Ep. 717: Is Live Scope The Death of Fishing?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 717: Is Live Scope The Death of Fishing?

Introduction

In Episode 717 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella engages in a compelling discussion with a panel of experienced anglers—Danny Thompson, Jeremy Smith, Tony Peterson, Brody, Seth, and Corinne—to explore the burgeoning technology of Live Scope sonar. The central question posed is whether Live Scope technology signifies the end of traditional fishing practices or heralds a new era in angling. Released on June 16, 2025, this episode delves deep into the multifaceted implications of integrating advanced sonar systems into fishing.

Understanding Live Scope Technology

Live Scope, often referred to as forward-facing sonar, represents a significant advancement in fishing technology. Unlike traditional sonar, which provides historical data about fish locations, Live Scope offers real-time imaging, allowing anglers to visualize fish movements and behaviors as they occur.

• Explanation by Danny Thompson [35:00]:

  "With Live Scope, we're essentially taking scanning sonar and speeding it up to provide a wide cone angle, allowing us to see fish in real-time across expansive areas of the water."

• Corinne's Experience [25:47]:

  "I used Live Scope once while ice fishing. It was fascinating to see both the underwater environment and the surface activities on a dual-screen setup."

Benefits of Live Scope Technology

1. Enhanced Fishing Efficiency and Precision

   • Danny Thompson [81:25]:

     "I love Live Scope because it allows me to be selective in which fish I target. I can avoid catching unintended species and focus on the ones I’m after."

2. Educational Insights into Fish Behavior

   • Tony Peterson [36:48]:

     "Using Live Scope has deepened our understanding of fish migration patterns and behaviors, enriching the overall fishing experience."

3. Economic Boost to the Fishing Industry

   • Danny Thompson [81:31]:

     "Live Scope has spurred the creation of new products and services within the fishing industry, driving economic growth and innovation."

4. Improved Fishery Management

   • Seth [30:07]:

     "With technologies like Live Scope, we can gather valuable data that can inform sustainable fishing practices and better fishery management."

Concerns and Potential Drawbacks

1. Overfishing and Resource Depletion

   • Tony Peterson [41:08]:

     "With Live Scope, anglers can locate and catch fish with unprecedented efficiency, which could lead to overfishing, especially of vulnerable species like muskies."

2. Unequal Access Due to Cost

   • Danny Thompson [24:41]:

     "A Live Scope system can cost upwards of $3,000, creating a divide between anglers who can afford the technology and those who cannot."

3. Ethical Implications and Fishing Experience

   • Brody [74:14]:

     "The precision of Live Scope alters the traditional fishing experience, potentially diminishing the challenge and mystery that make fishing rewarding."

4. Regulatory Challenges

   • Jeremy Smith [53:09]:

     "Implementing regulations on Live Scope use is complex. Bag limits and seasonal restrictions are potential solutions, but enforcing these measures poses significant challenges."

Regulatory Perspectives and Industry Responses

The panel discusses how various fishing leagues and state agencies are responding to the advent of Live Scope technology.

• Danny Thompson [35:00]:

  "Different leagues are experimenting with regulations. For instance, one league like the NPFL has banned Live Scope, while others like Bassmaster are testing limited usage periods to study its impact."

• Tony Peterson [40:53]:

  "States like Minnesota have already responded by lowering bag limits on species like crappies due to perceived overharvesting linked to Live Scope use."

Use Cases and Real-World Examples

1. Muskie Fishing Impacts

   • Tony Peterson [43:09]:

     "In areas like Unleash Lake, Live Scope has enabled anglers to locate and catch muskies in large numbers, threatening the sustainability of the population."

2. Live Scope in Tournament Settings

   • Seth [30:07]:

     "During tournaments, Live Scope allows for strategic fishing, but it also raises concerns about fishery depletion due to concentrated catch rates."

Future Outlook and Predictions

The panel speculates on the trajectory of Live Scope technology and its long-term implications for fishing.

• Danny Thompson [83:55]:

  "In the next decade, we'll likely see increased regulations as more anglers adopt Live Scope. It's a balancing act between leveraging technology for better fishing and ensuring sustainable practices."

• Tony Peterson [101:43]:

  "Technology in fishing will continue to evolve, making fishing more accessible and efficient. However, without proactive management, we may face significant challenges in maintaining fish populations."

• Jeremy Smith [105:50]:

  "Regulatory bodies will need to adapt swiftly to technological advancements to prevent overfishing and ensure fair access for all anglers."

Conclusion

The episode underscores the transformative potential of Live Scope technology in fishing, highlighting both its benefits and the significant challenges it poses. While Live Scope can enhance the fishing experience, improve efficiency, and contribute to economic growth, it also raises critical concerns about overfishing, ethical implications, and regulatory complexities. The consensus among the panelists is the need for science-based regulations and ethical guidelines to harness the benefits of Live Scope while mitigating its risks.

Notable Quotes

• Danny Thompson [35:00]:

  "Live Scope has spurred the creation of new products and services within the fishing industry, driving economic growth and innovation."

• Tony Peterson [43:09]:

  "With Live Scope, anglers can locate and catch fish with unprecedented efficiency, which could lead to overfishing, especially of vulnerable species like muskies."

• Jeremy Smith [53:09]:

  "Implementing regulations on Live Scope use is complex. Bag limits and seasonal restrictions are potential solutions, but enforcing these measures poses significant challenges."

• Brody [74:14]:

  "The precision of Live Scope alters the traditional fishing experience, potentially diminishing the challenge and mystery that make fishing rewarding."

Final Thoughts

As fishing technology continues to advance, episodes like this serve as crucial platforms for dialogue among anglers, industry experts, and regulators. Balancing technological innovation with sustainable and ethical fishing practices will be essential in preserving the rich traditions and thriving ecosystems that make fishing a beloved pastime worldwide.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Danny Thompson]

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Danny Thompson]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Steve Rinella]

This is the.

[Phil]

Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[Steve Rinella]

The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

All right Phil, you ready? We're rolling. Sorry, started.

[Seth]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Steve Rinella]

We're just having a little chit chat prior in the subject. Did you bring it up Seth? Yeah, Seth brought up how we have the shirt that that fisher was wearing on the on when he found the weights in the walleye. And then I was wanting to point out to our guests here who are fishermen that we actually hold in our possession the knife that was used to to disembowel the walleyes. It's a piece of History to find the weights. And he. And then it was. An interesting little detail, is he was a little bit embarrassed about his knife work. In the video, he's dis. He's cutting open the walleyes. And he was Apollo. He was embarrassed about that. It looked like his knife work was inexpert knife work. And he pointed out that his leatherman. The leatherman someone handed him had a broken tip, and that's why he wasn't able to more expertly extricate the leather.

[Seth]

Listen, when I was watching that video, the last thing I was worrying about was his knife work.

[Steve Rinella]

That's the first one I thought of. So this morning, I was reading that Harvard University, they've been in the news a bunch for getting their balls busted about antisemitism on campus, but they bought a different news story about Harvard. They bought a mag. A copy of the Magna Carta. Did you see this? For $27.50. Long, long, long ago. And these scholars just realized that it's the original copy.

[Jeremy Smith]

Holy cow.

[Steve Rinella]

Someday they're gonna be arguing about this knife, and I wonder if there's maybe hopefully, like, walleye DNA.

[Jeremy Smith]

You mean arguing about the provenance of it.

[Steve Rinella]

They'll be like, that can't be the actual knife. Despite the label on this side, there's.

[Seth]

Like, a little rust. Is that rust or some dried.

[Steve Rinella]

I just hope no one washed it. So when there is, like, a big thing and like a big scandal and like, it sells on Sotheby's for millions of dollars and, you know, it's like owning the.

[Jeremy Smith]

The gun that shot Lincoln or something like that.

[Steve Rinella]

Exactly. Yeah. Well, I traded that for this. Yeah. Yeah. It's the actual knife.

[Jeremy Smith]

It's impressive.

[Steve Rinella]

Here in our private collection. That might be our only. No, I don't think we have a lot of artifacts, like, culturally significant artifacts like that.

[Seth]

Start collecting more.

[Steve Rinella]

Today we're joined by two enthusiastic anglers who happen to be not friends with each other. I hope you come out of this. Friends.

[Tony Peterson]

We built a good friendship.

[Steve Rinella]

Friends with Chester, who's not here, Jeremy Smith and Danny Thompson. And what we're here to talk about is we're here to have a friendly discussion. A friendly discussion about. What's the slang term for it? Live scope.

[Seth]

Forward facing sonar.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, well, no live scope. The other day, I was sitting at. I was stuck at a boat launch for hours because the wheel fell off my trailer. Made a lot of friends, especially when it fell off the trailer blocking the boat launch, you know?

[Seth]

Oh, you're the asshole.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, it was Funny. There's two kinds of people in this world. There's people that will do anything to try to back a trailer around you in a moment of distress. And there's people who will come up to help.

[Brody]

Y right.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, there's a funny joke. There's two kinds of people in this world. There's people that think you can bucket everybody into two brackets. It's a joke. Anyway, while I'm sitting there in my moment of distress, no, my moment of distress is over because thanks to the help of a, of a fellow angler, we got the boat out of the way. And then we were just people sitting there with nothing to do waiting for a flatbed trailer. And a guy bragged to another guy, he bragged to another guy. He's like, just got forward facing sonar. Boom. So I thought, man, you should come into the studio because we're be talking about this in a couple days. We're going to be, we're going to have a friendly discussion about the future of forward facing sonar. Is it the end of fishing or just the beginning? And we have a sonar enthusiast. Danny Thompson, works for Garmin but is not here representing Garmin.

[Phil]

Can I even say that?

[Steve Rinella]

You worked there. You got a Garmin T shirt on.

[Danny Thompson]

I mean, people are gonna know.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Works for Garmin but is not here as a rep of Garmin, but he's a sonar enthusiast. And we're also joined by Jeremy Smith, who is from Lindner media Productions and anglingedge.com who is, is it fair to say, suspicious of, Nervous about.

[Tony Peterson]

I think there's reasons for concern with. Reasons for concern with the technology in certain cases.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. I don't want to lead. We're gonna, we're gonna do the news first. I don't wanna lead the thing. But we've been here before for hunters out there that don't care about fishing. We've been here before with drone technology.

[Jeremy Smith]

Smart rifles, too.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Remote control hunting with remote control rifles.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like this comes up. This comes up.

[Tony Peterson]

Sure.

[Steve Rinella]

How do we fit new how do we fit emerging technologies into our regulatory structures?

[Jeremy Smith]

Wireless cell cameras.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, wireless cell cameras. Two way communications. Like, throughout the history of wildlife management, we've done two things. We've gone back and reconsidered old technologies like dynamite.

[Tony Peterson]

Right, right.

[Steve Rinella]

They're like, you know what? I know y' all been fishing with dynamite, but we're gonna stop. Yeah. So we've done that and then we've engaged around emerging technologies. And I have a couple thoughts about how, how that goes. And we're gonna hear, we're gonna hear from the fellas here about their thoughts. But can I throw out one titillator, just titillate everybody to keep them hanging around. The minute there was like a whisper of using drones for hunting. They went after drones before there was.

[Tony Peterson]

A user group, smart.

[Steve Rinella]

And I started to think to myself like, you have to, if you are, if you look at an emerging technology, you cannot wait for a user group and you cannot wait for an industry to build around it. Once you wait for an industry to build around it and an enthusiastic user group.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

You missed your chance. You missed your chance. Like had someone a long time ago said, you know what? These gas powered boat motors are going to kill fishing. Now you got dudes everywhere.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You could fish five miles from your.

[Seth]

House, you're not shutting that down now.

[Steve Rinella]

You would have been like people, you could have gotten some old timers, be like, yeah, what's wrong with rowing? And you would have gotten, you could have banned boat motors for fishing. But you missed your chance. It's too late now if you bring it up. I remember my dad in the lake I grew up on trying to get a no wake zone in the evening. Geez, they about burned our house down. But first the news. I got two news pieces that aren't really. Well, one's a news piece the other day. You know that there's a dude that one of the guys that works at the meat eater store on main street the other day calls my kid to ask me they're headed to the emergency room because he'd stepped on a lionfish, man, which is painful. And I got zapped by a lionfish and I thought I was going to die because I didn't know about it. It's like I remember getting bit by a bullet ant. And I knew it was bad, but I didn't know what happened. And when I got hit by a lionfish in the hand, real hard, like someone swung it on the end of a pole spear into my hand. I was with Ronnie Baym and I remember Ronnie Bain yelled to me, put it cold water like. And like you look online, don't put it in cold water, what you do. And I haven't talked to these guys since, but it was extremely painful but very short lived. Like your hand, like my hand, his foot, whatever, just blows up and it's excruciating pain. Like I was just laying in the bottom of the boat writhing in pain. Two hours later, I couldn't even remember where the hell it happened. You get hot Water is hot, like, get it so it's too hot to put your hand in. And then the minute you can put your wound in that hot water, somehow it dissolves that toxin and alleviates it. So, yeah, they had been wading through the mangroves and one of them had stepped on it. But I haven't heard any news from them since then. Another personal news bit is this morning I was trying to remember if the invasive dove is called a ring neck dove or a collared dove. It's a collared dove. But they're everywhere now. Oh, yeah, in this state. We're recording in southwest Montana today for the first. I'd always see him around town. I saw the first three in my yard today.

[Jeremy Smith]

Oh, really? First and first three I ever seen.

[Steve Rinella]

Everywhere in our neighborhood. The first three I ever see, I've seen them from. Actually, I need to go into my bird list and put them down. We keep a bird list for the yard. The first year I ever seen, like touch foot in my yard.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah, we've got tons of them.

[Steve Rinella]

So I'm debating, like, my kid will get them now. And then elsewhere, I'm debating, is it ethical or not ethical to start a little feed station?

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah, go for it.

[Steve Rinella]

Because on one hand you're supporting them, but on the other hand you're whittling them down. You're trying to whittle them down. It's the ethical conundrum with probably legal. With probably legal components. But you're allowed to feed birds. Yeah.

[Jeremy Smith]

And they're not a game bird and they're invasive.

[Steve Rinella]

So I don't know at it. I don't know.

[Jeremy Smith]

They're bigger than mourning doves, I think.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I can tell them just if you get like. Because, I mean, morning doves are a little bit. You know, there's like the Montezuma's dove. It's like a real small little in morning dove. Then you got like a morning dove and you kind of get used to that size. Yeah, it's just a plumper. Yeah, it's a plumper bird. The other day we were at. The other night we were at my neighbors. We were shooting bows at my neighbors because he's got a great shooting setup. And I look out in his front yard and there's a collared dove getting a drink of water out of a mud puddle. And I told my kid, try to get him. And then we questioned it. My neighbor's wife pointed out that might not be the most popular move with a neighbor. So we did not do it. And then I Told him I was like, confirm the collar or else she might be in big trouble with the law.

[Danny Thompson]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Because you don't want to be a mourning dove. A dude wrote in. We had had a big discussion about Doug Duran's emphasis on always backing in and how he credits backing in with saving his father's life, which I think is a. Is. Is an overstatement. I think. I think Vince Dern would have survived getting attacked by his own chainsaw whether he had backed in or not. But there's a term for it that I didn't know in the mining industry. What's. What's the o N G industry?

[Jeremy Smith]

I was trying to figure.

[Steve Rinella]

He says, in the mining industry. Oh, okay. This guy says, in the mining and oil and gas industries, it is called the move. It's called first move forward. I like it backing in. You call it backing in, and everybody's like, yeah, I know what that means. Or you can call it first move forward, and people will be that. They don't know what that means.

[Jeremy Smith]

That's like the tactical name for it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's like your wallet used to be your wallet. Now it's your edc. Your pocket knife was always a pocket knife. It's your edc. A guy wrote a big thing about Red dawn, which, I don't know why did we talk about Red Dawn? It's a great movie.

[Corinne]

I think so.

[Seth]

You've brought it up a lot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Smith]

Throughout the years, eating the deer heart and whatnot.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, I brought it up because I. I am now, like, I now have my boy being. My boy is at the age where, you know, 14, 15 years old. He's at the age where I can now go show him all the movies I liked when I was 14, 15 years old. So we recently watched Red dawn, and the guy wrote in, and I'm not totally sure why I like it enough to talk about it, but I don't know what he's getting at. He says, Red Dawn, 1984, is a masterpiece of modern cinema. Makes you think about all kinds of cool stuff like government authority, history as written by the victors, and, of course, dirty commies. But I'm puzzled by histories written by the victors because in the end of Red dawn, they go to the. The monument, and you gather from the monument that we beat the commies. We beat back the commies. As a boy eating Pop Tarts and watching tnt, the film made me think about words quite a bit, like definitions of vigilante, freedom fighter, terrorist and the like. Also how all my boy Scout ranks and commendations would crush in a post invasion America. That's another good thing he brings up, because in Red dawn, the guy that has an eagle scout is being targeted by the Ruskis. Remember, they think it's a paramilitary organization. He says superheroes are kind of vigilantes. America is at war with the terror. I don't really. I wish I better understood where he's going with this, what it boils down to in the end.

[Jeremy Smith]

He's trying to ask what are. What are those kids in Red Dawn?

[Steve Rinella]

No, that's what. That's what. Yeah. I love it.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Alex, Love everything about it. Love your letter. I think he's saying like that from. It depends on whose perspective, right? Because here you have. They're violating. They're. They're poaching deer to eat. But they're the heroes. So are they poachers?

[Jeremy Smith]

Well, I mean, are they poaching? Like, are you still a poacher if you're being occupied by some?

[Steve Rinella]

It would have been good if they had showed him tag that box. He like, validates his tag.

[Brody]

Take it to the registration station.

[Jeremy Smith]

I think they get a pass.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm really nervous about going back into town, but I need to register.

[Brody]

I got 24 hours.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah, like, you go up to the. The Russian general with your tag.

[Steve Rinella]

It's illegal. It's a great question. And then he gets into, of course, the Mary. The. The Robin Hood's people.

[Jeremy Smith]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, Robin Hood's people are poachers because they steal the king's game and. And. And share it with the poor folk. This would have been better directed to Clay, who does. A lot of his bear grease is about violators, poachers. But in Clay's formula, he won't do a poacher unless the poacher is dead. He won't profile a PO. He'll profile famous dead poachers or he'll profile poachers who reformed. Reformed. Who saw the light.

[Seth]

Yeah, he's not talking to active poachers.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, he doesn't profile poachers. I think that's it. That's it for the news, right? Oh, no.

[Corinne]

There are a couple things in there, but they're not all amazing. Pick and choose.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, we got that. And then we got a guy writing in that just as an interesting thing for people to follow. He puts thing in quotes. There's a thing in quotes happening in my little hometown of Elkins, West Virginia, that I find incredibly entertaining. He says he has no affiliation with anyone related to this, and he's been moved out of there for 15 years, but he still likes to follow the local hunting and fishing scene. On Facebook, he says there's a young man named Trent Mullineux. Mullinax, maybe. Mullineux, probably. Who's been catching an absurd number of absolutely gigantic rainbow trout. And he's been putting his photos up at Middle Mountain Sporting Goods, the local hunting bait shop. And he keeps hammering giant trout. And everyone in the town is in an absolute uproar, accusing Trent of all kinds of nasties. Like, unable to explain this streak of success. Saying he's following the stock truck. Other guys are defending his honor and saying these are huge fish, no matter how he caught them. People have begun writing poems to explain his.

[Jeremy Smith]

I wish we had one of those to read right now.

[Steve Rinella]

Like it's inspired poetry. Trying to explain his incredible streak, he says it's worth at least a mention. And then he gives the Facebook page or search Middle Mountain Sporting Goods on Facebook and you'll find their page. And you can follow his trout fishing exploits. You can follow the arguments of his critics and defenders. That seems well worthwhile.

[Seth]

Must not be a lot going on in that town.

[Steve Rinella]

But it reminds it a little bit. Reminds me of another famous. Another. It reminds me a little bit of the Ron Paula book and Mitch Rampala's legacy of giant bucks in that it, like, here's this guy, like, well, giant buck, and then buck after buck after buck.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

And people are like, why? I don't get bucks like that? How could he be getting these bucks? There must be something going on. He posts another buck. You know what I mean?

[Brody]

Yeah. There's a level of success where you just go, really? Yeah, That's. That's exactly what I thought when you were talking about that. I'm like, in the hunting industry, every once in a while, somebody will all of a sudden be just, you know, 180s, 200s in a situation on fire. Yeah. Where you're like, really, like four of them in a season kind of thing. And sometimes when that happens, eventually you find out that it's just there's some shenanigans going on.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You know, I'm not saying that Trent here is right now.

[Brody]

No accusations. There's just a level of success.

[Seth]

This reminds me of my high school days because we used to go help stock the rivers around my area, and then we kind of knew what holes to fish.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

But that was not.

[Steve Rinella]

But this would be brood stock.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brody]

Right.

[Phil]

He's fishing stockers.

[Steve Rinella]

He's fishing 8 inch. He's fishing 8 inch rainbows.

[Jeremy Smith]

Well, no, they always dump in some of the old worn out breeding.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, they do? Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

They dump big ones.

[Steve Rinella]

You dirty dog, Trent.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah, what? But who cares?

[Steve Rinella]

I didn't write a poem.

[Brody]

Dirty. Super identified. Identifiable, though.

[Steve Rinella]

It doesn't.

[Seth]

I mean, those fish are gonna die. They got worn out mid summer anyway.

[Steve Rinella]

They don't live the brood stock when you don't.

[Seth]

I mean, if.

[Steve Rinella]

If they live because they're not naturally.

[Seth]

Reproducing, if they can find a spot where there's some cold water, but at least around Pennsylvania in some areas, some. Some streams, it just gets too warm.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Let's have a quick poetry contest if people. If people don't mind, like, go type in. What are you supposed to type in?

[Corinne]

Middle Mountain Sporting Goods.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. So Middle Mountain Sporting Goods, if you want to write a poem, this is.

[Corinne]

In Elkins, West Virginia.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Write a poem about Trent, send it in. We'll judge the best poem. We'll send him a present. And then. And then if Trent, if you want to call in, I'd love to have you call in and talk about your experience. Is that all fair? All right, let's go around the room and introduce everybody. Danny.

[Danny Thompson]

Well, Danny Thompson, obviously, you know, work for Garmin Marine from Andover, Minnesota, and fishing enthusiast. Been in the industry now for like 10 years, I guess, in the fishing business.

[Steve Rinella]

So do they know you're here?

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. You told them.

[Danny Thompson]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Did they. Did they express any kind of reticence that you would come on and express opinions?

[Danny Thompson]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Danny Thompson]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Supportive.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Good deal.

[Tony Peterson]

Sweet. Well, I'm Jeremy Smith. I work for Linder Media Productions. We make fishing content. So we specialize in making sport fishing content in the upper Midwest and Canada. And avid angler. So I also would be representing a technology company in many regards with Johnson Outdoors. They're a customer of ours.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, excellent.

[Tony Peterson]

So, yeah, so Danny and I both have that connection to technology.

[Steve Rinella]

And Linder is the Lind. The Lindy rig. Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tony Peterson]

Like Elender. Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Can you explain that? Because I think people will know. Maybe people would. Well, when I say people like me, for instance, I grew up knowing the Lindy rig. Sure. And then only later was like, oh, boom, Linder.

[Tony Peterson]

Linder.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Tony Peterson]

So, yeah, the. The Linder family founded. They made the. The Lindy rig, famously. And then in Fisherman Magazine, which turned into in Fisherman Television. And then in the late 90s, they sold that company and then started another company called Lindner Media. So they've had that business for about 22 years. I've been there for almost 20 of it, so.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's fun. Yeah.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, it's good.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Tony Peterson]

I get to fish all over, so if you like fishing, it's a good job, Seth.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. If. Now, I got to say, this here, Seth is a. I wouldn't even. I've fished this. This emerging technology with Seth. Seth, would you regard yourself as an enthusiast or suspicious?

[Seth]

I like using it, but I think there's.

[Steve Rinella]

Because it works.

[Seth]

I have. I have mixed opinions. Yeah, I. I think there's.

[Danny Thompson]

There's.

[Seth]

At times you got to be real careful certain things, and then other times it's real fun.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. The first thing, if you're listening at home, the first thing we're going to do after these intros is someone is going to explain what we're talking about. Yeah, someone's gonna explain like. Like a sort of an impartial explanation of what is. Live scope. And I have gone with Seth. Live scoping walleyes. And you're able to sharpshoot specific individual fish. Yep. You're able to be like, no, he's like 10ft to the right.

[Seth]

No, little cast a little further.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Phil]

He's facing left.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Phil]

Boom.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Corinne.

[Corinne]

I've used it once.

[Steve Rinella]

Did you like it?

[Corinne]

I was fishing. I did. It was. It was cool to be able to look in the hole as one window and then look on the screen as another window for, you know, information as to what was going on.

[Steve Rinella]

Did you catch fish you otherwise wouldn't have caught?

[Corinne]

I don't think so, because, you know, like, in a small hole in the ice, there's. I mean, we weren't spearing for anything. It was just our line was down there, so not really.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll tell you, technology that lets you catch fish you otherwise wouldn't have caught. Ice fishing is underwater camera. When they go to mouth it, like, sometimes they'll mouth something that you would have never even registered the hit. And you're able to be like, one. You're like, no.

[Corinne]

Oh.

[Jeremy Smith]

Forward facing sonar isn't that far off from an underwater camera, really.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Seth]

I'll tell you real quick. I'll tell you. Fishing canyon, ferry through the ice for perch that some days I wish I didn't have forward facing sonar because you see those fish come right up to your bait and then just swim away. And you're like, I would rather not just assume that there's nothing going on down there.

[Steve Rinella]

You'd get home a lot earlier, but you're like, dude, they're down there. Yeah. Tony.

[Brody]

Tony Peterson. I have actually have a weird connection to both of these fellows.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Brody]

Danny and I live in the same town, so every once in a while I'll be at like a dance class with my daughters or something. I'll look over and he'll be standing there because his daughter's in the same class, which is weird. And then I used to work in the in fisherman office.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Brody]

So I started out as a fishing writer in my. My first gig, like real full time gig was as an editor for Peterson's bow hunting magazine. And we were in the in fisherman office. So cool.

[Steve Rinella]

Just which. Which one of them is smarter?

[Brody]

We'll find out. We'll find out. But I, I'm. This is a topic that I'm like crazy interested in.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you?

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you using the technology?

[Brody]

I don't have it on my boat, but I've used it. My tournament partner has it. I've used it. I'm. I don't. I literally am kind of agnostic on it. I have one foot in each camp because I can see, I can see where I think it's going. And I feel like when it comes down in price and the average walleye guy gets it where I live, it could be a. Could impact the resource. But I'm also like real. I don't like taking stuff away without a really good reason.

[Steve Rinella]

Can I tell you a story?

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know how drones and hunting and now guys are putting thermal on drones supposedly for recovery. Who was telling us recently? Some guy they know.

[Phil]

Already.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like if you know where a whitetail buck is, it's not. You're gonna sneak in and kill it out of its bed. Right. Just. That doesn't really. You're not gonna like crawl up on a bedded whitetail and kill It. I mean, maybe once in a lifetime, but when he's setting up, he flies his area to see where deer are bedded, and that influences where he sets up to pick them off. Coming out of their beds. So already.

[Seth]

Yeah, yeah. Like that.

[Brody]

When you, like.

[Steve Rinella]

You know what I mean? It's like. It's like, oh, no, my buddy lost the buck. I'm just trying to find it.

[Brody]

Well, I mean, you think about that and say. Say the difference between a big woods hunt, you know, low deer density or whatever, or fly, you know, fly a drone. There be a different thing. Think about, like, a cattail slew or a western, like western Minnesota, where you could be like, that dude's bedded in that little willow patch there. Going to go push him out, or I'm going to go sit up over him. So it's.

[Steve Rinella]

The wind's doing this, right? He's bedded there, Right?

[Brody]

Yeah. So I. Yeah, there are ways you could put that to you. I mean, we were talking about turkeys earlier. I mean, you could probably find a roost. I've never used a drone with the infrared on it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Brody]

But you could probably find a roost and be like, we got birds. Oh, yeah, right there. You know?

[Steve Rinella]

Sure. Brody. Brody is Brody.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yep, I'm Brody.

[Steve Rinella]

You're probably torn.

[Jeremy Smith]

I'm torn. I don't have it on my boat. Like, I fish a lot for walleye perch around here all summer long with my boys, and I've been tempted, but I haven't. I haven't gotten it because mostly because I don't want to be staring at that screen all day long, Like. And it's not like this, like, war against screens necessarily, but it's like, you go out fishing and the whole day goes by and you haven't, like, you know, it's just. And we do all right without it. You know what I mean? We do fine.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, this is the last thing I'm saying before we explain what it is we're talking about. This is interesting bass. So, professional bass circuit. They've limited competitors to one LIS transducer, and 55 inches of screen space tells that mean. Let's explain what it is first. That's too complicated. Who's gonna explain what the hell it is?

[Danny Thompson]

Danny, I'll give it a shot, but.

[Steve Rinella]

Don'T get into whether it's gonna end the world or not.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah, yeah. No. So basically, if we look back at sonar and what we're running in our boats and whatnot, you know, traditionally we'd have traditional sonar, like, 2D sonar, we're kind of sending a ping down to the bottom. It's coming back. If it comes back with something like a fish, it might look like an arc or we might get bottom, something like that. But it was all basically history, right? So we'd mark it whatever sort on the right hand side of our screen there would be most recent, and then it'd kind of scroll across the screen. Okay, look, we went over rock pile. Maybe we went over what we thought was a big walleye.

[Steve Rinella]

What was the delay?

[Danny Thompson]

I mean, you know, it depends on how fast you're going and all that kind of stuff. But let's say, you know, get to the middle of the screen. It might have been, you know, five to 15 seconds ago, depending on how fast we're going. Could have been second ago if we're going fast. Right. But now with live sonar, what we're doing is we're basically taking like scanning sonar. So it's almost gonna be more of like a side imaging image or a down imaging image. We're speeding it up really fast. And then on top of it, what you're able to do is get a really wide cone angle. So a traditional sonar were maybe 7 to 16 degrees. So the coverage of the bottom, not only was it like historical, we might only be covering anywhere from 5 to, you know, 10ft of the bottom. Maybe that's all we're seeing. Okay, now with a live scope transducer, let's just say in this case, I have it mounted on my trolling motor. I have 135 degree cone angle by 20 degrees. So if I'm sitting on a lake, like Mille Lacs on the mud flats, I can look backwards, let's say 25ft, and I can look forward up to 200ft, you know, and obviously, you know, it's depth dependent. So the shallower we go, the less distance that we can see, the deeper we are, kind of the better the image really gets.

[Steve Rinella]

And what is tell folks about at what depths does it become irrelevant? Like, what are the. The technology now allows you to fish not 100ft, right?

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, we could go, you know, I was trout fishing up in Canada, and we can see down past 100ft of water.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Danny Thompson]

You know, and then there's. There's other transducers now, like, we've got an XR that will work like salt water, you know, so you can get down to like 500ft fresh water and 300ft salt water.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, dude, now I want one. I was on the fence, you'd be.

[Seth]

Able to see that Lincoln sitting right on that hole.

[Steve Rinella]

I was on the fence, but now I'm like, firmly in the podcast over. You said 300ft of salt water, but that's like mystery land down there.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, but. And it's live, you know, and then as we go shallow, we actually have what we call like a perspective mode. So we can kind of take that cone angle and turn it on its side, so to speak. So we're going to be 20 degrees up and down. We're going to be 135, or technically 150, kind of that left and right. So now when we get in that under 10ft of water, we can still get our distance. But it's not like you don't. You can't see your bait dropping as well. You know, the fish, the image isn't quite as good as it is like in the forward mode.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, but.

[Jeremy Smith]

And for people that aren't familiar, like, you can point that thing to where you want it.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah. So like, like in this example, I'm in a bass boat, right. And I have it on my trolling motor. Wherever my trolling motor is pointed is where that image is looking, you know, and then that's why we pick that 20 degree cone angle. So if we're flipping docks or I'm, you know, throwing a bait into some milfoil, or I'm scope and walleyes with slip bobbers, when I see that fish 75ft out and I make that cast. If we were to go wider, we're not able to be accurate. So we keep it 20 degrees so that when we throw that bait, the bait's going to land relatively close to that fish. If I can land in a 20 degree cone angle.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. All right, Jeremy. Okay, here's what here. You're going to get a lot more chance to talk, but the, the. The what's good about it is pretty obvious. Helps you catch fish. All right, Jeremy, if you wouldn't mind. Now that he's explained what the technology is, can you articulate some cons? Like, what. What is this? What are the concerns the anglers should be considering as we. As we make up our minds about this technology? And I just want to remind people, and before you go, I want to preface this by saying just. Just to. Just to give the historical context in fisheries, wildlife management. Fisheries management. There is, since the beginning of fisheries management and since the beginning of wildlife management, we have regulated technologies. Net size, mesh size, use of explosives, use of poisons, use of elect use of electronics. We make it that sometimes a year you can't fish. We tell people how many fish they can have, how big a fish they can have. We distinguish between whether you're a resident or a non resident. Like, we regulate the piss out of hunting and fishing just to set the. This is not like, you know, this, this can be a lot of things, but this can't be a issue of. Is it fair to regulate fisheries? Yeah, because we do regulate the hell out of fisheries.

[Tony Peterson]

Absolutely, we do.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. So I just want that. That's. I'm just telling for the audience. Like any question I think is fair, but I'm like, but it should start with the knowledge that we always are weighing impacts on. Impacts on resource.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. And you hit on a topic right away that I think was good. So in terms of technology, like fishing hasn't really looked at tech and said, you know, like this, this, this tech is out of bounds. I mean, we have with dynamite, for example, but electronics technology, for example.

[Steve Rinella]

So like, you can't think of an example.

[Tony Peterson]

I can't. So nobody said like you can't have side imaging or down imaging or mapping is. Is out of bounds.

[Brody]

Right.

[Tony Peterson]

So. But with hunting, you had a good point earlier on, Steve, that like, you got this adoption rate when this technology comes on board where you get a big user group that loves it. Right. And then others are concerned about it. So in terms of regulating something beyond that, that becomes really difficult. So to me, one of the biggest places of concern, and I know you love these critters, Steve, with Larry Ramsel on here is muskies.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, Right.

[Tony Peterson]

I also want to ask if you got Larry's girlfriend with your bluegill bobber bite.

[Steve Rinella]

You know what, though? I think I need. I realize he invited me to go muskie fishing. Yeah, yeah. But I don't think I've ever legitimately caught a muskie.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Even. Yeah, even after talking to him.

[Tony Peterson]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Tiger muskies, which don't count.

[Tony Peterson]

Well, they're cool. They're super cool fish.

[Steve Rinella]

But.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. So muskies, in my opinion, like, they're. They have low reproductive rates. They get really big. They tend to suspend in open water. So they're really easy to see with this technology. So muskies are, in my opinion, awesome. Right. They've been a fish that's really hard to catch. You got to bust your ass to catch them. They live in cool places. There's all this cool culture around muskie fishing, making lures and, you know, just the mystique of it. And so now with the technology like this, you know, you. To encounter one has been historically really cool. Now you talk to dude, like, how'd you do today? He's like, oh, we got 10. Any big ones? Oh, yeah, we got, you know, four over 50. Like, what? No way. Like, you can put this tech down and drive, you know, cross sections of a lake and be like, we're not fishing until we see one. You don't even bother with trolling. Like, that's completely a waste of time now because you just use this tech to find the fish, cast at them.

[Phil]

Boom.

[Tony Peterson]

Right. So muskie anglers, like, have a huge problem with this. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

And so the traditional muskie anglers.

[Tony Peterson]

You bet. Yeah. And I would say, you know, not all, of course, but a large percentage of them are saying, hey, man, like, you know, we've had. I'm sorry to go to Minnesota here for this example, but it's. What I know is, like, we've had a history of what I would say, poor management of muskies since the early 2000s, where we've lost a number of our stock fisheries, the numbers of fish that we have, which has forced a lot of pressure on our native fisheries because the stock fisheries that they built, they built this big group of anglers who love participating in the sport. The fish aren't necessarily there anymore. So we're putting all this pressure on our native fisheries.

[Steve Rinella]

Can I ask what's happened to those fish?

[Tony Peterson]

It's been a stocking issue, and we've had issues with the politics around it. We had a bunch of people back maybe 10 years ago that just hated. Hated muskies. And so it got to be this political climate where it just became difficult to get fish. We've had problems raising because they were mowing on walleye. Walleyes, they eat everything. Which obviously is not true when you get that thought. That was a thought.

[Brody]

That was like, the narrative used against muskies was that they're eating the walleyes, and the walleyes are more valuable.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. But the bottom line is when you've got these big predators and systems, like, you've got a really quality fishery. Like, we know that. Right. Places where muskies live, big pike live, there's just good fishing if you want a quality fishery. So.

[Steve Rinella]

So there aren't many bad fishing lakes that just have giant muskies everywhere.

[Tony Peterson]

No, no, they're all amazing.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Tony Peterson]

All the good lakes. Yeah. Big muskies in them.

[Steve Rinella]

So they go hand in hand with good fishing.

[Tony Peterson]

They do. They. They definitely do. So Leech Lake, for example, which is one of our native fisheries, it's a place where we get all the, the brood stock for muskies. I was on this like crusade throughout the winter having done this, like just to give you an example of how powerful this technology is. It's like, oh, you know, we know these fish are out in these open water basins and it's like these big, huge expansive areas that essentially like from a wildlife side, you would look at this area as basically functionally remote just because the technology wouldn't allow us to access this, these fish or these fisheries with any, you know, precision, any efficiency really an efficient, inefficient means of targeting fish. So now you go out there, I'm like, I'm going to try this, I'm going to take my 10 year old kid out there, half hour, boom. 250 inch muskies, you know, like what? No man, like I've done this for 30 years. Like this doesn't happen. Talk to my buddy, you know, oh yeah, we got 31 in the last four days. Like what, Any big ones? Yeah, the smallest was 47. You're going dude, this is nuts. Now there's 30 boats out here and this has never been fished. Like what, what does this mean? And there's dead fish floating, right?

[Brody]

So that, okay, that's the concern. It's not, it's not that it's easy, not that it became much easier than it traditionally was to catch a muskie. It's that now that it's so efficient to catch them, the mortality rate is going to go way up and the resource is going to be in real trouble if it goes the way it looks.

[Tony Peterson]

So, so yeah, it could be mortality rate but you also have to look at this as like the opportunities. So it is going to, it is going to condense opportunities right to those who have the technology versus so because you're trying to recycle these opportunities, right? With muskies, you're not looking for a harvest component of this. You want the fish to stay in the system. So all of a sudden, let's just make up a number. Say there's a hundred opportunities for muskie. If you're condensing all those to June at the beginning of the season with people using this technology, the outcome for the angler who wants to go throw it a weed bed or a rock pile is now different, right? That opportunity's gone to this. Driving around, not fishing until you see a fish. So there's a group of anglers, they're like, hey, man, not only could this be killing a lot of big fish that are hard to replace in our native fisheries, we also like to go just cast and suffer, you know, do all this hard work. Like, we really appreciate the suffering of the sport. The reward is big, and that's changing the outcome for us, and we want to do something about it.

[Steve Rinella]

Now I'm back to being against it, Danny.

[Danny Thompson]

And. And I think here's.

[Steve Rinella]

I got one in my shopping cart at the end of the episode, I'm gonna hit buy or not.

[Danny Thompson]

And me and Jeremy got to talk about this a lot. We're actually both on a panel with the Minnesota DNR where we actually do get to.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, you are.

[Danny Thompson]

Somewhat discuss this a little bit, you know, which is a new thing, obviously.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm sorry, I didn't.

[Tony Peterson]

What.

[Steve Rinella]

What's the panel?

[Tony Peterson]

So.

[Danny Thompson]

And. And Jeremy's probably better on explaining that I've only made it to the one summit that we just had. I just recently got, like, appointed to it. But.

[Tony Peterson]

So the Minnesota DNR has these, like, species or interest work groups where they've got stakeholders that meet with the agency, and you come up with some ideas of, you know, what do we want to do for better management for panfish or walleye or muskie in this case, they've got one on technology, so.

[Steve Rinella]

They do.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah, they do recently. And. And they have one on muskies, too. So, you know, they kind of go hand in hand there, obviously, in Minnesota.

[Steve Rinella]

Is the technology one focused on a broad spectrum of technologies, or is it basically. They're talking about live.

[Danny Thompson]

It felt like we're basically talking live scope at this point. I mean, that is the most pressing issue when. When you're talking technology and fishing right now.

[Steve Rinella]

Can I. Can I throw. There's one that I know is. Rylan, folks up. I'm not. We're not going to get it. We don't need to, like, debate this, because this is. I don't know anything about it, but dropping baits with drones.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Is becoming relevant in a couple pursuits. Dropping baits into bait balls where you can. Instead of getting a boat real close, where you got to start spooking fish and bait balls, you have a drone fly out and could drop a live bait onto a bait ball. And then there used to be a thing like surf casting. You'd keep a boat, and then you'd run out and drop where you wanted it. And now guys just sticking them where they want them. So maybe you guys can argue about that in your little thing, but Go back, Danny.

[Danny Thompson]

No, basically, I mean, I feel like, you know, and to kind of touch on the first point we've talked about, me and Jeremy got to talk a lot. Obviously, at the end of the day, like, nobody wants to do what's wrong for the fisheries. Right. And I feel like everybody's opinion and. And this is. This is the point that, you know, we always talk about and like me and him talked about yesterday is, you know, a lot of it is coming down to ethics. Right. But everybody's ethics can be a little bit different on. On what we want to do. And. And at the end of the day, I don't think any outdoor industry company wants to do what's wrong for any other species. Like, we want people to catch fish. We want to make superior products that help people catch more fish and, you know, have more opportunity. So if we go in and we're devastating a fishery like a muskie, that's very easy with this technology, like, I don't think anybody necessarily wants to do that, but I think what's important is we want to make decisions sort of based on science, sort of based on, you know, facts and that sort of stuff, and not necessarily on emotion. Right. Because everybody in this room. Right. Might have a different opinion on what. What is good and what isn't. And some people might like, traditional fishing versus some people, like, you know, we in this room are all around the same age. I'd say we grew up in an age where, like, fishing meant. They were talking yesterday. Like, I got a handheld GPS that I'd navigate out on the lake with. Well, my dad would mark a tree in a cabin, and that was his method of mapping the lake. Right, right. And then ice fishing. You know, I was in college during the crappie boom on Red Lake, and, like, I got a flasher and thought that this was, you know, that was the end. I was going to catch a limit every single time. But, you know, that isn't always the case either. Right. And, you know, I was talk about, like, Bassmaster Classic this year got the best of the best. They got the best of the best equipment when it comes to electronics and all that stuff. And some of these guys still can't catch a limit of fish. They're the best anglers out there, you know, so, like, there's certain use cases. Yeah. Where, like, I think it might be smart to maybe look towards some stuff, but also, like, just being careful that in the overall broader picture, fishing's huge. Right. And just making sure we're making the right decisions. Because at the end of the day too, and this is the case, I think, for everything from whitetail deer to wolves to, to fish, it's not one thing that's killing these fish or ruining a fishery. It's always kind of that death of a thousand cuts. Yeah, right. So like, not only do we have really good technology, we have really good boats now, really fast motors and, you know, good. The 2D sonar is better than it's ever been. Side imaging is like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, things that, that can lead to, you know, the detriment of a fishery.

[Steve Rinella]

I want to hit you guys with a couple clarifying questions, then we'll get into more opinion. None of us is probably. None of us is old enough to remember and it was pre Internet, what I was gonna, I was gonna ask about the advent of just fish finders, sonar. None of us is old enough to remember and it was pre Internet, so there wasn't like a place for people just to like regurgitate opinions. So you don't really know. But I remember being a kid out on. We used to troll a lot of salmon in Lake Michigan. And I remember the graph paper. Sure.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You had that pencil and you go home with a big roll. It was like the day of fishing captured on a roll. I wish I could recall. What if that was pointed out as was that argued about.

[Danny Thompson]

It was Minnesota.

[Tony Peterson]

There was actually legislation in the 70s regarding that. Yeah. So I thought that was going to be a big, big problem in crash fisheries for sure.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, that was debated.

[Tony Peterson]

It was, yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. The other clarifying question is how have just, just to help further set the situation up, how have the governing bodies of competitive fishing, what has been their attitude about it?

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah, I mean, obviously bass fishing is the big umbrella. Right. So in walleye fishing, it's kind of business as usual at this point. Right. But in, in bass fishing, you know, there's the few different main, you know, leagues, I guess, that people fish. And it's almost like all three of them sort of went. Went a different route. So you've got one that said, okay, no forward facing sonar and who are not doing it would be npfl.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

And then we've got the major league fishing series where they're going to allow it for like one of their periods. They'll split up the tournament into different periods. And so. Okay, one of them.

[Steve Rinella]

Dude, that's a great little test right there. Yeah, that's almost like research.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

That's like a B test.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

And then bassmaster actually is allowing like one. One live scope on the boat, you know, and that's sort of new this year. So last year was, was. And the years prior was sort of free for all. So that's why they're limiting the number of screens and the number of live scopes. Because what people were doing is putting live scopes, say, on the back of the boat and using it for side imaging. And now you're getting live side images. And you had guys that were running, you know, four graphs on the dash, five up front. And so they just said, okay, we're going to bring this down a little bit and. And we'll see what happens after this year. Right. This will be a good learning year to see what happens.

[Steve Rinella]

But as they go, I. Nothing.

[Danny Thompson]

Nothing. Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

And as you go around the country, you know, like, he's speaking with the muskies and speaking with different fish, like different fisheries and different fish are more susceptible to it. So, like when we go up north and we're doing a smallmouth tournament, a lot of times it turns into a scoping tournament. Right, got it. But like, when we're down south and. And the guys are learning how to use forward facing sonar, even in the south, like just left Lake Fork, and a lot of guys are scoping there, but a lot of guys are fishing traditionally as well.

[Steve Rinella]

Man, I want to applaud whoever came up with the idea of doing some days with and some days without because it'd be so fascinating just to compare the. The aggregate. The aggregate poundages taken on those days. That's an interesting little test, man.

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

Okay?

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

Right.

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[Steve Rinella]

All right, let me hit you with an opinion. 1. A way I've always looked at things that influence efficacy is that we have.

[Tony Peterson]

A.

[Steve Rinella]

Our resources occur in a limited pool and the way we allocate resources is dependent on success rates. Meaning just to put it in the simplest terms, let's say you have. I'm going to put it in a, I'm going to put it in a big game term and someone at the table hopefully can come up with a fishing analogy. In big game, let's say you have a unit of space, okay? You have a, however you divide it up, you have a region or a unit or a mountain range. Let's say you have a mountain range, and on this mountain range, you have a hundred elk. You've determined that you're going to pursue a 10% harvest rate on those elk. So you're saying we're going to kill 10 of those elk. We know that our hunters traditionally have a 10% success rate. Therefore, we're going to give 100 individuals a hunting opportunity in those mountains because we're going to wind up hitting our harvest objective. If we look at this historic efficacy, then let's say you were to go to that mountain range and you say, we're going to try something new this year, boys. We're going to give out 100 tags. You can hunt at night, you can spotlight, you can drone, you can thermal hunt, you can mount a firearm to a drone. Okay, unlimited, we're going to make the season 365 days long. Now, you turn out that you have a 90% success rate. 10% of dudes don't show up. 90% success rate. The next year when you issue tags.

[Phil]

You'Re like, you know what?

[Steve Rinella]

I think that we're going to have to do this. We're going to have to issue 11 tags, not 100, because efficacy has shot through the roof. So now 11 people will have an opportunity to participate, as opposed to 100 people having an opportunity to participate. The question to each of you is, do you feel in fishing.

[Phil]

There could.

[Steve Rinella]

Be a similar situation at play where you're going to feel, you used to be able to keep five, but no one really caught five, now you can keep two or whatever the hell do you picture? Or to put it to an ethical question, it's two parts. Will this, could this become a thing in fishing, and would you regard that as an acceptable cost of, of the, of using the technology? So will it happen and would you support it happening?

[Danny Thompson]

I'll let Jeremy go first.

[Tony Peterson]

Well, I, I think you hit on just a great point here. So you know this where in hunting, I mean, you guys know the efficacy of a spear, of a longbow, of a compound bow, of a crossbow, of an open sight rifle. So all these technologies obviously can add to the efficiency of a harvest or, you know, a harvest opportunity or a catch in the case of fishing. So we're asking the question right now in fishing that kind of drives me nuts a little bit. Like, does forward facing sonar impact catch rates? Like, we have no idea what the answer is and of course the answer is yes, but it's variable, right? It doesn't happen every time, but it can obviously and it can make a big impact. So we're going to address this. Sorry to get off track here. We're going to address this a little bit. Like we want to look at data, we want to look at science to answer. Please answer this question. Right? So, and I'm not at all against science, but I'm going to just say that the means in which technology is improving and the adoption rate with anglers is happening is massively outpacing any regulatory processes that can happen. The way we collect data, the way we analyze data, the way we implement what we learn from that data. So like a good example in Minnesota, I've got a buddy who's on this bluegill committee, right? So for like 10 years they're even longer special fish. They've been saying that like, hey, you know, we're losing the big bluegills in Minnesota. This is far before for forward facing sonar, even side imaging, right? Just the big bluegills are disappearing, they're being harvested. We want to protect the big bluegills. We want to, you know, have a quality bluegill fishery in this state. So they talk about it for 10 years. Clearly the best solution is to not harvest the big bluegills, just keep the big ones in the system, keeps recruitment low, all these great benefits to it.

[Steve Rinella]

So which would, which is complicated because you're introducing the idea of a bluegill slot limit.

[Tony Peterson]

Okay, right, yes, exactly. So let me get to why this is so complicated. So this is clearly that's the answer. So they talk about it for years. Eventually they come up with the idea that you know what we're going to do, we're going to take some lakes and we're just going to keep less. Well, that's not the answer. The answer is don't keep the big ones. Right? So now in five years now they're going to take 10 years to assess that, to see what the impact was in a reduced bag. And now they're talking about once that's up, we're going to look at doing like a nine inch, you know, maximum size harvest. So this is going to be like a 25 year process to use this science to identify, like, look back 25 years where we're at. So I'm not saying that science isn't wrong, we shouldn't look at it, we shouldn't use it. I'm just saying we also need to look at how this is a social science issue as well, that like there's just some places or people who don't maybe want this type of technology or as much advanced technology coming into certain areas of the sport. So it's not a, it's not a. You can't have livescope. No more livescope for anybody, you know, or you can have it. But like, we've got a lot of opportunities to experience, experiment with different resources where we could use it, when we could use it. Special regulate. We've got all these opportunities that I think we really need to be looking at more. Starting with the social component, you know, saying, okay, we know we've got groups of anglers, let's listen to anglers. Let's try to manage for what the user's expectations are and want as we work on the science in the background.

[Jeremy Smith]

So has there been any like knee jerk regulatory actions taken like anywhere yet?

[Tony Peterson]

Well, Montana said no paddlefish snagging, right? Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

And a few states have lowered, you know, catch limits, but that's really harvest limits or harvest limits. Yeah, yeah, that's really about it.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, but you gotta answer my question.

[Tony Peterson]

Okay, what was the question? Now I went on a tangent.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you feel, or whatever you have for any kind of survey data or anything like that, do you feel that in some fisheries live scope could lead to, could lead to adjustments in the regulatory structure? Second part of the question is, would you feel that that would, Is that acceptable?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, and it already has. Right. Like in harvest species like Mississippi lowered crappie rates on their big four down there and they attributed that to live scoping. Okay, so it's already.

[Steve Rinella]

They articulated that. That was a response to that.

[Tony Peterson]

Yes.

[Steve Rinella]

The dudes are tearing it up on crappies.

[Tony Peterson]

Yes. So that is already, already happening.

[Steve Rinella]

And then paddlefish.

[Tony Peterson]

Yep, yep, paddlefish, it's happened.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, that, that was different. Like for Montana to say you can't use it to snag paddlefish is the opposite. Not the opposite. It's like, okay, the technology's coming. We either limit the technology or we say it's coming. Everybody's a better fisherman now. You can't keep as many fish, right? You're all better now. So now we're gonna lower the potential impact by going after bag limits, going after seasons in order to accommodate the technology. So that'd be another way of putting.

[Phil]

The question is it's a great way to view it.

[Steve Rinella]

You feel that it could lead to a reduction in the resource. And when you look at a state agency coming in and saying, okay, it's here, we're going to lower bag limits, do you like, that's an approach? Or there's the approach of it's here. We don't want a lower bag limit, so we need to make it not be here.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. And I think it can be. You can look at it different ways. It can still be here, but maybe used during certain time frames. Right. So, I mean, it's back to this whole, how efficient is your effort? Right. How efficient is the angling effort? So I, I think it's. I think we should ask users what, what they want, how they, how much do they value the technology over the experience of catching fish. Would you rather be able to use this technology and be able to catch whatever you can catch in a certain window of time? Right. Or would you just say, you know what, we want this experience to last longer and therefore we, we want to limit technology. So I think that's that social component that I think we, we need to understand as much as, as much as anything. Because to say that this technology won't impact opportunity or catch rates, just, you know, to try to understand what that is, I, I think we already know what the answer is.

[Jeremy Smith]

From an enforcement perspective, the, the reduced bag limit approach seems a lot easier than having having a warden going around checking every boat to see if they got a trans. A live scope transducer. Yeah, that seems like a nightmare.

[Seth]

Yeah. If they did, instead of getting rid of, like, basically saying, you can't, you can only keep two walleyes and use livescope year round or whatever, rather than like just getting rid of it all together and keeping that bag limit bigger.

[Tony Peterson]

Well, and we've got plenty of people in here who don't have the technology, so is that fair to you? You don't have the technology, so now you could keep six. But now, because I want to use it, I only get.

[Steve Rinella]

I want to give Danny a turn to respond. I like where you want to respond to that.

[Seth]

That's a good question.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I'd like everyone around the table, like, if, okay, I had a meander. I wanted to give Danny a chance to respond to, to the question, which is being. Is the answer to regulate around it? Will that even be necessary? Or is the answer to stop the technology?

[Danny Thompson]

I mean, and this, this is, like I said, this is where it gets difficult. Right. So everybody's idea on what to do with it is going to be so different. And the hard part, and we talk about this quite a bit, is a lot of times it's that top 10% of the anglers that are doing all the catching, all the keeping a lot.

[Steve Rinella]

Of times about that.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah. And so it's hard because, you know, we're making all. We want to make all the regulation on that. And then also, like I said earlier, is we don't want to make regulation based on an emotion. And so, like in the panel, for example, we had a lot of guys that were very anti, you know, against live scope and whatnot, but they've never used it. And they. They don't really know, you know, the implements of it other than what they've maybe heard, you know, and then there's some media out there that's kind of like, you know, just putting taglines out there, headlines out there to get clicks. But then it's not necessarily like they're almost pitting it as the bad guy. Well, you know, like I say, if. If you're gonna go out and catch, you know, 10 muskies in a day, like, you're the bad guy, not necessarily the technology. Right. So why. Why do we need to limit a great resource where I can learn about the fish, I can learn about the fishery, I can see what's on the bottom and. And use it, you know, respectfully or ethically, whatever that means, versus a guy who's going out there and he's not.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

You know, so. And a lot of times, especially in muskie fishing, a lot of. A lot of. It's like the guides. Like, there's some guides. So state of Minnesota, prime example. Like, you can go out, put an ad on Facebook Marketplace and say, hey, I'm a muskie guide, and no license, no training, no nothing, and go out and target 10 muskies every single day to make your money. There's no public resource.

[Steve Rinella]

There's no licensing or process on that.

[Danny Thompson]

Unregulated.

[Steve Rinella]

No. Not even, like, insurance requirements.

[Tony Peterson]

Well, I'm sure there's that.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But any, Any. Any you could become. I could go there.

[Tony Peterson]

You could go be a guy tomorrow.

[Seth]

Yeah, but you don't need, like, captain's license or anything to Great Lakes.

[Danny Thompson]

So, like, you know. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot. There's a lot to this. It's. It's the death of a thousand cuts. Again, it's not like every single person going out there is, is catching all these fish and causing the problem. It's kind of that top tier. It's certain small groups, you know, that's all sort of leading to something. And that's where like if regulation is needed, then, then that's the avenue maybe we go down. But we want to do that with like a good science based or some actual factual information versus going on emotion or going on what small select groups are doing. We want to make sure when we're making these decisions, we're actually making a smart decision.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, it's pretty funny. Our colleague Ryan Callahan, we were one day talking about technology. Specifically we were talking about putting a camera down through the ice to watch fish. And he was talking about the emotional side of how you perceive it. Like you're saying, like, guys that are against it, they don't really know what it is, they've never seen it, they haven't seen any data, but they're just against it. Cal was talking about this feeling of like, if you're ice fishing, you could be catching fish and having a good time. A guy comes and drills a hole near you and lowers a camera down. And Cal says, you get this feeling like we're now all of a sudden it's like less fun. You know, you'd be having. You thought you were having a great time, but now you're not.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

You know, but that feeds in exactly to what I'm saying. Right. So I might sell live scopes to 100 people at a sports show one weekend. Right?

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

But 10 of them are going to know how to use it. You know, like you, you can have all the technology. You can have the greatest rifle and hunting gear.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

But you're not always going to shoot that deer. Right. Like, so obviously it's a tool that helps, but it's not the end all be all like people like, like it's made out to be.

[Steve Rinella]

All right? People wanted a chance to weigh in on it. So I just want to clarify the question because it's a complicated question. Well, we could, we could forfeit the idea that it's going to impact harvest. I think everybody here is acknowledged it's very effective for fishing. So let's just accept that it's going to impact harvest. If you will clarify this and put it. Everybody needs to imagine a lake they like to fish. Okay. There's a lake you like to fish, your favorite fishing spot. And they come to you and say, okay, we can do two things. We're either going to lower bag limits and shorten the season and keep live scope or we're going to ditch live scope and keep the regulatory structure the same. So it's come down to you, don't you. Danny doesn't like this. Go ahead.

[Danny Thompson]

No, no, I, I, I, I, I like the question.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

But like, once again, it just, it feeds into like, no, no two people are the same. Right. Like, I like to hunt whitetails on private land out of a deer stand that I already hung. Tony likes to go to public land.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

And you know, hope something's there. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you feel the question is not a good.

[Seth]

No. I could give an example on the fishing side of things. Like, I like to go to Fort Peck and target big walleye, and I'm never going to keep them.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Seth]

Yeah, I would love to use live scope doing that.

[Danny Thompson]

Okay, exactly. I, I love.

[Steve Rinella]

But that's not answering my question. But what's, what's the guy that likes.

[Seth]

To go to fort for Peck and keep a limit of walleyes? You know, he's not targeting big fish. He just wants to.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Smith]

Like in my case, I'm looking for a limit. So, like, I'd be like, we're out the lake. I'm thinking of, I don't need the forward facing. Keep the limits the same.

[Steve Rinella]

That's where you would fall if you were put in this. What's a Faustian decision? I don't know. Isn't that a thing?

[Corinne]

I'm googling.

[Steve Rinella]

There's something like a bargain.

[Corinne]

All right, thanks, Phil.

[Steve Rinella]

And okay. So you don't have to answer. You could do like Seth and have some, like, some kind of waffle. Doesn't like, like Danny, like the question. Seth didn't answer the question. Tony, do you, what do you feel about the question?

[Brody]

Do you know this, this is almost given me ptsd because this feels just like the crossbow debate in the whitetail world.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Brody]

And I actually, I mean, I look at forward facing sonar kind of like, well, we're almost going from traditional bows to crossbows.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Brody]

People are scared of it. People don't know. To Jeremy's point, you're like, okay, well, we have the social aspect where a lot of people are like, I do not want this because this is going to change the game on a broad level with the average user, which is kind of undeniable. Right. But you also have what actually is the impact on the resource. And so what you're talking about is like the science. To get the science, we always have to go retro. Right. Like, either that or you just ban it. And go, we're just going to be proactive and it's gone. But we don't live in that world right now.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, no, the drone situation was that world. The minute there was like a whisper of private drone use, I always remember it was kind of one of the more interesting wildlife management moments of my lifetime. 13 states, I mean in one year, 13 states banned drones for hunting use. Western states.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

And also some states that are not hippie, dippy, anti hunting states.

[Jeremy Smith]

Like some hard hitting Wyoming was one of the first.

[Steve Rinella]

Some hard hitting, conservative, pro consumptive use.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

States. Alaska. Right. Like pro, not just like looking for any reason to screw with hunters. Some, some like heavy forward thinking game management, consumptive use states. Right wing leadership right out of the gate.

[Brody]

Right. And that's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

No one had, no one waited to.

[Phil]

Be like, well, let's wait and see.

[Steve Rinella]

For 10 years if, if efficacy rates change. They just knew and they did.

[Brody]

Well. And I mean I think the only devil's advocate I'd play there is, it's like a, it's a different beast managing elk versus how many crappies are in Minnesota. Right. Like so, I mean it's, it's a fair point, but I look at it and go, maybe, maybe this is a weird perspective, but everything that makes it easier, a lot of these guys who are like, no way, I don't want that. I don't want crossbows, I don't want a bait deer. I take it right down the line. I don't want cell cameras. The adoption rate, when that stuff becomes a little more affordable, a little more ubiquitous across the hunting population. These people who are against this stuff, they don't understand, often end up on the side of using it because. So if live scope was 150 bucks and it took you five minutes to mount on your boat, all these guys would have it. Right?

[Steve Rinella]

You think there's a haves and have nots component?

[Brody]

Well, there, there isn't. There's just a component of just not, not people not being familiar with it and like hearing about, you know, and so the, I think you have to play in the world of going, okay, this stuff exists, it's legal right now and it will be adopted by people who are against it if it comes to that. So kind of to your drone point, like if you believe that and I do, then you would have to make that decision. Do we proactively go, no. And I'm not, I'm not on that side yet. I just, I feel like it's coming and it's going to be. It's going to change regulations.

[Steve Rinella]

I think that I've mentioned this drone thing a couple times, but out of fairness, I need to acknowledge that these are not analogous.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, like you could look at sonar as being an evolution of sonar. We agreed what it was in the 70s that somehow we were on a trajectory of not regulating sonar and then sonar. This isn't the answer. I'm saying like sonar advanced. What made the drone thing, what makes it imperfect as an analogy is it really was sort of this brand new, altogether new concept. Right. It was like if there had been some other like that drones at first had extremely limited capabilities and you couldn't really picture where it would lead. Right, right. It might have had a different path, but it was sort of like it emerged as an altogether new thing and was sort of. You had an opportunity to like say yes or no.

[Brody]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

In a way that perhaps even like cameras. The, the gradual increase in efficacy of cameras and then they kind of became that it was cellular cameras. Right. There was never a real clear inflection point. Right.

[Brody]

I would say that was a big leap. Yeah. And the closest thing would be scouting.

[Steve Rinella]

From an airplane which they had already haggled about.

[Brody]

Right, Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that's a good point. They had haggled about airplane use and it already said if you fly, you can't hunt that day. Let me hit. Can I hit you guys with another question? I want to set up with an observation of my own very similar bit of technology. When I started fishing in southeast Alaska, we'd fish off charts like as close as you can get to no detail. Just it's like a. It's like an open ocean portrayed on the chart. And then you have some soundings printed in a sort of equal spacing. So you could tell 20 fathoms, 6 fathoms, 40 fathoms, whatever. No detail. It made fishing very challenging because there was always this feeling of a kind of randomness. Okay, I've now gotten to the point where I use navionics data. My catch rate 100% went up. My understanding of the ocean and what's going on and my enjoyment of the experience went up hand in hand where it was like, oh, wow. I didn't know that that was like a really sharp hog back ridge. It would be like in the old days, it'd be like now and then you'll catch a blank like over in that kind of area. Now I'm like, oh, wow. They like to lay on the drop off point of a hog back ridge. And when you get there, get ready it, like efficacy up, understanding up, sort of like inspiration about the landscape up. You could. It was just like, it was better, more fun, more educational. Taking that and looking at it with live scope, do you feel that it's. Do you feel there's something similar at play? Is it like ultimately taking from the experience or is it adding to the experience? We'll start with Danny.

[Danny Thompson]

So I'm going to give two, two things here.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

Right. So I obviously, you know, like, I love livescope. I love to fish with it. I like how I can be selective in which fish I catch. You know, if I'm targeting eater fish, for example, I can target eater fish. I don't catch big fish. I don't catch small fish. I don't catch, you know, accidentally catch muskies. Back in the day when we, you know, rig leeches and creek chubs, we'd catch whatever would bite it and it would swallow the hook every time. Like, I feel like I can actually fish more efficiently but also more, you know, ethically, so to speak with, with the fish fishing. With that technology, I can learn about what's on the bottom. I've sat on Mille Lacs Lake in the wintertime and watched the migration of walleyes as they come and go off those flats morning and night. And it's like I've just learned so much about fish behavior and what they do and, and that's where, like, if, you know, like using it in that matter or matter, it is so beneficial to an angler, you, you learn so much. I enjoy the experience more. I'm able to bring my daughters. They're able to see the fish moving around. And if anything gives you hope, you don't always catch them, but at least you can see them down there, right? But then also from like an industry standpoint, right? And the crossbow thing here is, is a prime example. And hits me, hits me because I'm a whitetail guy, right? And you know, with forward facing sonar, I mean, the one great benefit it also brings, not only understanding fisheries, but look at what it brings to the industry as far as dollars go, right? So now we've got all these baits aimed at forward facing sonar. You can go buy, you know, a new Berkeley power switch and it's got the FFS forward facing sonar logo right on that bait, letting you know, the angler know it's for forward facing sonar. So it's created new industries within fishing. There's a new fishing line called Forward Daiwa, makes live scope Rods that are, you know, $1,200 rods you can use for live scoping. So like you bring all this new money to the industry like crossbows did and you know, a lot of times if that money can go back into the industry or keep the industry going, especially coming right out of COVID with all the new anglers we have, I mean, there is a lot of like fringe benefits. You don't necessarily speak of that not only add benefits to when you're out on the water, but benefits to the fishing industry in general.

[Steve Rinella]

They'Re subject to. What's the fishing? Dingle Johnson.

[Tony Peterson]

Dingle Johnson.

[Steve Rinella]

Is that technology hit by Dingell Johnson Tech?

[Danny Thompson]

The technology wouldn't be, but a lot of the other stuff would be the.

[Steve Rinella]

Hardware is not hit by Dingell Johnson.

[Danny Thompson]

Yep.

[Tony Peterson]

Marine electronics are exempt.

[Steve Rinella]

What?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, man.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Why is that? Dude, boat gas isn't exempt, right?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. So it was a navigational tool when that, when DJ was, was getting started. So it hasn't been modified.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, they need to get in there and hit that. How much is a. How much is a. What are we talking about? We never established how much does it cost to get your boat set up?

[Danny Thompson]

I mean a live scope system is going to be 1699 retail and then, you know, a screen that you'd use with it, you're looking at anywhere from, let's just say 800 bucks on up, depending on what size you had. You know, like when I first started, it's a lot of seven inch units. Now we're sending selling a lot of ten inch screens. So you're going to be, you know, about three grand, let's say to be all in.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Phil]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Steve Rinella]

That's a good deal. Does it improve or detract from the experience?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, so I don't want to come off as like, I just hate this technology because as a student of angling fishing my whole life, this is the most insane, coolest thing ever to happen in fishing. Oh, all the, like, it fundamentally changes it. Like, what's out there? Oh, I know what's out there. There's a big wall. You see it, right? Like, so that just. It changes things. So it is really cool. So you brought up the great point, Steve, of the GPS technology. Like all of the other tech is really. And that's really the foundation of a lot of it. Right. So if I can't easily navigate to these locations, it will likely be spots to hold fish. Right? Like forward facing sonar. Isn't that great? If you've got, you know, just a paper map that doesn't show you much. Like, if you're not going to go to habitat, where to begin looking, right? So, so the map is huge. And talking to, you know, I was talking to Al Linder about some of the big moments in his career in fishing. And one that I thought was most interesting is he was like, big outboards, man. Like bigger boats, bigger outboards. When we could go out on Lake Erie, we could go out in the middle of Mille Lacs Lake, he's like, that changed fishing, you know, like, that was a big moment in changing fishing. And that's. Marine electronics often get picked on. But that, that was a huge deal. You brought up out words earlier, right? And this and then the other, you know, fundamental shift was mapping and being able to navigate especially big bodies of water. Fine spots in the middle of the lake traverse Canadian shield waters. Now that, you know, spinning the map around, everything looks the same, you know, like, it's pretty cool. So technology absolutely adds to the. It can add to the experience. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess how much, how easy do you want it to be and how much do you value some of those intangibles that are the mystery, the difficulty in fishing? And that's kind of. I think what we want to measure to some degree is how much value is there in the mystery. Those intangibles. And those are some of the things I think we need to consider.

[Steve Rinella]

Let's say this isn't a question, it's just something to respond to, just a thing to muse on. Let's say I developed some crazy technology where I could. I all sudden had some technology where I had. I could put a map in front of you and I could be like, every elk at all times is on this map. And I went to a buddy of mine, I'm like, Check this out, right? Most dudes are gonna be like, let me look at that map. Right? But then I come and be like, I'm gonna sell this map to anyone that wants it. Then people are gonna be like, I don't think you should do that. But I think a lot of guys would want to peek at the map if they could peek at it secretly, right? So there is a point at which, like, we go to that extreme. And I. Some people don't like extremes when debating, but I'm a big fan of extremes when debating. Most people would agree that if we could do that, if I could show you a map and every elk in existence on that mountain is on that.

[Jeremy Smith]

Map, or just the 360 bullas on that map.

[Steve Rinella]

He's always on there, you know, right where he is at all times. I, I think that you'd have 90, whatever the hell, 80, 90% of people would be like, that's just going too far. And I would go like. But think of how educational it would be to understand.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

How elk use the mountain. That's all the big bulls, isn't it cool? You can see exactly where they like to lay, when they move, when they spook, where they go, what they eat. How educational. And people would say, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but. So there's like, there is an extreme. I don't know how to put that into a question. But this can't be. This can't be that. It's not like, it can't be that. All mysteries are revealed, right?

[Danny Thompson]

And you know, like, it's not obviously. And I know one thing people like to say is using livescope is like spotlight and whitetails or spotlight and deer.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

And although you can find the fish quicker, they still have to react. Right. And if anybody has tried to catch a walleye on Leech Lake as of recent, you'll know real quick that the fish start to learn about live scope and boats following them around. And where before you used to be able to maybe make a 40 yard or 40 foot cast at a walleye, you now have to try to make a 8,000 foot cast, like, you know what I mean? And so like the fish still has to react and bite that bait. I've thrown my ned rig at a walleye hundreds of times where they don't bite and you just got to keep moving on. So even if sometimes you know where the fish are, doesn't necessarily, you know, mean you're going to catch them all the time, you know, and obviously muskies are going to be A little bit different. I feel like they're always going to be maybe an exception. There's other species that are too, but like you know, knowing exactly where that bull is and then you know, going with a long range rifle or something, like it's, it's, it's similar but different. I guess just like spotlighting a deer, like once you spotlight the deer, like the deer doesn't have any choice there. Like the fish is making the choice to still react, bite the bait. You still gotta make your cast within that 20 foot or 20 degree cone angle, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

I got kind of an example. Chester and I fished a tournament on Fresno here in Montana a few years ago and everyone was kind of in this one part of the lake and we, we motored up in this part of the lake that was super stained like 2, 3 inches of vis and we started marking a bunch of fish, but there was no one fishing there. So we dropped, dropped down to Megalive and we figured out if we're, if you drop, we're drop shot in these walleyes and if you put it five inches from them, you weren't catching them. But if you were to place it right on their nose, you could catch them pretty much every time. And that's like an example where if I, if we didn't have that, we end up taking like seventh in that tournament and ever like a lot of people struggled, but we just figured out this one little thing in the super stained water where if we didn't have live imaging like you would never have caught those fish. But we were just able to like really sharp shoot and like pinpoint these fish using that technology. And we like ended up catching a bunch. But I, I was pretty confident where if we tried to do that, like you just had to put it right.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

On their nose.

[Steve Rinella]

It was getting you fish you otherwise.

[Seth]

Would have never, would have never have caught those fish. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, last. You want to address that one? Well, nothing. I don't know what to do. You want to comment on that one?

[Tony Peterson]

I mean. Yeah, I mean you just get this precision accuracy to your point, that just wasn't, wasn't possible. And you know, like back to the muskie thing, I mean that's that like the spotlighting comment or whatever. That's what, that's what muskie guys called. They call it road hunting spotlight and sharpshoot and like guys, the guys doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And so this is if you guys are familiar with the concept of the tragedy of the commons as well. Like this really applies in many of these, these cases where. And it's quite interesting, like back to the muskie world, like Unleash Lake. This has gotten to be a hot topic. So all these guides are out there. They know, like, this is bad, like, what we're doing out here, like, bad. We should not be catching this many fish. But if I don't do this, I'm not going to catch nearly as many. So if I decide, you know what, I'm going to take the high road and I'm gonna just go fish traditionally and not do this. But you know what? The guy who's 20 years old, really good with tech, just buys this stuff, he can start guiding tomorrow and he's gonna kick his ass. The guys who've been doing it for 30 years, so they're just caught in this rut and saying, hey, we need, we need help. We need help stopping ourselves from doing this. So it's a really interesting situation that we're, we're in with that.

[Steve Rinella]

There was a famous buffalo hide hunter and he observed when he was down in the. I think he was in the Texas Panhandle, he, he knew what they were doing, that they were pushing the animals to extinction. And he would say, sometimes I'd get so disgusted and I'd be like, I can't do it anymore. But he said you'd wake up and off in the distance when he's like, someone's doing it, it's gonna happen no matter what, you know.

[Tony Peterson]

Yep, that's it.

[Steve Rinella]

All right, the last question. We'll go around the room. Everybody can have. You can have. Do two things. You have a final thought if you want. But you also got a crystal ball. What's a fair number? 10 years. 20 years. 10 years. 10 years. Where are we sitting? Just kind of like, you know, where we sitting on the debate. In 10 years, what happened in 10 years, what will have happened as we, as we weigh this all out? So a final thought, if you got one and then crystal ball it 10 years down the road, I would expect to see blank.

[Danny Thompson]

Yeah, So I guess, final thought, I'll start with that. Obviously, you know, obviously, I think my, my big perspective on it is, is I, you know, there's, there's always going to be the two groups, the people that like it, the people that don't. People kind of fall in the middle. Doesn't necessarily matter what we decide as far as regulation or whatever else. Like, it's still going to, there's still going to be that, that those groups, you know, and that's where I say, like, as long as we're making decisions based on the science, based on, you know, actual facts and what's going on versus just on emotion and whatnot, I think we'll be, we'll be in a good spot. You know, the one bad thing, and Jeremy alluded to this a little bit, is like right now how we're getting those facts isn't necessarily like the most effective way. Right? So right now we're getting a lot of those facts through creole surveys.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Danny Thompson]

You know, and, and to some degree there's probably some truth to them. And it's pointing out that that top group is, is the group that's catching the fish, doing most of the harvest, that kind of stuff. And everybody else is still kind of the same, right? We're not really showing that much or if any increase in catch of fish or any of that kind of stuff, you know, so right now we're showing like really it's not having an effect is basically it. But you know, how are we getting these creel surveys? Are they doing them at the correct times? Are the muskie guys really coming off the boat access at noon now? They're coming off in the middle of the night or you know what I mean, before the sun comes up, whatever else. And are we actually hitting those guys that are harvesting a lot of the fish? Right. So I think there's a little bit of a flaw in how we're getting that data. But just making sure that we are using good data and good information, we make those decisions. I think, I think that's the most important because it does have a big impact on the industry. We are bringing a lot to the industry and a lot to the upcoming generation because of the technology. So 10 years down the road, where are we going to be? Well, I mean, I've been in this business now for 10 years. Been, been with Garmin for 10 years. And when I started we were using 2D sonar, right? Now we're using Livescope. I can see fish 200ft away in lifetime. So I mean, who knows what's coming, right? And we're sitting here and we're debating what, what's happening right now. But like, you know, we're all middle aged guys, right? And we grew up in a time where there was no cell phones there, there wasn't really Internet and all that kind of stuff. And now look what we have, right? And so this generation of anglers that's coming up right now, like with the new Bassmaster Classic angler being Young and a lot of young guns kind of in, in this, the tournament series and in the content game. Right. Like, they're going to drive that technology, I think, further and further and further. And so what we should be looking at, maybe concerned about talking about is what's coming more so too, versus what we got going on right now. So in 10 years.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Danny Thompson]

I mean, who knows? And.

[Steve Rinella]

Good point.

[Danny Thompson]

And that's where, like, I think Jeremy has a great point. And hey, we, like, we can't wait for 25 years to figure out if we have an effect on bluegills. Right. We need to figure out that right now. So let's, let's figure it out. Let's make good decisions. Let's work together. Let's drive the industry. Let's continue to get these anglers. You know, we added almost a million youth anglers to the, to the industry last year. Let's, let's keep doing that. Let's use the technology with them, but use it in the correct ways. Train ethics. You know, like, a lot of it really comes down to the anglers, like deer hunting. Like, you can do a lot of things that you maybe shouldn't, you know, but where does that start? That starts with like, the values and the ethics that we have as fishermen and outdoorsmen.

[Steve Rinella]

Ten, four. So, Jeremy.

[Tony Peterson]

Well, I guess to crystal ball it, I think there's going to have to be some examples of a fishery crashing or really, you know, showing like, oh, boy. There's a strong correlation between this use before we decide that we're going to be proactive on managing technology for the most part, and it'll be a reactive management strategy going forward would be my guess, at least in the state of Minnesota, where I can speak to. But I think technology is not going to slow down. I think we're going to pursue this idea that we want to make the fishing experience easier, more comfortable. We want to improve catch rates. We want to make, you know, I mean, that's just, that's just where it's going. So I don't like comfortable.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, that's. That's where it's headed. So I'm not saying that's bad, but.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm just saying it is that that trend will continue.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, that trend will continue. Yeah, man.

[Seth]

Yeah, I, I use live imaging and I, I like using it. It's fun. Some fisheries, I don't use it because it just like you guys were talking, like, there's, there's times when it's helpful and other times it doesn't matter. And I'm the type of guy who maybe keeps a limit of walleye a year. I don't keep a lot of fish. If it went away tomorrow, I'd still be out there fishing and I don't think it'd make a big difference in my life.

[Steve Rinella]

Got it. You'd fish, you wouldn't change, you wouldn't fish. Less days.

[Seth]

Nope.

[Steve Rinella]

100?

[Seth]

Nope.

[Steve Rinella]

No. Corinne?

[Corinne]

Well, I don't really have enough experience with any of this, but one thing stuck in my head from talking to you guys before the show, before you came out here, which was really, again, focusing on, and this is what I can't not think about the generation that's coming up with tech and if that's just going to be, if we won't get ahead of that. So I know we touched on that a bit today, but that, you know, in five, ten plus years, the generation now your kids age, you know what they're used to and what they're going to be clamoring for. And if we're really going to set regulations in advance of that and, and potentially with technology even developing faster, better, that that's just the one thing that's in my mind. So not, not sure if we'll react fast enough.

[Steve Rinella]

Tony.

[Brody]

I feel like when Jeremy's talking about the muskie guide thing and feeling the pressure to compete against the 20 year old who's going to use it without any, no compunction at all, he's just like, I'm going to go. This feels just like how deer baiting is sort of a social contagion where you're like, I don't want to do it, but now my neighbor's doing it and all my deer disappeared on opener and I want my kids to get one. And so I just think we have to look at this and go, it's going to be pretty widespread adoption, I think. And what kind of just occurred to me while you guys were talking is so we live, we're all kind of Minnesota boys. We live in this world, know these lakes and kind of, that's the filter which we kind of view it through. But I was like, in my head, I'm like, imagine if you had like a selfie stick kind of thing with a little portable version of this. And these fly fishermen out here could walk up to a hole, stick it in there, look at their phone and.

[Steve Rinella]

Go, dude, they'd be doing it.

[Brody]

Right, but.

[Danny Thompson]

Right.

[Brody]

So 100 people would do it. But that would be a catalyst for like, we're like, I think that People would go, this is a use case. Like it. That's too far for me.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

So, like, we. If you're really close to the muskie issue, this is like, if you really appreciate that opportunity, like, this is a hot button thing right now, because you can see that that specific use case is probably going to be trouble at some point or, or already is. It's like a lot muddier when you're talking, like, grand scheme of things, panfish populations, walleyes, whatever. But I tend to err on the side. Like, Danny, you're. You have like a pretty charitable, Charitable view of the average fisherman.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Like, well, we got to train them in ethics and this. And I'm, I think about a lot of the old timey walleye guys. I know. I'm like, you give them a chance to put more fish in the boat, they're going to do it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Like, they're not going to, they're not going to think about that for a second. And so I think we have to operate in that world. So 10 years down the road, crystal ball in it. I feel like we'll probably see some level of reduction in opportunities if that's just limits or if it's shortened season or something like that. And I think we have to consider that because I, I could see that. Like, I believe that's probably coming.

[Jeremy Smith]

Brody, I'm still on the fence. I'm nowhere. Like, I'm in the same place I was when I walked in the room.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, crystal ball it.

[Jeremy Smith]

I mean, the cat's out of the bag. It ain't going anywhere. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think, I think you're going to have a real hard time disallowing the technology other than in very specific cases like Montana paddlefish, where it's like a set number of anglers on a short stretch of river that can be monitored. I, I just, I don't think anybody's gonna be like, no, you, you, like, really can never. I, I don't know. I mean, it's there. I, I'm, I'm leery. I'm leery of putting it on my boat now, because you'll watch it is because my boys will pay attention to that to the exclusion of everything else. Like, which is annoying.

[Steve Rinella]

That's true. When I introduced ice fishing with a camera, my older boy, if you don't got the camera, he's less interested in going.

[Jeremy Smith]

Right. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

He loves it. And he'll. He would sit there for three hours intent, watching that screen.

[Jeremy Smith]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Glued but that's different. That's parenting. That's not regulation. That's parenting. That's not regulation.

[Jeremy Smith]

Totally.

[Steve Rinella]

When I crystal ball it just to stick to the pure crystal balling. If I crystal ball and I really had to like bet money on it, I would bet that you will see a noticeable, you would see a noticeable, noticeable increase in restrictions. Meaning just as we can point to just being, point to like paddlefish snagging, whatever, I think that you'll have, in 10 years, I think you'll have more examples of a fishery for perhaps an imperiled, low fecundity fish. Whatever. I think that you'll have some instances where people find that a resource is pretty limited. It's really reliant on low efficacy. And, and it might be that rather than shutting off the fishery, you'd have select instances where you decided to control the technology. I think that, like, I would bet on seeing a handful of more examples.

[Jeremy Smith]

In a place like Minnesota where there's so many lakes. You could have like forward facing free lakes just like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what form it'll take when I crystal ball it. But I think that we'll have, instead of us keep saying paddlefish, paddlefish, paddlefish, I think we'll be able to go paddlefish, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. And we'll have more examples. With all that said, I have to be totally fair with all that said, if you showed up in my fish.

[Jeremy Smith]

Shack, oh, and you could go find.

[Steve Rinella]

And you said, no, dude, here it all is, let's hook it up. I would be like, dude, oh yeah, like, yeah, right. I would say let's go now to continue that thought at the end of the day. Depending on what happened at the end of the day, I might, I might have, I might also say that was amazing. You shouldn't be allowed to do that.

[Danny Thompson]

I had.

[Steve Rinella]

Let me give you just a, like a sort of a closing thought from Phil's. Wave me up. I'll keep it quick. You can hunt coyotes with thermals and in the state of living, hunt coyotes of thermals. We were out thermal hunting during deer season one time. Okay, it's deer season, but we're out at night thermal hunting coyotes. And it occurred to me, I'm like, dude, we ain't breaking the law. But there's some hot intel. Some hot intel right up against that line.

[Jeremy Smith]

Especially if you were coyote hunting at five o' clock in the morning, first light.

[Steve Rinella]

We weren't, we were at the tail end. But I just said it just occurred to me like, dude, I could be like, I'm coyote hunting, bro. And could have had a feeling like, yeah, I could see someone saying that you can't deer hunt after you coyote hunt with thermals.

[Brody]

Right?

[Steve Rinella]

All right, thanks, guys for coming out, man.

[Tony Peterson]

Thank you.

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks for having me.

[Steve Rinella]

I really appreciate you coming out and, and kicking this all around.

[Seth]

It's a good conversation.

[Steve Rinella]

It's a great conversation. It's interesting. It's one of those things that makes everybody a little smarter to think about.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

All right, thanks. Thanks again to our guests. Danny, Jeremy, thanks, man.

[Tony Peterson]

Appreciate it.

[Danny Thompson]

Thank you.

[Tony Peterson]

Foreign.

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[Phil]

Steve Rinella here. The American west with Dan Flores is a new podcast production on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. It's hosted by author and historian Dan Flores, who happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor. By focusing on deep time wild animals, native peoples in the west, unique environment such, Flores will challenge your understanding of the American west and he will help to explain why it is the way it is today. I count Dan Flores as a friend. We do not agree on everything, but he has had a massive impact on my understanding of American history and I invite you to get challenged by him in the same way that I have. Catch the premiere of the American west with Dan flores on Tuesday, May 6th on the Me Eater Podcast Network. Subscribe to the American west with Dan Flores On Apple, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out and I mean that in a very good way.

[Steve Rinella]

This is an Iheart podcast.