Mostly Legal

Episode 46 - Saltwater in LA and SC!

• Stephen Dinkins • Season 1 • Episode 46

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Welcoming George back for more insight and stories about saltwater fishing and some funny memories about old family vehicles. Hopefully a good bit of this is relatable to our audience! We appreciate you listening and are glad to have George Knowlton with us always.

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SPEAKER_06

Oh man, I was kind of aggravated with it because I bought all these licenses. I wanted to show them to somebody that nobody even asked me for them.

SPEAKER_04

And I said, no, when he kind of looked at me with a linebrater, I said, I'm critical. I passed sick a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Well, Bubba used to dance in the magic attic.

SPEAKER_05

And so we're and when you stop the station wagon and cut it off, there'd be a little trickle of smoke coming out of the radiator. So we nicknamed it the dragon wagon. Well, that dragon.

SPEAKER_06

Well, it's another mostly legal Monday. Welcome home to the podcast and another episode with a very special guest, George Knowlton, with us back-to-back weeks. We're so excited to have him and to talk about some more fishing and even into some more saltwater fishing stories and some current happenings and what's what's biting down on the coast of South Carolina. We're excited to get into some more stories. We're coming at coming to you from some different locations again, but I am still here with my brother Scott Dinkins and Bubba Johnson, and of course the very special guest, George Knowlton. I want to go to Bubba. Bubba's got a listener of the week that we want to give a shout out to. Bubba, tell us who it is.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, our listener of the week this week is um Captain Robert Singleton. Um I understand that Robert has kind of found the podcast and has really started listening, is kind of catching up with all our episodes. And I know he's kind of out there listening, but he has really, really enjoyed it. Um so Robert, we really appreciate you listening. And um just so you know, it's it's Bubba Johnson, Stephen Dinkins, and Scott Dickins, and just in case we ever have any trouble with the law, that would be our name. Appreciate any any help that we could get from you. But no, seriously, we really appreciate your support and we understand you enjoy it, and so just tell your friends about it, and um thank you again for all for listening, and and truly, truly do hope that you um enjoy it as much as we enjoy telling the story.

SPEAKER_06

That's a fact.

SPEAKER_04

That's a fact. So, Stephen, um with that being said, we we you mentioned saltwater fish and everything. I know that you just got back from an incredible trip, and uh you went down the Cajun country, down to Louisiana, and got the fish kind of in the Gulf of America, and I want to hear all about that, but not just about that, but about how you got down there and that part of it too. It was it was probably a a pretty pretty good trip of a lifetime just with the whole the way you got there, the way you got back, and then all about the fishing trip. Kind of give us a little bit about that and tell us what happened.

SPEAKER_06

No, thank you for the question, Bubba. No, it was a great trip. We went down to Venice, Louisiana, which uh I I come to understand is now pretty much the fishing capital of the world, certainly of North America, and it's one of the most incredible fisheries I've ever been around. That delta of that of that Mississippi River flowing out into that Gulf of America, as you described it. Uh, it was pretty amazing. I had never been, and it was uh a landscape and uh a fishing environment that I could really have never imagined. I it's hard to even describe how much land is down there in that delta and how many different places there are to fish. It was it was really quite uh an experience. Uh a good friend of mine is in my Sunday school class, and he has part ownership in a houseboat down there that he loves to go and enjoy and take friends to. And he was kind enough to invite me and a couple other guys from our church to go down uh to fish. And so that in and of itself was an awesome opportunity. Uh, but one of the guys that was going down, another friend of mine, uh, happens to be a pilot and is a pilot in the Air National Guard, flies Apache helicopters, and also has his own plane that uh he shared with his father, who's now passed away. And so he has this plane to himself, and he was flying down. And so I got to fly with my friend down uh on Tuesday. We flew back last Friday, um, and it was a very, it was just a very neat experience flying in that that small private plane. We had to dodge a little bit of weather, which was kind of fun watching him navigate around some storms and through some clouds. We had stopped in Ozark, Alabama to refuel. And then we got down to Venice and we landed on a little small private airstrip, just a little green grass strip. Wow. And it didn't never cross my mind when we landed that it could be wet or muddy. Um, and I'm glad I'm thinking it was going through my friend's mind, the pilot's mind. Uh, but it never crossed my mind, but as soon as we landed, we came to a stop pretty quick. And uh he had to kind of keep the gas on the throttle up to kind of keep progressing down the runway. We got to where our friends were part picking us up and we unloaded. And then when he turned it around to go kind of taxi a little bit in this little grass trip and park and get off of that little small crown that it had for a runway, as soon as he pulled off of that, uh the plane got stuck. So it was, I mean, the the mud was soft and it got in four or five inches of mud that it sank down and we could not make it move at all. So thankfully, we had a couple of really dry, sunny days, even windy days, uh, the next the next couple of days that followed, uh, that it was able to dry out. And the day before we left, we had to take five or six guys back and actually push the plane out of the ruts that it was stuck in uh before he could crank it up, turn it around, get the dirt knocked off, and be ready to roll again. And I I I was very inquisitive. I was like, you know, uh, are you sure that all this mud's not gonna affect it? You know, take it off and fly. We we're safe, we're good. And he just kind of looked at me with this wry smile and he goes, I'm pretty sure we're okay. I need I need more than pretty sure. I'd like to know that you're very confident. He was. Uh, we were able to take off and fly home, stop again and get some gas and and make our way back. But one of the fun things was he let me, and you guys will you'll respect this uh friend of mine. I'm just not naming him just out of respect for him, but he was y'all will think he was crazy because he actually let me fly a little bit. He let me take that joystick and go up and down, left and right. It was it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. And I told him when we landed the only thing standing between me, my pilot's license, and a plane is a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02

Because I would do that in a heartbeat. It was awesome. Yeah, that's just what you need. You need a pilot's license.

SPEAKER_06

That's exactly what I want. I'm gonna get it to you before it's done. And you'll you'll make fun of me, but then you'll be the first one to ride with me down to Venice when it's time to go fishing. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01

I think I'll ride with your buddy.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_04

Tell us about the fishing trip a little bit now, because it was y'all, it was phenomenal. I mean, I know y'all did a couple different ways of fishing and fishing for a couple different species. So tell us a little bit about it and and and and kind of, I mean, I know they treated y'all first class and everything. Just let's let's brag on them a little bit.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, no, they did a great job. That the guys were so uh gracious to us. And I had never done most of the guys that were with us had never done that kind of fishing before, any kind of salt water, inshore type fishing. And so they were gracious to us and treated us like a better than a guide would, honestly, if we've been paying ridiculous amounts of money. But uh the our main day, our typical day was we'd go out in the mornings and we would wade fish around these kind of barrier uh islands in the delta, uh, and we would wade fish for sea trout. And uh we would use basically a little bit a heavy-duty bass rod um and a little jig with a little paddle-tail uh um grub looking thing on it. And uh we would pull it through these schools of mullet that you could see uh moving through the water and you know, waist deep, sometimes maybe almost chest deep water. And we'd pull it through that, and those sea trout apparently were schooling and or you know, foraging underneath the school, the the big schools of mullet. So you'd have to pull your line and your bait through those schools of mullet. So it was constantly stuff hitting your line. It took me some getting used to figuring out what was a bite and what wasn't. But we caught a limit of uh sea trout each day, I believe. Maybe one day we were a little bit short, but um, what I noted, these guys were such good friends that when we were short getting our limit, they would help us and just help us go ahead and get to 15. They were so kind, they would help us make sure that everybody got 15. So we had a lot of fun doing that. We'd come back in and we'd eat some lunch, you know, typical guy food. We'd make a sandwich and scarf down some chips, and then we'd go out in the afternoon a little bit offshore, like a little bit further, deeper into the gulf, where we'd get in 100 feet of water and we would catch some red snapper. And that was a lot of fun. Um it was almost automatic to drop those uh those bigger rods, right? The bigger reels and setups, and we'd drop that circle hook with some cut up bait on it down to 100 feet and wait for them to try to jerk it out your hands. And that's exactly what those drums would do. They would, if you weren't careful, they would slap, pull that rod right out your hand. And uh, we had a lot of fun pulling them up, but uh, they gave me a hard time. He said I grunted a lot for those small fish. But I told them it was hard work and that heat and that humidity, getting sunburned, having to jerk those suckers off the bottom. But boy, was it fun! I never we we filled up a cooler, a limit of red snapper every day we were there. And in fact, we came back and some guys stayed a few more days and they got into some better spots where they got some even bigger red snapper, I mean some like 20 pounders. So that was a lot of fun. I had never done that kind of fishing, and it was uh something I will never forget. It's good to have good friends that want to show you new things and show you how to do it without making fun of you too bad and helping you have fun. It was, yeah, I won't forget it anytime soon.

SPEAKER_04

And y'all fished, and I I've I've had the pleasure of meeting this guy one time before. I've never fished with him, but I know he is a true, another true legend, especially down in those parts of whatever. You fish with a guy, well what was his name? And I know he's been on some podcasts before, and hopefully we can maybe get him on live. What was his name?

SPEAKER_06

And we we fished with, well, let me say first, the the friend that invited me down there, Jeff Shooping. A lot of our listeners will know Jeff. Jeff's a Sumter businessman and a really fine fella, a strong man of faith. He was real involved uh with Joey Smoke and uh Tent Crusade that was in Sumter a few weeks ago. Um and and Jeff is the one to send my Sunday school class and at church with us at First Baptist. So he was the one that invited me down and was so gracious to me. But he also, one of his partners down there in this houseboat, is a guy that was originally from Somerton, South Carolina, but now lives in Tennessee. And but he spends a lot of time down in Venice fishing. And his name is Harold Wilcox. And Harold is just a very charismatic, charming guy. I mean, a master storyteller, but he's also a master fisherman, and everybody in Venice knows Harold. I mean, when you moved around that little community, whether we went to a little small diner or we went to the marina to get some extra, you know, bait or tackle, or if we went to go get fuel, everywhere we went, everybody knew Harold, wanted to speak to Harold, wanted to ask Harold where he'd been fishing. And one thing I learned about Harold Bubba is he reminded me of you. Uh, he was very secretive. He gave us lots of lectures on when they asked you where we caught them, you say in the mouth. You don't tell them where we were, you don't tell them what size rig you saw in the background, you don't tell them what the name of the island was. You just say, I don't know. I was confused out there. But Harold put us on them. And so we kind of had our marching orders, and that's what we would tell people. Because he, you know, there's a lot of competition down there. There's a lot of people who pay big money to go out with guides in that area, both inshore and offshore. And he he he he he plays it very close to the vest. But he was a lot of fun. He could not have been more gracious to me and the group that was there. Almost all of us were kind of beginners with that sort of fishing, and uh boy, it was a lot of fun. But he had some great stories about uh fishing on Lake Marion that down in Santee. Uh he used a guide there, uh, but he's fished all over the world and all kinds of different spots. But he actually kind of pioneered this idea of wade fishing for these sea trout. Uh I think this is fair to say, in down there in that Venice area. And uh he attributes it attributed it to his growing up in Somerton and wade fishing for Brim in the headwaters of that Sparkleberry and going out there and uh wading around looking for the right, you know, cypress stumps and trees and and fishing with some friends of his when he was just 10, 11, 12 years old. And he kind of took that same idea uh and started trying to hunt these sea trout and uh didn't you know kind of got out of the boat and tried something different and had a lot of fun doing it. So it's it was it was fun hearing those stories and making those connections.

SPEAKER_04

So a couple questions for you that I have for you, and I have not kind of cut this with I was just I said you what was your biggest trout that you caught, did you think?

SPEAKER_06

Uh the biggest one I caught was I think 21 inches, which which is a it was a good size, but I guess he was two, three pounds, maybe. Um then uh I know that my friend uh Joel, he boy, he caught one nice one. I think it was the biggest the trip was like 24 inches, and you know, maybe add another pound or so. So and they fought really well. You know, we were using a you you helped me get rigged up so you know, but our listeners, uh, we were using like a seven foot, you know, bass rod that was stiff with it's a I was just using a regular old bass bait caster that Bubba helped me source off of Amazon. And uh of course we had some braid on there with a uh a leader and that little uh three-eighths ounce jig head uh that we put that paddle tail on.

SPEAKER_04

And don't kill kicking secrets, don't kill kick me secrets.

SPEAKER_06

That's a fair point, but I think that's a pretty common bait for what they're using down there. And uh, but it was but it was it was simple, but it was just fun. It was neat doing you know, and being in a different environment. And in that waiting, we would have these belts and we'd have these stringers, a long stringer with a float on the end, and so you'd catch the fish, and you know, you you'd once you unhooked them, you'd you'd get them on that stringer, and you would just have them, you you drag them around as you continue to fish. And uh he had to remind us more than once to make sure that those fish stayed at the end of the stringer and that stringer was down current of you. You didn't want those fish hanging around you because it is not unusual for some sharks to come looking. And every now and then they'll attack those fish on that stringer, and when that happens, you don't want them real close to you. I thought, okay, I noted and I made sure every night I'd be fishing and I'd get like one on, I'd be reeling him in, and I'd recognize that those fish on my stringer kind of wrapped around my legs. Oh man, that was a bad feeling. I'd have to, you know, do the dance and get them untangled from around me so far away, all the while I'm not trying to lose the fish that's on. It was quite uh quite an experience. It was, but it was a lot of fun and beautiful. And and somebody said, How would you describe it? And I haven't been, I haven't done a lot of fishing in Georgetown. I know George has. We're gonna we got some questions we want to ask him about that in just a second, but I imagine if you went out in Wenya Bay, uh it's gonna look a little different than that, and it's like a billion times bigger. I mean, it just goes on. We would go 50 miles an hour for an hour in one direction and fish, and the next day go 50 miles in another direction for an hour. And we could have just done that in 360 different degrees, and it's just so many places to fish and uh so many boats. People going inshore, people going offshore. That little marina community in Venice was very unique as well. It was quite I I I liken it a little bit, Bubba to Stuttgart in Arkansas, you know, for duck hunting. It is to fishing and inshore fishing, I guess offshore too, uh, to what Stuttgart is for duck hunting. Uh it's it's got this own little world that is revolving around that particular activity. And uh everybody's very secretive about the holes and the coordinates and the bait. And so it was it was interesting to say the least.

SPEAKER_04

Well, that's awesome. I know y'all had a great trip, and and you did, you I didn't know, like I said, I know Jeffrey Schupin kind of organized it and stuff, and he is he is absolutely a number one top of the class. I mean, he he really is. He he is as good as anybody down there, and he spent a lot of time down there as well, and and is very gracious. I mean, he has been he has been more than gracious to take numerous, numerous people from from Sumter down there to kind of share what he has learned and that kind of stuff. And that just tells a lot about Jeffrey of what a what a gracious person is. So I know y'all had a great time, everything. Last question before we move on, because we do have some questions for George too. What tell me the two best things you ate down there while you were in Cajun Country?

SPEAKER_06

Ooh, man. The second night, those boys uh just they fried it up a bunch of the of the fish that we had just caught. So we had some uh sea bat citrus fillets and then some uh red snapper fillets that they fried. We bought a little bit of shrimp to fry too, and I love fried shrimp, but that fresh fish that we knew we caught that morning, cleaned it right there and fried it up just a couple hours later, it was a good cocktail sauce. It was hard to beat. That's some really good stuff. I'm a sucker for fried seafood. If I had to say a second thing, you know, uh a couple of the guys I was with, they were pretty fond of some soft-serve ice cream at the one place in about a 50-mile radius that had an ice cream machine. So every night they'd want to go there and get uh vanilla ice cream with Oreos crushed on top. And once you've been awake for about 14 hours and you've been in the sun for 12 of them and clean and finish, all of a sudden that regular oil ice cream tastes a little better than it usually does.

SPEAKER_02

It's about like bats in Westfield, right? And you come out of the bats in Wedgefield.

unknown

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Uh Steven, but before we switch to George, um, you know, I know our listeners are gonna want to know did y'all see any sign of I'm trying to think of the nicknames that Ken told us people use for them. Oh no.

SPEAKER_06

The Possum Police. The Possum Police. And what was it? The uh something sheriff, the rabbit sheriff? Uh no, I we didn't see any Game Wardens at all, and I was kind of aggravated with them because I bought all these licenses. I wanted to show them to somebody. Nobody even asked me for them. Kind of wasted all that money.

SPEAKER_03

Well, that's a shame.

SPEAKER_06

What are you gonna do? You know, well, one of the things, and this might be a good segue to the story with what I'm gonna share to talking to George about South Carolina uh inshore fishing and snappers and some other saltwater type stuff, but the limit on those red snapper was four per man. And of course, there's a slot limit, it had to be over a certain size. But um the we got a word the day we were leaving that uh Louisiana had extended that to five fish a man uh over the Memorial Day weekend. And uh the the idea was that um not enough people were going fishing because fuel is so high, uh, people weren't going out as much as they normally are, and so they still wanted to have a certain size catch, you know, I guess statewide, um, out of that fishery. And so they were trying to find ways to encourage more people to go. So they were raising that limit, uh, at least in Louisiana, uh, trying to get those guys, more fishermen out there. But I came back and, you know, sometimes like if you buy a Jeep, you all of a sudden you see a lot more jeeps on the road. You notice that kind of stuff. So I've been red snapper fishing, but so then I noticed that South Carolina, I think, was also changing some red snapper rules. But I don't know if it was for the same reason uh George or Bubba might can speak to that. But I know that uh George has done a fair amount of that uh saltwater fishing down there in and around Georgetown and Winya Bay, but y'all can speak to that about what might be changing, if anything, in South Carolina as it relates to red snapper or some of those other coastal species.

SPEAKER_04

Um I don't know a whole lot about it just because I I'm not in that world right now, or I used to be in that world a lot, but I'm not in it world. But I do know that there was a lot of talk, or matter of fact, they may have already passed. Whatever conservation, whatever that thing's called, um, was very limited. And there's only like a day or two-day season. You can catch one red snapper, keep one red snapper. Everybody's complaining because you can't drop a piece of bait down without catching a red snapper out there. And they always joke and stuff, say the you know, the endangered Atlantic red snapper or whatever, but they're they're everywhere off our coast. And so I think the season did finally get extended, but then the federal judge or something ruled, and that as an extension was not legal, and there's a there's a question about whether in-pastor waters apply or South California waters apply. So it's being complicated, it's nothing just cut and dry. So that's not a great answer for you. But if you go on the internet, there's a plethora of information to kind of look up about it. I really don't know exactly where it stands right now. Um, but there's a bunch of res map problems code too, but you just you have not been able to keep them. But I think some of that is changing as well, Stephen. I think they do recognize that has really bounced back and and the population is is strong out there, but it's just a lot of people trying to say whose fish are they? Are they the federal governments? Are they South Carolinas and and all that kind of stuff to answer you to make a long story longer, I guess.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Uh George, you've done some fishing. I want to hear a little bit more about some of your experience, but have you ever fished for the sea trout that uh in in Georgetown or in those areas uh like I was fishing for them down in Louisiana? I just haven't done any of that. And I didn't know if that was something that people catch or or target, you know, on our coast or not.

SPEAKER_05

I have, and it and sea trout's a lot of fun. You know, somebody like me, I'm I don't fish for them a lot. You know, the guy that you were fishing with out there, you said held his car so close to his chest. As many fish are there, it's still there, there's hot spots, so you don't just give away your spots. And I when we find them, the best time for us to to fish for them, because I don't live there and fish that much, but for here, and our numbers aren't as much as. By no means, but for here, the fall, those fish are starting to feed up, they're starting to fatten up. There's something in those fish's bodies that tell them when the days start getting a little bit shorter, they know cold weather's coming, they just start to feed red fish, trout, the fly, all of them. Everything down there starts to feed up. So September, October, really, really October, November, until it gets cold, cold. Those trout get to where they're feeding up more. You get around them, they're gonna find you. You get around them when they're not hungry, you can you can beat them in the head all you want to. It's just like um a fat baby when they're full. They're not gonna just sit there and eat, they'll go to sleep. Then they just kind of right now they don't have to eat that much here. But anyway, they they still catch them. Um my nephew came, you know, he caught 18 or 20 him and him and uh actually two of my nephews the other day. Well, um, but yeah, in the in the fall of the year they they bite good, they school up better and they feed. That's the main thing is when they're feeding. When fish are feeding, they'll find you. They'll fit you, you get close to them and they'll do their part. When they're not feeding, it's kind of a little more aggravating.

SPEAKER_06

That's about 104. Well, what's what have you fished for the most down on that coast? What what what takes you down there more than anything else?

SPEAKER_05

Well, right now, and there's some years it's just better than others. You know, on these dry years, the salt water just pushes back into these creeks and on into these rivers a lot further. Well, naturally, when that salt water pushes back, more fish come in. Um, and it's just it's just been one of those dry years. So the black drum, the sheephead, all those, well, sheephead aren't a trashy fish. A lot of people love to fish for them, but those black drum and sheephead, even the reds, they just come way up into these creeks. But right now, there is a pile of sheephead on the rocks at Georgetown. And I can't fish for them that much. It has to become, I get seasick real easily. I've been seasick on Santa, but uh those jetties do something different because your eyes mess with you. The boat's going one way, the water's going the other, this way pushes you, it's just it's turmoil for somebody to get seasick, and I get seasick very easily. So we went out, me and um my brother-in-law, a couple guys um from church, we went out, that's been about a month ago now, and it's been on since then. But on sheephead, there's piles of them down there. You just need to make sure you got some bait. And if you're fishing at the rocks, you just you kind of look, you, you, you look, what you look on the rocks where you can see the barnacles. And um, I don't know how to say it other than just what it is bird crab. You look for the bird mess on top of the rocks. Those birds are landing there for a reason. They're not eating sheep head. But they, you know, somebody somebody said a while back that those birds are the old timey live scope, they are. You you get where those birds have been messing on those rocks, you you're getting close where you need to be. But you need to make sure you got some filler crabs or barnacles and drop down. And you know, for years we fished for sheep head, it was a buckshot and a and a hook, kind of like a, you know, just a just a simple buckshot and a hook, about 10 inch, 12 inch, 15 inches down from it. But the way the sheep head bite, you know, the old saying was with a sheep head, you want to set the hook right before he bites it. And the concept behind that was they'll they'll they'll steal your bait. They bite it in such a way where they don't tug on your line like some fish do. But a lot of these guys have gone to these sweeper heads, the bottom, but whatever you call them, some of them call them sweeper heads. There's there's just a bottom head where there's no, there's no break in between your real rod and the actual hooks. The head, the hook, and all, the lead and hooking all together. And um, they can be fairly expensive, but they work really good. But if you sheep head fishing, you can just feel the bite so much better, the amount of the amount of fish you catch versus what you miss just drops down dramatically from what you used to do with the buckshot in the um, and just a hook. And I'll tell you one little tip you can do. You can go to just you can go to Walmart. I, you know, when you fish and you want to get into rocks, you want to be closer to the rocks or somewhere, you know, on them. And these bottlesweeper heads, they have a heavier barb hook. You go to Walmart or go somewhere and get some of these colored heads white. You can kind of mess with them, just play with them a little bit, see which ones they like on any particular day. But it's orange, white, red, pink, whatever. But it's a lighter, it's a lighter wire hook. And if you do get hung up and you straighten that hook, I mean, you can bend it back. I mean, she had pull, they pull really good. But bending a hook back two or three times ain't gonna, it's not gonna affect the integrity of the hook, being able to catch the fish anyway. And if one or two gets off, you still got a lot cheaper hook to work with. And I like the white, I like the lighter wire hook because for whatever reason, you just seem to get more bites on a light hook, and it's a lot cheaper. I mean, that diamond does. If you pop one off, you just tie another one back on, you don't have a lot invested in it. But the colors I think make a difference because uh any any fish, there's color patterns that just it helps sometimes. But those sheep head are there and they thick, and um, for anybody that can stand the rough, rough waves and rough um the tide water, it's a lot of fun, man. It is a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04

Are you using braid or you're using monofilament?

SPEAKER_05

I typically use braid and Bubby, you know, all those guys. I'm sure, I'm sure your guys in Venice did, Stephen. They a lot of people like to tie a leader on, and a leader helps. You can put the four carbon leader, the monofilament leader, all that stuff. I tie braid from my from my rod straight to the hook. I don't care. I mean, if if less fish bite it, so what? I just it's easier to rig up and you you in and out of those rocks and your line's constantly getting frayed and beat up, and um nothing's gonna hold up like braid. I mean, it can take a beating, and if you pop off, you just snip off a couple feet of it and tie right back on. But that's what I use. The guys that know what they're doing and just take it a lot more seriously than me, they tie on a liter. A tie on a liter of fluorocarbon or monofilament liter.

SPEAKER_04

George, another question for you too. You know, the sheep head, and I've got some friends of mine that swear by it and say they've done it. I've never done it because we really never targeted a sheep head down there a lot, like on the rocks and fish, the jetties and stuff for flounder and all that. But I've heard them say that you can take like three crickets and put on a hook. Kind of, I guess it kind of looks like a it looks like a filler crab a little bit if you put three or four of those crickets on a hook. Have you ever tried crickets on them?

SPEAKER_05

I hadn't, but I mean there's no doubt they'll bite them. If you look at a filler crab, I mean they stink, they look, they everything just like a cricket. Um, and and they'll bite them. I've heard people use other stuff. There's nothing, there's nothing that'll catch them any better than a barnacle. Barnacles are aggravating to get, they're dangerous to get, they're stuff, there's oyster shells and stuff, they're sharp. Um, one of my really good friends, one of my really good friends, I won't call his name, he he is a sheephead master. Master. But um, and he's kind of out of the sheephead world now. He wasn't, well, some of them might cringe, but anyway, but the best thing you get those barnacles and get you a five-gallon bucket and a and a and a brick or two, and just take and kind of crunch them up in the bottom of that bucket. And you don't have to throw out a lot. You don't have to throw out a lot of them at all. You you you you you want about a half a gallon to three, two-thirds of a, I'm not a half a gallon, a half a bucket to two-thirds of a five-gallon bucket of barnacles if you can get them. And you get your uh uh, you you know, crunch some of them up at a time and you just kind of chum with them. Just kind of put them in that running water and let them fall down. If that water's very clear and you got good glasses, it won't be long, you'll see those sheep heads start to gather up. And uh, if you can, you know, those that know how to put the barnacle on the hook, ain't nothing that catches them any better than a barnacle. That's what he's eating. That's what he's down there eating. Those filler crabs, they on the sand, they up there on the hill. What he's down there eating is those barnacles. Um, and obviously, if you can get what he's what he's eating on anyway, you're gonna you're gonna catch more of them. But if you can get filler crabs when there's and there's numbers, hush dog. I'm in my office on my front porch, y'all. But um, yeah. Welcome to New Zion. The um, but if you can get the filler crabs, but the numbers is there like they are a lot of times year-round, but it's the same way, the cooler it gets, the more they they're there, and the bigger they are, the more they want to feed. But you get that fiddler crab down there too, and he'll bite it. But that that setup with a lighter wire hook, an eighth ounce, quarter ounce, whatever it takes to get you to the bottom, but no more than it takes to get it to the bottom is gonna get you more bites. I wish I could do it more. I I hate I get so seasick. I got a nephew, nephews, Ashton and Josh and Walker. They in that world, like you said, Bubba, they they love that salt water fishing. And uh couple of these guys New Zealand Lyle for it, and they just they enjoy it, they good at it. And both, I don't know what it would take to get them seasick. I can get seasick thinking about some of the trips they've been on. But uh it's just it's just the way it is. I I get sick very easily out there, but it is a lot of fun sheep head fishing. And it's good eating. You don't get no finer um fillet than a sheep head. You take him home and fry him, grill him, sear him, however you want to feel, you can't mess him up.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I I would say this, George, as much as I've been on the water and everything, and and offshore fish and everything for years and everything, I have been seasick one time, and it was horrible. I'm gonna tell you right now, the the guy with I I fished forever. We fished the King Mackerel trail, the SKA trails, and fished all over and everything. And the guy fished with, I'll never forget the day I got sick. I I knew I was green. I don't know whether it was just I was sick that day or if I had a little stomach virus or what, but I knew that I was sick. I knew I was green. And we fished in a tournament out of Charleston, fishing a big tournament out of Charleston, and had small craft advisory, and we went out, they they fished, and so we fished. And we were on a 27-foot contender, that's what we fished off of. And um, we went offshore, and I can't remember we ran to, but I knew I was green. I was sitting in front of the Top. I started to feel a little bit better, and we hooked a shark on a downright, and he tangled up three or four lines, and I went back there and I was trying to untangle those lines, and it was over. You stick a fork with me. I got sick, and that was it was awful. And I threw up the first time, it was like quarter to ten. And I threw up an hour later, and it was like Kendall 10. That's how slow time was moving. Oh, yeah. That's the one.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, you can hear your heart beating through your ears. I mean, time just stands still.

SPEAKER_04

He said he fit, and I said, No, and he kind of looked at me with a live breath. I said, I'm critical. I passed sick a long time ago.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

He said, he said, Do you want to go in? I said, no. I said, I can't get any sicker. Didn't know how I can get any sicker. I said, we're fishing, but we're fishing at that time, and this was years ago. We're fishing, I think, first prize in a lot of terms, about $35,000. And I was like, no. I said, one bite out here today because they ain't pool fishing could be $35,000. I said, I'm just gonna lay back in on this beanbag and die. It was bad, y'all.

SPEAKER_05

Let me tell you this right here, Bubba. I I know y'all from something, and everybody knew Phil Richardson. My very first job out of high school, um, I met Phil Richardson through my brother Rocky. And he did landscaping irrigation. Me and Phil had a lot of fun together. He was he he was a trip. He was a hard worker. Um, he just he enjoyed, he enjoyed working on the outside. I'm sure Phil could have done a lot of things. But anyway, we had a lot of fun. And one day he told me, he said, hey, I got us a fishing trip at the ocean. I want you to go with me. I said, Man, yeah, I'll go with you. And I knew I got a little bit seasick. I didn't know what kind of fishing trip, I didn't know what it was gonna be like. I had no idea other than I love to fish and I'd go anywhere. We went out of, was it Captain Dicks? Somewhere out, somewhere out of it. There's a boat called Captain Dick's out of Captain Dicks Marina, yes. Yep. All right, so we mean Phil, me and Phil go down there, and we start, we start out. And we didn't we didn't make it out of the jetty as good. And already knew you say green, I already knew I was sweating. Mouth was watering, I mean it was bad. And we went out there, and as long as we were riding, I had a wind in my in my face, and I was okay. When I say okay, I was seasick, but I hadn't I wasn't vomiting. I thought I I thought I would live at that point. Well, anyway, we get out there and stopped the boat, and the fumes were coming up off of that thing. Scott's talking about my mosquitoes, my mosquito killer on my boat. Those diesel fumes were just rising up. And about that time, somebody beat me to the punch. I saw them throw up up ahead of me. Just so if nobody knows on the on the podcast that's listening, Captain Dicks is like a uh floating school bus with a top cut off of it. I mean, it's just a you got people lined up. It ain't it ain't fish.

SPEAKER_04

For example, you on the new element probably was out of Captain Dick Marina. You probably on the new Elk Princess.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, it ain't it ain't fishing. They got you packed on there to see who didn't get to seek the quickest. But anyway, some some guy, and I saw, I saw that guy. He he he he popped open a duck beverage and drank it on the way out there, and I just I I had him marked. I thought that that cat right there's gonna be in trouble. As soon as we stopped, he threw up with a wind, blew it on, two or three people beside him. I was like, this ain't gonna work. I'm already, I'm in my mouth, my mouth is just drizzling. I this is all I can do to hold hold my spit in. But lo and behold, I find I finally lost a battle. And I'm telling you, when it when it let go, it looked like a fire hose. It looked like a fire hose. And this is way more, I'm sure, but out of my mouth, my nostrils. I thought it was gonna come out of my ears and my eyeballs. I threw up that there was not anything left in me. And I said, I told Phil, I said, Phil, I'm going downstairs, Bo. I am done. And I walk, I walk, I stumble my way down those stairs, and I can see that lady right now. It was an older lady she had on glasses. She was sitting down there reading, looking down at her lap reading. And if anybody gets seasick, they know what I'm talking about. That's just a it'll make you sick just to think about it. She was looking down reading, she looked at me over her glasses, and she was salty, Bo. I mean, old leatherback woman. You can just tell she was she was cooked. You know, you know how you get that they had it, she had that skin from she had been tan the smoked, and I and she looked at me, she said, Don't you throw up on my boat. She she was down at that was like that was like a little canteen area. And I said, Lady, don't you worry. I don't have anything left in me to throw up. And I laid down in that in the bottom of that school bus and I thought I would die. I and I I listen, listen, I enjoy life. I love life. I have a will to live. But at that point, somebody could have came to me with a gun, and I was defenseless. That's just that's just what C-Sick would do to you. But yeah, I know all about being seasick. That was a terrible day. That was a terrible day.

SPEAKER_04

It was bad. I've been sick. Now, I've been out on some headbugs before back years ago when I first really loved her to learn to love to be offshore and everything, George. And I had seen some of the some of the best fish fights you've ever seen in your life, from one person on one side of the boat fighting the person on the other side of the life. And you would think you can watch it, and and like you see this guy fighting, and we're catching these little old fish putting a dag on clothes back. Like, that song ain't got nothing that we've been catching. Hook on the other side of the boat, you see the other person over there doubled over. It's I've seen some of the best podcasts of my life from back under the boat. It was crazy. It's a George and Steven, both y'all both been in ocean this year, like pretty neat down in the Gulf of America, and and George out of Georgetown and everything. I know our listeners want to know how about any barracuda sightings? I mean, I mean, come on. Like that is we know that is like the most amazing fish in the ocean.

SPEAKER_06

Most amazing fish in the ocean, no doubt. I did not see any barracudas, uh, Bob. If I had, I'd have filmed them for you. We could have put them on Instagram on the most illegal podcast.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I just I mean, I just want you to probably not see them because they swim so fast, much like me at Pointset that day. Like a barracuda, just getting it done.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. They were so fast. I bet you you is your are you asserting that you were swimming so fast nobody could see you?

SPEAKER_04

Well, I was at the point that the lifeguard tried to save me, I was treading water at that point. You know, kind of like a barracuda, you could kind of circles around. That's kind of what I was doing at that point.

SPEAKER_05

Stephen Hyde Bub on that last episode, how did he explain that bait, the Gorky or Gorky, or whatever he pronounced it? Did it move a lot of water? I can imagine Bubba fish plates a lot of water.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Displaced a lot of water.

SPEAKER_06

Are you saying that Bubba displaced a lot of water, George?

SPEAKER_05

I'm just saying he wouldn't be hard to spot. If Bubba was a missing boater and the helicopter was looking for him, he wouldn't be hard to spot. He was a lot of water.

SPEAKER_06

Oh funny, George. All that talk about being seasick, it reminds me of a trip I was on Sarah and I where we had a meeting that we flew to in uh Greece uh when we were serving overseas. And uh her mother had come over and stayed with our kids. And so Sarah and I went, and we had this meeting, we were going to be in Greece. We took a couple days of vacation and uh we went to this little small island called Nos when the meeting was over to have a little bit of uh time away, Sarah and I. And you had to catch a ferry to it. Well, I I I paid for a ferry both ways, and and the way there, it was this very huge ferry. It looked kind of like a mini cruise ship. And the the seas were not rough, it was an easy uh boat ride. Uh, it came to our little dock on this little small island. We got off and found our place where we stayed, had a delightful time for two, three days. On the way home, uh, I expected that big boat to come pulling back up, and it did not. This uh catamaran with these huge engines on the back and the seats for about uh 80 people uh came came pulling in, and it was their like their their jet boat essentially. It was when they were behind schedule when they needed to move people fast. And it when you went inside of this boat, it was like an airplane, but it was like uh six seats in the middle and four seats on uh either side of those double aisles, and about 20 rows deep, and that was the that was the that was the boat. That was it. So this thing was packed to that gill. And we pulled out of that little bay into the open water of the Mediterranean, and it was choppy, choppy, very choppy. And he gets, I mean, I thought we were gonna ease through it, but he he pours on the gas, and we are skipping across this Mediterranean like at 40, 50 miles an hour is what it felt like. And immediately everybody, you look at everybody on the whole boat and they're green. And if they weren't throwing up, they were looking like they were about to. And there was puke rolling down the aisles. I'm telling you, it was gross. And the more people got sick, it the more it made other people sick. And uh Sarah got sick. I had to go, I was going around like bargaining with people for their bark bags from the state in front of them, trying to collect enough for her. And it I I never got sick, but I wanted to. Like, you know, that feeling where you you would feel better if you could just throw up, but it was so bad. And I thought that thing was never gonna be over. It was like 40 minutes of that. We finally pulled into port. We had to jump in an Uber and head to the airport because we were behind schedule and it was just but I mean, it took me a day to had that feeling of being that nauseous and that feels that is a miserable feeling, like George was describing. You certainly wouldn't want to be alone by yourself with that feeling because who knows what you might do.

SPEAKER_03

Like getting on a Gravitron at the Sumter County Fair.

SPEAKER_06

Oh, I've done that before too. Oh my gosh. Golly bum. I got off that thing. It was a typical Sumter September day in 1985. It's about 108 degrees on September the 12th.

SPEAKER_03

It was cool in that Gravitron, though.

SPEAKER_06

Oh my gosh, it was 130 inside of that thing. As soon as I got off, I did all I could do to find the first trash can. At least get in the trash can. And I hurled every elephant ear I had eaten that day right in that trash.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, man. I thought you impressed the ladies, didn't you?

SPEAKER_06

Uh no, they were not impressed with 14-year-old Steven throwing up into the can. That was not a lady killer motor right there. Uh my my my friend uh Joel, uh who has the plane and flew me down to Venice, um, he's had his plane for some time, and 10 or 12 years ago, he took me up in this plane. And uh, there was a time where I thought I would have been a pretty good pilot. And uh, I mean, who doesn't love a roller coaster, who doesn't love to fly, who doesn't like to go up and down and turn around? I thought that would be awesome. And Joel, uh, and and Joel's plane is uh it's a pretty fancy plane, and he can do these tricks, he can do these barrel rolls, he can even go completely upside down in a big loop. I mean, it's not a little test, it's a it's a high performance plane. And so I was kind of itching to go uh fly with Joel and do all those, you know, arrow, arrow, uh, acrobatics in the air. I was excited. Well, he took me up and it was the summertime and it was hot, and uh he started doing that stuff, and I was so eager. Because I had flown a lot, I was eager to get to this next level. He did one barrel roll, and all I could think about was where was I gonna throw up in my shirt, on the display, on an instrument? I didn't want to mess his carpet up. And thankfully, at the time I remember I was wearing like a golf shirt, but I had an undershirt underneath it. So I took my golf shirt off. He was like, Steve, what you doing? I was like, bro, I don't want to throw up on your display panel, on your instrument panel. I'm gonna throw up in the shirt. Oh, and he was like, well, at least let me do one more barrel roll and show you how that feels. And that was not a good idea. But somehow the Lord's giving me some favor and I held it all in. But boy, it was a miserable feeling. So it turns out the Lord did not make me to be an S16 pilot. I I could not have done that.

SPEAKER_04

I don't with with your SA, Stephen, I just find it hard to believe. I mean, that's it. The incredible amount of like the SA. Would you tell him what SA stands for? Situational.

SPEAKER_06

It does not water displacement.

SPEAKER_04

Situational awareness is what it stands for. And Steven has an incredible knack for situational awareness. Just being, he's he's all over the all over the all-round whatever's going on. He he he got a pinpointed.

SPEAKER_03

Well, he would have been a heck of a pilot as long as he didn't have to keep up with like the pilot plane keys, you know, that actually crank the thing. They make people pronounce guys.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, now to pat him on the back too, Steven, I will say this. The first mention that I have ever had of Joel, your friend Joel, a good friend of ours from Sumner, Jamie Fiddler, was also over at McIntyre and flew, you know, Apache helicopters. And when Joel's name came up, he said, he told me straight up, he said, Bob, I'm telling you right now, he can do things with an Apache helicopter that Apache helicopters can't do. That he is absolutely one of the most talented aviators there is when it comes to an Apache helicopter. I've heard nothing but amazing things about him.

SPEAKER_06

No, that's absolutely true. I don't have any problem believing that. I've heard that from several different sources. And a lot of people said that about me and the four tars I had when I was 15. It just was not designed to do. It was pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_01

But you could put a basketball through that windshield pretty quick, though, I can tell you that. No doubt. I could wrap it around a fire highter, too.

SPEAKER_06

I mean, I could do anything with that four tars. I tell you, I'll tell you a funny story about the four tars. I'm at the beach right now for Memorial Day weekend. This this coincides. So four tars, spring break, 1991-92. I'm a sophomore or junior in high school. I'm down here with a group of friends. Uh, our parents were so crazy that they let us come down here for a week with a bunch of friends and almost no chaperone. I don't know what they were thinking. And uh, we are cruising the strip, right? That's what you do. You go find some cute girls uh on the strip from you know some other town that you hadn't met yet, and you try to find them and talk to them and flirt with them while you're cruising the strip down in front of the pavilion where Bubba used to dance at the magic attic. And so we're we're down there cruising, Chris Barno's with me and Chris Harrison and a couple other guys from sure, maybe a couple of good road boys, and we're all piled in my Ford Taurus, my four-door, very, very, very cool Ford Taurus. Sleek, sleek, chic. I mean, it was all of those things.

SPEAKER_05

They don't make them like that anymore.

SPEAKER_06

They just don't. They don't. And so uh we're we're cruising in the Ford Taurus and back to, you know, bumper to bumper traffic, windows down, you know, hollering at people. And there's these two guys, y'all, that are in front of us on their like ninja bikes, and uh impress all the ladies and anybody else watching, they would, while we're sitting there not moving, they would rev those engines up. Wing, wing, wing, wing, to be so loud, so obnoxious. And it finally, finally quieted down. Cars still weren't moving. So I decided to have a little fun and kind of make fun of them. So I slid my four guitars and it's a little four cylinder in the neutral, and I started revving the engine up. And it was so it was hilarious. Like all the people walking on the sidewalks, they're laughing at me for making fun of, you know, the guys on the ninja bikes. It was going so perfect. I mean, girls are looking at us and noticing us, and we're funny, and we're, you know, we're humorous. It's working great until the smoke started bellowing from underneath my hood. And then the engine cuts off. And those guys that were with me, dude, it was like rats jumping out of a sinking ship. They're like, get it out of here. Uh, and I had to holler at them to get him to come back and help me push it off the road and into a convenience store, a little parking lot, a block down from the pavilion, and it had overheated. I had to let it cool down. But I added some water to the radiator. I cranked that bad boy back up after 30 minutes or so. We drove it home a little more gingerly than that than I had been. But we made it out of there, but uh without thoroughly embarrassing myself in that traffic with that four Taurus.

SPEAKER_01

You did the every good cart I ever had my whole life before you got that four Taurus. You ran every good car into the dirt.

SPEAKER_06

You gotta drive it hard. You gotta push the limits. That's what us test pilots do. We take things to the limit.

SPEAKER_05

There you go. Only a four Taurus could come back from the come come back from dead, right? I mean, that only a four tourists can come back to life.

SPEAKER_06

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_05

That thing was a bit was a beast. I think yeah, I think every family had one of those cars. We we had a four-tourist, we had a white four tours, and and we put a half million miles on easily with nine of us. Before the four tours, we had a station wagon. Old school station wagon with the with the circular seat in the back, um or with the square seat in the back.

SPEAKER_07

That rumble seat. We drove that thing.

SPEAKER_05

Oh man, we drove that thing ever had electric windows. We were some kind of fancy. Well, my sister Shay drove the school at this particular time. There were five offshe road together. Shea, Shelley, Sandy, Scott's wife, Sandy, and me and Benny. And one of my other siblings had swerved a deer somehow or another. That's a whole nother story. Swerved a deer and hit a mailbox. Well, when you stop, when you swivel. It's easy to do for the record. Oh, it's very easy to do. Very easy to do. And there's been speculation. What anyway, he swerved a deer somehow or another, hit the mailbox, hit two mailboxes. And when you stopped the station wagon and cut it off, there'd be a little trickle of smoke coming out of the radiator. So we nicknamed it the dragon wagon. Well, that dragon, we we drove, we that's that station wagon has so many miles on it. It had served us well. Shea drove to school one morning. She we may have been a little bit late. She may have been driving a little bit too fast. But anyway, the dragon wagon decided that was the end of the road. We pulled up to the front of the schoolhouse. And when she did, when she pulled over to the side, was just kind of trying to figure out somewhere to park. One of the front wheels, not the tire, the whole wheel rolled off of it and rolled across the front of the front of the schoolyard at each screen. And somehow or another, everybody in Turboville was in that front yard at that time. And of course, she jumps out, all three girls jump out hollering them, and they just they mortify, they take off running, they leave the station wagon, the dragon wagon, sitting there smoking with that little trickle of smoke coming up out the radiator. And I mean, both people were just dying laughing. And we just thought that was just a normal thing. I mean, they took off and thought, oh, daddy, I'll get it. You know, and of course, daddy came there and somehow another got it, and somebody able to roll back and load it up. But that's awesome. Those old carstones are old car stores.

SPEAKER_06

So, George, we uh we had, you know, my dad was in the tire business, and uh, there was a time where he had a little bit of a wholesale division and would sell national brand tires to a lot of little mom and pop stores throughout the state, little mom and pop like filling stations that would sell some tires, little service stations. And so uh he had a salesman that would drive around and take a couple of tires in his uh this Mercury Marquee station wagon, wood panel station wagon. Oh, yeah. And so he would go around and show tires and you know, get the orders, and that was his job. Well, when when that wagon was no longer suitable uh for the tire store and the tire salesman, um, it became mine. And uh so I'm driving this old wood panel Mercury Marquee station wagon that smells exactly like rubber tires. Is that one you picked Sarah Robinson, Steve? That was I I would have, but they had actually bought my sister a nice car. I borrowed her car for my date with with Sarah. But uh so I'm but I am driving this car, but it's so old, it's got 300 and something thousand miles on it. And it's so old that the switch, the ignition switch, it would work without a key, George. You can just get in any time and just turn the switch and it would crank up without a key. Well, that was kind of cool until your friends found out about it. And so uh almost every day my senior year, uh high school, I would come out after school and my car was never where it was supposed to be. It was always like hide and seek. My friends would have called out and moved it during their study hall or their break. And most of the time I was finding it on the football field somewhere out there at Wilson Hall. But I'd have to go hunt it down and get it, and you those friends would make me pay for that little bit of knowledge about that switch working about that key.

SPEAKER_07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

But it doesn't smell good, so that was okay. That's funny stuff. Back in the day, kids don't know about these stuff anymore. They don't have switches anymore, they got push buttons. What in the world? They don't have keys anymore. You just gotta phone.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. I think the one you're talking about, Stephen had little bat wings on each side of the where the key switch where the key was, and you could just grab those bat wings and spin them. Was that the same one?

SPEAKER_06

That's exactly right. You got it down. You're on it 100%.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No country for old men.

SPEAKER_06

No, it's not. I was on the beach today, that's exactly the thought I had was boy, am I old. I got grown kids and son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws, and uh, it's just uh boy, life comes at you fast.

SPEAKER_04

Don't blink, that's what they say.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, my dad has a funny saying. He says uh that life is like uh toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. And he's not wrong.

SPEAKER_04

No, he's right.

SPEAKER_06

He speeds up, it's like warp zone.

SPEAKER_04

Yep. My daddy, my daddy's thing too. Daddy's 83s have a couple of neck problems with a compressed nerve and that kind of stuff. He told me multiple times, I'm telling you right now, son, getting old ain't for wimps. He said the tub getting old, but he he does he's done an amazing job, and I think we're all fortunate that our daddy's getting around pretty pretty daggone good right now, too.

SPEAKER_01

Very blessed.

SPEAKER_04

I don't know if you were there for the beach trip or whatever, or you have you were you may not have been there, Scott might have been there, but I know Beach Steve had a big an incident one time when y'all had a John boat at the beach. Um we end with that story real quick. This is a tip, this is a classic Big Steve.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, no, it's a great story. Uh he had a cousin that had a beach house down at Paulie's Island when we were little boys, and uh the girls, my mother and her two sisters and their and their mother were taking a kind of a girls' trip down, and he decided he'd go down with them and do some fishing by himself. And he had a John boat that he hauled down to the beach, and he Paulie's Island's great because you can put in and fish that creek right there behind it, and that's what most people would do with a john boat, is fish the creek. Well, uh he went out early in the morning to do that, and uh he decided that you know it was a pretty calm day, and I'm not catching a lot of fish, and I'm bored, I guess. I don't know what was in his mind exactly, but he decided to go out around the inlet on the south end of Paul's and go out into big water and see if he can come down and find the girls on the beach.

SPEAKER_04

What's that? Big water, aka Atlantic Ocean, right?

SPEAKER_06

Atlantic Ocean in his 14-foot John boat uh with his, you know, I don't know, 25 horsepower little outboard motor. And so he is uh he comes out there looking for them on the beach, and he thought that would be really funny if they could see him out there in that john boat. So he's cruising uh Pauli's Island, running parallel to the shore, uh looking for the women. And so he's looking to his left, he's running north, he's looking to his left for the women, and what he's not doing is looking to the right, which is the Atlantic Ocean, where the waves are coming from. And a big wave, he gets right in front of it and it flips him straight over. Boom! In one motion. He's in the water, all his fishing gear in the water. And uh he comes up out of the water from underneath it, and thankfully, there was like a group of college kids that were down there for spring break or something. They were playing volleyball on the beach, he said. And uh they immediately ran out there and helped him turn the boat over and grab as much of his gear as would float or they could find and drag it to the shore. Well, uh he thanked them profusely, and but they were committed to helping him. They knew they couldn't just leave the boat right there on the beach. I mean, he needed to get it to where he could trailer it. So they helped him uh carry that boat straight over the sand dunes, past the first row of houses to the second row where his cousin's house was. And uh mama tells a story. She says you had a knock at the door, they were playing cards or drinking coffee or something, had to knock at the door, and she went and got it. And who's knocking at the door? And it was my dad sopping wet with a boat just sitting in the yard, in the front yard. No truck, no trailer, just a boat sitting there. So I had to give him a ride over to the landing to get in the boat and bring it back, and then it was, of course, a fashion to get it back on the trailer. But uh, there's a reason a lot of people don't take John boats in the Atlantic Ocean, so to Bubba's point. But uh that's kind of the hard-headedness that's gotten out of inherited. We try some things maybe sometimes that aren't always the wisest decision, but they do make for great stories a little while down the road. Yeah, come by it on us. That's a fact. Now listen, we could we could keep going. Uh, we love these stories, George. We love having you on again. We really appreciate it. We do hope that you'll come back. I hope we don't have to wait all the way till next year when the Dinkus Milk Classic rolls around again. But uh, we do appreciate you coming on and sharing some of your expertise and some of the stories of your family and your life in the outdoors. So from on behalf of Scott and Bubba, we're thankful to you for your friendship and for your willingness to be on the podcast. And we look forward to transitioning over to another word segment with Scott, and then we look forward to another mostly legal Monday. We hope you guys have a great week and look forward to joining you again for the next episode.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, sir. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00

Well, good morning. Welcome back to the word segment. I want to look at a familiar story for some of you, probably if you've read through John's gospel and um focused a little bit on John chapter three, where Jesus is having a conversation with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a teacher of the law. He was a Pharisee. He was interested in learning more about who Jesus was, and so he came to him at night so he could have a conversation with him, a candid conversation, and he engages with Jesus, and Jesus says uh some things about being born again, about being born of the Spirit, and then a little bit further down in um verse 13, Jesus uh gives an example from the Old Testament that Nicodemus would have understood because he was a teacher and he knew the Old Testament very well. And Jesus says in uh verse 13, no one is ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And Jesus refers back to this story in Numbers 21, when the fiery serpents were uh in the camp of the Israelites because they had sinned against God and they disobeyed him yet again, and so God sends these snakes into the camp. And I don't want to get into too much detail and get caught up in John chapter 3 and number 21. The point I want to make is that Jesus knew Nicodemus, he knew what would relate, how to communicate to him, he knew how to make an analogy that Nicodemus would understand. And I think that's so important when we're when we're relating the truth, whether it's to our spouse or to our children, or we're trying to share uh the truth with a friend at work or uh somebody that we're spending time with, um just in relationship, it's so important to understand them, to get to know them, and then to try to use something that they will know. Something that they will understand, something that they can relate to, so that you can teach them, so that you can say something to them that's gonna have an impact, that's gonna bear fruit, that's gonna actually stick. Um and you know, it's I know it's kind of communicating one-on-one, but knowing your audience uh is so important when it comes to uh figuring out how to care about them, love them, um, meet them where they are. Jesus knew Nicodemus and he knew what he needed to say to help Nicodemus along. And and that's true about us. Um not only do we need that somebody to love us in that way, um, and the Lord Jesus certainly does that, but we also need to figure out you know, who are the people that God's put in my life that I'm um placed here for for the reason of encouraging them, blessing them, teaching them, sharing my life with them, sharing truth with them, and get to know them. How do I do that in a way that they're gonna it's gonna click for them? Um if I'm constantly talking past them, if I'm constantly talking over them, um I'm not gonna be nearly as effective as I could be if I just take some time to understand who they are and and how I can communicate with them as well as possible. Hope you have a great Monday and I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

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Stephen Dinkins

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Bubba Johnston

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Sandy Sanders

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Scott Dinkins

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