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 20: The Thrill of the Catch with Ocean Giants w Captain Ben Chancey
Captain Ben Chancey joins us for a thrilling adventure into the world of monster fishing, as we recount the legendary pursuit of ocean giants like the Goliath grouper. Captain Ben takes us on a captivating journey through his personal challenges, including equipment limitations and the art of selecting the perfect bait. His relentless determination and innovative strategies inspire anglers and adventurers, leaving us on the edge of our seats as we imagine his epic battle at Santa Bell's old drawbridge.
Experience the raw power and unpredictability of these aquatic titans, as we compare their strength to vehicles and share tales of fishing rods breaking under immense pressure. This episode is packed with vivid stories that highlight the humbling nature of fishing, reminding us that the outcome is always uncertain.
We also embark on exhilarating fishing escapades off the coast of Florida, with Captain Ben leading the charge against formidable sharks and Goliath groupers. Dive into the logistics, modern reel technology advancements, and the heart-pounding excitement of reeling in these sea behemoths. Whether it's the camaraderie among anglers or the adrenaline rush of the chase, this episode celebrates the passion and adventure that define the sport of fishing. Join us to uncover the inspiration and awe that lie beneath the waves.
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. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass.
Speaker 2:And we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 1: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 trout? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I'm co-host Jamie Pistilli here with the Ryder Knowlton and we had to keep our last guest on Captain Ben Chansey kind of getting you interested in South Florida. But Ben's key to his trips and to his success and how he's become so well-known is these mighty huge sharks and gigantic.
Speaker 4:Goliath grouper.
Speaker 3:So we thought you know what these need? A whole show of their own. So this is the Super Bowl of fishing, ben. Welcome back, man.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much. I appreciate you guys having me back.
Speaker 3:Oh geez, you know, goliath grouper, one of those fish. Um, I was down in florida, um, I hooked my first one. I was no joke, it was a super bowl day. I went to the super bowl party on this little island and then I took my rod fishing and I hooked a little snook and my rod bent over like wow and sure enough, it snapped the rod at the handle the heavy action rod like right where the reel is, and I saw this big tail and I was soaking wet. And then I went back and I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 3:So I thought I have a quest to get a Goliath grouper. So I returned back to this island and, sure enough, I got a snook eaten and a kid gave me a little hand line and, without telling a story, that's too long, but I had this fish wrap around the dock and break the piling of the dock and snap my line, break my heart. And I actually called you and said hey, I know you're not far from this place, please go and catch this fish. I still have not landed a goliath grouper. It's on the list, but from somebody who's caught some of the biggest fish you know in the ocean and a whole bunch of different ways. Tell me how you got the love for these gigantic fish and something you know about your trips sure thing.
Speaker 5:So I used to look at these old sepia photos from, I want to say, 30s and 40s and stuff like that. You know they weren't black and white but they were close enough to black and white and I would see these absolute giant fish and I thought to myself I'm like did they all just disappear? Are they gone? Does anybody know anything about them anymore? And for the most part, no, nobody did. And what I did was I just started trying. I would go to places where I thought they could be, and the bigger thing that I had to learn was is what kind of bait was best to fish in the areas. Because I did find them.
Speaker 5:And then, after I found what the right bait was, I found that at the time this was 2002, 2003, the equipment did not exist to land these fish. It just wasn't good enough and there was things that I had to do to be able to land them. And the first big one that I ever landed and we would have days where we would go 0 for 22, 0 for 25, and we'd just get broke off and murdered over and over and over again. We could land them under 100 pounds, but never any of the big ones. They always just taught us a lesson. So one day we're fishing, it was on, it was outgoing tide on the old bridge at, uh, santa bell, the old drawbridge, and we were fishing and, um, we had some jacks came through and I caught a jack that was probably about five pounds and we're all laughing. And I take that jack and I hook it and I, you know, imagine casting a five pound bait and you're serious about it. You cast this five pound bait out and it hits the water. It sounds like a bomb hits the water and as soon as it hits the water it's going crazy because jacks fight anyway and that's on the end of your line and I don't think it was 30 seconds.
Speaker 5:That fish was inhaled. So I got a five pound bait I threw off. It's inhaled. And so next thing I know, okay, after all the other failures that I had, I think I boosted my line capacity up. It was either 200 or 400 pounds. I think it was 200 pounds at the time the drags typically at that time this was a lever drag, a pin reel, and no drags were good at that time. They didn't have. I think it might have been 16 or 18 pounds max drag.
Speaker 5:So what I learned was is I had to thumb the spool as soon as I got one of the Glyas on. So whenever I would cast out I would thumb the spool and do everything I could not to let any line go off the reel. If line went off the reel they would get it spinning so fast and they'd run me in the pilings and break me off. So I'm like can't let line off, can't let line off. So this first big fish it was a ripping out going tide. I ended up fighting that fish for 35 minutes, which now is unheard of for me, but at that time it was 35 minutes because I'm thumbing the drag, fighting it, doing all that type of stuff. When we got it up it was probably I don't know somewhere between 350 and 450 pounds in that range, and at the time it was the biggest one we'd ever caught and it was absolutely awesome and all that. And I actually ended up being sore for like five, six days after Because you don't just you know, when you're fighting a fish that big, that long and you're thumbing the spool, you're not letting them pull, drag, so that's all muscle on you stopping these fish and it's very, very, very physical.
Speaker 5:And that was the start for us, with equipment that wasn't good enough to do it, but we made it work. And then eventually AVEC came out with their TRX reel and it's got 114 pounds of drag. I say that so your listeners can hear. If you think about when you go to the gym and you go curl and you grab, you know, if you grab 30 pound weights in each hand and you do some curls, you might be able to do 10, 12, 15, 20 if you do good. Now, if you think about that, that's only that's 30 pounds each hand at 60 pounds total. Well, we're fishing with drag. That's 114 pounds, and you've got no prayer of stepping up, putting that rod butt in your hip and fighting one of these fish, and you don't have the muscle, you don't have the ability, there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 5:And I would have people that would say, hey, how come you don't put people in harnesses? How come you don't do this for people? How come you don't do that? And then I'd say, hey, do you guys think about leverage? They go. What do you mean? I go. Well, if you stick the rod in a harness in your hip, the whole rod is away from your body.
Speaker 5:Now, where do you get the leverage to put real power and real pressure on these big fish? And they'd go well on other fish I go. Yeah, other fish are a lot smaller than these fish. A typical Goliath grouper can pull up to three times his body weight. So if you have a 300 pounder on, I could put 900 pounds of pressure on you. So people don't understand. And I tell people, I've told people everybody from Rangers in the Army to NFL football players to MMA players to basketball players. You know those guys have did a lot of hard physical stuff in their life. They know what it means to be physical and to be challenged. And I even tell those guys this is the hardest thing you're ever going to do in your life. And if I step away from them and I let them fight a Goliath group or by themselves without me spotting them, they either go overboard or they quit.
Speaker 2:Ben, how do you fight them? Like, what tell us about? So you know, tell us about the. You know you hook into one of these fish and I can't imagine the power of what you're talking about. How do you fight them?
Speaker 5:Well, since I'm a wrestling coach jujitsu, black belt and that type of stuff I learned to use techniques from that on how to fight Goliath Grouper. So essentially you're using the rod as a lever, almost like a crowbar or something like that. That's where all your power comes from. But your power is by putting the rod between your legs, underneath your hamstrings, and fastening the reel up on your front of your hip, and you use your hips to fight the fish and you only reel when you're going towards the fish and you drop your rod tip. So your hips use, put all the force, put all the leverage on it and if you think of old cartoons and stuff like that, you would see them lift up something really heavy. But it's because they're using a lever system.
Speaker 5:Well, you got to use the rod as a lever and if you've got a strong enough rod, you can put enough pressure on them. Or you use the rod as a lever and then, if you really don't fast enough, you only usually get one or two cranks. So you get one or two cranks, then put your hips back in. If you do that now, that fish is fighting you with all of its muscles and you're fighting it with leverage. If you try to fight muscle to muscle, they'll always win. You'll never win. You can't go 100% for five minutes and they can't.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. Oh, dude, you see some of these videos and you get these. Like, like he's saying, you get these giant, muscle-bound guys, you know they're hooking these fish and they just get wasted. I mean, they just they don't have a chance, it's not even close us canadians coming down there.
Speaker 3:I went down and did a tarpon fishing trip with some buddies and we had this. Our friend, nick, is a giant, giant man. He got his ass kicked so bad just from a tarpon because, like you said, he's just reeling, he's not using the rod as leverage and just real, real well your forearm after 10 minutes of salt, like you're done, like he tapped out, gave the rod away and like he's like, forget it. We got the good thing with southwest florida. It's the only place I've ever fished where I was like I hope we catch a smaller fish.
Speaker 6:Whereas I'm a guy, exactly.
Speaker 3:Hopefully we can find an upgrade. I've never had anybody go. Hey, I'd like to get a smaller muskie or whatever, but down there it's like I just want to be. I just don't want to be manhandled in store for a week.
Speaker 2:I mean that's kind of crazy. Have you been asked that, ben Like? Do you have customers that say, hey man, I don't need a 400-pounder but I'd love to see a Goliath grouper? I mean have you ever been asked that question.
Speaker 5:I get asked that all the time. But I also have to inform people. Hey, I never know what's going to eat this, that's right. So I always have to inform them to be prepared for the worst because I don't know. Be prepared for the worst because because, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5:And I've had some of the times when you are thinking, okay, we're going to be okay, and, and, and I would have a girl on the ride and she would hook into a 600 pounder. So you're like, and then it goes crazy because we're all getting jerked around and it doesn't matter if it's a girl or a guy. They don't know how to anchor properly. And when that fish puts all that pressure on you, you know it's almost like people are dying a little bit because they go into a fear of flight type of deal and they do both of them and a lot of times. If I wasn't there in front of you, you're going to go overboard. You're just going to fly in the water it. If I wasn't there in front of you, you're going to go overboard, You're just going to fly in the water.
Speaker 2:It's just. That's what's going to happen. 600 pounds I can't even fathom a 600 pound grouper. Is that you know? Tell us about the different size ranges of these fish. That's a bluefin tuna size fish.
Speaker 5:Well, so that fish is probably 96, 98 inches long.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 5:You know so. And here's the difference. You know everybody talks about the blue fin tuna and all that type of stuff. But here's what they don't understand blue fin tuna don't have big fins for big power, they have small fins for fast. So it's kind of like if you brought out a lamborghini and you said hey, go pull that big, heavy trailer. Lamborghini might have 600, 800 horsepower, but the truck over there it's got more torque and more power than the Lamborghini does, even though it doesn't have as much horsepower. So essentially, if you don't have horsepower when you fight these big fish, they just say sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're hooking into a big-ass truck, is what you're saying.
Speaker 5:Yeah, with a lot of torque because their fins are so large. Their tail fins are huge, their pectoral fins are huge. So they've got so much. They're like tugboats under the water. You know, tugboats you see on moving cruise ships and stuff like that, with no problem. So it just tells you they've got big blades, big props where they can make a big difference, you know it's funny.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, jamie talked about his story. They can make a big difference. You know it's funny. When I was a kid, jamie talked about his story and Ben, you've got a thousand of them. When I was a kid, my dad grew up in Florida and he always talked about you know the day that they were fishing off the dock, and it's the classic story. Same thing happened you know where. Literally you know something, grabbed their bait and and, as the story goes, they had super heavy stuff and literally pulled a chunk of the dock away. And so to this day and of course that's what's so exciting as a little kid, you hear that story in your picture. Oh God, what was it? And you're just assuming it was a great, big shark. But who the hell knows? As you said, these things live in such different areas and who knows? For all we know, that was a big, big ass grouper coming by and grabbing his bait and just taking the end of that little dock and bending it over.
Speaker 5:I got two quick stories I'm going to tell you, but they're different species, but you'll want to hear both of these. One was when I was a younger kid, probably 15 or whatever we had just got to Captiva Pass, we'd set up our camp and then we went out into where there's a hole camp and then we went out into where there's a hole. It's like 38, 40 foot. A bunch of fish were in there but we weren't catching any of them and I dropped a rod on the front and I put it in a rod holder and dropped it down and I was away from it and I looked up and if I looked up, the tip just barely moved. And then the next thing I know, the rod shattered in four places and it broke from below the reel, above the reel, halfway up and towards the tip. Just broke from below the reel, above the reel, halfway up and towards the tip, just absolutely destroyed it. And so, being at that age, I'm like if I had that in my hand, I think I would just went right overboard how fast it broke it. So, same place, but this is 25 years, 30 years later I got a friend that he's drifting a stingray through Captiva Pass and so he drifts up on the bar and he's kind of on the bar and his bait's just out there behind him.
Speaker 5:Well, he's got the rod in his, in his rocket launcher in his, in his, in his seat. All of a sudden his boat starts getting drugged backwards and he's like what's going on? Well, the rod's in the rod holder, in the leaning post, and his boat is being drugged backwards. And what happened is is you know, when we do our Goliath grouper trips now we fish with a stainless steel cable. So we go straight with cable, because they run you into the pilot and we get broke off on the cable too. So it's not like this is any foolproof method, but it does knock down a lot of the break offs, but not all of them, and he only had probably 75 feet of line on this because it's cable.
Speaker 5:So this fish is pulling him backwards so fast that water is coming over the transom and it's filling up the boat. And so you think like this, you're like this is absolutely crazy, how's this going? What's happening? So then the rod holder that it's in starts bending. So the leaning post starts bending, the aluminum starts bending, it. Just you know this is absolute catastrophe, right?
Speaker 5:And then the next thing he knows, he sees this thousand pound plus hammerhead shark that's dragging his boat backwards, swamping him. So he's getting swamped, going backwards and then the rod breaks, right above the handle, right in front of the reel. So he's got cable on, the rod breaks, the leaning post is bending and still the cable didn't break and it's pulling backwards through the water and the boat's filling At the time. His wife at the time is freaking out. She thinks they're going to die. He doesn't know what to do, how to handle it because of the cable. He didn't have the ability to cut the cable at the time and, uh, I think eventually the rod holder bent far enough where it ripped out his rod and reel and everything. It was gone holy cow.
Speaker 3:So stuff like that does happen the one that I lost, that broke the cable. People did not believe me, so I'm gonna send this episode to everybody, saying if you don't believe, ben, you can do a couple rounds of jiu-jitsu with him.
Speaker 3:So it's funny. It's funny. Down in Florida. You got, I remember I got a lot of Canadian guys that don't do much saltwater fishing and I remember going to like one of the trying to get some bait whether it be like a Kuda or a Jack and they're taking pictures at the dock with the bait we're about to use for shark fishing, right. So it's funny. The bait that you use is often bigger than some of the fish that we catch back at home. So what are? What's your favorite go-to bait for for sharks and grouper?
Speaker 5:So I used to have. This is my favorite, that's my favorite. That's my favorite. What's my favorite is is what's big and available in the location that I'm fishing. So if, if I used to say I need this in order to catch them, and I learned that's not true. I just needed to find the bigger bait and it could be different varieties.
Speaker 5:Like for a long time I thought I had to have stingrays to catch them, and we did really well on stingrays and we caught a lot of giant Goliath grouper on it. But stingrays are not easy to catch. You don't just go out there and get them, you know. And to figure it out, whenever it's really good, it's good, but whenever it's not, you spend six, seven, eight hours just trying to find a stingray and it's, and you know you're not fishing, so it gets really difficult. So I learned that if you can't get a stingray, if you can't get a bonita, if you can't get a jack which those are probably my three favorites Well, I also learned that catfish work.
Speaker 5:So some of my recent trips jacks weren't available, stingrays weren't available, and if I didn't have the catfish available, we would have never had an opportunity to catch a Goliath grouper. But once I figured that out, I was able to stop a lot of the chasing bait part. If I didn't have a real good beat on what bait I was supposed to use, at least I knew the catfish were pretty consistent. Once I got them I'm like, yeah, we can get them with this.
Speaker 3:What size bait are you using for these fish, either sharks or for grouper?
Speaker 5:either sharks or for grouper. I've used bait up to 35 pounds.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, holy cow, that's incredible.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, then we get it.
Speaker 2:You know, jamie, I remember we did. We used to go down and do snapper trips, you know, down in Central America and stuff like that. And you go out and you know there were places you could go and you could, you know, catch lots of snapper and and and legally bring them in and eat them and have a great, you know great cookout. And I remember one day fishing off of Costa Rica for red snapper and and hooking into about a 20 pound, 25 pound red snapper and really an end. And then, as we're getting it into the boat, the rod just bent over and went down to the transom, didn't break, but it just was yanked right down to the side of the boat. And I was there with my buddy and I said, holy cow, what in the world? And he was a very experienced fisherman down there. I was just, I was there for the ride. And he goes. Well, he goes, he goes.
Speaker 2:Ryder, your 25 pound red snapper just got eaten by a 100-pound Kubera snapper and so that was a 100-pound fish eating a 25-pound fish. I can't imagine a 500-pound, 600-pound fish eating a 35-pound swimming bait. The scale of it. You can't even comprehend the power and the scale of what Ben's talking about.
Speaker 5:I've got some underwater video where we've had divers down and they're filming the Goliath 8 and stuff like that and when they inhale they suck in about 55 gallons of water at one time.
Speaker 1:And when they do that.
Speaker 5:You could be 50, 100 yards away and you hear it underneath the water. The reason why I know is because we hear it on the camera. So if I've got someone that's filming with a GoPro or something like that, we can video it. We'll watch them eat the bait. When they eat the bait, you hear the sound of them sucking in all that water and that bait at one time, and when you're fishing that's what you feel and it rattles your bone. When you get, get bit, you're feeling them inhale all that water and it shakes you just like it inhales that bait and then you know it's about to go down back in 2016, frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
Speaker 7:Our dream was to harness the knowledge of this amazing community and share it with passionate anglers just like you.
Speaker 4:Thus the Ugly Pike podcast was born and quickly grew to become one of the top fishing podcasts in North America.
Speaker 7:Step into the world of angling adventures and embrace the thrill of the catch with the Ugly Pike podcast. Join us on our quest to understand what makes us different as anglers and to uncover what it takes to go after the infamous fish of 10 000 casts.
Speaker 4:The ugly pike podcast isn't just about fishing. It's about creating a tight-knit community of passionate anglers who share the same love for the sport. Through laughter, through camaraderie and an unwavering spirit of adventure, this podcast will bring people together.
Speaker 7:Subscribe now and never miss a moment of our angling adventures. Tight lines everyone.
Speaker 4:Find Ugly Pike now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman.
Speaker 3: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, Ang and I will be right here in your ears, bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio.
Speaker 1:Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 3:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1:We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, all the other guys would go golfing Me, and Garton Turk and all the Russians would go fishing. To scientists, now that we're reforesting and laying things free it's the perfect transmission environment for limestone.
Speaker 7:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 3:And whoever else will pick up the phone.
Speaker 1:Wherever you are Outdoor.
Speaker 2: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 2:You know you talk about your customers. You know the men and women who are fishing on your boat, how they just they don't know what to expect. I'm picturing people showing up. You know they've seen the videos, they've seen the photos but, as you said, I think when they, when they there's, you can't explain it until they are holding a rod that gets taken by a Goliath, what it's all about. And suddenly they're like holy shit, what is you know? Like you said you, they can't prepare for it.
Speaker 5:No, and it doesn't matter what kind of athlete. Fortunately for me, I had one of my buddies set me up with one of the world's strongest men back whenever I first started Goliath Group of Fishing. It was 04, 05, 06, something. His name is Brian Turner and at the time I think he was the sixth-rated strongest man in the world and he could bench press I think it was like 720, 730 pounds at the time and he could squat over 1,000 pounds. So I've got this guy.
Speaker 5:At the time we were using stingrays, but I'm looking at him going. If I spot this guy he's going to be offended. I mean he lives, he's got, he's got videos of him with two Citroen motorcycles where he's farmer walking. So I'm going. This guy is the strongest of the strong I've ever seen and and and it's going to be. You know he's going to be offended. Anyways, we put a stingray down, dropped it on one of my, one of my favorite spots.
Speaker 5:A big Goliath came out. He's probably three, 50 to five, somewhere between three to five 50. I didn't know Cause we didn't land it. Anyways, it inhales his stingray and the first time it did it he bowed up on it and he's fighting it really hard. He let it turn in his hand a little bit and it ripped all the eyes off the rod. So I'm like, well, he did a pretty good job, you know he didn't lose it.
Speaker 5:And then we ended up changing the way the boat was positioned. He was fishing on the front, standing up. Well, this time it was a smaller fish that ate, and it was probably 250 or so. That small fish jerked him off of his feet, he fell on the front deck. He wasn't able to get back up and he cramped. So once I saw that a guy this strong has strength levels that are astronomical. Well, once he got destroyed, I knew every you know Joe and Jane that got on the boat. I had to be there right for them, because everyone's going to get destroyed. Nobody's going to get on there and do good.
Speaker 3:You know you're a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu right, which I'm a big martial arts fan. That's always been the technique over strength and over power, right, so it's how you use it. I think you kind of use that in terms of how you fight fish too, where the proper technique is better than, like you said, just gigantic muscles.
Speaker 5:No, exactly, and you know the videos that I did out of the ultra skiff, which is a little round six foot boat and it's just me in a seat. There's a reason why you've only seen two people ever do those videos, and those videos probably have. I can't. I can't be a hundred percent on this, but I'm. I'm telling you, based off all the people that stole in the videos and put them in their things.
Speaker 5:Um, it's probably got about 1.5 billion views because people all across all their different social media platforms and stuff like that, people always tag me and say, hey, there's your video again. Hey, so I'm officially a meme status guy because I fight these giant fish out of that little round boat. Well, if it was easy and people had the skill set to do it, you would have seen somebody else do it, because that video was way back in 2017, probably. You know, in our industry, if somebody does something that's really successful, well you know, somebody else is going to say I'm going to try that, and the fact, since it's seven years later and not even one person's attempted it, so it just tells you how difficult it is to do that type of stuff.
Speaker 3:I remember getting that video about 10 or 12 times just sent to me going check out this guy. I'm like that's Captain Ben, we'll have to put that up and tag you again for one more time.
Speaker 2:Hopefully get some royalties out of that, $1,500,000,001 because of the Untamed Pursuits podcast. Hey Ben, how long do you fight these fish? You know you talked about that first one you caught and I know it depends on the fish and I know it depends on so many things. But when you made the reference early on about that first fish that started this all for you and you fought it for 35 minutes, I'm going to ask the naive question Does that mean today you're fighting them longer or today you're fighting them shorter than 35 minutes?
Speaker 5:Now the average on a fish probably between 300 and 600 pounds is somewhere between three minutes and seven minutes.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but it's all based off the technique, it's all based off of how I coach you to do it. It's all based off of how I coach you to do it. It's all based off of it's really based off. It's kind of like when you go and you do a professional race car track and they let you follow them and they tell you hey, this is what's coming up, do this, do that, and you're following them. So it makes it a lot easier, right? Well, whenever I hand you the car and I say, hey, go run that track, I can't do that. I have to be there for you, because you'll just run the car off the track and crash and kill yourself, not literally, but you'll go crash.
Speaker 5:So, with the technique, how I've taught people and me being right there to coach you through that situation, because everybody goes past the point of failure when they're fighting these Goliath grouper and I'm there for people. I get them through the tough part as much as I can. But if I see them, if they are completely about to fail, I'll take over for them, hand the rod to somebody else, I'll do the transition for them. But if I feel like you know they're tired but they can handle it, I will spot them a little bit more. I'm the kind of guy that if you're lifting weights with me, if you're getting the weights, I'm not going to touch it If you start not getting the weights. But I think you can still go a little bit further. I'll help you the amount that you need to get the extra reps that you can get. But I want you to believe in yourself and that's kind of how I do it with these big fish.
Speaker 2:Well, and you're also looking out for the fish too. I mean a mean that's, that's better for the fish, you know. So you're, obviously, you're there, you're protecting the fish as well as you're protecting exactly your you know your customers. Yeah, and so go ahead.
Speaker 3:Then you do trips like on the east coast as well, right, so you got trips out of stewart and then trips, trips out of cape coral. If somebody wanted to go catch one of these or go get their ass kicked by one of these, like when would be the best time?
Speaker 5:um, my favorite time is really in in, in the uh, beginning of summer, june, all the way through august and in seward, and the reason why I say that it can even start earlier sometimes, but sometimes the winds get in your way uh, there's actually a migration that goes on over there and, uh, nobody knew about this migration.
Speaker 5:Nobody even knew there were goliath grouper over there until I started fishing over there and I brought my style that I learned from Southwest Florida over there and I started learning where the fish were, how they hung out, what I needed to do to catch them and how long they were there. And the way you learn that stuff is is you go there certain times and if you're not successful and you don't see them, you go oh, they're not there yet. Or if you get there at another time and you go, there's 200 down there. So what happens is I learned that there was a migration period where they would come in for a certain period. You could do really really awesome, amazing, and then they would thin out and then it would get where. If there was one or two, you were lucky.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's just amazing. Hey, ben, when folks are thinking about you know there's gonna be listeners that are going holy cow. And, by the way, two of those listeners that are saying holy cow, we gotta do this is myself and Jamie, because, I promise you.
Speaker 2:When we hang up with you today, we're like, oh my God, dude, we gotta get down there and do this. But you know, for listeners that are listening and their jaws dropping like mine is right now thinking about this, you're providing the gear, obviously. Is there anything you know? Just thinking about the logistics of somebody doing a fishing trip to Florida and they want to come try to catch one of these monsters. As Jamie said, get their ass kicked by one of these monsters. Is there anything they're bringing or thinking about or planning, or is there any you know things that you need to be thinking about in putting together one of these trips, from wherever you're coming in from.
Speaker 5:Well, a lot of my customers know this is true, because this is what I tell them all, especially on our specialty trips out of Stewart. I always say I'm a resort captain and they're like well, well, what does that mean? And I go, well, the boat ramp where we're at, where we usually leave from, from there to where we fish for the giant fish, I always say it's three miles, but it's three miles by the way the crow flies. So if I have to go through the water and all that, it might be somewhere between four and five miles, and the main spot where I go over there is, uh, if it's more than a mile offshore, I'd be be surprised. It might be a mile and a half.
Speaker 5:We're only fishing in 40 feet of water. So, essentially, a lot of times we go, we spend our time catching our bait and doing that type of stuff, which is fun, and then, after we catch our bait and we go after the Goliaths usually based on how the bite is, which is usually pretty good, by 11, 1130, we go in and we go into Pirate's Cove and we go get something to eat. But those people can't stand up, so we'll go in and get something to eat. Everybody gets a little rest. They get out of the sun, they get in there and they go and they recover and then we go out and we give it a little bit of shot more and they take their last beatings and a lot of times they say I can't do anymore and to me that means it's a great trip.
Speaker 2:It's not how long?
Speaker 5:you're on the water. You know I have to tell people all the time we do full day trips, right, I go. But listen, if we go out there for a full day trip and you absolutely get destroyed in the first three to four hours, just smile and say, hey, captain, I've had my fill, let's go eat and let's go home, you know, because you can't handle anymore. If you can't handle anymore, smile and love it and be happy that you were there for such a great day and success is a good thing, right?
Speaker 3:So you also offer another fish that'll kick your ass, which is sharks, right? You got hammerheads, bulls, a little bit of everything, so you also specialize in shark trips. So tell us a little bit about your shark fishing trip.
Speaker 5:So um, back in the 2006, 2007, 2008 uh, the world record hammerhead holder was bucky dennis. He's still the world record hammer holder to this day and he had learned a specific skill set on how to target and where he needs to be, and stuff like that for hammerheads and Boca Grande. And fortunately, he called me one day and said hey, you want to go film a show? And we went out and did it I think this was 07, probably and we did it. We ended up catching it was probably 1,050 pounds, 1,100 pounds, something like that. It was giant. We measured it on the side of the boat, all that type of stuff. I bet it was. It might have been 100 inches around, because at that time of year they've got a lot of pups in them and all that type of stuff. They're just giant fish.
Speaker 5:And that was the first time we had used a vet reel to fight one of of these big, huge sharks like that. And the one that we used was a 30 wide and it pulled 90 pounds of drag and I'm gonna say we probably fished at about 50 pounds of drag, maybe a little bit more. The reason why I know how much drag we were fishing? Because when we hooked onto this hammerhead. The way we had the position, the boat position the hammerhead was pulling at an angle where it was pulling us like three quarters off the back transom. So it was pulling our boat backwards so fast that we were probably going almost five knots.
Speaker 2:So that's how hard it was that's right out of the Jaws movie by the way, it was literally pulling.
Speaker 5:We had a 24 foot Lake and Bay bay boat and it was literally pulling us that fast backwards. And since we were able to put that much pressure through the drag on that reel, the world record that he had caught was like 10 and a half hours and we were able to land this fish in under three hours. I think we landed like two hours and 20 minutes. So we were able to put so much more drag pressure and fight it so much harder than he was with the pin reel that he was using at the time. It was one of those giant pin reels but it just didn't have enough drag to put the type of pressure on them where you could make those fish quit Is the difference.
Speaker 2:so when you're talking about the new technology, ben, is it leverage or is it the drag system? What's advanced so?
Speaker 5:much so on these. What AVEC came out with back then was you've got disc on your spools, right, and for the majority of reels, forever, they only have disc on one side of the spool. And if you think of disc brakes right, so the disc brakes imagine you've got two wheels, right, you've got two back wheels. Imagine having disc brakes on one set of back wheels but no brakes on the other side, so you could stop your car. But it's not as good. Well, AVET created it to where you had brakes on both sides of the spool, so that way you didn't have binding issues. That way you didn't have where the load got on one side more than the other. So what happened was is you were able to put more pressure, more torque on big fish, which allowed you to catch them a lot faster.
Speaker 2:Which again is better for the customer, better for everybody and just as important, if not more important better for the fish, exactly.
Speaker 3:What's your favorite shark species to target, then?
Speaker 5:The hammerhead's my favorite, but I do have an issue with them. They're not always cooperative, meaning sometimes we'll do everything right and they'll be there and they'll have we'll have a stingray or something like that out. You think they're going to eat. You think they're going to eat and they just swim around it a lot and don't eat it and you're like wait, you're a shark, you eat everything. You, especially, you eat something that's bloody and blah, blah, blah. But sometimes you know, and when you've got people on the boat and they're like we're going to catch this, and then they just don't show up, you know. So that's whenever I compare Goliath grouper to sharks and stuff like that, you would think that sharks would be there every time. No, they'll migrate away and you won't see one. However, with the Goliaths, once I know where they are, where their houses are, it's pretty consistent. I can always go there and know that we're going to have an opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's funny. There's a lot of people, especially people that aren't from waters that have sharks, think, oh, you put a fish in the water with some blood and they're going to come and blah, blah, blah. It doesn't work that way and oftentimes you have to use fresh bait. You can't use old bait, like they can be pretty picky.
Speaker 5:They'll get really picky on you.
Speaker 2:What are the species I mean you talked about? You know, the bull sharks and the hammerheads, is it? Is it a wide range? I mean, are there? What are the species that you're maybe hoping to come across when you're taking folks out?
Speaker 5:You never really know. You know I've had days where black tips show up. You get a lot of black tips that show up. I've had days where you know a tiger shark will show up. We don't usually see them, but then they'll show up and they're really dumb. They'll bite your boat and all kinds of stupid stuff like that. But it's kind of cool because you don't usually see a tiger shark. They've got the neat stripes on their sides and stuff like that. But if you said, hey, we've got to go out there and catch a tiger shark on this coast, it's a lot tougher to say that, unless you've been out there a couple days and you've got the same one that keeps showing up in the same area. If you just told me to go out there and let's go get one right now, it's a little bit difficult, you know, because I don't want people to think, yeah, we're just going to go out there and there they are, they're waiting on us.
Speaker 5:It's not really how that works.
Speaker 2:Well, and a big fish is exciting. You know, I remember doing a chum line down in the Keys one time on the south side of Alamorada and what's fun and exciting, and we had kids with us. The whole thing was great. And the one that ended up taking the bay was a damn nurse shark. Oh, nurse sharks are terrible. It was a blast, oh my God. And it was a blast because, you know, all the kids got in turn fighting it and at the end of the day, I can't think of a less dramatic outcome.
Speaker 5:But it turned out to be a blast for everybody on the boat gummers, the homer simpson of sharks is right, exactly.
Speaker 3:Well, ben, it's so awesome to have you here now. I just wanted to bring up something you started uh, this is like unrelated to fishing, but I have to mention your life force battery. So you started a battery company. How did that come about?
Speaker 5:Well, I invented a battery that's 10 pounds, has 2700 cold cranking amps, that replaces your starting battery on your boat, your car, your truck or anything else that requires a cranking engine. It uses Lifepo batteries and I invented it back in 2019, applied for the patent, then In 2022, I officially got the patent, and then over the last two years, all the manufacturing and all the development process, and now it will be available on Kickstarter on November, the 19th, and if any of your listeners want to check it out, they can check it out through wwwlifeforcebatterycom. And you know, I'm the guy, I'm everything. I didn't sell out any corporations or anything like that. So I'm the guy that built it.
Speaker 5:I'm the guy that developed it. I'm the guy that, uh, invented it and all that type of stuff. And I don't say that to say, hey, look at me. I just say that to want you to know I'm one of you guys that, fortunately, I was in a position where all of it came together to where this product is out there available right now, and I've cranked everything from airboats to diesel trucks to everything else to 1,200 horsepower Hellcat engines with just one power cell, only 900 cranking amps, a five-pound battery. It cranks a 1,200 horsepower engine. So everybody check it out. Go check out LifehorseBatterycom.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I got to say also for those listeners that are out there that are thinking of going down to Florida, whether this winter or preferably, probably, when the big fish start biting, in April, may, june, july, august give Ben a call, chewonthistv, and I'll say book in advance, because most good captains out there aren't sitting on the dock waiting for the phone to ring.
Speaker 3:They're already getting out there. So if you know you've got a trip booked, don't be left behind and be forced to go out with some other schmo. Give Ben a call, he's going to get you on the fish and make sure you tag us with your photos and say thanks so much. I can honestly say you won't regret it. Ben's an awesome guy to spend a day with and an amazing guy to have on the podcast. So, ben, on behalf of Ryder and I, thanks so much for all your time, man, and looking forward to catching up with you this winter. Hopefully we can maybe go grab a grouper sandwich down at Cape Coral when we're down there this winter, or maybe, ben or Rod, we'll see Exactly.
Speaker 5:Thanks for inviting me, guys.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it. Hey, thanks so much On behalf of Ryder and Alton. I thank you so much for listening to another crazy episode of Untamed Pursuits on the Outdoor Journal Radio Podcast Network.
Speaker 6: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 6: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.