Catching Fish & Men

In this episode of Outdoors With Brother Safari the topic is fishing.  Brother Safari shares lessons, memories and plans when it comes to fishing.  He also talks some about what it means to be a fisher or men.  Take a moment to tune in and learn from this accomplished outdoorsmen.  Let's get this safari started!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Outdoors with Brother Safari. I'm here with Brother Safari. Uh real name, Mark Morgan Sr. But uh how often do you get called Brother Safari? Is it fairly frequently?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Fairly frequently.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

It's a name I use when I go to a restaurant where they want to give the you ask for your name, I tell them Brother Safari.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Because that way nobody else's name sounds like Brother Safari. You know, they can't get it mixed up, other than they can't spell it half the time. Yeah. Too many Fs, A's.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

And Mark Morgan, you may, you may run into another Mark or another Mr. Morgan or another Mark Morgan out there. But Brother Safari, you're an original. Yes, sir. That's it. There's there's no other one out there. I'd be willing to wager on that. Well, today, in today's episode, we're talking about fishing.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Tell me a little bit about what uh spawned that topic.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Um, it's getting spring. Started to think about fishing more. Thought, well, let's address it best we can. I love to fish. I haven't done it much lately, but I've I love to fish. So I thought, let's do something. Let's talk about it a little bit and started.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

What is the appeal of fishing? My son has that same interest. And uh I kind of see it, kinda don't, but the people that love it, they really love it. What what is it about fishing?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Adventure in it, you never know what you're gonna get. Sure. A lot of times you think you know what you're gonna get. You you know, like up here or down here, we can fish for bass, but you can get several kinds of bass. You get spotted bass, you can get striped bass, they usually hang out together, and then you get largemouth bass also. You never know for sure what's gonna bite the line.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

It's always an adventure, yes, sir. Are you uh prone to fishing more in lakes, rivers, uh, swamps, whereabouts?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

All of the above. Uh wherever I feel feel like the fish are gonna be that day.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah. And do you prefer live bait or uh lures?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I prefer lures because that's what I've got the most experience in. Tournament fishing, you can't use live bait.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

No. What's the uh logic there? No live bait. I guess you have to rely more on skill and presentation. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Skill of you know, knowing where to fish and presentation, and how to how to use what you've got and making sure your tackle box is full before you leave the dock. You gotta be prepared. Yes, sir. Prepared with the right stuff.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Funny story, I went fishing with my son this past weekend. As I mentioned, he loves fishing, and we went to Lake Hartwell to the dam here in uh Anderson and uh didn't catch a thing, but it was a beautiful day. Love being out there. I take that back. We did catch something, it was really fascinating. There was some you know how the lakes were seeded, right? Like the waters were really low. It is really low. And it it was it was pretty pretty far out the shoreline. And um I saw some fishing uh line out there, and he and I picked it up and we kind of traced it to where it was connected under some rocks that was just a little bit out into the water. Guess what was on the end of that fishing line? A lure, a really nice lure. So we didn't catch a fish, we caught a lure. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

That that's still a win.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

He was celebrating, he loved it.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yes, sir. That's a win-win all day long.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

For sure. For sure. All right, so do those who hunt typically like to fish as well, or are there is there a clear distinction between the two? Uh like you have those that really prefer to hunt and those that really prefer to fish?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Well, I think most of the true sportsmen will take anything that's available. They can fish during fishing season, they got turkeys during turkey season, squirrel during squirrel season, deer during deer season. I mean, they're outdoorsmen.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And and hence the name of this podcast, Outdoors with Brother Safari. Uh and that's the that's a big appeal when it comes to both hunting and fishing, right? You get to be out in God's creation.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Sir, all the time, pretty much. And I've done some fair amount of ice fishing too. Tell us about that. In in Michigan, we use ice fish all the time. Spend almost as much time on ice as you do on the underwater when it's soft.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

How do how does ice fishing work? For those of us who are raised in the south, we kind of might have an idea, but tell us tell us that whole process.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Okay, you you go out on ice, you gotta wait till ice is thick enough. Three inches, you can walk on it, 12 inches, you can drive on it. You know, I've driven on my vehicle on several lakes.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Really? Do you get uneasy at all?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

I don't. Uh some people ride with me, have been a little uneasy. Oh, do you hear that crack? Yeah, it's ice gonna crack. It's gonna come, but it ain't gonna drop out from underneath you. It's 12 inches thick at least, you know. We've we've done it in northern Minnesota where they had three foot ice. Wow. And there you that's pretty secure, I would guess. Well, it's pretty secure, but you gotta watch when you're driving across it because they it'll heave. Sometimes it'll heave up twelve, fourteen inches.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Heave okay, so you got three foot ice here, three foot ice here next to it. All of a sudden the one side heaves up, you got a three, you got a 12-inch ray, basically a 12-inch curb sticking up there.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Oh my when it heaves. And there's no there's does that increase the chances of it breaking?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

No, not really.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Pressure's gotta go someplace. Yeah. And that's what it does, it comes up.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Wow. That kind of sounds like fun in a risky kind of way.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Uh yeah, it's a little risky. I've only gone through the ice twice, and both times have been not when I was fishing, I was riding my motorcycle.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Oh, really? Yeah. And you just ran up on some ice that was just too thin.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Well, what I did was run both times it's where somebody moved their ice fishing shack. Yeah. They didn't put brush in the hole. In Michigan you can spear fish. Like for pike.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

You can actually sit in your spear and just cut a bigger hole, you know. So you can pull the fish up and so you can see the spear down there. You have a decoy down there. Usually it's a a smaller pike or something. And you jig them, jig your jig, you know, up and down. There ain't no hooks on the on your decoy, but you get fish to come in and you spear him.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

And and is a spear like a gun that you point. No?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

It's a handheld.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

So you're kind of gigging them, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah. Okay. It's l you use a frog gig, what you use basically.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

And they're uh they have to be at the surface, I guess, to actually get them good, don't no? You go deeper?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, you can go down four or five foot, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Still get 'em, still snag them. Okay. So it leaves your hand, or you just got a rope on it. And it's like a spear. You should wow. That's that is pretty fascinating. So that really does incorporate uh some hunting technique as well as fishing.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yep. When you do that, I didn't do much spearing. Um I did a lot of fishing on regular ice fishing, drill a hole, and you gotta keep the ice out of your hole, so you gotta you constantly scrape it. Spud. Spud's is like a like a spear with a flat edge on it, like a chisel, and you just dip away at the ice till you get down through there.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

It's called spudging.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Spudding.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Spudding. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Okay. You just have to spud it's a lot easier to drill a hole. That the spudding takes a lot of time, huh? And it takes work, yep. We we've you gotta carry one because some places you go, like we've bounced the motor on the drill down on ice and have a three-foot auger underneath it and still have to spud through to get to the water.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Really? Yeah. Wow. That is some thick stuff. Sir. When when does it usually get good and solid like that? We can go out on it by December?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Typically November, a lot of times November up north. Nice fish on. And in the spring of the year, when the ice starts to melt, it melts from the shore first. So we take a John boat and go out to the ice and get on the ice and pull the John boat with us on ice and then sit there in the John boat just in case something happens.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Okay, on top of the ice.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

On top of the ice and drill the holes.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

So, okay, so you're kind of hedging your bets in case that ice is a little bit thinner than you thought. Breaks through. Yep. That's that's pretty cool. Pretty cool. What kind of fish are you looking for in this area in South Carolina?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Um, South Carolina, yeah, I don't know that you could ice fish ever.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Well, I mean, yeah. No, yeah, I you you yeah, I've never seen anybody. But what kind of fish are you you looking for as far as bass mostly?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

I'm bass fisherman. Okay. Used to fish tournaments.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Are you getting out on the boat or are you fishing from the shore?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

I'll get out on the boat. Actually, I've I think the next weekend.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Okay. So that'll be like your warm-up. Yeah, kinda. Fishing?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Only they use live bait and pretty much go with Jerry. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

What what is the bait? Is it worms? No. Minnows? Crickets?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, it's like a big minnow.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah. That's what they're feeding on.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Throw it out there and just let it go. Let it swim around wherever he wants to swim and still know when it gets when he when the fish takes it.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Pulls it. Yeah. Is it on a bobber?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

No.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

No.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Reline it. Okay. Just feel the line. You can feel him swimming when he gets excited and he starts really taking off, you get ready because he's taking off for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

There's something coming for him.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Wow. Usually that don't last long. Where where do you do you hook the bait through the mouth or in their back? In their back. Okay. Right. You know, it's got to fish and you hook it between below the dorsal fin.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Okay. Yeah. It's just so it can still swim. Oh yeah. Yep. Gotcha. Um, tell me your earliest fishing memory.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Earliest fishing memory. Well, I was thinking about that one. There's a lot of them early on, but I think the earliest one I can remember is when we boutsunk the boat. We caught so many fish. Nice. Down in Florida, uh hunting, fishing with my grandpa and my dad and my uncle. And it's back before they had limits, I guess, because we had 200 and some fish in the boat. Wow. Sea trout.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And we were using shrimp to for bait. And you get the shrimp on, put it all the way to the bottom. As soon as it hit bottom, you had a fish and just start reeling back.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Pull them back in. What kind of fish were they?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Sea trout.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Sea trout.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yep. Yeah. And we had 250 some of them in the boat when we got a big book. My goodness. We we went down to our whole neighborhood as we pulled in the neighborhood, stopped, and knocked on doors. Hey, if you want fish, come help us clean. If you want fish, we had a whole assembly line down there.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

That what part of Florida was it? Clear water. Nice. What a memory. How old were you?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Probably seven or eight. I was pretty young.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

And and you were able to take them off the hook and so you're you're ready to go. That's I would think that would make a big impact. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Um sink the boat. I mean, the boat was pretty pretty low in the water. There wasn't much gunnel showing.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Oh, yeah. There's a similar uh fishing story that we find in the Bible about uh fish that overwhelmed the boat to the point that they had to to stop or get some of the fish off, um, where our Lord actually told Peter, throw your net in, and uh Peter obeyed and uh experienced some great fishing success.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

The the good part about that is Peter was a professional fisherman. Yeah. That'd be like somebody fishing a tournament and not catching anything, and then they pull up the boat dock and say, Hey, fish on the other side of your boat, you know, and they go, Yeah, right. You know, you have to put that in context. If Peter was a professional fisherman, and here he'd fished all night, no caught not caught any fish, and God, the Lord said, Fish out at the other side of the boat. Yeah, and he obeyed. Yeah. He didn't say he questioned it. Like, what are you talking about? He just did it. Yeah. And praise God.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Amen. Yeah, Peter often gets a bad rap for being brash and uh impulsive, but you got to give him some credit on a lot of things, uh, and that's one of them.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yes, sir. He definitely obeyed right away. Didn't ask why or how.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, that's that's actually a good life lesson for us. Uh the Lord knows what he's talking about. Yep, and he knows what he's doing, he knows what he's doing. Amen. Um how much did your first fishing ride cost?

SPEAKER_01 13:51

First fishing ride I made. Really? The bamboo pole. No way. Yep, bamboo pole. I made it at church camp. Was it effective? Did he catch fish? I caught an alligator.

unknown 14:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

It wasn't a fishing pole, it was an alligator pole.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

No, it was a fishing pole. I was trying to fish with it. Wow. I caught a little alligator.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Did you actually get him in?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Oh yeah. Got him all the way, I got him all the way in. Grabbed him by the tail. No way. Yep. And then took him up to the camp director, and the camp director they had a fountain thing in the middle of the camp main building. They put him in there for the week when we were there.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

What an awesome story. And he lived and it was kind of like the pet, the camp pet.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yep. And then I'm sure at the end of the week, I'm sure they turned him.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

They didn't keep him forever.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

But it was it was pretty cool. Yeah, that is. Um first fishing pole that I purchased was probably 10 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Okay. Did you have to run a paper route or save for it?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Or I had to save for it. Yeah. I caught snakes down there. Sold them to Sharpen Springs Zoo. Really? Yeah. Banded water snakes. Wow. I don't know what the zoo did with them, but they paid us 75 cents apiece for them. And back then that was for good money.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Wow. What a cool job. And you had that as a 10-year-old?

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Were they were they poisonous?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

No. They they they'd bite you every once in a while, you know, but they weren't poisonous.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Were there an abundance of them?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

There's quite a few of them. Yeah. And they look like a copper, uh, not a copperhead, but a water moxin. The only difference, the main difference is their belly's orange rather than white. And so you grab them by the tail and flip them up. And if he's got an orange belly, he goes in your pillowcase. If he's got a white belly, you just let go of him, let him fly. We were dumb. The Lord definitely protected us because I didn't think that a snake could bite you underwater. I thought he had to strike you, you know, to get you. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

You found out the hard way?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

No, I didn't I didn't find out the hard way, just the Lord protected me. I found out after the fact. Praise God. Wow. You know, those snakes could have bit you underwater. Oh, they can't either. Yeah, they could. I started doing some research. Yeah, they could have.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Are you able to uh I guess cook the fish you catch? You know how to fillet them and serve them up.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Done a lot of that even since I was a kid. I used to when I lived in Florida, I took my a hand line with a hook, a piece of bread, and I'd put it in my headlight on my bicycle. That way everywhere I went, I always had fishing equipment. I could pull off on a creek or you know, cross a little creek. Let's see what's in here. Catch catch a fish or two, take them home.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah. So in those little creeks, would you would you find some sizable fish? Enough uh enough enough meat to to eat?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Well, if you got several, it'd be small bluegills what I caught.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Okay. And then and then it would create almost like a fish nugget or something. How well yeah, I filleted them.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah. I don't like bones. Yeah. So I filleted the fish, even the little ones. I filleted them. Yeah. And learned how to do that, learned how to get pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

And they're pretty tasty. Yeah, they're pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Some people call potato chip fillets, those little thin ones. Hey, yeah. It was it was fish and I wanted it. I'd caught it.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Free meal, yeah. For my son, he I wish I could get him in here and have him on this podcast. Uh, he wants to really develop his fishing skills. Give him uh maybe four or five points of advice.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Practice casting. So you know where your lure's going. You can do it quickly. Cover and recast. Um the best compliment I got was from a competitor that I competed with um and against, depending on what the situation was. But uh he he let me run his trolling motor one day. He said, I'll fish second water to anybody in the world. I said, Okay. So I ran his trolling motor on front of his boat and ran the boat that day and we got done. He said, I ain't never letting you do that again. He said, son, he said, You're like a machine. He said you hit every good spot. He said you didn't even leave any spots. Any good spot. He said you hit it and then we really and boom, we got the very next one right line, and he said you didn't miss any. Nice. But there's a lot of practice goes into that. Being able to cast accurately so you're not wasting casts spooking fish.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

And I do you have one thing I was trying to figure out when I went out Saturday with Liam was the pace, the reeling pace. What's too fast, what's too slow.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

You vary it, find out what the fish wants.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah. And I'm taking it, they can they can move fast if they want it. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

If they want it, they get on it. A lot of the newer reels have got like a 9.1 to 1 ratio, really almost water ski deficit. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Well, this has been a great conversation with Brother Safari. We're talking about fishing, and uh he has a lifetime of experiences and memories on the topic. Um Brother Safari, as we wrap up, I wanted to get a uh a verse in here, and this this came from our our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and this is Matthew 4, verse 18. Starting at verse 18, it says, And Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets and followed him. He's made you a fisher of men, sir, as well as being a fisher of fish, but more importantly, a fisher of men. That's absolutely true. Tell us uh how how you go about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

That's what caused me to write the track that I've written. You know, how to get the name in the book for air hunters, yeah. Accurate casting for fishermen. And uh are you ready for turkey season for the turkey hunters? So that's something that they would actually know a lot of sportsmen no matter what they're pursuing, they pursue it pretty good, and they'll read everything that they've written on that subject. And I used to hand out tracks at sport shows all the time. 90% of the time I find them on the floor someplace, you know, somebody threw it away. Got tired of you know, carrying it, dropped it. Oh well. And so I was burdened to have that, to do something. And so I said, I wish somebody'd write a track. And I made that comment out loud one day and somebody said, Well, why don't you? Well, you don't know my English and uh so it's kinda like Moses making excuses to God. Yeah, kinda, kinda like that. I was just I was being realistic, you know. I yeah, I had bonehead English, I liked it so well I took it twice in order to get caught up uh to where I should have been. But that was due to some English teachers that I had when I was young didn't like me. And feeling became mutual pretty quickly. And so I didn't pay too much attention in their class therefore. But later on in life, when the Lord called me into full time service, he said, I need this English thing. So I probably took it up and studied it well in English then.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

But uh used that to To be a lure, I guess, in your pursuit of fishing for men.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yes, sir. When I when I first wrote the first track, I took it to my English teacher and I said, Here, what do you read this proofread this for me? And she did. I did. She said, Man, how many times has you write this? I said, That's the first original copy. She said, No kidding. I said, Yes. This is the best thing you've ever written. Wow. I said, Praise God. Yeah. Wasn't wasn't uh inspired by like the word is, but it was the next best thing, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yeah. It sounds like he graced you with the and equipped you for an ability. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah. What gave me the ability and the experience to grab somebody's attention. That's what it is. I've given out four or five tracks this week to Fisher.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

That's great. Well, if people only knew what was at stake, they would want to be caught. They would want the Lord to catch them. And uh it it is something that's of eternal significance uh that you're doing testifying to the Lord and Savior uh Jesus Christ. There is no other way uh to be saved apart from him. Right. And uh we we definitely want to honor him on this podcast. Um and I think uh I think he is receiving honor.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yes, sir. I would think so.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

All right. Well, a great conversation on fishing. Give us an idea of uh what we may be hearing about next episode. A little teaser, maybe. A little teaser. Have you thought through it?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

I thought a little bit through it. We're gonna continue the fishing thing. And uh maybe we'll talk a little bit about how I beat Kevin Van Damme in the tournament.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

He's one of the big names in fishing circles.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yes, sir. Kevin just retired last year.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Fishing competitively 50 years of competitively, and he retired. But I we started out in Michigan together, and I've got several paperwork, several of the places that I beat him in tournaments.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah. Well, that'll be a good one to tune into. Maybe we can get that one uh either right before or right on the heels of this tournament coming up. That'd be a great topic to converse over. Well, thank you for listening, and we look forward to you joining us again on the next episode of Outdoors with Brother Safari.