6 Ranch Podcast
Four Elk Guides in Hells
What happens when you blend the outdoors, seasoned guides, and the thrill of hunting and spearfishing into one unforgettable place? Join us as we venture into Hell's Canyon with Cliff Gray, Kevin Harlander, and Greg Jones, who share their experiences guiding elk in North America's steepest gorge and jobs that shaped our lives. We may or may not catch a Sturgeon while recording this episode.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
What happens when you blend the outdoors, seasoned guides, and the thrill of hunting and spearfishing into one unforgettable place? Join us as we venture into Hell's Canyon with Cliff Gray, Kevin Harlander, and Greg Jones, who share their experiences guiding elk in North America's steepest gorge and jobs that shaped our lives. We may or may not catch a Sturgeon while recording this episode.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
I just want to encourage everybody out there to like keep doing the work and and know that that the harder harder you try, no matter what you're trying at like, it's going to lead you closer to an opportunity like what we're having right now. These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me, I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, dect. If you don't know DECT they make bomb-proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy Don't be that guy.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's do introductions.
Speaker 2:Self-introductions. Yeah, yeah, all right, cliff Gray, where do I start, man? So tired I feel like the sun beat.
Speaker 1:The introduction out of me today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tired, I feel like the sun beat the introduction out of me today. Um, yeah, so I guess. Uh, the intro that I guess is most relevant is I was an outfitter for 11 years and sold that outfitting business two or three years ago and since then just been on an adventure to do the next cool thing. I guess that's my intro, man yeah that's a start.
Speaker 3:Kevin harlander uh, good buddy of james nash, and uh, we've worked together quite a bit. I also work in the outdoor industry. I've been kind of all across the board, uh, most recently working with our golly outdoors out of boise, idaho. Um yeah, just really stoked to be here, man. It is a beautiful place.
Speaker 4:Greg Jones. I've been honored to be on several of these podcasts with Mr Nash. I grew up ranching as a cowboy rancher, trapped as a young kid, trapped all the way up through, became a government trapper and ended that career in the state of Idaho with wolves, and now I'm just kind of a free ranger. So cheers.
Speaker 1:I consider all of you to be among my very best friends. I sincerely mean that, but there's another thing that ties us all together, besides the fact that every single one of you has been on the show more than once. We all guide elk together, mm-hmm, yeah, and you know, we've worked with each other in several different capacities, but we've all guided elk together guided archery elk. But we've all guided elk together, guided archery elk. But right now we are in Hell's Canyon, which is the steepest and deepest gorge in North America that separates the beautiful, rugged, exquisite portion of eastern Oregon from, you know, idaho, which you know Idaho. I've been thinking about this Careful, it's gotta be. Idaho has to be the state where you are most likely to run into a dude who's hunting with llamas.
Speaker 3:No, disagree immediately, really Montana.
Speaker 1:Montana is overtaken.
Speaker 3:Idaho yeah, because it's like the place you start, I think montana is like a starter hunting state well, no, I don't mean it that way, I think. I think it's like uh, you know, if you grew up somewhere other than the west? Yeah that is what you think of when you think of the west.
Speaker 4:I think uh o Really Oregon Bend? Oregon is the llama center of the world.
Speaker 1:Come on, but not hunting with llamas.
Speaker 4:They do everything with them probably. That's hard to say, I just don't think you can put Idaho over the top of Oregon with hunting llamas.
Speaker 1:If you're going to try and rent llamas to go on a hunting trip, that's going to be in Idaho.
Speaker 3:That's a good point. That's a solid point. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 4:That is a business in the state of Idaho. I bet you can find one every quarter of a mile and bend.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I think and I have some good evidence on this that it's the Idaho-Montana border.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like Idaho Falls.
Speaker 2:They can all see into Idaho, but they're in Montana.
Speaker 1:Okay, that checks out Just backing up All the hardcore llama guys.
Speaker 2:I know that's where they're at.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, jordan, yep, yeah, talking to you, sir, level up, okay. First question for the group what is the hardest job you ever had?
Speaker 2:The hardest job you ever had, the hardest job I ever had. You know, I think it's hard to answer that, james, because I think there's the jobs are hard for different reasons. You know, I think my, when I was outfitting, the hardest part of that job was managing people, particularly, I think, the type of people in that business, and I don't mean that as a bad thing, I just mean that they're a certain personality type.
Speaker 1:And do you mean guides? Do you mean clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean guides. Managing guides. Yeah, you know they're on the positive side, they're my kind of people. You know they have a certain thing that gets them into that business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it makes them hard to manage them into that business. Yeah, but it makes them hard to manage, yeah and uh. So I think that was probably my hardest job in that way. My hardest job physically what I? I remember exactly what it was it was. It sounds ridiculous, but it was tying baby walnut trees to the little stick going through when I was 15 or 16 years old. That was my job, just to you know. The little support stick on the walnut trees, yeah, boringest job ever and that's why it was the worst job you just go into the next tree and there's no.
Speaker 1:You don't even see progress was this on like a conveyor belt or?
Speaker 2:no, no. In a walnut orchard they plant the baby trees and they put the post next to it and somebody's got to tie the ribbons. And the problem is is by the time you're done with like whatever there is in a big block of walnut trees, the other end of the trees have grown enough that you got to tie the next ribbon on never ending, yeah, never ending it's like a factory gig, but at least you're outside, Sure. So yeah, those are the two ends of tough jobs from my perspective.
Speaker 1:Have you gone back to check on your walnuts?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've seen those orchards recently. Actually, how are they doing Good? It's amazing how quickly they grow. It makes you feel old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, when I built my house, my very first project, you know, after moving in and stuff like that was to plant trees. Like that's the thing that I considered to be something that was going to take a long time. And I remember a quote that I cannot contribute to the specific individual because I've forgotten that, but I think it was a French philosopher, and he went to his gardener and was like I would like to plant this specific type of tree, and the gardener said, well, you know, that's going to take 100 years before it bears fruit or whatever. And he's like, well then, we have no time to waste. Yeah Right, not a moment to waste. So the first thing I did was plant trees. And it is such a cool thing to take care of trees, yeah, but it's hard, it's very hard oh, yeah, yeah those mundane repetitive tasks.
Speaker 1:Those are, those are tough, oh yeah, so tough jobs. Yeah, what about you, kevin?
Speaker 3:man, I've got two, I think both for similar reasons. But when I was in high school I think I was a junior in high school I got a gig plowing snow in Minnesota. But I wasn't the plow guy, I was the dig out guy. So you know, a plow rig on a 250 or whatever would roll through a parking lot and I had to dig out all the entryways after the plow went by.
Speaker 1:So now it's like compacted snow. Oh, yeah, did we just get a hit on a surgeon rod.
Speaker 3:It sounded dingly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I did hear it.
Speaker 1:So, folks, we are sitting in my jet boat right now. We've got two surgeon rods out and I've got bells on them and one of them just gave us a little jingle, so this could be interrupted by a surgeon. We'll see. And kevin is up.
Speaker 3:kevin, you know he signed up to to reel in a fish, so we'll see what happens so yeah, plowing snow man, yeah, but not really plowing snow, mostly digging snow plowing snow with a shovel and wet snow you know, like wet, gross snow, yeah, sucked, and it was all night too, which is the first time I've ever, you know, because we grew up in the city, so like jobs ended at quitting time, right, and then fighting fire obviously was like one of the harder jobs but the most fun, because you're just like out in a place where you're never gonna go again, likely, and you just work until it's done, right, which was, uh, the first experience I had where you, where you finished, when it was three days later or whatever.
Speaker 1:And I fought fire for the feds. You fought fire for the state, yeah, which have wildly different sets of rules. There were occasions where I was allowed to work for 24 hours on initial attacks.
Speaker 3:When.
Speaker 1:I got to a fire could I could work 24 hours to try and catch that fire, but there was a lot of occasions that, no matter what that fire was doing, I had to quit after 16 hours right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we didn't have that right. My last season we worked from memorial day to labor day without a day off. Yeah, because they just, you just could, and it was great money right sure you can, just because, like after 40, baby, that's OT Sure.
Speaker 1:And when we're talking great money, we were talking about this recently.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah For a 17-year-old.
Speaker 1:Your base pay is like $14 an hour.
Speaker 3:I think I started at $12.75.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then you add overtime, hazard, pay stuff like that, and you can get up to like $28 an hour.
Speaker 3:Yeah, then we're living, we're raking it in, son you made a joke of like oh, we're buying microbrews after this check, which is so fucking crazy.
Speaker 1:But that's kind of where you're at, you know? Yeah, for sure, greg.
Speaker 4:Kind of like Kevin. There's two things that just jump out at me. First one, on a big scale, long range of time, was the ranch. It was brutal amount of work, there's for sure a fish that's eating on that rod right now. Yeah, which one is it?
Speaker 3:Is it the right one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a port side rod okay you tell me he's.
Speaker 3:He's not on right now, but he for sure hit it please don't let me in this fish or dingle oh, he might be, he might be on now is it a big set.
Speaker 1:I forget it's been 10 years it's a set on that rod, but you want to kind of feel some pressure, so let's go ahead and kind of sneak over there. I'm going to move.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take this off. I think no, no no, you keep that off. We're going live. We're going live on trying to catch this sturgeon. Oh, we're hooked already.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry that Kevin's fish is interrupting you here. Greg, this is good, this is good, this is good stuff.
Speaker 4:We've got to be sure and talk about Cliff's fish last night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cliff, tell us about your fish man. I honestly cannot believe that it happened. Put it in your hand, and if you feel pressure, then give pressure in return.
Speaker 3:But try not to move the bait. You know what I'm saying yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I got it all right. It doesn't feel like it's there.
Speaker 1:Ah, that, that's moving hmm, so that sinker's on a slider so he can pull line it's not like he's moving, moving, you know you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. Well, we'll see what happens. Cliff, tell us about your fish man? The Six Ranch Podcast is brought to you by Nix Handmade Boots, a family-owned company in Spokane, washington.
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Speaker 2:Yeah. So last night, my first sturgeon, which I had no idea that that was even going to be part of this trip man, yeah, but no amazing fish and, to be honest, to me the most amazing part of it was getting in the water with it. Yeah, yeah, just holding the thing, it's like holding the dinosaur.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know Well, it quite literally is yeah.
Speaker 2:And you telling me that that fish is probably over 100 years old is pretty wild to think about.
Speaker 1:What I'm hearing from the fish biologists is that, like a six, six foot, fish in this river is around 120. So a fish like yours at six and a half could be, you know, older than that by a very substantial margin. There's been fish that have been surveyed here, which your, your fish was surveyed because that scoot on his left side, that second scoot, was cut off. I know, know of one fish that was caught 10 years apart and had lost an inch oh really Right, in a decade. So either that was a bad measure on one of those occasions, but at any rate, in 10 years of living in here, had not grown, didn't grow. Yeah, wow, amazing, yes, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:So sturgeon, the white sturgeon, is what we're talking about. They evolved around 240 million years ago, so they're about twice as old as, or more than twice as old as, most of the dinosaurs that went extinct at the end of the Jurassic period Really really incredible animals. They're not doing particularly well in this river system. They're not reproducing that well. There's a lot of smallmouth bass here, which are a non-native species, and the smallmouth eat stuff before it can get down to the bottom where the sturgeon can eat it. Something that Idaho is talking about right now is allowing spearfishing for smallmouth bass. We've been down here spearfishing for the last two days but due to the regulations in Oregon and Idaho we can only spear for non-game species. So we've been targeting squawfish, which are called northern pike minnow, large-scale suckers and carp Shot a 13-pound carp. I'm feeling pretty good about myself, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those things are giant. Yeah, you turn the head and suddenly they're in front of you and they're not easy to kill either. I think that's the you know what.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're a smart fish.
Speaker 3:Yeah, super smart fish. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So what I mean? This is kind of an odd thing. Right, you've got four like accomplished Western elk guides who are in the River Canyon spearfishing in July. Like, what do you think is the nexus between guiding elk and spearfishing Spanning generations?
Speaker 2:You know? I think it's interesting, james, because I don't. You know, I think there's two types of hunters or guys that are in the hunting world. Some guys are very focused on one thing and've never been that way and I don't want to project on you guys, but I get the feeling from you guys that you guys aren't either, that you're, you're up for the next adventure, and I think that's part of it, at least from my perspective. You know it's. Does that make any sense to you?
Speaker 1:you're the most accomplished spear fisherman among us, by a lot right. You spend a huge part of your winter doing it. Where you live, in Puerto Rico, you know you've spear fished for your whole life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean off and on for probably 20 years. Yeah, but more seriously in the last two, three years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's about the amount of time that I've taken it more seriously. I just don't live in an oceanic area so I don't get to do it quite as frequently as you do, but I started spearfishing 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's always been very alluring to me. But you know, 17 of those years have just been massive failures.
Speaker 3:Massive failures, you know 17 of those years have just been massive failures.
Speaker 1:massive failures, you know, without trying to learn, without trying to get trained, without using the correct gear, without going with buddies, like lots of you know, just really stupid decisions, and I can definitely tell you that doing it right is way more enjoyable.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I'm 64 years old, I've never done this before and my first outing in Hell's Canyon, which isn't easy, you know you don't want to get sucked into that, out into the river. You got to watch that current, but I was successful today and in listening to you guys and some of the podcasts I was really intrigued and I'm going to tell you, man, I'm hooked by the second time I went into the water. I was hunting and I really was.
Speaker 1:I swallowed that hook. It's deep and it is hunting too. It is it really?
Speaker 4:is when you find that perfect boulder where the water is rolling and you know there's a nice little pocket down there that the water isn't moving, you peek over that and you're just waiting for anything to move.
Speaker 1:And they're there. They're usually there and allows spearfishing. For smallmouth one, I mean, there's a kajillion of them in here, right, there's so many in here that they're limiting their own growth potential. So if you're a ride-or-die smallmouth guy and you're like, hey, you know, I love fishing for these things, we're going to make them bigger for you. Yeah, okay, and there's already plenty of them. If you're somebody who cares very much about the ecosystem, about native species, hey, we're going to make it better for the native species by removing some of these fish. And then if you're somebody that's like, you know, I really don't want my recreational opportunities taken away. Honestly, if there's very few people who are going to come down here and do this, that rod is for sure getting hit.
Speaker 4:And you ought to see the fish that are just hitting the top of the water around us. I mean, it's evening, it's just. The sky is just barely light and there's fish going nuts everywhere. Yeah, this is just an amazing canyon.
Speaker 1:This is my first river trip in the new jet boat. Kind of interesting. We're overloaded on the way up here. I'm never going to put that much weight in this boat again, but we've had a pretty nice camp. I mean, cliff cooked us ribeye steaks last night. We had fish tacos tonight with smallmouth that we caught.
Speaker 4:I brought the scotch. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is on board at present and, uh, mr kevin harlander is taking care of lunches for us, having some, some light breakfast. Look at that thing, go. So if, man, if, if it's pulling like that dude, you just got to set the hook and like do this thing okay yeah, but like wait until there's there's tension he's got to be pulling, and then you set the hook and then it's, it's donkey kong. Gosh the suspense right now, okay how big was that fish?
Speaker 1:last night. Uh, I think it was about six and a half feet yeah, yeah are we tight? You might need to tighten the drag.
Speaker 3:There's something moving down there. I think Are you on. Oh yeah, okay, let's do this.
Speaker 4:I think, so Check your drag, because I'm not sure If I set that Real like crazy.
Speaker 1:We don't want it to hang up In the bottom.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it doesn't feel heavy. There's definitely Weight there. We don't want it to hang up in the bottom.
Speaker 1:I don't know it doesn't feel heavy. There's definitely weight. There Is that drag still pulling.
Speaker 3:It feels like it bounces every time I pull it up.
Speaker 1:Might be the weight bouncing on you. Could it have a catfish on there too? There's some big catfish in this river.
Speaker 2:I've definitely been reeling in like, like oh this must be a small surgeon, and uh, turns out to just be catfish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like you know, just wait and weed three foot catfish dang, all right. Uh well, let's pull the weeds off and cast her out. Cast her back out there. Try again. This is gonna going to be sporty Cliff, what's the softest job you ever had?
Speaker 2:Easiest job I ever had Softest, softest. My softest job was probably when I was 22, from 22 to 25. I was a financial trader.
Speaker 1:What's that mean?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it can mean a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:I, in particular, traded like proprietary strategies, so I didn't.
Speaker 2:What I did was so I did it for some established investment companies at the time and then my brother started one and I started working for him and, uh, what I would do is I would, basically, I would be given a set of equities if it was an equity type of strategy or a set of debt, you know, just like, uh, bonds and that sort of thing that I needed to trade, and I would just figure out how to buy it.
Speaker 2:Or if I was selling stuff the most effective, you know, most effective and cheapest so a lot, some of my stuff I would even it was at that time I'd still buy it over the phone. And then we had I don't know how far you want to get into this man, but um, everything I did, we were buying and selling stuff at the same time. There were what was called hedge strategies at the time. So a lot of what I would do is find the most efficient way to borrow all the stocks that we shorted, and so that would take phone calls to the investment banks and that sort of thing. So I did a lot of that.
Speaker 1:Did you short the housing market?
Speaker 2:No, we never had any strategies that were related to that.
Speaker 1:Do you wish that you had?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was during that era.
Speaker 3:That was during that era.
Speaker 2:Fortunately for us and my brother's business that still exists that we weren't in that world, so it didn't benefit us, but it didn't kill us, but it didn't.
Speaker 1:It didn't kill us either, you know all right, greg, whenever you're ready, we're collectively moving back to the cabin of the boat all right, all right, this lineup folks, we uh, you know we missed the fish. We recast the rod. Now we wait again. That's the situation. So this podcast set up is a recorder that has four microphones plugged into it. So first time ever when a when a fish messes with us like that, we all have to move as a single unit together like a pod a pod of surf.
Speaker 4:I've done pretty well so far yeah, so far so good.
Speaker 3:Honestly, yeah, kevin, softest job oh man, a pod of syrup. I thought we were doing pretty well so far. Yeah, so far, so good. Honestly, kevin, softest job. Oh man. I worked at an ad agency in Minneapolis with some great people, but it was just so crazy to me how little shit got done.
Speaker 1:Really yeah, because I come from landscaping and demoing houses and studying marketing and biology.
Speaker 3:so I was like well, I'll try this for a moment. And it was just really funny to me how my dad used to always tell me that he's like what do you just talk about ideas? I'm like yeah kind of.
Speaker 3:It was a cool experience but I quickly realized that it just wasn't. For me it was more about the office life and the culture and all that stuff that just became bigger than the actual, the actual work, you know. And they produced some incredible work right cadillac ads and stuff for arby's and stuff that's out there in the world now, but it was just pretty soft so what did you learn from that job that you are applying to?
Speaker 3:you know the work that you do with, like argali yeah, totally um, yeah, totally, I worked in like the pseudo role, like dual role, of like media buying and then like creative service stuff too. So just like understanding the balance between, like a creative idea and the analytics that go to it. Right, so you can have the best idea in the world, but if nobody gives a shit, it's like it doesn't matter. Yeah, so trying to balance like the science and the art of everything and everything we do. Um, I learned that as a 22 year old. You know that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Dude, if you can figure out how to balance art and science at 22,. Like kind of got it made.
Speaker 3:I'm still figuring it out, think you know, but it was a good introduction to how they thought about how to figure that out. Sure, you know how to like measure and they always had two creative people to every one account person. So the you know, because the account person always went on logic, right, sure, but sometimes you got to take a big hit, you know, and like try to figure it out. Yeah, so that was pretty cool, it was a good experience. It was in. I had to take the you know the bus to downtown minne, minneapolis, which was new for me, never done that before. Yeah, it was cool, but it was often the people that were like the weekend stuff that they would do was very different than what I was doing. Yeah, interesting gig, greg, softest job.
Speaker 4:Don't have one.
Speaker 2:That is the best answer ever.
Speaker 4:I've had three jobs in my life. The first one was a ranch, which was insanely tough. I ran it for 15 years, my wife and I ran it for 15 years, and then the hardest short time was laying pipe in portland um going from a ranch in southeast oregon we're talking about softest yeah, but there wasn't one. And then I mean, then there was the government job. You know, I was a government trapper, so there were no soft jobs you didn't have to like like bag groceries for a day or nothing no, no, no.
Speaker 4:I had three jobs in my life. I grew a branch in Trappin, grew a branch in and then laid pipe for seven months in Portland, which was brutal, and then I become a government trapper. Those are my three jobs. I've never had a soft job in my life. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:But one of those three Softest has to be softer than the other two.
Speaker 4:I don't know man.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry they were tough.
Speaker 4:I mean you know from. I mean I ran 10,000 to 12,000 square miles of trap and I had a 400-mile trap line. So I can't say my government, you know job was was the easiest you know in portland we had. We had a lady that that come out and would chase us with a deer rifle in the morning because we woke her up.
Speaker 4:Um, we went, you know, I'd never run an excavator in my life and we went 28 feet deep on burnside, 181st and Burnside, oh my God. And in that first 20 feet of trench we had three coffin boxes stacked up, you know, 10-foot coffin boxes stacked up. The pipe layer was down there and I was the guy behind with the roller wheel excavator compacting everything behind as we started moving. In that first 20 yards there was a 22-inch high-pressure cast main, there was an 18-inch high-pressure cast main water line, there was power, there was propane, there was telephone. It was just spaghetti and I had never run an excavator in my life and I had to reach down there and compact all this dirt and come up. So yeah, it was almost a mental breakdown for me.
Speaker 3:Not soft.
Speaker 4:Not soft, and so I have no soft jobs, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I don't. You're just unwilling to answer the question.
Speaker 2:Because one of them has to be the softest. They were all hard jobs, but one had to be the softest.
Speaker 1:I'm not trying to take anything away from you, which was the less hard job of the three.
Speaker 4:Laying pipe in Portland. Okay, once I got good at it, it was, you know, okay, we survived. You know, I'd have to say, you know, laying pipe in Portland was the softest job I ever had.
Speaker 4:We had druggies on the cruise that were. You know, we had one guy that would take the loader downtown Portland, burnside, with the big loader to buy drugs and he would come back and at 2 o'clock in the afternoon he'd be so wiped out you just he'd be. One time he'd come flying backwards, passed out, and I reached over with the hoe and just and hooked it and almost slipped his loader over, but I had to wake him up because he was full bore, going backwards, absolutely passed out.
Speaker 3:Not soft. Not soft Makes a guy feel pretty soft yeah.
Speaker 2:I had multiple soft jobs. The ad agency was hard.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I worked at a feed store organizing stuff like organizing pallets with a forklift. That's pretty soft.
Speaker 4:I'd take any of those over half of the wrap-up wallet trees you know one after the other, or any of that Well that was in the hard job category.
Speaker 1:Huh, that was the hard job category.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, it's all about definition man, because I think some of the softest jobs are mentally the hardest.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's why the ad agency sucks so much, because I just couldn't do anything. Yeah, Like you know, you're not active. And then Fight and Fire was a great job. It was hard as hell, but you know what about you? Yeah, what was your softest job?
Speaker 1:Organizing stuff with a forklift? Yeah, and that, what was your softest job? Uh, organizing stuff with a forklift yeah, and that that was funny. It was at a as at a feed store in dillon montana that isn't there anymore now, it's a murdoch's, and I hadn't worked there very long.
Speaker 1:I was a freshman or sophomore in college and I'd made enough money fighting fire and you know I'd made enough overtime throughout the summer to be able to pay for college and, you know, pay for rent and uh you know a couple micro brews even yeah, throughout the throughout the school year, and I asked these folks for, uh, for a day off, right, and I said I'll make it up on another day, but I would like to have a three-day weekend so that I can go to Oregon. I've got a buck tag, I need to kill a deer so that I've got some meat. And they're like, ooh, we don't really do days off. Another rod just went. They said we don't really do days off until somebody's worked here for a year. I was like, okay, this is about a month out. I said, well, I'll give you two weeks notice then, because this is important to me. And they said, yeah, we don't really do two weeks notice either.
Speaker 1:alright, see ya, I'm out and you know, drove home and shot a buck. That's right and I don't feel bad about that. I feel like that was honest dealing with with everybody involved like they're. They're holding their policies. I was holding to what was important to me. There's, you know, plenty of plenty of time involved for everybody to make it fair. I think that was fine, but the job itself. I'm not a terribly organized person. Everybody that knows me knows that I'm not an organized person. I came on a spearfishing trip down here and forgot my wetsuit. All right. I've been swimming around in 67-degree water and like battling hypothermia.
Speaker 4:But it's 110 or 108.
Speaker 1:It was 102 in the shade, for sure. Today I measured it on the old Garmin watch. But um yeah, I wasn't like super well suited for that job. But it was kind of fun running a forklift and everybody if nobody's run a forklift before like 10 out of 10 would recommend it's like a zero turn lawnmower makes you feel powerful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah forklift certified.
Speaker 1:That's a thing now? Sure is yeah, yeah, what's a job.
Speaker 4:Greg, that you wish you had had but never had. I can remember sitting on an open or an old swather no cap, you know in heat like what it was today.
Speaker 1:We get it Like not soft, what it was today.
Speaker 4:We get it Like not soft. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 4:The job I wanted was I wish my dad had been a sport fisherman in the Keys, florida Keys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, that's that's. Yeah, you know Jimmy Buffett was coming on. Yeah, I crave the water, I crave that, that blue caribbean, that fishing, that you know. Yeah, that's that. That would have been the job it's like being a deckhand first mate captain, something like that absolutely just anything working on the ocean, anything get away from the heat and the dirt and you know getting kicked but sport fishing, not commercial fishing sport fishing. Yeah right, I didn't want to. No, Commercial fishing never appealed to me.
Speaker 3:It was the I wanted to run the big boat out and chase big fish. Kevin man, that's a tough one.
Speaker 1:That's definitely a fish, right, that's for sure a fish. The rod shakes. That moved the boat. Is he on then?
Speaker 3:Shall we. I don't think it's on man, that's the weird thing to me. It's like it's intermittent.
Speaker 1:This is like a 6,000-pound jet boat and it just moved the whole boat.
Speaker 2:You know that fish last night did the same thing, though Remember, yeah, boat. You know that fish last night did the same thing, though remember we didn't come down here till he jumped, yeah that which rod is it.
Speaker 4:I think it's the right that port rod has been in clover to the rocks, and it was going kind of out like that one.
Speaker 1:Well, both are, though yeah so what I think is that maybe you got in the current when you recast and that way it's rolling.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to go with that, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:Keep going. You know, I think that I would like to have been some kind of biologist right Like wildlife biologist just to be out.
Speaker 3:I see the rough job they have now, though, and I'm glad I'm not right Rough as in like what? Well, just it's a lot of like public interface that aren't very stoked with them. Yeah, a lot. Yeah, you know, and I recognize they're. They're beholden to a agency and things like that, but they've got pressure from every side. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's just impossible to win right, which I don't thrive in those situations. I like to win once in a while, but I think, if I had to do anything right, I think I would be a fly fishing guide on little water. I just love watching dry flies get ate.
Speaker 1:I think 2015 was the first time you guided fly fishing for me. Yeah, somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I loved it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think the problem that I always saw with it too and this is the same thing with fire is like how long can you do this before you're like, oh man, I don't know what else I can do? Very well, right, and I was, I guess, smart enough at the time to know like, well, I can't fight fire till I die. That's impossible. Yeah, I mean, you can, right, you move up and whatever, but you can't really get like fighting fire till you die, right.
Speaker 3:Same thing with fly guy, and I think you can do it till you're ancient, but you gotta burn out man. I mean. Same thing with elk guiding right, like after a season, you're like I need a month off. So I don't know, I just really enjoy, like greg, I enjoy being on that, that type of water specifically, and and the fact that it's active every day and you got to like you know where the fish live and you get to meet different people and I'm pretty emotionally in tune with folks. I like talking with people, hearing different stories, and that's a great way to do it, because there's nobody else on that boat with you.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, you have fabulous emotional intelligence, which is a real weakness of mine, and it's something that I've always admired about you, um, and you are also the type of friend that you know is willing to like call me out and help me with it when I don't realize that I'm doing it wrong sure yeah sure, yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, on the guide burnout thing and I know there's a bunch of guides that listen to this show, so I'm going to bring it up and I've talked about this before, I'm gonna do it again. The the scary thing about burning out as a guide is that it sneaks up on you totally, like you don't realize it. It's not like a slow burn, it's where, like, oh, I'm starting to lose passion for, for fly fishing. It's like you're going strong and then suddenly you wake up and you look at your fly fishing gear and you're like I don't ever want to. I don, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 3:I have no desire to do this yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like, don't don't fall under the spell that you think that you're going to see it coming, Cause you're just not. You're just flat out not.
Speaker 1:And you can lose that thing that you loved so much, that you wanted to dedicate your life and your soul and your happiness and your health to making sure that other people could experience it Like you can lose that. You can lose it without ever knowing that it's sneaking up on you. It happened to me with fly fishing. You know Totally, like I've fly fished like once in the last three years yeah, twice maybe, but and I I love it when I do it but I need that buddy to come along and be like hey, man, like I really want to go fishing today. I want to go fishing with you. Like let's go do it, and then I have a great time, sure, but I've completely lost that. Like, oh, there's a hatch on, I'm gonna string up a rod and go whoop on some fish.
Speaker 3:That's gone, I lost it, and that used to be so important to me I've also been in tune, you know, just with like things you didn't grow up with that are so exotic and new, like we grew up spin fishing man for walleyes, right like nothing, nothing like fly fishing. So I think it was just like I got to that point later in life where I was like man, this is really fun, but like how long does that last, you know before, and so what I've been trying to do is like keep it for myself a little bit you know, like enjoy going down the river two days a week after work, sure like can and it's awesome, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, very important, yeah, what you think.
Speaker 2:Job that I wish I would have done. Yeah, you know, I think so. I got my pilot's license when I was 17. I actually got it before my driver's license because I failed my driver's license the first time. Failed my driver's license the first time on an unprotected left turn.
Speaker 1:You don't have to parallel park an airplane. Huh, no, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sure don't. So I couldn't get an appointment. I went late and then I couldn't get an appointment to retest. And what's crazy about it is I feel like I was a decent driver, but if I mean I have, no, I have nothing to say about the test, because if the woman wouldn't have, like, like, been very stern about stop, yeah, we could have both died like it was.
Speaker 2:I was, you know, an unprotected left turn. You're yielding the traffic coming this way and I was for sure just pulling out. I don't know, nerves got to me or whatever, but anyways, between my first driver's test and my second driver's test, I took my pilot's license and my pilot's test and passed. So I and I flew quite a bit from like 17 to maybe 21 and I always thought, you know, being a bush plane pilot or something like that would be fun, yeah, and I think I would have liked it. Like now, whenever I fly in the backcountry mountain, flying that sort of thing with somebody else going into a camp or whatever, uh, I always think to myself, yeah, this would have been fun. But I think the thing about that is, I think, small airplane pilots.
Speaker 2:The problem is that's the kind of flying I would have wanted to do I had no interest being an airline pilot or something like that, but I think that it's actually somewhat similar to guiding those people burnout too.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, but when I talk to them, when I'm flying into you know, remote back country strips and stuff. I always talk to people because I'm intrigued by, like what if I would have taken that career path, you know? So that would have for sure been it, yeah, interesting. And it's weird because even after selling my business, I view it as this, because the obvious question would be like, well, why don't you go do it now, you know, why don't I go? You know, create a business in that world and get all my commercial ratings or whatever, I could still do it. I feel like that that time has passed for me you know, what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's like a younger guy's adventure career slash, whatever you know in one of the, you know, class three plus, class four minus rapids down here that we came through on the way up, like I, I crested over a wave and probably had a little bit too much throttle on and then when I came down into the trough I carried too much acceleration submarine.
Speaker 1:The boat wave came over the top of the boat and the pump came out of the water and we cavitated and lost her momentum and then as I sat back down into that water column I no longer had the momentum or the power to continue going up this, this big wave train. So I had to walk the boat out to to the right, find a little bit slower water power back up and then go on through it, which was fine, right, but it, you know, requires a bunch of movements on really the two primary controls that I have, which is the steering stick and the throttle, that's fewer controls that you use in an airplane. But when we got through that rapid he said you know, it's interesting seeing you run the jet boat, it's similar to flying a plane. And what ways are piloting a jet boat similar to piloting a plane? You know the word pilot comes from boats a long time before it came for planes it comes from boats a long time before it came for planes.
Speaker 2:I can only comment to the similarities from an observer on the jet boat side, because I've never driven one, but what I was observing— Well, you're driving all the way out tomorrow, so get ready, oh.
Speaker 3:Well, you guys better put your life jackets on.
Speaker 1:I hope you paid attention to the 70 or so river miles between us and the ramp Memorize those carefully.
Speaker 3:You just zig and then zag, you'll be fine.
Speaker 2:Just observing you drive the boat I almost said fly the boat. Just observing you.
Speaker 1:We flew for a minute, felt like it from the back let me tell you.
Speaker 2:One.
Speaker 2:I could tell that you were focused the whole time. I could just tell by your mannerisms and stuff. You were focused, particularly when you were coming to a rapid, and I could tell that it was just from your mannerisms. It wasn't like, hey, I'm not going to bother James with a question right now because he's in the zone to figure out how to navigate this. I think that's very similar to mountain flying there might be 30 different paths you can take, but a subset of them will work, but that subset's pretty small, so you've got to figure it out.
Speaker 2:The decision-making process is really important to the outcome because there's only a few ways you can do it where it's safe. You know what I mean. And the thing is, is it what's weird about flying? You know and I get the feeling it's the same as as driving this jet boat is you might be able to make one mistake, but two mistakes and you're gonna die, right, you know, and that I think that is what I was talking about. It's like okay, yeah, this is you got to really be on it, because you're on the edge all the time.
Speaker 2:Just the nature of it. You can't have seven backup plans. Yeah, you know, and it's funny because when you learn to fly an airplane, they teach you how to fly an airplane in a way that you always have. You know, okay, I'm gonna always keep this much altitude. You know all these different ways. I'm going to always be looking for a place to emergency land. Right, I'm building up these layers of safety, but then when you actually go do it, particularly if you get into backcountry or mountain flying, all that goes away and you, if you're really good at it, you only have two layers. You know, and sometimes the reality is you have one layer. If you don't make the right decision, you're gonna die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know there's also a huge similarity between the way that water works in a whitewater river, oh sure, to the way that air works in mountains, which, you know, water's denser than air, obviously, but the way that it's acting, that the eddies, the rapids, the turbulence, all of that is is actually very similar to the way that wind works as it goes over, honestly, similar terrain just higher up. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Yeah, and also just the interplay between power and that. Right, sure, you know, in an airplane, if you don't have enough power because of the wind and the certain conditions or whatever, you could really get yourself in trouble really quick. Yeah, same deal with this. That seemed to be from just an trouble. Really quick, yeah, same deal with this. I could, I could. That seemed to be from just an observer standpoint, yeah.
Speaker 1:And like flying downwind dude, uh, you know, it's like not everybody's favorite thing to do Uh, in, in some situations you're going to see that tomorrow, cause we're going to be flying downwind. Yeah, we're, yeah, we're for riding down current and, uh, I don't get the luxury of of slowing down the way that I do when I'm coming up, yeah, and I also don't get to see the rapids because the water's falling away from me on a slope. So I have to, um, remember all of these things in my mind from the trips that I've done up and down, whether it's rafts or jet boats or or whatever. I have to remember all of them.
Speaker 1:The other like really wild thing about this river in particular is that has a tide. So right now this river is doubling every night and then reducing by half every day. And the crazy thing and that's because of the hydro dams, so they're holding back water during the day, so then the water level drops to like 9,000 CFS cubic feet per second. A basketball is about one cubic foot, so it's still a ton of water, and then at night they're bumping it up to 18,000, 22,000. The energy that's coming from these dams is getting exported to California, the energy that we're using here in this part of Oregon is coming from coal plants in Wyoming, so hydropower comes with problems of its own own, but it is very clean as far as energy goes and that's being exported for something that you know isn't super clean, which is coal super, super interesting.
Speaker 1:But because of that man, I don't know whether I'm going down an 18 000, 20 000, 22 000 cubic foot per second river, or 9 000 or 6 000 cubic foot per second river, or 9,000 or 6,000 cubic foot per second river. The guys that live down here and guide down here all the time like they've got marker rocks throughout the entire river and they can look at that and know what the flow is and know if they need to adjust their line. People like like mark knapp, who have run this, run this thing close to every month of the year for almost an entire career for Oregon State Police. Mark runs the same line, whether it's 100,000 CFS or 6,000 CFS. He runs the safe line and I've heard from multiple people that have ridden with him that they don't think that he deviates the center line of his boat more than 12 inches off that line on every trip.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. Another awesome thing is like and like, shout out to Oregon State Police, man, law enforcement, that's a freaking hard job. We're talking about hard jobs. That's a hard job. Sure, you're not getting a lot of love there and it's tough in ways that that people just can't imagine.
Speaker 1:But, uh, I was running a section of the river that I'd guided on with rafts, but I'd never run in a jet boat before, so I'd never gone up. I'd never seen that perspective before. This spring I wanted to go do a new section, to bear hunt. So I, you know, sent Mark a text. I was like, man, can you, can you talk me through this a little bit? He's like, yeah, come down the office, had a cup of coffee and then sat down for almost two hours and he talked me through every single turn in the river, every single rock, every single flow. We looked at google earth, we talked about all of it and you know I took meticulous notes. I went downtown and laminated it afterwards and he said you know in, you know 18 or 20 years or whatever. Nobody's ever asked me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like, really Like you have more knowledge about this than anybody and nobody's ever asked. Yeah, Like that's life-saving information, so shout out to oregon state police yeah freaking big time. Appreciate them yeah oh man, uh, cliff, coming into this. Like you've spearfished in california, puerto rico, lots of places in the world. You've done blue water, you've done reef. Um, have you've done reef? Have you ever spear fished in freshwater before?
Speaker 2:I don't think I have, James. I was trying to think about that. I don't think I even did as a kid, you know, with a pole spear or whatever. I think this is the first time I've ever shot at fish in freshwater.
Speaker 1:So, beyond the freshwater aspect of it, this is a river that has class five rapids. It has incredible eddies, currents, undercurrents, rock cliffs all around, huge boulders, limited visibility. What was the difference between the reality of spearfishing here in Hell's Canyon versus your expectation?
Speaker 2:spearfishing here in Hell's Canyon versus your expectation. You know, probably the biggest thing that jumps out to me is something I didn't expect is I actually expected the fish to be dumber, particularly the fish, you know, like carp, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Sure, I thought they would just sit there, and particularly the fish that were in groups. I mean, we would shoot one fish out of groups and that was it Right? That surprised me. Yeah, I thought it would be. You know, you find a group and they just sit in there like a koi pond, you know, and so my expectation there was way off. But I will say that it makes it a lot more fun when you, when you know you got to hunt them, you know. So I wouldn't say that's a bad thing by any means. It makes it much more fun. Yeah, you've got one crack at it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, a lot of things have to line up, seemingly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and and the other thing is, is it's hard? I've drift, I've drift, speared a lot in the ocean, but that's different because, what is drift spearing?
Speaker 2:for people that don't know. So you jump off the boat here, right, you get in the current. A lot of times when you're blue water fishing you'll put out a flasher and you'll chum and you basically drift with the current. And usually you set up the drift where the divers, the spear fishermen, jump off the boat and they're going to drift over some sort of feature like an underwater pinnacle, maybe a rack, something like that, where the fish are going to be there. So you're going to time it where you jump in, you put the flasher down, you start chumming and by the time you kind of get the chum going down past the flasher, ideally you're over this structure around then, or a little bit. You know, basically that's what you're going for, because you're going to pull the fish that are up off of that structure or hanging around that structure, because bait are hanging around the structure.
Speaker 2:So now that's a lot different, because you are in moving water, but you're not. You're only fighting the current. If you need to move right, you get to chasing something, something shy, or you need to dive down and you know, maybe a wahoo shows up and you've got to fight the current a little bit to get over there. That's totally different than the water. Here you're always fighting the current right in in this, in the sense that you see a fish, if, if you, if you drop down to try to shoot it, you have to fight that current the whole time. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:That's different, that's very it's different than than than what I would call like drift. You know, drift spearing in the ocean. You basically ride. You ride the currents in the ocean. You know, here, here, you're fighting them all the time. You know, and drift spearing in the ocean, you basically ride the currents in the ocean. You know, here you're fighting them all the time. You know, and I found it hard to be real sneaky on fish here because of it. Yeah, you know, and I'm sure it's lack of practice, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, you duck, dive and you know, even if you're going to only dive 15 feet, if you go straight down you're still you could. If the fish is in front of you 10 feet when you go straight down, you could end up right on top of the fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean, or past it, yeah, yeah, who knows? Right? So now you're making a lot more motion. They're going to you know. So it's interesting, very cool aspect of it. I actually think one of the big benefits of this type of spearfishing is just getting reps in and at shooting. Yeah, you know, you can dive a lot in the ocean I mean blue water, you lots of days. You're never going to shoot your gun, right, you know? But even reefs in the ocean, right, you're looking for certain fish.
Speaker 1:You may only shoot your depends on what you're doing, but you may not shoot your gun that much yeah so yeah, we're, we're seeing fish, like we're finding the fish and all of us connected with, which I think is a tremendous achievement. I would love to be corrected on this, but I don't know if anybody has ever come to to this whitewater river in this remote wilderness canyon on a spearfishing trip before.
Speaker 2:No, that's cool you know, I likely not I mean probably.
Speaker 1:I've never heard of it. Probably not, yeah, probably not. But while there's a lot of danger involved in this and I'm not I'm not going to pretend like it's not dangerous it it's a dangerous trip up it's. It's dangerous diving, you know there's there's a lot of rocks, there's limited visibility, there's tremendous undercurrents in places and a lot of people have drowned here, uh, and it's a tough situation. But if, if you're not overweighted. You know, we were really really cautious on this trip. Like we had two people observing every time that we had two people diving, and then the divers were watching each other, and I so appreciate all of you guys being willing to do that. I know it's not particularly fun to sit on a rock and you know me paddle around, but you know we're all looking out for each other and I think that those are some precautions that we've we've got to take here.
Speaker 1:But what an opportunity oh yeah to come up here and and hunt big fish and and see lots of fish and, man, I wish we could hunt the bass because they're so cocky oh, yeah, um and you know it's like removing bass from this ecosystem is going to do nothing but good for literally everything.
Speaker 1:Like why not? There's no limit on bass here. The season is open year round and there's no limit, so why would the state of oregon ever care? Why would the state of idaho ever care, if people are coming in here and spearfishing for them, right? Doesn't make any sense to me at all, and I really hope idaho makes the right decision on that, because probably um oregon will reciprocate in this waterway and it will start to open up these like tremendous recreational opportunities for people to engage in this, yeah, and and good conservation to boot. So I just think it's there's so many wins involved in it. What is greg uh, since you're new to this, a lesson from spearfishing that you are going to apply to guiding elk this season?
Speaker 4:Be prepared for what you don't, what I guess you don't know. But I mean, but how do you do that? Yeah, I mean, I come into this. I wasn't ready for, I guess, how incompetent I was going to be underwater with a speargun I'd never handled one before but, man, I've pulled the trigger on a lot of stuff in a lot of tough situations.
Speaker 4:You know, I have a fixed wing aircraft, or you know, or you know rotor craft, and I thought, well, that covers it right? No, I was a bumbling fool down there. I mean yeah holy smokes, you know, I mean I got fans on that are three times longer than anything I've ever used. I'm in a current that is dangerous. Um, I've got a, a, I think. Today I ran three different types of spear guns two different pole spears and a spear gun All of them.
Speaker 1:So you had a nine-foot Nomad pole spear with a slip tip, which I love. That's like a blue water, like I'm going to go shoot Wahoo, or.
Speaker 4:K Wahoo or.
Speaker 1:Kubera or, like you know, big hogfish type of pole spear. And then you know one of my favorite, which is my three-pronged Kai spear, made in a Wahoo Like super badass.
Speaker 3:really quick just fun, easy to handle. Yeah, it's like the perfect intro into the water Intuitive.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like the recurve bow of spearfishing you know, I really like that little spear.
Speaker 4:And then the speargun, and then you also shot the pin flicker from Aimrite, which, sorry folks, not on the website, you got to know somebody, but man, I love that gun yeah, I mean I learned real fast that I mean everything was so new and I, I missed um, I missed three carp today and I had them, I had them pinned, but I wasn't, I wasn't ready there, there they are the current's taking me away.
Speaker 4:Oh crap, my fins are so big that I can't maneuver. And then I pulled the spear gun up and I learned real fast not to. It took all of my strength to cock that thing, to pull that bungee down and get it into that slot. It took everything I had. It's going to be interesting the bruises I'm going to have on my chest here in a day or two.
Speaker 4:But I learned real fast that you want to hold on to that when you pull the trigger, because that thing popped me in the mouth so hard. What the gun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh you weren't expecting any recoil.
Speaker 4:It's got a little bit of recoil there. It got me. Good, I'm blowing air and spitting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that got me good, and so I'm blowing air and spitting. Yeah, you got to get them out there a little bit. You want to straighten that arm? I'm getting it right up there.
Speaker 4:That punched me good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you pretty good, yeah, that's funny, that's a single band gun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could see that, though Like you're not anticipating it, no.
Speaker 3:You've been shouldering rifles for 64 years. Yeah Well, you've been shouldering rifles for 64 years.
Speaker 4:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:So now I'm sticking this thing out here, you know, like a sawed-off shotgun. Oh, because you're aiming too. Yeah right, I'm trying to aim and you know I'm getting moved. That's probably my fault. No, I should have known.
Speaker 4:I mean the effort it takes to get that band down there. Dude, something's going to happen when you turn it loose you know it's gonna go both ways. I should have known that you know what you know.
Speaker 2:It's funny is your? So? People who are listening they can't see it, but you're doing this palms up, pulling the band down, and this is totally the intuitive way to pull the band right. Next time you do it, put palms down really, pull this really, and you'll find that it's you're much stronger okay, yeah it's so funny because everybody does it this way, like you know crank down on that thing, but palms down okay it'll be, it'll be easy to know.
Speaker 2:So it's easier for me by a lot that way you know, what I found is the.
Speaker 1:The best lesson in learning how to crank that band back is watching a you know 110 pound uh kyleo made up, oh yeah yeah, crank back bands on a gun, that's like you know 20 centimeters longer than mine. It's like okay, all right Time to pour some coals on the fire. You can't, you can't be like this is undoable.
Speaker 3:The band. The bands are too short on this gun.
Speaker 2:He out, yeah, but I I you know, greg, I think you almost uh touched on it. But one thing I noticed about spearfishing that is very much elk hunting uh related is I always like the dynamic of getting drawn on elk. Yeah, I feel like when you're spearfishing it's always like that. Yeah, it's like okay, when do I yeah, when do I turn?
Speaker 1:the gun with a pole spear.
Speaker 2:Because they can see everything. You're already in the zone. It's like you rarely are going to be quote drawn when you see them, unless the gun is already pointed at them, because obviously with a spear gun you've got the bands back, it's like ready to go. But if they're not right in front of the gun, you've got to move the gun over to them and they're in the zone already.
Speaker 4:Then let's turn the pole spear crossways into the current.
Speaker 1:Now you're off, you go Really.
Speaker 4:You just got a full sail of current there.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, you know I'm much more familiar with the gun than I am the pole spear and I had a fish.
Speaker 1:Uh, I dove down to the bottom and I was was holding on to this rock because, you know, I didn't bring my suit and because of that I wasn't wearing a weight belt, so I was like stuck using rocks as ballast. So I was diving down, I was holding on to this rock to hold me onto the bottom and I was just waiting, um, for a fish to like come see what this you know big, nervous object was, and I had a carp swim up right, right next to me and I had that the pole spear pulled back and he came up like next to me, in broadside, not in front of me, and I was like, all right, I'll get you where you are. And I forgot about, like that you know, five feet of pole spear that was behind my hand and it kept like running into my side and now I'm, like you know, turning my belly up and trying to hold on to this rock and this fish is looking at me like you, idiot, I'm out of here, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:It'd be like going into Home Depot. Let's just pick up a 16-foot 2x6 or a 2x4. Now walk through the whole store and don't hit anybody or anything with it. That's what it's like trying to maneuver this 9-foot pole spear through the rocks and the current, and here comes the fish. Oh, shoot, there he goes. Oh, I didn't you know, you've got to have it cocked, and that takes some strength.
Speaker 2:Yeah, holding it, you gotta have it cocked and that takes some strength.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially that nomad like yeah, you've got to mean it if you want to get back to the grip on that gun, but uh and I about guarantee this is a hell's canyon.
Speaker 1:First I got a carp from the bank yesterday, yeah with with the pull spear and um, you know, we, just after we got camp set up, we saw these carp that were, you know, cruising you know along the rocks and I ran and got, got my nomad and was like getting down there and caulking the band and I got really close to him and I was having to like shoot from the hip. You know, um, using the, the pythagorean theorem, if you will. And yeah, I finally connected on one. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 4:You know coming up here been anticipating this trip for quite a while, so stoked for it to come up here with you guys. But I thought there's no way in hell anybody is going to kill a fish with a spear gun in Hell's Canyon.
Speaker 1:Not in this one. There's no way.
Speaker 4:We're going to go up, we're going to have some fun. We'll fish, we'll do some bass, we'll cook, have fun, visit, we'll have a drink, run the new river boat, check out the rapids, but nobody's going to stick a fish. There's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:Greg, I'll tell you one thing that you already know about this crew we always kill.
Speaker 2:And we always just figure it out. This is quite a new, yeah, but this is quite a different venue this is Hell's.
Speaker 4:Canyon, snake River, spear fishing the funny thing man.
Speaker 3:I felt less scared in the water this trip than ever before in this canyon.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I've been down it a few times right, and it's always from a rubber boat with a life jacket on, but like once you're in it and you can see how water moves underneath the rocks it's just like such a more intuitive thing where it's like I had no fear. I was never like, oh, I'm going to get sucked out there, because it's like two quick kicks with the fins and you're like back you might hold in that section for a while, or you feel it, you go out a little farther, you start feeling the current.
Speaker 2:You're like I can't beat that, I'm going back.
Speaker 3:That's. What was most impressive to me is just the lack of fear of the water. There was definitely fear when you saw a carp out of your peripheral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, they're big man when it's just like there's no viz.
Speaker 3:That was weird. But like the water itself, man, total lack of fear. And I don't mean that arrogantly, yeah, I mean it was more of an appreciation of like, yeah, it can be done with the safety measures in place, because we were cautious, I would say, yeah, you know Because we were cautious, I would say, about where we went, what we tried to accomplish.
Speaker 4:I would say 100%. Yeah, it can be done, especially the way we did it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:With the safety measures easing into it. We started in the smaller pools, eased up into the bigger pools. That had eddies, but never, never one time did I feel that anybody was at risk.
Speaker 3:No, and it's such an ego check too, like's certain riffles that were like back at you that I just didn't go through. You just like stop. And you're like okay, I need 10 kicks to get through this, I don't have the energy for that. You're so in tune with your body, I think.
Speaker 1:When you're focused on breathing, versus just like running around the mountains or whatever, like oh, I can get up there, and it's like four days later, yeah and and man, now that I've been like taking this seriously for a few years and I've learned that that fish really key on, key in on how you're living at that moment, uh, like trying to manage the current and and the fear I have of this river. You know, I, I know people who have drowned here like they're, they're, there's, there's bodies in this river. Yeah, and I I've been afraid of swimming in this river my whole life and I've I've been coming down here my whole life, but I've never got to know the bottom of this river the way that I have on this trip. Yeah, and I have such a different level of comprehensive understanding and it's not a comprehensive understanding, that's the wrong word but I'm getting closer to that by looking at what these rocks actually do.
Speaker 1:A great example is there's a lot of sheer cliffs that come straight down into the rock. This comes, comes straight down into the water and I've I've fished those a lot and I've caught fish on those a lot by, you know, throwing bass jigs at them, but what I've learned is that all of those that I've seen diving on this trip are undercut at the bottom. So they they appear to be sheer and straight coming down into the water. But if you dive down them, they all undercut on the bottom. So there's a cave at the bottom of those things and dude. That's just fascinating and and every little bit of understanding that you you get of this water helps you in your your ability appreciate it, to navigate it, to understand it. I love that you know. It's like learning for the first time that trees have roots Right.
Speaker 2:I think it's you know how I would describe it, man, and it goes for the ocean too. But here I felt it because again it was like a little bit newer for me Is you learn to dance with it right? Again it was like a little bit newer for me. Is you learn to dance with it right? If you really think about people who I'm not saying all of them, but a lot of people who drown in the ocean or in a river, they get in, they didn't expect it, they fall off a boat or whatever and they get to fighting you know some current and they don't change, they just keep fighting it until they get exhausted and then they die.
Speaker 2:It's like fighting the rip current If they just decided like, hey, can I dance with this a little bit and move out of it? Can I go this way, or that? It's like, yeah, rip currents in the ocean. Once you know, and you can feel one, you know what it is. It's not that dangerous. You know what I mean. It's not that dangerous, you know what I mean. But if you just put your head into it and try to fight it, you're gonna die.
Speaker 2:Every time you're gonna lose you know, but once you know how to do the dance, it's so less intimidating you know what I? Mean, and you get way more comfortable all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:Yeah here's something that that I want to add right now For the folks who are listening, please understand. I want you to try spearfishing, whether that is in saltwater, whether that is in freshwater. I want you to go out and try it, and I want you to try it in the least expensive way that you can do it safely, the closest to where you live, way that you can do it safely the closest to where you live. And that doesn't mean that you've got to get in a jet boat and charge up some remote wilderness canyon and dive, dive under these types of conditions. But do try it, because I guarantee you you're going to get a lesson from that first day of spearfishing that you can apply to something else in your life. I don't care whether your job is hard or soft. I don't care what it is it might be something to do with your relationships but spearfishing specifically, more so than any other style of hunting or fishing that I've ever experienced, which has been a lot it's given me life lessons.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty cool. Oh yeah, it is pretty cool, pretty cool. It's got a steep learning curve, like at the beginning. You know it does, but man these schools are the way like just go to the school like don't struggle for a couple decades, like I did.
Speaker 1:Like just go to the schools, yeah and yeah, yeah you'll be so far ahead. Okay, last question for you guys why do you think I asked you about your hardest and softest jobs?
Speaker 3:kevin man, probably because we're spearfishing and it seems pretty hard at times and then also pretty soft at times. I imagine you know like when you're in it and you get a little better at it, it doesn't seem as hard. Or just maybe just to show that you can like do anything from a point right, from a starting point, right. What do you think, cliff?
Speaker 1:I don't From a point right, from a starting point right.
Speaker 2:What do you think, Cliff? I don't know why would I ask those questions why? So I have no idea why you would ask them.
Speaker 3:I really don't.
Speaker 2:I can tell you one thing that and maybe this relates to why you asked them that I noticed from everybody's answers, um, including yours, james is that some of the softer stuff was earlier, earlier in life, and then we decided to do harder jobs you know, what I mean, which is kind of an interesting observation, at least, least if you took a rational perspective on it. It's like, hey, well, why wouldn't you stay with the soft job, you know?
Speaker 3:Chase or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so maybe it's related to that. But other than that man, I don't know what do you?
Speaker 4:think. I think in some way probably has to give us all a chance to have a perspective on where we've been, what we've done, accomplished what was the easiest, and maybe it was the easiest but not even close to the most enjoyable, what may have been the hardest, but that hardest one may have been the most enjoyable. I think it's something to where you show both ends of that in a person's life and I think in four people's lives that have done a lot you know, that have accomplished a lot in the things that they have pursued.
Speaker 4:So I think that question had to do with showing both ends of it.
Speaker 1:I think that your work really shapes who you are, and not just the result of the labor, but the type of effort that goes into it. But the type of effort that goes into it. And I don't want to take away from anybody who's doing a job that they think is soft, because that job would be impossible for somebody else. I don't want to take away from somebody who is doing a job that's hard, because a lot of hard jobs are looked down upon. It's like, oh, you're doing a hard job because you're not capable or talented enough or have the opportunities to do something else. You know that has a higher return for less effort. But I do think that all of these things are are really formative experiences that change who you are as a person, change what you're capable of, change what you're appreciative of. And I also want to highlight the fact that the four of us are doing something that that all of us are doing, something that all of us deeply, deeply enjoyed. We all really enjoyed coming up here doing this trip together, doing something that is hard and benefiting from it, and without all of the decisions that we've made in our lives and all of the the employment and effort you know, regardless of what it was, it all of that led us to where we are, which is in a a really special place Like we're getting to, you know, experience a really cool place.
Speaker 1:We're getting to catch, you know, six and a half foot dinosaurs yeah, we're getting to. You know, spear fish a half foot dinosaurs, we're getting to. You know, spearfish uh, in a place where maybe nobody ever thought that that would happen. Um, and we're, we're hanging out with each other and, you know, having a good time and drinking scotch and you know, about to fire up a cigar and you know, maybe this surgeon will, will shape up and act right and and eat this bait and, uh, and it's. It's all possible because of the employment decisions that we've made and and really every decision that we've made. But, uh, I, I just want to encourage everybody out there to like, keep doing the work and and know that the harder you try, no matter what you're trying at, it's going to lead you closer to an opportunity like what we're having right now.
Speaker 4:It's not a quick fix. Yeah, be patient. Your failures are going to be your best teachers.
Speaker 1:Dude. So true, yeah, teachers dude.
Speaker 2:So true, yeah, uh, man, I listened to an incredible book lately uh, by uh hickson gracie. Uh called breathe. Yeah, I haven't read it.
Speaker 1:I haven't read it yeah, it's pretty good book. So, uh, you know I don't want to spoil it for everybody, but but when Hickson was a kid competing in jiu-jitsu in Brazil of course he's the golden child of the Gracie family in a lot of ways he got two presents from his father if he lost a fight and he got one if he won. So he was more heavily rewarded for losing than for winning, because winning was a reward of its own in a lot of ways, but losing was also to be encouraged, um, because there's so much more opportunity for growth in it.
Speaker 1:Interesting yeah, very interesting and he's like the most winning Gracie of all the myriad of Gracies who are out there.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Pretty incredible. So yeah, that's it. Any closing thoughts?
Speaker 3:Man, I just think, like being in the water, like that. I have a busy brain generally and there's two things that I get in the flow state doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:As of now, like there's been more and there probably will be more, but it's doing this and then RGL cutting, yeah Right, where you just like have to be locked in, like no other thought exists and that's super healthy, yeah Right, I just, I really appreciate that part of it. So thanks Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can relate to that too, man. I think, to expand on what you said, james, just everybody should try spearfishing. People should just try freediving too, man.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Because it does exactly what was just said. Man, when you're doing it, you can't think about anything else, and it teaches you so much about your body. It's pretty wild, yeah, so, but no other than that, man. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4:This is an epic trip, my pleasure it was interesting today to watch cliff go down, and when I would go down it's like, okay, I can do this. I figured I could stay down a minute. But when you're pushing against current, when you're swimming, you're trying to fight to get in a position, you breathe, you try and take a big breath and down you go, man, 30 seconds. I'll bet at best that. I would last and I'd come roaring up, Cliff would go down and be down and be down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we almost lost him today.
Speaker 2:I was like he's still under there.
Speaker 3:man Anybody seen Cliff?
Speaker 4:You know, and to see that kind of control and to start to get just a peek into what that control does, not only for just physical but for for your mentalness to help, it's just. This is a kick. And to be able to do it with you guys, the conversations that are had from daylight till dark with these guys, is just it's the best. The camaraderie is just absolutely phenomenal. So, happy camper, this has been one heck of a trip.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, all we've got to do is catch another dinosaur and, yeah, get some good sleep under some bright stars, pack up and hopefully I remember the way to zig and zag on the way out. All right, well, thanks everybody. Hope you all are having a good day and I really hope that you get an opportunity to try this, because it's a pretty special thing. You all have a good night. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages.
Speaker 1:Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.