies recently just came back from Louisiana and they went down and they did a lot of of frog gigging, yeah, which, for, for our listeners, and especially maybe our Canadian listeners that are unfamiliar with that, is literally where you sneak along in a boat with a, you know with a, almost like a little harpoon, and you're hunting for frog legs you know frog legs being such a delicacy and then the other thing they did is they were hunting nutria, which is, you know, like this big, almost like a golly. It's like a big rodent of the bayou, if you will, rodent of the marsh and Seth.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember some of your stories where, like you said, hey, man, protein's protein and if you happen to come across a couple of nutria that went right in the jambalaya pot.
Speaker 5:That's right, you know it's interesting.
Speaker 5:I was told whether this is true or not, as a young man, especially in duck hunting in the marshes of South Louisiana, you'd see a lot of nutria swimming, just free, swimming from pond to pond.
Speaker 5:I was told that that was a South American rodent that was brought in as a means of the fur trade. They thought that if they turned this large rodent it's not unlike an aquatic capybara, which I think you've spent time around that they thought that it would be a part of the beaver fur, maybe the otter fur trade. This is going back to the dawn of colonization in the Americas and these things just took off and in fact the fur wasn't very sought after or desirable in the marketplace and so it just became a staple for subsistence lifestyles in the Gulf States and the folks down there just put it into a part of their diet and I don't think it was much of a trapped animal. I believe not, unlike the pythons and some of the invasive species that we have unwittingly turned loose upon these native ecologies. If I'm not mistaken, in South Louisiana there is no limit, no season on nutria, and so it just became a staple of that diet.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask this. So nutria in Louisiana a nutria is considered an invasive species.
Speaker 5:I believe it is. I'd have to go back and look at some of the regs. You know, I've actually seen one here in coastal North Carolina, just one which there can't be, just one, Um. But I remember running across one down in the lower Cape Fear river basin and thinking, golly, I haven't seen one of those since I was way down South, you know, as a young lad, but um, yeah, that was, that was very much a staple of the diet and for you know, to be eating Nutria and then have one like swim the river. You know, and, and point that out to somebody, a guest, a family member that doesn't know that's in the pot we're eating, that that can turn your stomach, See a big aquatic rat.
Speaker 2:Amen, you know, protein is protein. Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. 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.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 4:Every Thursday, angelo and I will be right here in your ears, bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now what?
Speaker 1:are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 4:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 3:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors.
Speaker 1:From athletes. All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists.
Speaker 3:Now that we're reforesting, it's the perfect transmission environment for life To chefs. If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone, Wherever you are.
Speaker 2:Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside.
Speaker 4:Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 7: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 Ouellette and I was honoured 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.
Speaker 7: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.
Speaker 2:Tell us about. I can't imagine the stories you must have. Tell us about the alligators. I mean, you grew up as a kid around alligators and I remember you used to tell me about all the three-legged dogs around your fishing camp. But tell us, tell our listeners about your life among you know, just among alligator folks in the bayou. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So I've always been fascinated with big reptiles, and you and I both share a passion for birding. It's crazy to think that the birds that we admire today through the lens or the binoculars are actually more closely related to dinosaurs than these crocodilians. You know, as a youngster seeing alligators, I think my first instinct was fear. Right, here's something that we were warned about. We had designated swimming holes down there that were safe, that were free of alligators free of alligators. It just hadn't been an attack there.
Speaker 5:My grandfather had been rolled out of boats by large alligators while fishing. Fishing, there might've been a firearm on the boat, there might've been some out of season harvest. In those days it was not uncommon for the family members to come across those things on a trot line or to actively engage in harvest Again, another big protein source. But I do remember around family camps, around the river camps, it was not uncommon to have watchdogs and they would let you know if there was trouble with somebody that wasn't welcome coming through the yard or somebody coming up on your property from the boat. But more importantly, they would let the river folks know if there was an alligator trying to get into your chicken coop, and it was not uncommon for there to be a couple of three-legged dogs that had somehow survived a grab from an alligator down there in the bayous, and I just remember that being like there were a lot of cur dogs. These were not like fancy Catahoulas from Louisiana, these were, you know, your traditional rat terriers, your small little cur dogs that were just mutts and um, always friendly and fun to be around with with family members and kids.
Speaker 5:But they definitely served, uh, probably as an attractive nuisance to the alligators which would stalk them from shore, but also as an early warning system. And I think that was a cultural thing. People just just had them around, but alligators were a big part of that life. You saw them everywhere, especially in areas with low current. You saw some big ones in and around the Amite River and I think that's because it doesn't have a lot of flow.
Speaker 5:We see alligators here in North Carolina. We're probably the northernmost range of the native alligator range for the continental US and I still remember hearing them rumble in the springtime. So they make like a bellows where they inflate themselves. They'll get up on the surface and as they let this mating display, as they let this sound out of their diaphragm, it sounds like somebody's starting an outboard motor, like a 20 horse, you know, on the backside of the lake this deep hollow rumble, and so some of those things are just sights and sounds that definitely graced my memories as a child and kind of set the tone for that whole South Louisiana adventure lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Tell us. I mean you grew up in that situation. It's funny you mentioned the northernmost range. You and I are going to be fishing together in a week or so and we'll be down off the Cape Fear system but just north of the Cape Fear River system, kind of transitioning now maybe more towards your home waters for your river system. Kind of transitioning now maybe more towards your home waters is. You know, people don't realize just how incredibly remote eastern North Carolina is. It is so remote and you literally have the Alligator River right on the inside of the Outer Banks of North Carolina and I guess you're, like you said, I mean that kind of tips, the northern edge of that habitat. But you know, it's amazing to think that you've got alligators that far north that are getting through the winters and thriving. I mean those areas around the Alligator River. There's lots of alligators in eastern North.
Speaker 5:Carolina. Yeah, you know, one of the things that struck me I mentioned earlier. My grandfather worked for Ethyl Chemical Corporation for years and they had a plant and I'm going to show you when we drive down to fish the Cape Fear River and Baldhead area. But Dow Chemical was a part of the Ethyl branch and there's a Dow Road that is parallel to the main drag in Carolina Beach, curry Beach. It's on the western side of that peninsula, carolina Beach, curry Beach. It's on the western side of that peninsula. And my dad, my dad's father, my grandfather, I remember before he passed telling me he remembered traveling to Wilmington. I believe Ethel worked on some chemical anti-agents during World War II, so this would have been long before I was a blink in my father's eye, but he had traveled to Wilmington and it is very reminiscent of that South Louisiana bayou.
Speaker 5:When you travel up the Northeast Cape Fear River, which is fresh, you get into these beautiful hardwood cypress swamps.
Speaker 5:When you go into, even more remote, the Black River Complex, which is one of the last undammed blackwater rivers in the state of North Carolina and has some of the oldest living organisms on the East Coast, it's a little known fact but the cypress trees there date back to the birth of Christ at 2,000 years old and you've got bowfin in those rivers and you've got redeye and largemouth bass and you've got gar red eye and largemouth bass and you've got gar um and alligators in the black river.
Speaker 5:But those Cypress trees and those habitats in the black river and the Northeast Cape fear river, like Prince George Creek, they all remind me of the Amy river and that childhood growing up. So it's kind of neat that here in this small little microcosm of Wilmington, that in a very short amount of time you can be catching striped bass in downtown, right on the waterfront in the Cape Fear River, and then you can run up the Northeast Cape Fear River, get out of that brackish salt mix and be right back into the heart of the cypress swamps that remind me of my childhood in South Louisiana.
Speaker 2:Tell me, I mean, you grew up with this incredible connection to the outdoors through your family. Tell us about the transition. How did you get into guiding? And then, of course, we do want to dive into the fishery that you actually guide in. But what was that? I mean, Jamie and I love comparing notes on how various guides kind of took that path. What was your path?
Speaker 5:Yeah, my path was kind of unique. I think it's become more commonplace now. You know more people have found guiding as a way of life. You know that was. There were not a lot of guides when I was growing up. Some of the men in my family did guide duck hunters and did guide fishermen but it was very unofficial, right. There was no registering with the state and setting up your maritime insurance and all that kind of stuff. It was like I know a guy and he's an outdoorsman and he can take us and put us on on game. And you still see this in in far away, far flung countries like South America you don't have like an official guide, right. Um, you'll just have somebody that knows the region and that person becomes employed for an expedition. My guiding was kind of unique because I had grown up in Houston and spent so much time in Baton Rouge with my dad's family and in the basins of the bayous.
Speaker 5:When I was a young man and growing up and maturing and thinking about going to college, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to get out of an environment that I was really comfortable with, kind of thrust myself into something new, and so I had the good fortune to go to school at Appalachian State University in Boone in the western part of North Carolina. It was there that I fell in with an amazing group of anglers who were diehard fly fishermen. That was really my first real professional experience with fly fishing and um and my brother from another mother mother, my, my mentor, Ollie Smith, who is a fixture in Boone and um, has been featured in all kinds of videos and and um in magazine articles and is truly a whirlwind of a human being to spend time with. He's funny, gregarious, outgoing. You never know what's going to happen. He's always an adventure to spend time with Ollie Smith.
Speaker 5:I was fortunate to get to work for him at Fosco Fishing Company and Outfitters while I was in college, so I pulled shop time like a lot of the guys learning the trade, learning the skills, learning the equipment, dealing with customers coming and going from the store, skills, learning the equipment, dealing with customers coming and going from the store. And then on my days off I was just probing all these rivers. And then the guides in that community. They'd give you a little pearl, they'd see how you were advancing, they'd show you some casting techniques, they'd teach you some new rigging techniques just to get you caught up. But everybody there at Fosco Fishing and outfitters in those days it was a beautiful family of brotherhood and and and a fraternal bond. They we all were were there cause we love the outdoors. Uh, everybody came from different backgrounds. We had guys from Virginia, north Carolina, tennessee and and other parts like me and, um, there was this celebration of your successes, so like if you had a great guide trip or you got your first $100 tip that was worthy of going to the barbecue joint and having some beers and everybody wanted to celebrate with you your successes.
Speaker 5:Tell me about your day. What did you have as a saltwater guide down here in Wilmington? I don't have that same sense of community that I had growing up and I definitely look back at those times and think what a wealth of knowledge. Right, I was standing on the shoulders and riding the coattails of some giants when it came to fly tying or fly preparation or rowing a drift boat. Those guys really impressed upon me the need for community and shared knowledge and then having that cumulative knowledge and that mentorship program and I owe all of that to Ali Smith, you know he gave me my first guide trip, connected me with some amazing people that 25 years later I'm still fishing with today. So just a wonderful experience to have started my guiding career amidst college and, I would say, seeing the successes of my peers, ollie Smith and some of the other guides there, it gave me the wherewithal to realize that, man, if you really apply yourself, if you want to be a professional, if you want to show up ahead of schedule, if you want to make sure that all of your gear is in order, you can make an honest living as an outdoor guide, whether that's fresh or salt hunting or fishing.
Speaker 5:But it takes a lot of passion, it takes a lot of drive, and some of the things those guys taught me, especially in those early years, was look, you can't control the fishing. You can't control the rivers. We fished tailwaters, we fished free-flowing rivers like the Nolichucky for smallmouth and muskie. You can't control the environment and you're guiding.
Speaker 5:What you can control is your attitude right. Bring a positive attitude that'll be reflected back a hundredfold with your guests, a positive attitude that'll be reflected back a hundredfold with your guests. And you can bring with you that passion, that desire to disseminate the knowledge that you've accumulated from your peers and also from your own observations and time on the water in the field. And if you teach your anglers three new things a day, that can be something simple like a new fly and a way to present it. That can be something like rigging up your fly rod for walking through the woods and rhododendron and laurel so that it doesn't snag. That can be reading the water, showing someone how to apply themselves to actually catch trout in those slow moving water sections which are so much more difficult to fish. If you can teach that angler three new things a day, they will come back every time so you'll have a 70% repeat of your angling clientele.
Speaker 4:You know, it's amazing that, as a guide, I totally respect the learning process and I wish all my guests were there to enjoy the day and not just worry about a species or a certain size of a fish. It's amazing, I'm like that's it, I'm going of a fish. It's amazing, I'm like that's it. I'm going to go fish with Seth right now and I don't even know what species do you fish for. And was there a particular species that made you say, yeah, I want to target these as a living, or was it just?
Speaker 5:the whole environment part. You know I've always been a curious mind and, jamie, I think you have that too. I mean, I think, about all the species that you chase and I've had the luxury of spending time with Ryder on the boat and I'm always fascinated about I spend 200 days a year guiding for redfish, trout, flounder, tarpon, triple tail the seasonal things that we have access to here in coastal southeastern North Carolina. But I've always been very passionate about whatever environment you insert me into. Nowhere could have been more emblematic of that than my guiding in southwestern Alaska. Right, I had this opportunity to go up there and spend time at Mission Lodge and I was the new guy. I mean, my nickname was Grits. I was the only guy from the south. Everybody there was from the Pacific Northwest or Northern California, oregon, washington. They were all incredible seal headers, incredible spay fishermen. These were all fishery styles, techniques that were foreign to me, and so what I can tell you is that you know to drop a good foodie guy there, but, like Anthony Bourdain going on assignment, that guy was all in, ready to go native. I've heard stories of riders, sheep hunting and you know some of the wild adventures he's had in South America and he's all about going native and taking one for the team. I very much embrace that from the mentorship of Ollie Smith, the travels that we had and some of my other peers people.
Speaker 5:It's one of those things where you drop me in southeastern North Carolina. I'm going to sponge it up. I want to learn every little nuanced thing that I can. Or fishing in the Everglades. I'll partner up with some of my buddies down there that I hold in high regard and I listen. I'm really willing to come forward with humility and listen. Come forward with humility and listen because there are people in each of these ecosystems Alaska, north Carolina, Western and Eastern South Louisiana, with my family members. If you find somebody that really knows that ecosystem and you can learn from them and they're willing to impart that knowledge to you, you can shave light years off your learning curve.
Speaker 5:You know, like me coming up to fish with Jamie, you know, in his neck of the woods, I'm not going to just bring the skill set that I've learned and accumulated from all the places, but I'm going to ask Jamie like okay, jamie, how do you want me to present the flight of this species? And you know what's our current doing here. Is it a left to right? Is it a right to left? Is it because it's sunny this morning and cloudy this afternoon? We have to change up our presentation to get a bite, but having a curious mind, being willing to go native or go with the flow, like you were talking about in the intro, just embracing opportunity as it presents itself. Some of my most memorable days have come from embracing the opportunity that presented itself to us, even if it wasn't the target species, and, at the same time, getting a good feel for my guests, their skills, their limitations, and trying to work in concert with them to find what's going to make us successful that day.
Speaker 4:Now, do you have a favorite species to target when you're out with guests?
Speaker 5:So my favorite species in an inshore saltwater setting is always going to be the tarpon. They grow big. They're just incredibly powerful creatures. You get to see the bite. You can almost communicate with that fish, with the strip, especially in a clear water setting. But they're also fickle, so not unlike a freshwater trout. You hear a lot of anglers talk about freshwater trout. Fishing can be very difficult. Some trout have a PhD Certain places in Florida.
Speaker 5:Fishing the keys, the refinement of techniques and flies and presentations and getting that fly in the perfect spot for a bite is truly one of those exceptional moments in sport. Right and tarpon I feel like, unlike some species, are an honest fish that if you make a really good presentation, if you get that fly into their cone of vision, you get rewarded. I love to permit fish and I've had some incredible experiences doing that in Ascension Bay over almost a decade of years of fishing down there. But they're a dishonest fish, you know, like a muskie you can do everything right and still not get rewarded and that's really hard to guide for those species. So I have a lot of reverence for the guides that target muskies. The guides that target permit those fish are just dishonest fish. You can make the same presentation over and over again and give up and relinquish the vow to somebody, can make the same presentation over and over again and give up and relinquish the vow to somebody and make the same presentation you just did on your 13th cast and be rewarded. You're like man. I should have stayed in the game. They're just permit or they're just musky. You've got to be willing to have confidence in what you're doing and stay in the fight.
Speaker 5:But I'm favorable as far as guiding goes. It's already hard to daily fish with a new team, right? It's not like we get the same anglers for a week, so to try and summit the mountain every day with success and have a different player on the field every day and have to start from zero. I think that's part of the allure of guiding, right, that's how we measure up, more so than tournament fishing.
Speaker 5:But with honest fish like redfish, tarpon, sea trout, freshwater trout, smallmouth bass, you know from guiding that if you can get that the angler and their fly and their presentation in a certain fashion, or even their spending tackle in a certain fashion, you're going to have some success. And, um, tarpon are definitely going to be at the top of that, that bucket list for me? Um, because there's very few fish that we chase in saltwater that make anglers knees quake and I have literally been standing on the platform tarpon fishing, make anglers knees quake and I've literally been standing on the platform tarpon fishing with anglers and they get their first bite. And the fish comes roaring out of the water shaking his head and water thrashing everywhere. You literally see them get apoplectic. There's not a lot of fish that do that.
Speaker 2:No it's a buck, it's a buck fever fish. I mean, if you talk about buck fever, you know literally knees shaking as that big giant whitetail walks in in front of you. It's the same thing, you know, looking at a seven foot tarpon. Hey, seth, tell me, I was surprised. You know I want to. Maybe we end it with this, because I do.
Speaker 2:We cannot have a show with Seth Vernon and not talk about your thoughts on where the redfish, you know where the red fishery is right now. Tell us for our listeners that might be saying, hey, man, I want to go. You know what a neat guy. I want to go fish with this guy. Tell us about the name. You know how do people get a hold. Let's start with that. How do people get a hold of you, the name of your fly fishing outfit. And then maybe you know Instagram. Tell us about how people can get a hold of you. And then maybe let's finish up with your thoughts on the redfish you mentioned. You call it an honest fish, and so maybe, first, how do folks, if somebody wants to fish with you, how do they do it? And then maybe let's kind of wrap it up with a fish that you maybe are most famous about, which is, of course, the redfish. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 5:So if you wanted to come and fish southeastern North Carolina, wellington, topsail, baldhead, that area you can find me online. And my guide service is Double Haul Guide Service, which is a technique we use in fly fishing just to create more distance, more speed, more line speed. It's something that I love to teach and it unlocks that extra zip in your cast and makes everybody a better angler, whether you're fresh or saltwater fish. So doublehullguideservicecom. My phone number is 910-233-4520. People reach out to me there via text a lot of times before they even call. I'm obviously not going to answer my phone on the water, so I love a text because it's just a little less formal and I can reach back out. And then on social media, I'm still using Instagram a lot to promote the successes of my anglers. It's not really about me so much. And that is at capped, abbreviated C-A-P-T, and my first name Seth, so at capped, and my first name Seth, so at capped Seth. And yes, redfish are definitely one of my absolute favorite fish. I've been so fortunate to have made a living chasing these incredibly fun shallow water game fish, and there are states state saltwater fish, done a lot of work with the State Division of Marine Fisheries, wildlife Resource Commission, our legislators, my community, people in the community that have greater political influence than me to really push for some stronger conservation measures for the long term for the benefit of our children and future anglers and guides that are going to come in the wakes of my guiding career. And the redfish is a special fish for North Carolina. We still hold the world record I think that fish was in upwards of 96 pounds caught with surf fishing tackle up near Hatteras, north Carolina, in the 1980s. And the redfish is always going to be this emblematic fish of North Carolina's patronage and it is deserving of being the state saltwater fish and is even more deserving of being considered a game fish by our legislature, which it is not. Tarpenter actually considered a game fish in North Carolina and we owe that to a friend of mine. I'd be ashamed to not mention Captain Jot Owens, who worked really diligently to make that happen.
Speaker 5:And for our listeners, what that means is game fish, just like game animals which more people are familiar with your ducks, your deer, your turkeys, the things that we all pursue in the field those animals are no longer allowed to be sold as a harvested commodity on a commercial scale, so you cannot eat duck in a restaurant. That was wild. You're not going to get served teal or pintail or mallard. The duck that you get served in a restaurant is going to be farm-raised to some extent. The same is true of white-tailed deer. If you enjoy having white-tailed deer eating backstrap it's usually because you harvested that animal or you were with a friend who harvested that animal and they're going to open up that freezer and serve you some beautiful wild game meat. So tarpon in North Carolina are listed as a game fish. It means there's no commercial harvest of that species. That was kind of an easy sell to the legislature because tarpon are not really considered a good eating fish and so it was a kind of a low bar threshold. But it has preserved the integrity of that fish as it migrates to North Carolina.
Speaker 5:I've been on a big push to make redfish or state fish a game fish species through our legislature and what that would mean is that it would curtail these fish being a part of the commercial harvest in North Carolina waters and it would remove the bounty from this wonderful shallow water game fish being sold on the commercial market fish being sold on the commercial market. We actually have massive aquaculture going on in Texas and in South Carolina and Florida where they raise redfish. And in Texas specifically, they not only raise them to stock them in their coastal waters but they have separate entities that raise redfish just for the commercial wholesale. So they're not in the wild waters, they're actually being raised in aquaculture the way we do with oysters and catfish and some other fish species like striped bass for the seafood restaurants. They're actually doing this in China right now. There are massive pushes to feed that population a good protein source and so they have imported redfish and they're doing aquaculture in China, which I never would have thought of to feed the masses.
Speaker 5:And redfish do really well in this kind of a setting. So yeah, I'd love to see a day where we could all nod and kind of look at each other with a knowing glance that we made that happen for North Carolina's public trust resource, meaning that that resource belongs to everyone that is a license holder in North Carolina and wants to come enjoy our fishery. And that would mean downstream, long-term that redfish would have a much more viable ecological toehold as a game fish. They would have a chance to propagate, to come back to their historic numbers of abundance here in our coastal waters and you know, to the average angler it would just mean more fish per effort. So you would be catching more redfish in a day's trip than you are at present, and that would be a good thing for our citizenry.
Speaker 4:Oh, seth, I can go on for hours and hours with you, but you know you're such a pleasure to have on the show and a favorite of our writer and artist and our guests too. So I'd like to thank you so much for your time and hopefully I can get down there, and you know I'd love to spend some time on the boat sharing stories. And to our listeners, thank you so much for coming on. The Outdoor Journal Radio podcast Untamed Pursuits.
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