3RM Ep. 16 - Mike Surdyk - All Things Raymarine

 We are excited to have Mike Surdyk join us in the studio this week! He shares some Raymarine product knowledge, and we swap stories about GIANT fish at Rivers Inlet! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hi, you're listening to the Three Rivers Marine Podcast, a show that brings anglers and mariners down-to-earth advice that helps on and off the water. I'm Anthony Marisi, a fishing rep born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sitting down with the biggest names in fishing and boating to make your next adventure easier, safer, and more exciting. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Three Rivers Marine podcast. Today I am super excited that we have Mike Serdik in the studio to talk about himself, Ray Marine, where they've been, where they're going. And you know, I got real into Rivers Inlet last year, and there's maybe nobody that knows it better around here than Mike, so we're gonna expand on some stories and just kind of chit-chat about that. Um, but thanks for being here. We're really happy to have you. Um giant wealth of knowledge for not only boating, marine in general, but fishing as well. You know, you go and participate in a whole bunch of different fisheries, you're out an active participant in the activities, which is uh you know, some like we check a lot of boxes, you do, yeah. Yeah, I'm always surprised at like how many people that work for manufacturers, like you know, I I am a manufacturer's rep as well, right? And like don't participate, yes, you know, yes. So I couldn't imagine going and selling stuff where I'm like, yeah, I don't really know. I don't I've never used it, but like I've heard it's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

That's one advantage of selling electronics is enjoying what you do for work and selling face finders, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Um, you know, and you get to use them all and um help people out, and you know, like you're one of the most accessible reps too for for troubleshooting, which is like yeah, really nice. So you always can feel good if you get Ray Marine system on the boat that you aren't you aren't just out in the cold with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Don't gotta call 1-800 now. Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Um so you know, walk us through Ray Marine history, right? They've had multiple names, some different ownerships, and then because of that, they've had some different focuses through the years. Sure, you know, bring us back from history up to modern day.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah. So the um, so I've been with Ray Marine since 2014. So I got recruited uh right out of college, um, started when I was 23 years old. And so I've really been able to see the transition of marine electronics, you know, from the time I was out of college, even in before, you know, high school back in in uh in elementary school, we had uh it used to be called Raytheon at the time. So for the guys that have been around for a number of years and have uh have seen electronics grow, um Raytheon uh became uh Ray Marine back in 2001, I want to say. Okay. And uh from 2001 to 2009, um 2009 was when FLIR Maritime came in and purchased Ray Marine. And so uh when I first started with Ray, we were a FLIR branded company, fast forward to now, and we're owned by a company called Teledyne, right? So their teledyne are kind of the juggernauts in uh aerospace and deep water ocean mapping. And so um it's actually probably been the best thing to happen to Ray Marine is now we have uh a parent company that's you know willing to put some serious money uh in into RD and coming out with some really cool technology. And I'll say this the probably the last six years is when you really saw electronics start to change. Um, kind of like iPhones and Androids, uh similar concept, you know, everybody started putting these big beefy processors into marine, you know, multi-function displays. I mean, the sonar that they're putting into these head units now, whether it's a Garmin or a Ray Marine or Ferrino, it's it's it's really impressive how fast and and and powerful these units are. And so um, so now present day 2026, we're owned by Teledyne, and you can really feel this um this shift for Ray Marine in uh focusing on the saltwater fishing market, right? And so you look at the freshwater, uh the saltwater, and then you can start getting into the commercial side of things. You know, Ray Marine now offers a full line of um IMO uh certified radars, so it's a certain classification that is required by law to get on any type of these uh commercial boats. So like the freighters, the tugs, um, even in the Coast Guard, right? Um, so we're we're starting to compete um more with Feruno, right? So when people hear Feruno, they think of a cruise ship and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Exactly, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

It's where you see the big radar spinning on top of all these boats.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Giant domes. You know, there's two of those rolling down the highway yesterday, and I was like, you know, they look so little on top of a big boat, and then you see one that's like they're 12 feet long. Oh yeah, you're like, oh man, that takes up like a whole bed of a semi, and it's just one.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yes. Um, so yeah, it's it's it's really cool to see where we've uh where we started and and where we're at too now. Um it it uh the the sonar is the big one, right? Everybody wants to talk, you know, everybody's got good charts, got you know, uh a radar, you know, especially for the recreational, you know, private sector. Um, you know, everybody makes really good equipment. It's where the sonar um starts jumping off the page where people, you know, start making their decisions on what you know a brand of electronics they want to put on their new North River or their Duckworth. Um, you know, too, a lot of guys will will come up and ask, you know, hey, how come why would I want to go with Rain Marine over a Garmin or a Simrad or Feruno? And really uh we tell people we're we're simplicity is a big deal for us, right? We want to be the brand that prides itself on as few of button pushes, you know, if you're setting up a radar overlay or you know, doing some course correction, we we don't want you to have to drill through a bunch of menu options in order to do that.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah. That's certainly been my experience, is you know, because I've had multiple boats now, they've all had Ray Marine on them. And I, you know, I started out with the most basic model. It's a seven-inch screen, and then like what's the the most basic one?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Uh so we do our sizes range from uh seven, nine, twelve, and sixteen on the Axiom and Axiom Pro. And then we all go all the way up to you know twenty-two, twenty-four-inch displays. We used to have a unit called the Dragonfly, yeah, which was a small five-inch.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't that, but it wasn't, it also wasn't axiom. It was uh oh, maybe an A series or a C series. Something like that. Yeah, it was it was very basic and pre-Axiom. Yeah, yeah. Um and now I have Axiom Pros and large screens and things like that. And you know, sure, there's a lot more features and some of the things with the larger screen, but the core of it was never it, it's still there, you know. Like when I went and upped all of the technology, it still felt like my last boat, which was nice. So my learning curve was like virtually zero. It was just, oh, now when I want it to do this, it's right there. And that's and that's super true. You know, there's some of the others that I've been on and things like that, they have very interesting features that in some ways are compelling, but you're you know, you turn them on when you're sitting at the dock, you're not out there in in a glass of milk being like, well, that menu, that menu, this one, toggle that. Okay, now it's on. Now I'm back to the wheel. You know, it's just like pretty much with Ray Marine, you're like eyes on the road, and you can pretty much do whatever you need in probably four clicks or less, I would say, is kind of my we find people aren't even opening the user manual, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

When you when you pull a unit out of the box, I mean it's just like your iPhone, right? You you pull an iPhone or an iPod out, you plug it in, and and you're you know, figuring your way through it.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Put my map chip in and ready to go, you know. Um and it was nice that like the UI on all of it was such that like you can just pick it up, put it on the trailer, drop it in the water, and yes, it just power, okay. What chart do I want? Boom, oh it's a sub. Great.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Yeah, because of the um, so now um Axiom and Axiom Pro and Axiom XL, which has really been our flagship um, you know, multi-function display, now it's all Axiom 2, Axiom 2 Pro, and Axiom 2XL. And really we're just beefing up the internal processor. So instead of going from a quad core, now we're running a six-core processor. You know, we've start putting more HDMI ports on these units. Um, you know, really, I'll say one of the things that I really enjoy that our engineers, when when we were awarded the Coast Guard contract in 2017, one of the stipulations with the Coast Guard was they wanted a chart plotter that was not all touchscreen, right? They needed to be able to have some type of rotary knob, some type of soft key, so that when they're responding, you know, to these events and they're, you know, the picture of the guy sitting in the in the pilot seat doing 50 and you know, five, six foot C's using the touch screen when when the boat yeah. So we built that rotary knob for the Coast Guard.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Oh, and it works so good. You can like turn it up, down, push it, turn it. It's got a mouse and that like tactile function of it too, is like, okay, you know, because eventually you learn your electronics good enough that you're like, okay, I need to go back one to the right two to get the display to read chart and you know, engine or chart radar, chart fish finder. And you can kind of just use the tactileness of it to be like, okay, three clicks, yes, press it, and you don't you you haven't locked, lost what you're doing, and then you're like, okay, cool, my displays are the way I want them to be. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

And that's, I mean, so uh you nailed the great point. You know, when you fire one of these things up for the first time and you see the all the different apps for chart and sonar, radar, engine data, right? Because we're an open UI, we really let the operator configure and customize the thing any way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

So you can have it be on, you know, you want your chart on the right side, and then you can split it four ways. I think some of them you can even do six.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Four up to four right now, six, six on the next update here for the bigger displays. Yep. So and moving the depth and stuff, right? Like, you know, when you finally get to wherever you're fishing, whether you're tuna, halibut, salmon, whatever, right? You get to where you're fishing, typically either the front screen or the rear helm, you're gonna have a split screen with your chart on one side and your depth sounder on the other side, right? So being able to, you know, take the depth and move it over here. I want to make the depth bigger, I want to put the time, I want to put our drift, all that stuff is, you know, each each tile is configured, you know, for trolling, for back trolling, bait stop, running, night ops, you know, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

And then on top of that, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, I have the some of the Yamaha like readout displays, but I actually really like on like the internal Ray Marine one. Yeah, I can just take the core engine data that I want. Oh, yeah, and that's it. Yep. Right? Like, I want to know what my oil pressure is, what my engine temperature is, how fast the prop is spinning, and that's pretty much it. Like when I'm running, you know, like fuel burn and all that stuff is somewhat important, but I have a big enough gas tank that I'm kind of like You're not worried about running. On the day-to-day, man, I'm like, I could, you know, I I got a week worth of gas in here, right? So um sometimes it's more important, but you can also have another tile in there that has all of your extra data or a different display, things like that. But you know, my my helm, my rear helm has completely different information than my forward helm, you know, like the back one has the drift speed, where we're going, different charts, water temp, all of that type stuff. So I have a tile for it, but like my forward helm, when I'm running, I want different information available to me. And it's just one button to give me a completely different set of information that the that I have access to all the time, but I just I filter it for how I want it at any given point in my day.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yes. And and when we're configuring these, you know, government agencies, boats or Coast Guard, you know, they take delivery of a boat and we'll go down and commission it and make sure everything's working real nice. And when we spend time with the captains and the lieutenants and the people that are gonna be operating these boats, we go through and and and really the other cool thing is is um, you know, some of these boats might have five, six, seven, eight operators, right? You're gonna have multiple people driving the boat at any given time. Well, maybe you like to drive in north up. I like to drive in heads-up display. You know, maybe you like your speed in knots, I like it in miles per hour. So it basically instead of having to go through and and each person has to change that every time. Now you have your own profile.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Home. Yeah. Here you go. Boom, it's already set.

unknown 12:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Because I I do like to have mine north up, which and I'm a heads up kind of guy. Which like drives a lot of people just absolutely bonkers. They're like, dude, we're going down the screen. Exactly. And I can't handle it because I want to go right and it's actually left. And you're breaking my brain. And I'm like, for me, it's just, you know, like it's what you know. It's well, it's what I know, and then it's also, you know, like when you're out on the coast, or you know, when you're kind of running, it's easier for me to be like, okay, you know, we're going the boat's going facing the same way. I know I'm going north. Yeah. Right. And then I can like hang it, hang it west if I need to. And I don't really have to, like when you're in that fog and everything like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

It's disorienting.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

It's super disorienting. So I can always just reference what way the wedge of the boat is going and know if I'm going north, south, east, or west. And I don't really have to, and then I can, you know, pair my heading depending on where I'm trying to get to. But you know, because you you can. You're just like in a current and you're going along, and then all of a sudden you're you're off the map. Somewhere completely different. It happens to everybody. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

And you know, yep. Um, so yeah, you bring up a great point, you know. Um, when you're configuring these things and getting them set up, you know, we tell people too, when you get a boat and you put put either you know a new boat with a new system or you're upgrading, right? The the time to learn the gear is either at the dock or the driveway, right? Like when you get out to possession or you get out to a place that's got lots of people and and you're drumming through the settings, trying to configure it, right? Crack a cocktail, sit in the boat, have a beer, and familiarize yourself. And and what we find is people, once they understand the UI, and you know, for example, like you know, if you're anywhere on the chart page, a press and hold will do so much, right? What do you want to know? Do you want to know the tide station for there? Yeah, right? Do you want to know how far it is?

SPEAKER_02 14:42

You want to build a route there, any of that stuff intense for whatever you could possibly want it to be, you know, like but and it it and it again, like for me, where a lot of that stuff I don't use on the day-to-day, it isn't cumbersome, it's not like it forces you to do it and you have to exit it out, it's just it's there when you need it. Yes, and it's there in a capacity for everybody from a professional, but it's not overwhelming to someone who just bought their first boat. Exactly. And I think that that's really important, you know, because I've I've been that guy, right? I've been first boat guy. I've been, you know, and you know, I still don't have all of the things a boat can have, maybe someday.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

So like some of the stuff isn't isn't something that I use because I don't have it, you know, but um, and it is true, like, you know, just as like a PSA. If you get a new electronic system or you get you add a radar or something, some of the best advice I've gotten from people that are far better on the water than I am, is like use all of that stuff around port, make a special trip to learn how to use it. It's a beautiful, bright, sunny day. You can see as far into the horizon as you possibly can. Yeah, turn your radar on radar on. Yep. Learn how to use it. Exactly. You know, even if you have an open array and everybody's like, look at that guy, he's got his radar on, it's clear, haha. It's like, you don't know if that guy's learning. Sure. And it's really important to be able to go, well, was that one of those like cloud bursts that pinged once, or is that a uh a ferry? Yeah, definitely. You know, that I'm on a constant bearing and decreasing range with, like, and I gotta get out of the way, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

And understanding what, like you said, what targets look like. What does the ferry look like in broad daylight on a sonar, right? You know, what is a 20-foot, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, because that radar works, it it will look exactly the same, whether it's day, night, yes, you're in a glass of milk or it's beautiful sun.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

You know, yeah, exactly. You know, um, one of the things that we talk about, you know, when people come to the boat show and and they're trying to understand about you know, what what do I need to have on my boat? A, to feel safe, right? So getting there and back every time is the story we're telling, right? Um it has to turn on, it has to work, and it has to get you back there and safe every time. That's rule number one. Rule number two is or what we try to aim for is be successful, right? We want to be on the water, we want to catch fish, we want to have fun doing it is what we're doing. What what what things do I need in order to be successful at that, right? And so, like for example, transducers, right? You know, you could spend uh you know 150 bucks on a transducer, you could spend six thousand dollars on a transducer. What do those differences in transducers do? Will they help me catch fish? Um, and so you know it's it's all part of the the you know the discovery of what it is that you want to do. And and typically the new guys, right, they're you know, they're probably looking for something a little entry-level, trying to understand what it is that they're putting on. Um, the second boater guy who's buying a boat for the second time that might have fished with somebody that had a chirp transducer and he didn't have chirp, now he is all about chirp. Um and chirp is just the big conversation between all the brands right now, right? Is is you know, 15, 20 years ago it was 50 and 200 kilohertz. Now you've got high wide chirp, chirp, chirp below, medium chirp, low chirp, you know, all these different brands of of you know, you know, different frequencies. And um and mine goes to auto chirp. Yeah, exactly. And and honestly, probably 90% of the guys leave it, leave it in auto.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Yeah, you're gonna have to teach me about that. Yeah, because I'm that guy. Uh, I don't know, dude. It does it all, but mine's just on auto.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah, and everybody uses you know uh Airmar transducers, so when you start getting up to these big boy transducers, you know, you're one kilowatt, two kilowatt, even three kilowatt, they're all made by Airmar, so they come with our plug on them. Um, but uh, you know, as far as uh salmon fishing goes, you know, I've got a 23 grady and I've got a big transom out TM275, which is a dual channel, has the high wide chirp on it, and then the low chirp frequency for deep drop. And um, the high wide chirp has just been fantastic for salmon fishing. I'll say anything shallower than about 200 feet because of the wide beam angle and the high frequency. Do we get that really gorgeous target separation? I mean, Rivers Inlet is a you know, we'll talk about that in a bit. But you know, seeing 40, 50, 60 pound Chinook on your sonar and he's only down there 15, 20 feet, I'll make your hair stand up, dude. Oh yeah, it's yeah, it's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Um yeah, I don't know. I've had such a good success with all the rain marine stuff that you know and then uh there's increasing I I want to give you a platform here to just sort of address um you know Simrad. Everyone's like, well, if you have Mercury's you have to run SimRad. Oh, if you have Yamaha, you really should run Garmin. Not oh you have this and that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Like it's it's kind of you know they they can't they sort of it's a lot of hearsay and and and and I'll tell you, I'll give you my run us through that, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Because like I've been so happy running Yamaha Power and Raymarine Electronics that like you you'd kind of have to force me to give it up before I did.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, right? Yep, definitely. Um so far um we talk really great with Mercury. Mercury and Yamaha are kind of the two brands that in order to get their engine data up on your chart plotter, it requires uh either a Yamaha 6YG gateway or a Mercury Smart Connect gateway, right? Um, you know, with a Garmin, you can go J1939 directly from the CAN bus into the chart plotter, and that allows you to get you know all the Yamaha graphics on that display. But really, you know, because you know, all these big boats that have might might have two, three, four displays, you really want redundancy and be able to share all that information on any you know given given chart plotter. Um, yeah, we we play really nice with with Yamaha, right? I mean, just put the gateway on and then the Yamaha app will show up on the Axiom.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

That's that's how it's been for mine. Is it's like, I mean, you know, I get into someone that has Lorant's Garmin Simrad.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

And I'm kind of like, well, mine's the same, man. It's just, you know, it's just sending zeros and ones at the end of the day, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:54

We're really just listening now with these gateways for all this engine data. And so really what kind of the nice part is is you know, you can run um your engine data through one of our chart plotters and not have to eat up dash base with the you know five or a seven-inch engine display. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Yeah, I don't have engine display in mine, I just have displays, right? So then I can, you know, for mine, I have a tile on one that's here. I want that to be the, you know, there's a tile that's Yamaha. Yes. Run that, and it runs, it even runs the Yamaha graphics. You know, so I can do that. And like I said, I actually prefer that one less than the Ray Marine dashboard. Yes. Like the way that you guys set up the UI on the dashboard, the way you can control it, you can put wherever you want within the tile. To me, is I get so much more like just my eyes like it better than the Yamaha.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yamaha graphics, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Um, you know, and it's like it's like little stuff like trim level, right? It's like instead of having four bars, you have like the bar changes a whole bunch of times, right? Like it's a scale rather than just like, well, I'm you know, I'm three bars on trim. It's like, well, no, you know, in between half and three quarters or whatever, right? You know, you just get much more precision with a lot of the Ray Marine dashboard stuff than you do on the Yamaha. Yep. In my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah. And now with those, um, with the Mercury and the Yamaha, you know, say you have a boat with either a Helmmaster system or, you know, the joystick fly-by-wire system. When you bridge that system into the Ray Marine gear through either the Mercury gateway or through the Yamaha gateway, now you get, you know, their graphics on the plotter. We can actually adjust RPMs now on the Axiom for the uh Yamaha system. So that's cool. Yeah, if you guys are out back, you know, tuna fishing and you want to adjust your RPMs, you can do that directly from the Axiom. Well, that's exciting. It's out of budget for me, but you know, eventually it'll get there. The other thing, too, you know, say you're going tuna fishing, right? You're bomb out a Westport or you know, Astoria, and you know, you enter in a lat long on a fly-by-wire system, right? Now you've got your go-to on the axiom. Okay, then it's just a press and hold on the track point button on the thing. And now it's the the Hellmasters or the fly-by-wire system is listening for navigational data to steer you to your coordinate. And it's been bomb-proof. We've had really good success with it so far.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

And that's on the is it DEC or what's the because there's there's fly by wire, which you can still have hydraulic on, technically. Yes. But you're talking full electronic electronic steering. Yep. Yeah. When we were when we ran, we'll we'll use this as the bridge, but when we ran to Rivers last year, we were on the XTO's twin 450s. Yeah. And on that motor, there's one choice. You get the full electric steering helmmaster, like that's required feature.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Um and how well the autopilot system worked when you did have that electric steering was pretty remarkable. Where there's there's no splash, there's no lag, there's no delay. It's all instantaneous. Because there isn't any flex, right? Like hydraulic has that certain, it's a liquid, right? So there's a certain amount of latency and overcorrection and stuff. And when you do have that, I mean, I was like, all right, this is pretty nice. You know, it's on rails, you want a one-degree movement, it's it's one degree.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah, you know, yeah, it's it's it's pretty remarkable. In fact, it's probably the the some of the coolest technology. Um, uh at least when I remember it seeing it come out and and on all these brands to see the motors all moving independently of each other in and out of gear and the tiring.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

You know, it sounds so weird when they're clunking in and out. I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:28

You're like, okay, yeah exactly. Supposed to do that, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Um I don't know. But yeah, that was that was a cool trip.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

So we're we're playing, we're playing nice with the engine manufacturers now, and really that's well, and it's kind of by design, right? If uh any engine manufacturer decides, hey, we're only gonna work with this brand, well, what if a boat builder you know sells the boat with a different brand, you know? So um Nima 2000 through these gateways is is is really working for us. You know, if you get into the Suzuki's and the Honda's and these other brands, they actually don't require you know a gateway. You can actually direct connect the engine directly into the NEMA 2000 backbone. So um so yeah, man, everything's talking good on the electronic yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

I mean, and and and ultimately, you know, like the way that I have built my boats is you know, I want I want someone to manufacture the hull, I want someone to make the engine, I want someone to make the electronics. And I'm gonna use my own judgment, and you know, for me, my own judgment is I'm gonna ask Kurt Um, you know, who makes the best of this, right? And like just because in theory something has a direct gateway or something like that, doesn't necessarily mean that it's the the best at it. And it's like, you know, so for me, I've always felt the most comfortable with, you know, I love a duckworth, so I have a duckworth, right? I just think that the way that they build the boats, the design philosophies, the running surfaces sure fit my needs and how I like to run the boat really well. Um, you know, raymarine, the way that I like to absorb a chart, what makes sense to me with everything from the colors, the layouts, the grids, how a system functions. It could just be that was the first one I got, and I've just it's just home at this point, you know. But at the same time, like I know where it all is, I can hop in any raymarine boat and pretty much know right how to get it done. And then, you know, Yamaha power, right? So like that's kind of my thing is I want to go with who makes the best electronics, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Sure. And it's really, you know, it comes down to what kind of support are you gonna get when you get it, right? So some people can be uh intimidated by this, right? They're like, God, I'm not using 90% of what the unit's capable of, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Yeah, there it is. I mean, it's a rabbit hole. You can get real deep into it if you wanted to.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

I geek out on the on the nerdy stuff on that. I really do.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

I know. And and like, you know, and I'm funny because like there's a lot of stuff I get super nerdy on, but I am sort of team like I don't want to break it. I'm just gonna leave it on the auto, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Oh man, we deal with that too. People have this system on their boat, and they never update the software on it because it works how they need it to work, and they're like, I'm not gonna mess with this thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

You know, like I haven't yeah, I haven't updated my chart subscription, it still works. Like, it's okay. Yeah, um, I should get better about it, but that's that's where I'm at. So uh you are not the first generation Serdic that's been around the Pacific Northwest and a well-known figure roping big fish. You're just you're just one of a few.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, in fact, um I I do have a very big family, um, both uh on the surtic side. So my uh father, Larry Serdik, is but give him a lot of credit. Um he's he's had me uh on the boat fishing with him since I was a little kid. Um and even bigger than that, um, on my mother's side of the family, uh the uh Potosa side, we call the Italian side, um they kind of started it all, right? My uh grandfather, John Potosa, god rest, um fell in love with fishing at a young age and in the 60s and 70s, was fishing all around, you know, here locally, and then um discovered Rivers Inlet back. I think his first trip was in 68 up to Rivers Inlet. So back we call it the heyday. Um dad fell in love with mom. Uh dad actually didn't fish uh growing up besides some little trout fishing. So he kind of married into a spicy Italian family that uh liked to buy boats and fish. And so um, yeah, he fell in love with it really early on uh in their relationship. And uh yeah, I feel very blessed to be able to spend the time on the water with my friends and family. Um it's it's pretty cool. This Rivers Inlet trip is uh is kind of our Super Bowl trip. Um where we uh the amount of planning and and organizing and and time spent to make that trip possible is is the favorite thing we do all year. Um so yeah, very very humbled. Um the the job you know I have now, my my dad told me at a young age when we were going through college and high school and trying to figure out what it is I wanted to do. And he he kind of told me something that's always resonated with me, but uh don't ever make your hobby your occupation, right? If you love to fish, don't don't make fishing your job. Well, this job with Rain Marine. Sorry, Dad. Yeah, this job at Rain Marine feels like it flirts with that line because I get to work with some amazing people that you know I I get to sell them fish finders and and and you know electronics for their boats to help them catch fish and spend time on the water. And so yeah, we do have a big family uh history with with fishing and outdoors and recreating. Um, I mean we live here locally in this Nahomish area, that's where we're from. So, you know, fishing out here in Area 9 and um especially the San Juan's, you know, that was used to be one of our favorite fisheries. And then uh we got a place out at uh Nia Bay where we spend a lot of time out there in the summer too.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah. Absolutely love all of those things too. So, you know, but you've been going to rivers for a long time since you were a kid. Yeah, so 68 was the first sort of like family lore lore trip. That's correct. And you know, so kind of has it changed. I mean, my my first year was last year, right? And like it's still this kind of mythical land of giants. We saw really, really big fish get caught. We caught big fish. Yeah. Um, you know, we certainly weren't alone doing it. Um but for me it didn't it didn't really like knock any of the mystique down for me.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, I mean if you love to fish for king salmon, it is uh arguably one of the coolest, coolest places in the world to do that.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

Yeah, I mean that whole just Central Coast BC, like it's rough. It feels like home, yeah, but it feels like you went back 200 years.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

It really does, man. Yeah, we call that getting off the grid. When you launch out of Port Hardy and you're headed northbound, making your way towards the mouth of the inlet there. You get to Cape Cosh and the phones go out and uh and we're off the grid there. So see you later. My first trip to Rivers Inlet was in 2002. I was uh I was in sixth grade, finally got invited to come up after you know my my father's first trip was back in uh 84. And when I was a kid, um I can remember them coming home from Rivers Inlet and opening these coolers up and just seeing these just massive, massive fish, man. 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, yeah, right. And uh and so finally got to go up when I was uh in sixth grade. And um my very first trip, I hooked a 50-pounder, got handed the rod and said, here you go, son. And and I had done some salmon fishing, but I think I played that fish for over at well over an hour and and was just immediately hooked in. Yeah, it's it's over for you at that point. It really dude, it it created a monster at that that moment in time. Yeah. And so when you ask if the place has changed over the years, um, it certainly has. And um, you know, uh one of the things that I remember being uh up at rivers as a kid was uh the amount of boats, right? Up up at the boundary marker there at the head of the inlet, you know, the headwaters that you know, nice turquoise blue water. Um, some of the spots that we fish now, we might see at the most maybe 25 to 30 boats. And when I was a kid, um you could walk across the boats. There'd be 200, 200 plus boats.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

It's less popular.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Oh, well, so the the the the reason why it's less popular is there used to be, I think there used to be, I think it's either six or eight lodges.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Yeah, well, and there and there was that one, you can still kind of see the cables and the ruins like at the boundary market.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

If you could have seen what that looked like back when I was a kid, um, that was called Rivers Inlet Resort. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Like, like you could probably catch an 80-pounder from the dock.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Right off the dock. Where we fish now, right up against there.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

It it seems like that was where they dredged the dock pilings.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

I got a I got a picture of uh 10 float planes lined up on that dock, and then the cabins used to disappear up and up into the creek there. Up in that creek hit. Oh man, it was uh in all the lodge boats were just little putt-putt, you know, 16-foot livingstons. And um, yeah, so I remember uh being a lot more boats. Um this was actually back before they outlawed downriggers, right? So in in 2002, you could use them.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

And for those that have never been there, it's not that wide by the scale of things. I mean, I'd say it's kind of like you know, if you put your boat in at Schulschul, it's like maybe like running over to Bainbridge wide, maybe a little less. Yeah, maybe a bit less. Yeah, a couple miles wide. Yep. But like in the like you can be a hundred yards off the shore and you're in like 400 feet of water. Exactly. It's a it's a fjord. It is a fjord straight on there.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yep. And um, and so yeah, lane lane one up against those rocks, man. It used to be that you had to, you know, take your time to, you know, go everybody waited to go through the hole, right? And so you just one at a time in and out of neutral and and and just waiting for your chance to go troll through there. And and uh man, it would just be a parking lot. Did and everybody wanted lane one. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Did people just like bounce out? Because the irony of it is, you know, like we had some of our best success out on like lane six. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Uh-huh. And that's that's a we when you start figuring out if the fish aren't in lane one and you start working out to lane two and lane three, and all of a sudden you get out to lane six and you come across spectrum.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

I really wanted to rope a big one, like where the rod tip's scraping off the rock, you know, but it didn't happen for us. So you know, we were a little further out, not any deeper, yeah, but just yeah, out a little farther.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

So back in uh 2004, we saw one of the lodge boats um catch a fish, a guy and a gal, and we knew it was big when they hooked the fish. And and you the the protocol up there, you know, because we're all fishing so close together, is when somebody gets ripped in and they're scrolling out line, everybody gives them some space, right? Stop what you're doing, do the thing. If you get hung up with the with the guy on the fish on, ledge cheap, right? You know, it's just a common courtesy of thing. And we saw a gal play a fish um that she did everything she could to lose this fish. The old man nets it, and we see him drive back to the dock. And about an hour later, uh, we heard somebody came over the VHF radio and said if anybody wanted to see what a 90-pound Chinook looked like dead on the dock, that's how big their fish was. And so everybody picked up and ran. Oh, yeah. Of course, we're gonna go take a gander. Yeah, 88 pounds on the scale. One of those one of the bigger fish we've we've heard up over there over the years. Um, and so yeah, now that the lodges are gone, it it uh it's it feels somewhat quiet up there, you know, instead of having these float planes flying in and really, you know, talk about changing too. You know, back then we didn't think about letting fish go, right? We catch 50 pound chinook, we bonk it and put it in the cooler. Now, you know, the regulations have have started to change.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Yeah, where there's you know, you I mean, we were there primarily, we you couldn't keep any fish exactly. Yep. Um, a little later than you could. And you know, my experience was that the culture was definitely such that you know, you go get a 40 or a 50, it's like, yeah, right, take it if you want. But if it's 55, 60 plus whatever, like you bring that back to the dock, you're you're shunned.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah, it's almost like killing a 30-pound steel head on the whole river or something.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

You know, you're kind of like, dude.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, we we honestly we go up there because we just want to shake hands with a bunch of big fish. We have no hundred percent. We fill our freezer up, you know, all summer fishing the above.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Yeah, when when we went, yeah, we came back with zero fish.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yeah, exactly. Just want to catch catch big fish. Yeah, you know, has the fishing gone up or down over the years? Um, we've seen it fluctuate. Sure. You know, I think we're probably maybe not seeing as many big fish up there purely because there's a fraction of boats fishing, you know, there's only 10, 15, 25, 30 boats at the most, typically.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

You know, I a lot, a lot of them are getting to gravel.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I have seen some of the most uh insane bites up there. I can remember between you know 2004 to 2015, where you know there might be 60, 80 boats up there fishing, and you would see these bites go off at a tide change.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

And oh man, I can just I can see the islanders were singing.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

I can see a uh visually, you know, seeing 30 boats hooked up at the same time, and everybody's playing 30, 40, 50 plus. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

It's just there's uh I've never been anywhere like it and don't expect to go anywhere else like it. Yeah, it's maybe South America. Yeah, and even even that is the volume of fish is good. There's you know, some of the rivers have big fish. Yeah, it's not a Chile has big salmon or Argentina, like in a general sense, yes, but it's like this river system has big ones because the history there is such that basically you know, we sent a bunch of fish down there from a lot of them came from Washington. Absolutely. Um but we sent spring kings, fall kings, summer kings, and winter kings down. And basically it was this spaghetti on the wall scenario where hey, we're gonna put all these kings in here from all these hatcheries, we're gonna plant them and see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

So, and that part is not that well understood because it's not that developed of a fishery at this point. But like what fish are, you know, oh hey, are these the big summer kings um in this river system that stuck? Yeah. Yeah. You know, but then you can also go to some where it's like, oh, big ones 20 pounds. Sure, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

I think one of the cool things um back to Rivers Inlet here, what makes those fish unique uh in comparison to what we see on the Columbia or, you know, even the kenye, right? The kenye, you you think of big fish and um the the biologists that we've spoken to and and we've known for years up at Rivers Inlet, they always uh you know share really cool stuff with us. You know, they used to do this um, you know, dead pitch count where back in October, after those fish would spawn, you know, the group of biologists would walk up and down the shoreline and and count uh you know, take a machete and count each fish on the beach. And they would tell us every year they they counted fish that had uh that were dead spawned out, um, you know, decay decaying on the on the shore uh that were well over a hundred pounds. You know, they had they had spawned and they were still over a hundred pounds, and they had hooks and leaders hanging out of them, and you know, there's a world record, there's a world record, you know, so they still exist. Um, our good friend Mike Also back in 2018 um hooked a fish uh by himself, right? I think he was 78 years old at the end.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

It's always it's always that way.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Yeah, you're like uh hooked a fish. You forget your net. Yeah, exactly. You go by yourself, yeah. You know, we watched him play this fish for over two hours through the bynos. And finally, when we saw him net it, we went and pulled over and checked out and wanted to see what it was. And uh he it was actually one of the biggest kings I'd ever seen in my life, and um, it was hooked in the tail. So a lot of these fish will sideswipe a cut plug up there and get hung up. And um anyway, the lodge heard about it, the lodge took it back. Uh, it weighed 80.1 on uh IGFA scale. And after the biologists did all their sampling and stuff and whatnot, um they had sent him uh some information on the fish and they that they determined that the um the salmon was uh eight years old, right? So it was an eight eight salt fish. Um you know, probably would have let it go at the time, you know, but it was it was dead, so he he killed it. So it's really it it it's um I mean did you know rolling giant cut plugs, like no downriggers, like what's a very finest range.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

I mean, and you know, like we went up there and you know we know how to catch fish okay, you know, like we're we're I'd say we're above average, you know. Um and we we didn't touch a fish for like three days. Yeah, it was humble for sure. Um, you know, and you see like this little couple over there just like putting around, and it's like I think that's their fifth one this morning. You know, and when it takes an hour to catch them, you're like they basically have one as soon as they let the last one go. They've been hooked up for six hours. Like, you're like, yeah, what is going on?

SPEAKER_01 41:30

It is it is humbling because it'll make you question everything.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yeah, and we got you know, we got on the cell phone bite and called you and were like, uh what do we do different here, you know? And it was like the difference between running big hooks and little hooks and 50-pound line and 30-pound line was like impactful. Yeah, you know, and when you get used to area, you know, down in here, whatever, like I say it all the time. You can drag a green flasher and a white hoochie around just about any distance from the flasher that you want, with about any line that you want on there, with any size hook. Yes, it's gonna happen for you.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

You're gonna catch fish, you're gonna get them.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Yeah, not the case up there. Oh no. No, no, no, like the bait spun the wrong RPM at a certain speed.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Yeah. Well, and we see that, right? And and you can, and we we were playing with it. They're up in the gear and they're like, and then they're just nope, man. And then it's they don't usually like dart away. It's just kind of like they're just disappointed in you. Just sort of back off.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

You're like, oh watching those big kings uh underneath your boat, because you know, you're fishing each rod at you know, six, seven, eight, six holes. I mean, those your bait is down there, you know. The the the trick is is the milk layer, right? Where that fresh glacial that lid. Exactly. It's a ceiling, and you can you can see um you know where the break in in and from where the fresh is just kind of like turn the deck right in it, you know, and they'll come right up into it.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Yeah. The first the first fish that we hooked up there. Yeah. Um funny, funny story. I don't know if I told you this story, but um, we had I don't know, six, eight people on the boat, we're rolling around. You know, we got all sorts of displays in the back that we're looking at, and everybody's all fixated on watching all of this and that. And then, you know, we have two bow rods out, and it's been a slow morning again. This is like day four. Um everybody wanders back because a big fish just came into the gear and disappeared, so everybody wants to see if it comes back, you know. And I'm like, man, alright, I've you know, I've been running the running the boat for a little bit, doing this, baiting and whatever. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do a bow shift, you know. Yeah. So I just sit up there by myself and I wasn't up there for like ten minutes. And I was like, and we had the the Islander MR2s, right? Sure. I think they're MR2s. But the one where you could just free. Um, so that got smacked, and then there was a clang on the bottom of the boat. What clang.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

The fish hit the boat. No kidding. Yeah. Like it ran into the boat biting the bait. It clobbered the bait, it tagged the bait. It clobbered the bait, tagged the boat. So I just dumped the reel. Wow. And it's just going, going, going. And I dumped it for like a while. Because we're running like big baits. Big baits. Yeah. You know, like halibut herring. Yeah. Eight-inch cut plugs. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Um. So I dump this, and I'm just like, okay, this is what Mike said. Click it back in, and it's just that like suspense of where because you're going so slow. And it's just it starts, dude. Oh yeah. Got him. And it was just like pandemonium at that point. It was like, you know, and I'm like, I'm so excited. Like, you know, heart's going. I'm so stoked. Like I felt it. It's a real one. And I just kind of like casually walk back down to the boat. They don't know I'm hooked up. It's the best. And I'm like walking back and everyone's like, fish. And I'm like, yeah, fish. Yeah. You know, inside, I'm just like, oh my God, oh my god, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

But you're like, you're like, yeah, dude, I got him. We we've I and then over the years, you know, when you talk about big baits and and presentation and what to look for. And you know, this last year the the humpies and coho were everywhere. In fact, we brought nine cases of black label herring between our four baits. We did eight of them on Humpies. Yes. And uh they eat it, and you're like, what are you doing? Well, and it it's it's so cool because you know, you you pray for the freight train, right? You want the rip and run, no-brainer. And then a lot of these big kings, man, they'll they'll nibble on the yeah, it was not that first bite.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

I was like, Yeah, you know, like whatever. It looks just like anything, but I'm just gonna let it roll. Yep. And I got that, like, and you're like, ooh.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

So feeding fish, right? Paying line, dumping that lead so that bait starts spinning. Um, yeah, I mean, we we we have a nickname for it. We call it sleeping beauty, right? You you might have a uh six-pound humpy on there, you might have a you know, 60 pounder, yeah. And a lot of times we've we've hooked these big fish, and we you don't even know what they look like because you can't see in the water more than about you know 12 inches of visibility, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's not a pink, that's bulk.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

And it was interesting too, like you know, because that was that was the only fish up there where that would have made a difference. Yes, the rest of the big kings that we caught were pretty much azon. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. Um did you guys get much rain this year? So the first couple of days it was just beautiful, sunny, no rain, hadn't rained, and then it nuked for like a day and a half, yep, and changed the color of that inlet and got some things moving, and then the fishing did improve, but you know, there were still those Highliner boats out there that it didn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

They were still getting in man they were there. It everybody's got their own, you know, what they call their secret sauce, right? Well, their brine, their scent, their you know, the charge they're putting in the water.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Certain certain points, like what you're catching them on, it's like experience. Exactly. Exactly. You know, like I've been here twice as long as you've been alive. Yeah. So keep coming back. Yes. And maybe you'll uh, you know, catch some.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

One of the things we chatted with you over the weekend when we were springer fishing is um, you know, how the weather plays into your role, you know, whether you're fishing an area like rivers or you know, you got freshwater meeting up with salt, right? Fish are starting to change and do some different things. The chemistry, the biology, all of it changes for big time. Absolutely. And one of the things that we really uh have been um collecting data on, I'll say, on our boat the last four years, um, is the barometer, right? What is the pressure doing when we're on the water? And one of the things that we've been able to gather is uh we see the the barometer drop pretty abruptly when we start coming into colder, wetter, uh, you know, low low moisture. Yeah, low pressure systems bring the rain. Exactly. And so those first five days at Rivers this last year, where we got anywhere from 12 to 15 inches of rain in the matter of about three days, we saw the barometer just plummet, right? And it it uh it was wet and soggy. Fishing was starting to pick up. We were seeing more fish get caught, and then as soon as that rain uh let up and the sun came out and it started to get high pressure and the barometers just kept rising rapidly. That's when we see fish like on the chew. They're they're you know, seeing the bait and hitting it the first time. Um, and so we saw a little bit of that down springer fishing this last weekend where we got through three days of cold, wet, rainy, and all of a sudden it's warming up and and things start to think you know, the call going on the chew.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Yeah, that you know, they're they're so sensitive. Yeah, like we we in some ways they don't deserve a lot of credit. Yeah, because like sometimes they're just dumb. And that's we love that. But like they're so sensitive to their surroundings and stuff that like you know, I when I was a fishing guide, I always get asked a lot of the questions of you know, like, hey, and you know, like my my dad answers always like, Well, how many worms do you think a fish eats in a year? You know, and they're like, I don't know, and it's like as many as you can, yeah, exactly. Right, you know, um so but they certainly get conditioned to stuff, you know. So when that biology changes, that water chemistry changes, like it's very disruptive to them, you know. And it's like sometimes that works in your favor because they don't have hands. Yes, you know, like the way that they interact with their world is by putting stuff in their mouth. So sometimes there's you know the curiosity aspect and things like that, but it you know, a fish that's been in the salt water and is you know the boss of his environment at 80 pounds, you know, once some of that stuff starts changing, like they behave completely different. And you really gotta be on your A game to get that fish to interact with the world.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

That's a fact, you know, fooling nature. Yeah, right. It it really is. And and there's a reason why you know these you know, big 50 plus pounds shouldn't get so big, right? Is there, you know, is they're smart. And and you get a fish that has genetics to go five or six or seven years old that gets exposed to large quantities of big bait throughout its life, right? So a fish that isn't just eating squid and or excuse me, shrimp or smaller bait, but you know, I mean that that thing could eat a baby link. Horse, horse herring, right? Pilchards, yeah, whatever big baits is kind of the recipe how these fish get get as big as they do. But um, yeah, it's it's really uh, you know, we're talking Rivers Inlet and and electronics and stuff. I feel very blessed uh being able to uh to go on these trips and be exposed to this stuff, you know. It it uh it really has tailored how we fish um you know, even here locally, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

Like yeah, we love I changed I changed a whole bunch of stuff on my book coming back from that trip. I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

It really does. We we enjoy the art of brining baits and running cut plugs, you know, in an area where a lot of people are you know fishing with hardware and stuff. We we enjoy uh fishing bait, we enjoy fishing shallower than most too, right? So we we talk about shallow water kings, you know, uh catching fish in in 20 to 40 feet of water.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

In an area 10, like last week, yeah, day one, we didn't get the downrigger past 70 feet. Is that right? And that's you know, kind of goes against the normal, kind of established way to fish for blackmouth, right? Like, oh yeah, they like to lay on the bottom and drag your downrigger balls, and like that works, obviously. Like it does work, right? But I mean, the more fish that I catch, you know, and I've said it before, but like I I am at a point in my fishing career where it's more important for me to go and get that fish the way that I want to experience them rather than just getting that fish.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Man, you hit the nail on the head because we're the same way when we go out fishing. I don't care if I don't catch any. Would I rather catch 10 eight pounders, or would I rather catch one 25-pounder? It's it's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

And that's part of the you know, the pressure. I have no pressure, right? Like if you come on on my boat, you're not paying me to be there. Yes. Right? So, like, I don't have, you know, like I want to have it show everybody a good time, and with my guiding background, I'm really confident in being able to have a super fun time on the water if fishing is good or bad.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

But there's also no like, oh sorry, man, like fishing, you know, we did our thing and we didn't do as good today as some of the other boats, but like, you know, but we fish the way we wanted to, exactly. And I I think I think I've said it before too, I don't remember, but I'm gonna say it again is like, you know, I was really into the spoons and hoochies and all of like that for a while. And you have to be, right? And but now I'm realizing that like you know, you also kind of have this like, oh yeah, if you fish bait, you're just sort of the knuckle-dragging idiot, you know. The difference between fish and bait and being a good bait fisherman is like uh unbelievably different. The skill floor for bait is low. Yes. Can you drag a herring around and catch something? Sure. The skill ceiling for bait is also so much higher than what it is for spoons and any of the artificials. Like, if you want to be a really talented bait fisherman, and I'm very fortunate to know several that have been kind enough to teach me things.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

Dude, it's it's as complicated as your electronics, like you know, to get to get your bait to just act right, look right, perform right, perform it, it's it so like for me, I'm like I'm into it. I want to be as good of a bait fisherman as I can be because you also like yes, the big ones eat bait. So that's it, man.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

You hit the nail on the head. If you ask me uh of the eight, 50-pound fish I've caught in the course of my life, how many of them were caught on hardware? I'd tell you zero. The big ones eat bait. It really is, man. And it's it's where the big fish lay in the shallows. I mean, I I get I just get so fired up dragging big herring across the kelp beds, and and when it goes off in there and it happens exactly the way I want, oh man, it's it's epic.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

It's and I pay attention to like people on the water too, and there's there are there's a long list of people who are better anglers than I am on the water on any given day, right? Sure. You know, eventually I learn who those folks are, and I look at them, you know, and I'm like, I don't I don't go and get on on on their stern and you know do that, but I'm just kind of like okay, well, you know why is that guy over there? Yeah. You know, and you look on your chart and you're kind of like I still don't know why he's over there, you know. So you you you know, like have some etiquette, don't just go bomb over there, you know. If you see Tom or Joey or John Martinez or like, you know, the sort of local legend people, it's like you know, don't just putt over there and get right on them and get in their way and get on their line, but like, you know, you have a lot to learn just by keeping your distance, you know, and like they'll show you the secrets if you if they don't think you're looking at them. Definitely what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Um and constantly learning, right?

SPEAKER_02 55:32

I I try and have a learner's attitude every time that I'm on the water. Every time it's it's not the same water, you're not the same person, or you know, like whatever that kind of trope is, but it's it's damn true.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

It really is. And I'll tell you what, when somebody wants to ask me and quiz me about, hey man, where are you fishing? Or you know, how deep were you, what were you using, man? I got no problem telling you. You know, I kind of think we unless we're fishing a big tournament or something, I might keep some of it to myself. But for the most part, dude, especially a guy, you know, he he's got a wife and kids, he goes out to Nia Bay, right? He's got to take a ferry, he's got to haul his boat. Oh man, it's a lot of money to get out there. And for somebody to go out that really maybe doesn't understand the fishery or or where to be, I got no problem cluing people in and be like, dude, get back in here, 40 feet of water, we're fishing 20 feet on the chain, and we're running, you know, either whole herring or cup plugs.

SPEAKER_02 56:24

Right, yeah, and and and by the same token too, right? Is you know, I think everyone who's in a position of authority in our community is always very interested in trying to grow the community, right? Until it becomes time to grow the community. Hey, how did you do that? Well, yeah, you know, and it's like that's your opportunity to grow the community, man. Is it's like if you if someone made the effort and is there and is asking and not being inappropriate, the best thing you can do is try and get someone to have some of that success themselves. Like you go and you you gave a guy a tip and he went and caught a 20-pounder out, you know, on the coast or in the straits. That dude is never gonna stop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Yeah. He's always he's in. Yeah, he's in.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

You know, he's committed. You got him. New boat, bait, new knew this, knew that, new, you know, and it's like they don't have to realize, like, we all don't realize that level of success every single day, right? But it's like that one time, oh yeah, that guy was really nice to me, you know, and then we, you know, we went and hooked a fish that day. Like, those are the memories that stick with all of us, right? No doubt. You know, is and like I don't know. I feel like we should all do a better job of trying to be that person for somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

No doubt.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

At least, like, you know, not all of the time, every time, you know, but like more often than we probably do.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

I like to give back on that front, you know. I like to share people are struggling, they're having a hard time catching, they don't know where to go, they need a coordinate or something like that. Man, I am like because I had to get I had to learn that growing up, you know. And it was hard asking, you know, when you're when you're yelling this.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

Yeah, to be able to return the favor now is is pretty cool. For sure. Yeah, man. So, you know, with that in mind, I have two more questions for you. Go ahead. First one, I need your big fish story from Rivers Inlet. Which one? I know, there's a lot. Yeah, right. All right, well, so let's break it down into three parts. The biggest fish that has ever come and hit the deck in the boat you've been in, the biggest one you've caught, because I feel like they're gonna be different.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 58:39

I think you've told me.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

And then let's talk a little bit of Raymarine tech just to wrap it up. So the last question being, you know, let's talk sonar, because that's you know, the the multifunction displays and things like that, they're simple, all of this, but like why would someone want a certain transducer? Sure. And then let's keep it, you know, like hey, everybody from I have a small boat, if that makes a difference, up to I have an unlimited budget and I want to go and catch as many Alba Cortuna as humanly possible.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

Yeah. Yep. Um, so big fish story first. Yeah, big of course. Yep. So um our biggest in our crew that we've killed, um, that we hung on a scale in and have lots of pictures of uh is 72. 72 is our is our big fish in our group.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

Um and you think you you and you're like you're him, you come back to the dock with like a 25-pounder in Puget Sound, and it's like three of those.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

Yeah. Yep. Yep. My grandfather caught that fish, and he actually caught it on a um on a uh GL2 nine foot, you know, extra heavy and the reel, the the Shimano Triton reel he had actually had 17-pound mainline on it that my old man had spooled up. Well, he didn't know that um when he was playing the fish. Um and after two hours was getting a little impatient and buckling down, and my old man finally told him John let off that 17-pound mono, not 20-pound like we normally do. Um, so 72 is our biggest that we've killed. Um, my father and uh Uncle John Potosa let one go uh back in 2000. Um, that we have some pictures of that we figure is in the 80 plus pound range. Um and actually played the fish for almost three hours, figured it was foul hooked, and netted the fish, took a picture, put it back in the water, and my old man's 6'2, 240 pounds, and this thing's just massive. So um those are the two big fish that we've killed.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:39

And and the fish there, you can play them a long time, like sometimes you can't, but like up there, that water is really cold, it's glacier, yeah, and that fjord gets that really like just good oxygen dense water. Yes, I was really surprised at how like they're hard scaled at that point, you know, like they're they're okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

Oh, big time.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:59

Put them, put them back.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

Unless they're like dead on arrival, put them back and like it they will be fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

They are rugged, they are definitely rugged up there. In fact, I don't know if you knew this, but um years ago, um, the world record for the longest time for somebody to to play a fish was Rivers Inlet. Don't doubt it. Yeah, it was 22 hours, and I'm sure it was uh a guy on some light light pound line trying to be a hero. Um, but yeah, it's not it's not uncommon for people to play fish up there for hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

Yeah, I mean my my first one was I mean, it was not a big one by river standpoint, but it was the biggest one I caught was I mean, we did we put it back, but we figure it's somewhere 40-ish pounds. Yeah, and it's I mean, like those fish pull hard. Yeah, dude, they're a different breed. They they're they pull, they run a long way, and they run right at the surface. Yeah, straight out. And then they'll jump and cartwheel and do the cool stuff. But I mean, it was I think it was like 35 minutes. Yeah, you know, and that was not a slab by that that area's standards, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

The 30 pounders up there that we call them the dirty 30s, they have so much mojo because they'll they'll bust out of the water, they'll flip, hit the side of your boat, and then some of the big bigger fish, like um, but so my biggest is just shy of 60, me personally. And um, those fish uh will will will hog and hold so hard, you know, that last 50 feet might take you 40 minutes. You know, they're just you know, and we're around.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

Yeah, like you know, even on that one, like you feel them, like you feel each pump of the tail. It's not that like it's yeah, that big lead swing back and forth. You know, yep. But it takes so long to make that turn.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

Yeah, yep. They will have they'll have you buckling in the knees. I hope everybody that's listening here gets to go watch watch some rivers inlet videos. So um, those are my big fish stories. And so, yeah, so Raymarine Tech. Um, there is some very exciting stuff um coming down the roadmap here um that we've been working on. And so uh maybe doubling back to Raymarine, and now we're we're owned by Teledyne, right? So Teledyne, um who is um kind of the manufacturer of some of these really impressive um sonars, uh and in fact, uh probably one thing a lot of people don't know is the um is the Garmin Live Scope, um the live view sonar. That technology is actually uh owned and licensed by Teledyne. So Garmin pays um you know Teledyne for that technology. Um so uh when people are asking when is Raymaring gonna have some forward-looking sonar? Um I'll tell you to stay tuned because we're we're um we're we're getting closer. Yep. And and really uh as far as you know, what market do we want to play in? We know when people say forward-looking sonar, are you looking for big bass underneath lily pads or are you looking for a black marlin 500 feet from the side of the boat? And um because Rain Marine has really shifted and and put its eggs into that saltwater fishing market, um, I'll tell you that it's gonna have some blue water application. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Well, our main camera died. I think it overheated. Oh, gotcha. It's fine. We got the right later rang. We can we can finish it up. And the audio works fine. Um but thank you for being here, sharing your wisdom and all of that stuff. And like, like I said, we still have good video of all of it. But with that in mind, we can end it here so you can see both of us. Awesome. Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. Sharing your knowledge. You're welcome to come back anytime, and I hope that you do, because we have more to talk about. I've got a lot more to talk about. We have we have more to talk about. I feel like this is just the beginning of this conversation. It's been an hour. Tip of the sword. Um, so let's do it again soon. Let's do it. Thank you, sir. See you. Have a good one. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Three Reverse Marine podcast. We would like to give a special thanks to our sponsors, Endrun Tackle, make your own bite window. Fisherman's Gold Products, everything we make, we fish ourselves. And Duckworth Boats, legendary adventure.