Last summer you might have heard that first light was making waterfowl gear.
They put it on some pretty slick field hunting patterns, but folks here that hunt the
dark flooded timber my home state of Arkansas started grumbling right away.
They wanted some timber camo.
Well grumble no more.
They just released cash camo, specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded
timbers of the southern half of the Mississippi flyway.
The cash river is a river here in Arkansas.
The pattern was designed using the same nature based algorithm used in their other patterns,
but emphasizes micro break up elements and high contrast textures that are most visually
disruptive when you are up close and personal with green heads in the woods.
I'm proud to say that this pattern was tested and tweaked for two seasons in Arkansas and
it looks incredible.
Plus first light donates a portion of every sale of duck hunting gear to delta waterfowl
to support their mission of conserving North American duck and goose populations.
Head to first light dot com slash cash that spelled C-A-C-H-E like the river in Arkansas
to give it a look.
We have a natural flood pulse of the lower mists where as you don't have it in the upper
mists you don't have it in the Ohio.
You don't have it in the Arkansas, it's all damned all the way up.
So that's a unique nature of it and the fact that it joins the Missouri and goes another
1200 miles makes it the longest free flowing stretch of river.
We've traveled a good ways down the Mississippi River in the last three episodes to understand
its power and size, its ancient connection to man, the settlement of the delta and some
of the world's richest soil, the great engineering feat of taming the river and the great
flood of 1927, we've covered a lot of ground.
All of this for the purpose of trying to understand how the Mississippi river has impacted America.
On this episode though, we're getting into the nitty gritty of river life and the fisheries
health and status and I think you might be surprised by what you learned.
I was Dr. Jack Kilgore who's a fisheries biologist for the Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg,
Mississippi will tell us about the great beasts of this river, the giant catfish, paddlefish,
gars and turtles.
We'll also hear about finding giant ground sloth claws, bison skulls and dead bodies.
We'll get to meet a man who's spent the last 50 years commercial fishing on the river
and hear his wildest stories.
I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one.
I hear that a lot, you know, look how muddy it is and it's got to be polluted.
It's not.
I tell people, it's not.
In fact, you know, I would catch a fish out of the Mississippi way before and eat it before
I would eat a fish out of my lake there in the subdivision.
Is that right?
My name is Clay Nukem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things
forgotten but relevant, search for inside and unlikely places and where we'll tell the
story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
By F.H.F. Gear, American-made, purpose-built hunting and fishing gear, it's designed to be
as rugged as the places we explore.
How are you doing?
I'm doing pretty good, how about you?
Clay Nukem.
Yeah, Bill, that cast.
Good to meet you.
This is my colleague and partner Brent Reads.
Brent Reads, yes sir.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, pretty good, yeah.
You been on the river this morning?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I went out and got those huppens.
Brent and I just crossed the big river from Arkansas onto the Mississippi side in a truck
on a bridge and that's some uptown living.
We didn't have to ferry across it or build a raft.
If you remember, old James Buchanan Eads was the first guy to build a bridge on the
bigger sections of the Mississippi in 1974, it's in St. Louis.
Where we get out of the truck, the aristic and muggy, it's incredibly flat compared to
where I came from.
And if you're not looking at a crop field, the vegetation is as thick as a cane break.
Welcome to the Mississippi Delta.
The single landcaster is a commercial fisherman and he's just come off the water.
He's wearing a ball cap, t-shirts, shorts and white rubber boots.
He kind of reminds me of the country singer Tracy Lawrence, but a lot grittier.
So how long you been fishing on the Mississippi River?
Probably, I probably started actually fishing in 1969.
Yeah, that's the year I bought my first hook net, graduated from high school.
My dad belonged to a hunting club on the Mississippi.
A good friend of mine that was in the same grade that I was, we moved over there that summer
and commercial fished on the river in the fall of 1969 and then went off to the army.
So you got that winter?
Yeah.
So we fished all summer over there and sold fish to a local guy that was on the river
at that time from Arkansas.
And you were just like, hey, I can make a live and do this.
Well, we were 18, 17, 18 years old at that time and we were up for pretty much anything.
But we both grew up hunting in fishing and we enjoyed being on the river and we thought
that'd be a great thing to do, it'd be fish this summer and try to make a little money
just something to do before we went off to the service.
That was over 50 years ago.
Yeah, yeah, 69, so every year since then you've fished off and on for a number of years
and then started fishing full time, probably around 1985, 80s.
Full the year round.
Yeah, year round.
Yeah, 12 months out of the year, you know, doesn't matter how cold it is, how hard it is,
you know, we fished.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
You spent a lot of time on the river.
Oh, I wish, you know, I wish I knew exactly how much time my head spilled out there.
Yeah, unbelievable.
Mr. Bill is 71 years old and has spent over 50 years on the water.
With all this talk from Mark Twain about the treacherous river and its incredible power,
one of my first questions which struck at the heart of my curiosity and had nothing to
do with fish but had to do with close calls.
I asked him if he'd had any and you better believe that he had.
Eventually, we're going to talk to him about fishing, but not yet.
Yeah, I've had a couple of experiences out there.
I was running a small 16 foot boat with a 50 horse motor on it.
And earlier that week, I had broken the trim tab off of it.
And when you do that, the motor will torque hard to the right.
That trim tab is what keeps that motor running in a straight line, even if you let off
the teller handle.
So I broke that trim tab off and I was running hoop nets and I had gotten through running
the hoop nets.
I was headed back up river with about a half a load of fish and there was water in the
boat and I was going to reach back and pull the plug out and let the drain the water while
I was running back to the boat round.
When I pulled the plug out, had one hand on the teller handle and I was running about
half throttle, not wide open.
And somehow, when I pulled that plug out and started to turn around, my hand slipped
off that teller handle and when it did, it made a hard 90 to the right.
And it sent me out of that boat just in an instant.
I mean, I didn't even realize what had happened.
The first thing I knew I was under the water and when I came to the surface, I could see
the boat going off away from it still in gear.
It had outleted itself down to idle speed and it was going off, you know.
But when it did that hard right turn, it threw all the fish over to the left side of the
boat.
And everything in the boat went over to the left side when it made that hard right turn.
And when it did that, it sent the boat into a turn and it was running at half speed
with the plug out, coming around and making a circle.
Well, I was in the river, had my rain gear on, had boots on, had blue jeans under the
rain gear, you know, and it was heavy.
I kicked the boots off, you know, to light myself up, you know, and I was just dog paddling
and trying to stay afloat.
And the boat, I could see it, you know, coming around, it was going to make a circle.
And it, you know, it looked like it might come back by me, you know.
So it started that turn.
I said, well, if I can catch it when it comes around, I can make it.
So we're floating down the current, in the current, you know, floating downriver and it's
coming around, just at odds, you get, you get, you get, you get, you get, you get, you
get, you get, coming around.
Well, when it did, it was just out of reach.
I was trying to get to it, but it was just out of reach and my hands just barely missed
the gotle on that boat.
I was going to just grab hold to the side of the boat, you know, and hold on.
Well I missed it, you know, it, it wasn't quite close enough.
So is it went around again, it made a wider circle, it was widened itself out.
It was coming out of wider, making a wider turn, every time it went around.
Second time it went around it I was lined up with it pretty good and when it
passed me I just blocked my arms over the gondola of the boat and just held
on until I got my strength up and got my wits about me you know I just hung
on and let it pull me it was dragging me through the water and I just rolled
myself over the in the boat with just brute strength just roll myself over in
the boat and laid in the bottom boat for a second you know then I reached back
there and I got the plug back in and I got control of it you know but if that
boat hadn't come around and pick me up I probably would have been gone yeah
really you think you would have I would have found the middle of the river yeah
well I wasn't in the middle but I was out I didn't think you could have made
it to the bank I don't think I could it was so the water wasn't that cold in
October you know but it was just the current and the weight the sheer weight of
those that wet clothing and that rain gear and I had no life jacket on
nothing it just sapped my strength almost immediately it was all I could do to
hold myself up yeah just keep my head above water you know that was so that
was one of the closer calls and so you just got back in the boat back in the
boat and probably say thank you Lord yeah well my composer and went on to the
boat round and carried on carried on that day yeah soul of fish you know did it
all yeah what is your wife say when you told her that story well she was
and everybody else I've told it to you you know they just say you know you're
you just it wasn't your time you know just lucky you know you know they be
crocket had a boat wreck on the Mississippi River and he said if you're born to be
hung you'll never drown it wasn't his time to drown that's right how old were
you and that happened that was probably in 2000 probably eight okay so you're
71 yeah I was in probably what 60's about 60's wow yeah that's incredible boat
wrecks on the Mississippi are common as a matter of fact the worst maritime
disaster in US history happened on the Mississippi River on April 27th 1865
near Memphis Tennessee 260 foot long steamboat called the saltana was
carrying Union prisoners just two weeks after the Civil War ended who'd been
released from a Confederate prison camp at Vicksburg they were headed to St.
Louis to go home to their families the boat had a carrying capacity of 376
passengers but they packed on 2,137 people aboard at 2 a.m. on that April morning
a boiler explosion sunk the ship in a fiery ball of chaos 1169 people died most
Union soldiers despite the size of the disaster the shipwreck didn't get much
press because Lincoln had just been assassinated the war had been raging for
years and it just ended and the country was tired of bad news and there was a
possible government cover up because of the overcrowded ship on a US sanction
transport today there is a saltana disaster museum in Marion Arkansas the boat
was missing for over a hundred years it sank in the river but in 1982 over two
miles off the current river the saltana was located in an Arkansas soybean
field the riverbed has shifted that far and the boat is still there soon we're
going to talk about some fun stuff like the charismatic fish of the Mississippi
River with Dr. Jack Kilgore who else and I think you'll be surprised to hear
how well they're doing but I had to ask Mr. Bill another question kind of the
dark question and if you're listening with kids we're about to talk about D-E-A-D
people stand by don't judge me I'm just asking the questions that everybody's
thinking but it's an interesting lifestyle you know you see a lot of different
things you know you just found a dead body on the river yep found a couple of
those over the years yeah found two actually what what was the story yeah found
one just several years ago she was right down here south of town yeah and I was
going upstream you know I've done running running gear you know it was in
March it's cold I was running upstream and I was just looking you know out
across the river you know just paying attention to where I was going and I saw
something you know floating downstream you know it it looked a little bit
different you know then I said well that's probably a deer you know you see
bucks you know somebody's shot upstream or whatever coming down I passed by and
I picked up big deer before you know I mean big deer and I you know I said I'm
going to go back and I'm gonna look at see exactly what that was and when I
turned around and I got a little bit closer to it I could tell I said oh my Lord
here we go Mr. Bill reported these incidents to the authorities and worked
with law enforcement to help them recover the bodies but it's clear the
Mississippi is no stranger to the dead in the first episode we learned that
Hernando de Soto credited as the first European to see the river in 1541
had a water burial not far from where the Sultana sank my intent is not to be
morbid but rather to present a slick scientific segue into the next section of
the podcast but I'd say there's a high probability that de Soto's body was
eaten by an alligator snapping turtle if you know wild places you know that
organic matter and water does not go to waste I now want to talk with Dr.
Kilgore about the health of the Mississippi River this first segment is a bit
of a review but it will quickly get into the new stuff all the other great
rivers of the world the Congo the Nile the antsy all of those they have dams
near the mouth of the river whereas the Mississippi the first dam you encounter is
up in St. Louis which is 1200 miles up however a fish can take a left on the
Missouri and go another 1200 miles to the Gavin's point dam on the Missouri so
and I tell people this that if you put all of that together there's almost
2400 miles of free flowing Mississippi Missouri River there's nothing else like
that in the world except for the Amazon all the other great rivers have
been dammed which influences sediment transport water quality migratory fish
you know it has all those negative impacts and and that's one reason in
particular the lower miss because it has an intact floodplain it has a natural
flood pulse there've been no extra patients or extinction of species in modern
time really even with all the manipulation that's right despite all that
river engineering we still have a very robust diverse aquatic assemblage in
this river that's incredible and that's what we're trying to understand and
protect and conserve because it really has never been evaluated in a you know
in a very holistic quantitative way until the last 20 years or so it's
essential to understand the river is what it is because of its intact floodplain
the batcher as it's called or the space inside the levees here's why a healthy
floodplain is important for fish what happens then is every spring you know the
river comes up and it floods and the fish and other aquatic organisms they
follow that flood pulse up into the floodplain and what they encounter are tens of
thousands of acres of lakes, scatters, breaks, slews, just perfect habitat for
spawning and rearing and feeding and then when the river begins to contract and
go back down a lot of these recently spawned fish will follow the retreating
flood down into the river and they repopulate the river so they sustain the
numbers the biodiversity year after year because we have a natural flood pulse
with a lower miss whereas you don't have it in the upper miss you don't have it
in the Ohio you don't have it in the Arkansas it's all damned all the way up
so so that's that's the unique nature of it and the fact that it joins the
Missouri and goes another 1200 miles makes it really one of the longest other
thing I think it is the longest free flowing stretch of river the flood pulse the
movement of the river up and down in its floodplain feeds the fish of the river
and can be important for their breeding cycles it's just that simple
Dr. Kilgore will now talk about why having extended stretches of free flowing
non-dammed rivers are good for fish and this might even bolster the tattoo
idea from episode one don't do it but it's good idea and so we do telemetry
studies and we tag fish and we've had multiple examples of fish moving up
stream a thousand miles moving downstream a thousand miles a thousand miles
yeah what what fish what kind of fish are doing that sturgeon paddlefish the
invasive carp we've had buffalo they make long migratory runs as well why are
they why are those fish doing that like what what's what's biologically
advantageous about going that far well I think one reason is that they're spreading
out their progeny some of them we believe we don't know for sure have certain
homing instincts just like salmon that they'll actually go back to their
natal spawning area or that general area some fish may move from the Missouri
down into the Mississippi but they spawn in the Missouri they go back to the
Missouri just spawn okay so it's a homing behavior it's a behavior we don't
fully understand really but we do know that there's there's a lot of movement
both upstream and downstream the fish
Dr. Kilgore is an expert on fish and as usual I was delighted when he talked
about all the things they don't know mysteries remain brothers
and he and his teams have done some seminal work on the river and still are
but let's talk catfish but the catfish we have three species of giant catfish
the new state record in Mississippi a blue cat was broken last year 130 pound
blue cat we regularly catch 50 60 pound flatheads and blue cats out there
the catfish population is unexploited I mean there are
there are so many catfish in this river and there's so few fishermen really
and there's and there's so much habitat and and it's and the further you go
down the bigger the catfish tend to be too from base upon a study we did
you know in some ways because this river fluctuates 50 feet a year
and you've got these huge floods you know we haven't even reached the carrying
capacity of some of these fish they can continue on and that's what's
happened unfortunately with invasive carp
they found the lower Mississippi river to be very hospitable
unfortunately now the catfish I'm interested in catfish
I would have thought that commercial fishermen were hitting the
Mississippi really hard but they're not yes they are
but the numbers of commercial fishermen have dwindled over the years
is that a market thing or like are they part of farm raised and catfish that
was part of the decline for bid people aren't eating as much catfish that you see
is that true I think we are there's more store-bought catfish
the the farm raised catfish certainly took a head on commercial fishing
however I work with the commercial fishermen for years Bill Lancaster
we've already met Mr. Bill he and Dr. Kilgore are old bros
in fact I'll diverge for a minute and tell the story about Bill
we were coming in and we've been out there sampling we we came into our boat
ramp and here comes Bill and his boat and he his boat was
full of fish he's a commercial fisherman of course
just full of catfish and buffalo and we started talking to him
and we've told him that we're interested in catching sturgeon
on the Mississippi River and he goes did you have any suggestions he goes
I catch sturgeon all the time on my trot lines
go really well would you like to go out with us and show us
and he did one January 1999 a cold January
morning we went out with Bill he had set trot lines on the Mississippi river
and one of the first hooks that came up he had a 10 pound
pallet sturgeon which is the endangered species of sturgeon
and so okay hey Bill would you like to work with us on contract
and so for 20 years we worked with Bill and we put out over 10,000 trot lines
and we trot line all the way from the mouth of the Mississippi River
up to the chain of rocks in St. Louis and that's how we figured out the status
of the sturgeon population wow he's through trot line
10,000 trot lines I'd say these guys know the river as good as anybody
I want to go back to Mr. Bill I've got a question about his fishing
what are you mainly fishing for when you're on the river what's your target
species two two main species that's a buffalo fish and the catfish
you know all species of catfish channel cat blue cat
and in flathead cat to the market everybody it doesn't matter what kind of catfish
it really doesn't pay the same they prefer they prefer the blue cat
and the channel cat over the flathead really yeah that would be opposite out
and just on the street wouldn't it right yeah a lot of people like the flathead
for us eating but it's harder to dress yeah it's more waste
probably to the flathead okay so for for the commercial market where people
where they're processing a lot of fish they want channels and blue yeah channels
and blue cat you know and preferably smaller fish you know they don't they don't
really care about the big fish you know over 30 or 40 pounds you know they'll
they'll they will take one or two or three but they don't want a boatload of them
really yeah so you're not targeting big fish no not at all yeah anything
sellable you know from a two pounds up to you know 15 20 pounds that's about
the range that's what I'd be looking for what are you doing with the buffalo
oh the buffalo were sold you know so straight to the market as he is you know
they are there's a big demand here for buffalo I mean a huge demand probably
probably sell more buffalo than catfish really buffalo ribs is that what people are eating
yeah they'll take the ribs you know of course when they dress a buffalo they take the ribs out
and then they they have the loin you know which they cut up what's your favorite fish to catch
what do you what do you get excited about when you see when you see in that flathead it's probably
really yeah flathead even though that's not as marketable yeah yeah but I can still sell them
all that I catch so you know it doesn't it doesn't matter yeah but I like to sell
you know a net full of flatheads when they come up yeah because they you can feel them before you
ever before you ever raise a net you can tell what's in there just by the way they're hitting that net
you know where they feel and when you pull it to the surface it just erupts into a massive bowl
you know and then you you can see them you know he's not targeting the big catfish that's interesting
and he sells more buffalo than catfish that's interesting but he loves kitchen flathead that is not
surprising buffalo fish the genus Ictiobus is a large sucker fish that's not gained as much
popularity as a game fish like catfish because they're hard to catch on rod and reel and her bony
but they're very good to eat any fish restaurant in the south worth its watermelon salt is going to be
serving fried wild caught buffalo ribs it's a hunky piece of white meat on a single bone you eat them
like chicken wings I've got another question and if I'd left Mississippi without asking him this
I'd be forced to resign from my position at meter you're not targeting big fish for the commercial
market yeah but just in year 50 years on the river what's the biggest fish you've seen come out of
the Mississippi River I caught a a hundred pound blue cat in 2017 that's the biggest biggest
biggest fish I've caught yeah caught a lot of fish in the 70 down you know 60 70 50 60 70
pound range but that hundred pounder was was the biggest that I've I've landed yeah
I caught him on trot line too using the I was using a two out stainless steel hook or two I was
not very big you know if you know anything about hooks you know but it was it wasn't I think March
when I caught that fish the water was super cold and you know he was he just came up to the surface
and I got the dip net under his tail and of course I knew it was big you know I got the dip net
under his tail and got him about half way in that dip net because it was too big to get in
well I guess with the adrenaline I had pumping you know I just rolling over into the boat
and then I looked at him I said boy this is a big fish here how long you think he was five foot
he's he was as tall as I was almost when he was hanging when we hung him up the way you're not
you're six six two a one hundred pound blue cat is giant you're glad I asked aren't you
in April 2023 the rod and reel Mississippi state record blue cat was caught in the river near
Vicksburg and it weighed 131 pounds and just for reference the world record blue cat weighed 143 pounds
and was caught in a North Carolina lake the world record flathead cat fish weighed 123 pounds
and was caught in the lake in Kansas the world record channel cat came from South Carolina and weighed
58 pounds and that's a pretty good blueprint for the size of these cats so the blue cats get the
biggest flathead second and then channels but most people prefer to eat flathead
and it would be a miss if I didn't learn something about the gear commercial fishermen are using
on the river here's Mr. Bill what kind of equipment is a commercial fisherman on the Mississippi river
using well people use different kind of equipment some people you know will fish maybe all
gill net gill webbing and then you know you people that have that do mostly hoop net then you
have some that that just trot line didn't like myself you know I do a little of all of it you
depending on what time of year it is and what kind of fish I'm looking for a gill net is simply a
net stretched across a section of water that catches fish traveling up and down the river a hoop
net is shaped like a barrel often baited but not always and the fish enter into a wide opening that
next down and they can't get out a trot line is a long string with baited hooks dropped off every few
feet last summer you might have heard that first light was making waterfowl gear they put it on
some pretty slick field hunting patterns but folks here that hunt the dark flooded timber my
home state of Arkansas started grumbling right away they wanted some timber camo will grumble no more
they just released cash camo specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded
timbers of the southern half of the Mississippi flyway the cash river is a river here in Arkansas
the pattern was designed using the same nature based algorithm used in their other patterns
but emphasizes micro break up elements and high contrast textures that are most visually
disruptive when you are up close and personal with green heads in the woods I'm proud to say that
this pattern was tested and tweaked for two seasons in Arkansas and it looks incredible plus
first light donates a portion of every sale of duck hunting gear to delta waterfowl to support
their mission of conserving North American duck and goose populations head to firstlight.com slash cash
that spelled C-A-C-H-E like the river in Arkansas to give it a look
I want to get back with Dr. Kilgore about his experience on the river he's going to talk about the
general health of the fishery and some of his river sampling projects and we'll bring up an
interesting idea the river as wilderness what he said was very surprising to me of course you
know you're sampling the bottom of the Mississippi river so you're not just getting a sturgeon you're
getting these giant catfish we're talking about you're getting a garbuffalo drum goo gasper goo
all those fish and over time you know you start getting this appreciation that there's hardly any
limit to the number of fish that you can catch out of this river people are afraid to get on it
they're afraid to fish for for a good reason really you have to really know what you're doing
initially but once once you understand the things you got to watch out for it is a wonderful
experience that's one of my passions I mean you go out there and it's just I can look one way
and that's exactly the way Mark Twain saw the river when he was a cub pilot and then you work
look another way you see dikes and revetment you know that's modern day Mississippi but my point is
that you can still see a lot of natural features in this river that still exists and
haven't haven't changed over the years you know it's kind of I like to think a lot about wilderness
and I really value like wilderness with a capital W in that just a place untouched by man you wouldn't
really think of a I wouldn't think of a river system as a wilderness and it's not the perfect analogy
but what I'm hearing you say is that you can be on that river and you're dealing with something ancient
yes you're dealing with something very old and intact which is rare and rarely would you go into
a natural terrestrial system today and be able to or we have places like this but where you would say
this thing is a lot like it would have been pre-European yeah and you're telling me in the river
with the fish the endangered species other than the invasives it's doing pretty well which is
kind of surprising to me it's doing very well in fact really even with the pollution and all the
stuff to see the pollution I mean yes we had before the Clean Water Act there were certainly
polluted waters throughout our nation including the Mississippi River but the legacy pesticides
like the DDT in the toxin they they are not detected in fish tissue anymore okay
and you hear about oh that the Mississippi River is polluting the Gulf of Mexico with all that
nitrogen well that's true you know because it does drain all the agriculture almost all the
agricultural land in the United States so there is fairly high nitrogen and phosphorus but mainly
nitrogen but but it's not a form of pollution for the Mississippi it might be a form of pollution
for creating a Gulf hypoxia right a dead a dead but it's not but it's actually a lot of this
nitrogen is being sequestered in the flood plain as it as it as a flood spreads out and that's
what's helping you know the plants and the soil to grow and be nutritious and support the the
aquatic life there too so yes it is a wilderness a a colleague of mine Paul Hartfield he worked for
the Fish and Wildlife Service for years he called it an engineered wilderness because you get the
levies you know you have the dikes you have the revampment so it is an engineered system
but it still did not diminish or eliminate the natural features of this flood pulse type river
that we have I hear that a lot oh you know look how muddy it is and it's gotta be polluted I
heard it's not I tell people it's not in fact you know I would catch a fish out of the Mississippi
way before and eat it before I would eat a fish out of my lake there in the subdivision is that
oh yeah that that is kind of shocking to me I love it it's kind of surprising to me and Bill
Lancashire the commercial fisherman he has plenty of customers you know that by his catfish
and buffalo like I said commercial fishing and the commercial fisherman I'm unfortunately
as a dying breed there's just not being recruited I said and it's probably the economics of it
well me and me and Brent Reeves are going to come commercial fisherman friend of ours I've got
I got big dreams big dreams big dreams big dreams folks big American dreams if the bottom falls
out of the podcast market I have a diverse financial plan to make a living as number one
standing up comedian number two commercial fisherman with Brent Reeves with our sea art catfish
boat Laura named after the Lauren tied ice sheet number three I'll work remotely as a Nashville singer
songwriter and those things will obviously be a supplement to me already be in a major player
in the high end mule market I don't know if I want to tell my plan or not somebody might steal it
cut that out seriously though we've got to get back to what Dr. Kilgore was talking about
we're treading in some complicated water regarding the health of the river I was completely expecting
Kilgore to say the big muddy was America's sewer manipulated by man so much that it was the dainty
relic of its past but that's not what he said at all from a fish perspective the river is healthy
I've also got to mention two things that we're just not getting into in this series number one
the dead zone in the Gulf number two coastal erosion in Louisiana there's a zone of hypoxia with
very little aquatic life in it in the range of 7,500 square miles along the Gulf Coast this dead
zone is the result of excess nutrients primarily nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture fertilizer
runoff from lawns and just human existence that pools in the non-moving water of the Gulf
creating algal blooms that suck up the oxygen in the water however nutrients in a moving current
have less impact these nutrients aren't in and of themselves harmful but in excess they cause
big problems this drainage basin definitely has problems but the natural fishery of the river
isn't suffering from this I'd say that's a pretty incredible report considering a lot of the
environmental news that we hear on a day-to-day basis and the hero of this fishery is that intact
natural flood plain inside the levees of the river don't forget it the other thing that we're
just not getting into which is a major issue is the coastal erosion in south Louisiana where they've
lost over 2,000 square miles of land in the last 50 years as a result of sea level rise and less
sediment moving down the Mississippi river it's incredibly complicated and serious however this
next section is wild and we're going back to talk to our friend and old boat captain Hank Burdine
about a significant factor influencing river health it has to do with the monetary and cultural
value of hunting stand by within the what we call the butcher between the levees the land
between the levees that flood you can't build a house and unless you build it 15, 16, 20 feet up
off the ground so the majority of that whole area down the river is in hungramps it used to be
timber companies but the timber companies realized that there was inherent value in those lands
recreationally for hunting and it was about in the 70s and 80s that had some color Chicago mill all
these huge timber companies that owned hundreds of thousands of acres of land between the levees
said looks and we have our king eat it too we lease in this land out to these unclothed for
nothing really why don't we sell them the land keep the timber rights 15 to 20 years
they sell the land at top dollar for recreational purposes they keep the timber for 20 years
they got doubled up money so the majority of all this land now along the river in private
hungramps on clubs so really in a way and that's why the hunting the value of hunting and the money
that honey brought in is helping preserve the wildness of the Mississippi River absolutely
absolutely yeah and when you talk about hunting club you talk about catch these points 12,000
egg hunt club you know huntington point 10,000 I mean from from Memphis all the way down to New Orleans
along the Mississippi River inside the levees is hunting camps for Memphis I would say all the way
on down toward getting closer by the route okay yeah it's hunting camps hunt and camps from
living to living they don't want those trees cleared if they do it's select cutting I mean the
temperatures are out of it now but they've got a managed program yeah where they go in select cut
the trees leave this leave that have the food plots all like that and that's powerful for the health
of the whole system as these as these natural natural floodplains inside the levees which are manmade
but are remained timbered and managed managed for wildlife and I mean it's a wildlife mecca it's
wildlife mecca water systems are a product of their riparian zones the value of hunting camps inside
the levees of the river being managed for wildlife which is primarily white tail turkeys and ducks
is creating a healthy natural flood plain unique to the world at one time the value is in timber
but that is changing I can't express what an incredible conservation story this is once again
hunters are the good guys saving habitat and wild places at a time in earth's history when it
couldn't be more important that's the muddy boggy truth I now want to talk to the doc about the
big fish other than catfish of the Mississippi River yes there are several different species of
fish that I categorize as iconic megafauna the first is what we've been discussing are sturgeon
there are two species of sturgeon that live their entire lives in the Mississippi River the pallet
and the chelvoenose sturgeon the pallet is the federally endangered species whereas a chelvo
knows is not but they only get here in the lower miss maybe 10 or 15 pounds they're not like
the giant sturgeon that that you see along the coast and and the reason of course that the demise
of sturgeon was due to the building dams and the caviar markets but today sturgeon are thriving and
there you can almost walk on their hacklebacks you know they're so really the the two most abundant
bottom-oriented fish are blue cats and chelvoenose sturgeon more than the other catfish more than
more than more than more than flathead more than channel catfish blue cats are by far number one
of the big bigger fish sturgeon come in number two based upon our trot line catches wow the largest
North American fish alligator gar now alligator gar really got a bad rap what happened to them is
that people misunderstood them I mean they're they get to 300 pounds plus and they're ugly in
their mean look and I can understand that but they misunderstood them thinking that alligator
gar are eating their sport fish they're bass they're blue-gill they're croppy and so they put a
bounty on their head considering them a rough fish and they just about wiped them out and then
they started doing scientific studies and found out well they're they shat they're not eating you
know our sport fish and plus they're an apex predator of the Mississippi River we do not want
to eliminate an apex predator and maybe also be a bio control for some of the invasive carp
and so once we we hated them and now we love them and there's hatchery programs introducing
them back into the Mississippi River and we're slowly seeing them come back how big you said 300
pounds how long would that fish be 10 feet 10 foot long yeah the other the other iconic
megafauna which is even more interesting than all the other fish all the paddle fish spoon bill cat
fish and they're very abundant here although they also have the black eggs and so now they're
being targeted for the caviar because all the sturgeon are now protected so all the states are
really watching harvest of paddle fish but the paddle fish they can get over a hundred pounds
their virginal giants just an amazing you know and they're you mean you call them a you call
the spoon bill catfish yes is it a catfish no okay that's just the kind of colloquial that's
why it's a colloquial name the the sturgeon and the paddle fish are very primitive they were around
during the age of the dinosaurs that's how long they have lived same with the alligator
garter they're very primitive fish what does it mean biologically like what does it say biologically
when a species is so stable for millions of years they have overcome the evolutionary challenges
of adaptation they have adapted to that environment to be perfect but these fish are uniquely
adapted to this flowing water fluvial environment and if you take away that flow and you take away
that flood pulse then you eliminate those species and that's what's happened in the upper
mish you don't see a lot of paddle fish and sturgeon things up here because of the dam would they be
considered an indicator species yes for free flowing natural river system hmm I like the idea of
that that a fish that old would indicate that he kind of has met his optimum design yes and to
exploit the environment that he's got and then we could deduce that if he's still here the conditions
are like they were a long time well in the main channel the Mississippi River provides the same
sort of habitat quality that it did pre-European hmm so that's why we have had no
extinctions or exturbations that's that's amazing to me what other natural system can we say
exists in relative similarity to pre-European arrival the only places that could compare would be
our wildernesses with the capital W the federally protected terrestrial wilderness that's some wild
stuff and I'd love to see a 300 pound alligator gar wouldn't you and let's hear Dr. Kilgore talk
about something a lot smaller that lives in this river this surprised me river shrimp are
prior to you know the exploitation of white shrimp and brown shrimp along the coast which is where
we get most of our shrimp now the river people and the Indians indigenous people would eat the
river shrimp because there are billions of them out there hmm well we'll put a troll through
there and it's the troll sometimes is so full of river shrimp we can't even get it on board
and you can imagine how important those river shrimp are to the forage base how would they have
caught how would have Native Americans caught river shrimp they could put traps in there where
you can like a weir or something and and because what they do is they they swim and walk along
the bottom of the Mississippi River all the way up to the Ohio they can go over dams they can
they can go up to the Missouri but in order to complete their life cycle they have to go back down
to salt water so those little shrimp have to walk all the way back down to thousand miles to get to
the gulp to complete their life cycle who knew now though I want to talk about turtles
in the big picture of fish in the river yeah tell me about the turtles along the the river
into the swamp areas you get these alligator snapping turtles that can get over a hundred pounds
I mean actually several hundred pounds and you know there are another primitive species as
relatively unchanged over the years and they have that specialized appendage on their tongue
they could remain underwater for hours and hours and they open their mouth and they stick out
their tongue and they have this little red appendage that flips back and forth and that attracts
the unwary fish close to their mouth and bang you know they'll snap shut they've got a little bait
they're attracting their bait too wow and this is the alligator snapping turtle that's right the
alligator snapping turtle like I said there's about a hundred species of fish that maintain
reproductive populations in the lower mists if you include the tributaries then there's probably
about 250 species of fish that are associated how does that compare with other rivers of the world
is that that's quite biodiverse yes it is but it's nothing compared to the amazon which has
probably over two thousand species of fish wow I mean I know I mean amazon is such an anomaly
amazon is the NBA and we're playing like in high school 1a basketball that's right yeah
I mean you can't compare any river of the of the world to the amazon it's in a class by itself
the outflow of the amazon is up to 20 million cubic feet per second at a major
floods on the Mississippi we only get 2.5 million cubic feet per second wow so it's 10 times higher
and it's longer the drainage basin is wider and there's no dams no dams on the main stem amazon
whereas all the other great rivers of the world the Congo the Nile the ants see all of those
they have dams near the mouth of the river the amazon is a beast I waited until the end of this
series to mention it because it makes our beloved Mississippi look like a creek the amazon is the river
all rivers are compared to Dr. Kilgore has spent a lot of time on the big muddy and I want to hear him
talk about the perils of navigating the river you said that people are afraid to get on the river
because of how dangerous it is anybody in American history that has been on the Mississippi river has
some boat wreck stories are our our boy Davy Crockett crashed a boat just south of Memphis and nearly
died on the Mississippi River and then you know all of Mark Twain's writing talks about the dangers
of the Mississippi River and today it's still dangerous even though it's it's been tamed from those days
what do you you said there were some safe some things that you would look for you can be safe what
what would those be well I mean for me number one is I I watch the wind because there's nothing
worse being on the Mississippi River when you have a south wind pushing against a northern moving
river and the waves are like this so in small boats that we're in you know we're just we can't you
know you can't get on plane you know you're getting inundated by all this water it can be very
dangerous out there at high wind the most dangerous thing out there are the stone dikes there's no
doubt about it we've had some tragic stories about folks leaving Vicksburg and never being seen again
other than their boat turned over because of a dike you have to first of all know kind of where
the dikes are what the tell tell signs of these dikes because they may be underwater but they're
still not deep enough and you can still hit your lower unit on it and flip the boat so you have
to know and have navigation charts is good but I don't I mean I'm familiar with this river
around here I know where all the dikes are but if you don't you better be real careful and stay
along the buoy line because the coast guard generally not all the time but they'll adjust the
buoy's according to the flood height and then the other thing you got to watch out for the tow boats
because tow boats can't stop on a dime so you don't want to get in front of them but when they're
pushing upstream they're creating these really big wakes and that's going to slow you down too
so you know you have to be able to take these wakes slowly and get out of it you don't want to
hit them hard because it'll flip your boat too you're not careful so it's the wind the stone dikes
and the tow boats but once you have a feeling and understanding you know it's just like I say
it's a wilderness out there usually the only people the only thing you see out there are the
part of the tow boats you don't see a whole lot of recreational boats out there yeah now during
the summer if it's a nice day that sand bar across the Vicksburg it's got boats up and down that
thing people are just laying out on the beaches that's another thing about the Mississippi river it's
got these giant point bars there is more sand beaches along the lower Mississippi river than all along
the Gulf Coast is that right yes do y'all remember when Hank Burdine called the Mississippi
America's fourth coast I like that I'm doing some cleanup work with Dr. Kilgore I wanted to ask him
about shipwrecks and turns out he was holding out a great story on us this whole time so you think
that are there a lot of shipwrecks in the Mississippi River hundreds hundreds and some of them may
be in an ag field because the Mississippi River has changed course as it meanders remember that
meander belt a guy named Henry Fisk he did this geomorphic study and he mapped out all the meander
belts on the Mississippi River over the last 10,000 years and it's beautiful I mean you just can't
believe all these meander bins that have cut off so you may be 25 miles from the current Mississippi
River today and find I mean the channel could have been there so you have a shipwreck exactly
400 years ago on your place that's right we discovered one on the the old white river right
where the white river comes into the Arkansas the old white river mouth is kind of a meandering
shoot and we were there during low water and we looked up there and there was this long wooden
boat that had been exposed by the bank sluffing off and we reported to the Arkansas folks and
they had heard about it but they came out and excellent it was an 1800s version of it I don't know
how's it can you believe he wasn't going to tell me the story he's holding that on what other
interesting things have you found in the river I haven't found them but I've been with folks who've
found a giant ground sloth claw wow how big is that yeah it's probably eight or nine inches long
curved black unbelievable and I've seen all kinds of teeth and Indian artifacts like old bottles
you'll find old bottles you'll find pieces of pottery you'll find old whiskey jugs pieces
of the old whiskey jugs and find China that used to be on the boats of sank out there you'll find
chips of them did you ever see the bison skulls yes in fact yeah they've proudly another guy down
there we were walking on one and all of a sudden his foot hit something and he starts digging around
and he picks up an entire intact bison skull wow that was preserved out there you should have
pushed him out of the way and touched it first I saw it first yeah yeah when we say okay let's take
a break on this gravel bar and we all just spread out you know everyone's looking some people are
running you know for big stuff and others are just going real slow looking at the river just
constantly revealing news it does it does when Brent and I start commercial fishing and we find our
first shipwreck trust me that will be the first thing we bring up in conversation for the rest of our
lives hopefully it's not Laura misty would get burned out quick on a shipwreck story if I found one
or was in one undoubtedly the Mississippi River is one of America's most extravagant natural systems
rivaling the Rocky Mountain range the Appalachians are great deserts are giant inland lakes are
majestic coastlines this river its size and its location has been a fundamental component of what
makes America America both functionally and culturally want to end by asking Mr. Bill about why
he's dedicated his life to working on the river you love fishing the river yeah why what is it that you
love about fishing the Mississippi river oh just the solidarity of it yeah just being out there if
you're out there you know before the sun comes up and you see the sun come up or you see the
sun go down it's just a almost a spiritual experience you know when there's nobody you know there's
nobody to talk to there's nobody around you don't see anybody you're just out there in the
wilderness you know almost like like you know you're the only person on earth yeah
in episode one of this series we learned about the rivers incomprehensible power and size
along with man's ancient connection to it the first European sought in 1541 and will never
know when the first Native American the first human sought time has forgotten in episode two we
talked about how the Mississippi Delta was one of America's last frontiers that kept civilization
at bay because of constant flooding until the advent of levees long after most of America was
settled we talked about the plantation slavery sharecropping we talked with Mr. Earl Jasper about
growing up in the Delta in a sharecropping family that was big we talked about the art and literature
of the Delta and how prior to the Civil War this region was one of the richest places in America
fueled by some of the richest alluvial soil in the world on episode three we talked with author John
about the engineering feats that defined the century this daring man sought to tame the river
and how human nature and ego help formulate the circumstances for America's most costly natural
disaster which changed America forever flood of 1927 on this fourth episode we've talked about
the health of the fishery of the Mississippi River and I am highly encouraged to learn that the
river is thriving and much of it has to do with an intact flood plain preserved by the value of
hunting camps inside the levees we've just begun to scratch the surface of really understanding this
river like I've said so many times there's so many directions this story could have gone
and I just had to choose some directions to go but I believe every American ought to know about
the Mississippi River I started off with a knowledge gap that plagued me and it desired to understand
this river as a natural system and how it's impacted America and I think we've taken a pretty big
swing in understanding the Mississippi River I can't thank you enough for listening to Bearcrees
hey be sure to check out the Phelps Acorn inhale exhale grunt and bleep call for deer hunting
it's made of fine white oak wood and we only made 500 of these calls and they've even got my dead
gum signature on them for real I stand by these calls as incredible deer calls nothing else on the
market like it have a great week and I look forward to talking with the folks on the render next week
last summer you might have heard that first light was making waterfowl gear they put it on some
pretty slick field hunting patterns but folks here that hunt the dark flooded timber my homestay
of Arkansas started grumbling right away they wanted some timber camo will grumble no more they
just released cash camo specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded timbers of the
southern half of the Mississippi flyway the cash river is a river here in Arkansas the pattern was
designed using the same nature-based algorithm used in their other patterns but emphasizes micro
breakup elements and high contrast textures that are most visually disruptive when you are up close
and personal with green heads in the woods I'm proud to say that this pattern was tested and tweaked
for two seasons in Arkansas and it looks incredible plus first light donates a portion of every
sale of duck hunting gear to Delta waterfowl to support their mission of conserving North American
duck and goose populations head to firstlight.com slash cash that spelled C-A-C-H-E like the river in
Arkansas to give it a look