Fishing Crappie Tournaments With Dalton Gorham

This week on the Missouri Woods and Water podcast we get the chance to sit down with local crappie fisherman Dalton Gorham to talk about his love for fishing crappie, specifically fishing crappie tournaments with his dad. First we talk about how he got into fishing and how his love for the sport has deepened after he and his dad started live scoping. Then he talks about all the tournaments and how that goes and also gets into his gear from poles to bait and lures. It's great to see young guys with a passion for things in our great outdoors and Dalton sure shows that with his love for crappie. Thanks for listening!

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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Missouri Woods Water Podcast with your host Nate Micah. And Andy, he's back. Yeah. Still not done farming, but he's back for tonight. We were just making fun of, you guys are like slowest farmers. It's fine. Ain't worth shit anymore. Anyway. I feel like you're over it already. Do you get like this every year?

You're just like, I'm just done. I'm done farming. Yeah. It gets the point you're just ready to be done. But we were too dry for a long time and we stopped planting just to get some moisture back in the ground and. Now we have moisture back in the ground, but we're too wet to plant so we're kind in that low.

So [00:01:00] hopefully this weekend we can knock it out and almost finish up. It's supposed to get rain Friday. Yeah, I don't think it's supposed to be that much. So if it is, yeah, it's gonna push us back even farther, so we're getting there. Yeah. You ain't got too much left though, do you? No. Couple hundred acres.

So we're you probably need to rep pants, plant some corn though. It's getting a little thin. Yeah, I'm just saying we'll get into our sponsor, but I did some lucky buck dumping a couple days ago or last week and I dumped some spots for Andy out at his spot and I just walked right over that corn.

I didn't care. Hitting the tops off. Yep. I just was kicking it as I was walking through. Shocker. I didn't do that. That's cuz he was tickling it. Nevermind.

Oh. You guys are in it. In just ridiculous. So I'll tell you something Micah did for the first time last week, which I'm surprised we haven't heard. Heard a bunch of bitching from our listeners. You know how you were doing the dad jokes for a long time? Yeah. And then sw [00:02:00] switched over to Micah doing Chuck no's jokes.

Yeah. Micah did his first Chuck Norris joke in a while. Nice. Last week. It was hilarious, by the way. But actually I, and you listened to that show. I heard it and I'm trying to think of what it was. It was the uppercut what do you call a giraffe? Yeah, that's right. It's just a horse that's been uppercutted by Chuck Norse.

That's right. And, which, that's a pretty good one. I don't have a horse this week, so you're just gonna have to deal with that. No, that's all right. You made up your own on the fly one time. That's probably my favorite one you've ever made. I did not tonight though. Not tonight. What are we doing today?

What are we doing? Little Fishing. Fishing action. We've d like we've talked and done more fishing in the last, I don't know, when did we go. That was last weekend. Was that last Saturday? Five days ago? Yeah. Yeah. Last Saturday. We, me and Andy and our buddy Daryl, we all went out and we did some bow fishing.

And that was Andy's first time. My second time, yeah. And Andy caught the bug oh, it's, dude, that was he's freaking awesome. I loved it. He did the same thing I did and started [00:03:00] sending, Hey man, we could totally buy this boat right here. Get this boat. Yeah. You guys have been sending me boats on Facebook nonstop tomorrow.

If it works out and because we're hoping to go again tomorrow night. If it works out, you might be doing the same thing. You might be like, you know what, this would be a great investment, Uhhuh. We just need to, it's a write off. We need to get him back on Exactly Who writes it off. Write off people.

Dude, I found the perfect one. It's a combination of almost like a pontoon. But it's not, see, that's the, it's a flat bottom boat. You can have people, you have people on it like family. That didn't look like a flat bottom boat to me. It is it? If you look at, it's a flat bottom boat that they've retroed put the family seats on, but the front still has the deck with the lights.

Yep. Yep. So I'm, I would think about it. You two are losers. We're not about, dude, it was a blast. I know. It's a blast. It's a lot of fun. But you two are losers. What are you doing? I'm looking, so I actually saved the final Turkey numbers. You already talked about it. No, that was, the season wasn't over by then yet.

That was just through that point [00:04:00] in the season. I saved the final and oh wait. It's in my email. We're not, so anyway, we're bow fishing, we guess. How many birds were tar or killed this year? 43,000. Just under 42. Okay. That's 7,000 more than last year or something. Yeah, like 30 something last year.

Yep. All right. Move, proceed. Oh, I was just kinda making fun of you. I wish wasn't Yeah, y'all went fishing. Yeah, we went pro fishing and we landed and it took a team effort cuz all three of us got an arrow in this thing. This video better be posted, we'll post at some point post. Yeah. But so me and Darryl, we tag teamed up on this freaking big old, was it Buffalo?

Buffalo? Buffalo carp. Buffalo carp. We get it to the boat and we both pick up our arrows and we're picking up the fish at the same time. You're trying to get back in the boat, trying to get it in the boat and as soon as we get it up it falls out. And if you look like your air at ville, your arrow comes out first and then it creates like this, like a effect and it pops off a Daryl's arrow.

And dude, it's, we're like, [00:05:00] oh no. Cuz we were like, dude hollering, like this thing was huge and we must have messed it up enough. We were in shallow enough water. You kind, Andy was recording this and he is oh crap. He puts his phone down and then Andy was able to get an arrow in it and we got it close enough and then we used the was it gaff?

Yeah. Yeah. He used the gaff to get it in the boat, but I wish we would've had a scale, but that thing was a big one. It was 40 ish pounds, it could've been tickling 50. I don't know. We'll post it. It was heavy. We'll post the pictures soon. Yeah. It was a big fish. Yeah. Daryl Bo Fishes all the time, and he said that was the biggest one that he's ever gotten.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. So yeah, three plus years. Pretty like hardcore, Yeah. Quite a bit. No, he's pretty hardcore about it and that was pretty sweet. Pretty nice. Hoping to go tomorrow. Hoping speaking of fishing. Yeah. Today we talked to new friend of ours, Dalton Gorum. Yep. About crappy fishing.

Yeah. He's a big crappy. Tournament hunt or fisherman. Yeah, whatever you want to call him. I [00:06:00] mean with life scope it's that sounds like it's kinda like him. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, we get into him, get into it with him about crappy tournaments what he does, how they do it.

Him and his dad, they're a team. They've been doing it for a long time. Pretty good information. Dude. 19 his dad's been doing it. Yeah. But he's been doing tournament since he's been 14. So he got, I mean he's been doing it tournaments in it 30% of his life. Yeah. And he, I guarantee he's been fishing before that cuz he said his dad used to grew up doing it.

Yeah. Pretty cool story. Pretty good stuff. This is more based on like lake fishing than it is pond. As far as ponds. Ponds, we talk about ponds, but little bit, that's not really what he does. Anymore or, just how they choose to hunt when they get the orb hunt fish. You did it to me.

How they choose to fish when they get the time they're going to the lake to, to that lake and they're doing those tournaments cuz that's what they have the time for. Here in Missouri we're blessed with lot of good fishing lakes. Yeah. They make it happen. So let's do some sponsors before we get into this show.

Let's do it. You don't get under bump. I don't have it up on the big screen. My bad. Let's start with OnX and there's a reason I want to [00:07:00] Okay. OnX maps use the code m I said we weren't gonna do that. Nate, use the code Mww 20 for 20% off on their website. I'm gonna be spending a lot of time on OnX.

Okay. Oh yeah, that's right. I got some information yesterday. Big news that I drew a Wyoming elk tag, like a very sought after Wyoming elk tag that I wasn't even planning on drawing. It was just like, yeah, screw it. We'll do it. Not just you, either me and my brother-in-law Russell.

Who's been on our show several times and it's the general tag, yeah, like it's the tag you want, we can hunt anywhere basically that there's general tags in the state of Wyoming and so for archery and rifle the entire season, yeah. You have to buy archery stamp, I think it's called to go bow hunting.

And then if you don't happen to kill one with the bow and you wanna go back rifle season, you can my whole world just changed and our world's changed cuz that, that's gonna affect our Colorado trip. Possibly. Yeah. All kinds of stuff. But we drew that. [00:08:00] So that's badass and I'm gonna be spending a lot of time on OnX doing some scouting over the next few months.

Shout out to our friend Chad Parsons with the veterans Help Foundation of Wyoming, by the way. He's been, I told him about it and he's already been helpful and I think he's gonna help PO point us in some directions and stuff like that. Really appreciate that from his perspective.

And cuz me and Russell, like we didn't do a whole lot of homework when we put in this task. Oh, the odds of you like drawing this was some none next. So I, we looked at it again. I looked at go hunt 0.7% cuz our odds were two points less than 1%. And we drew. So it was just like, you know what, the only reason we did it is cuz we heard Wyoming might be changing a lot of stuff.

Which may or may not happen, they did stuff with moose and I think it was Bighorn last year. We were thinking, okay, we might get forced out, or whatever's gonna happen with that. Take your chance now we like f it, we've got two points, we might as well try it.

Damned if we didn't. So that's awesome. That happened. So gonna be using the OnX app and doing a lot of saved [00:09:00] maps cuz we don't know service, we don't know anything about, we don't even know where we're going yet. But the homework was next to nothing. We just put the draw in. So check 'em out on X Maps, download the app.

Lucky Buck I dropped my second bucket the other day. Me too. So I think we did the same day or day after each other. Something like that. I like that reel. You just, you put up the kids. Yeah. That was a good one. You do a good job with those. They like playing in the they like the smell of it.

So you're gonna be looking over there in lost. It's just gonna be like licking. I can see. Oh, he, oh, he has tried that stuff before. He's bud, like candy apple. Yeah. Eating the freak factor. Yeah. It's like corn. Yeah. So you put the lucky bug down, you put freak factor around it. Yeah. That's the first time I've had the freak factor, so I just wanted to see what it does.

Yeah, I thought about doing that. I just didn't Should I know that you're like, like you can mix it with corn or whatever, but I just, I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna try it. I was really so far behind. I had to have Nate put my shit out. It [00:10:00] happens. I did do it. I did do it. Yeah. I, your cameras that were out I flipped 'em all off, but I think they're all dead.

They're all dead. Yeah. So that kind of sucks. But yeah, check out Lucky Buck. Obviously you should have, men are out by now. I just got some photos today of some bucks because I got excited. We'll get into that. You some stumps coming. Yeah, we'll get into that in a little bit with our cameras, but they're definitely hitting mineral, that's for sure.

This is way you're way behind at this point, so get it out there if you haven't. Speaking of cameras, reveal cams. Reveal sale cams? Me and Micah got a little, I guess excited. Yeah, I just wanted to like, I wanted to try get one set up and get it out there. First off, freaking simple to set one up.

Oh yeah. You download the app two minutes, you turn the camera on and you follow the steps on the app and it's set up. And then when I went out there, I set up what I liked about it and I did a reel, I think on this I set up a Reveal X Pro. And when you turn the camera on, there's a screen, LCD screen that shows you what the camera's looking at.[00:11:00]

Yeah. What you're seeing in the camera. So you can just sit there and move the camera. And get it where you want it. You don't need to worry about I used to take my phone. Like I do a front facing picture and like, all right, that's what it's looking at. Or, I would go stand in front of the camera and kind of pretend if I'm a deer, I'm, that looks about right.

And then inevitably you'd get your first photo and they'd be, 10 degrees too high or whatever. So that was really nice. Plus as soon as I got the damn camera on, it was sending me pictures so I could also just use the pictures I had. Pretty sweet. So check 'em out. Reveal cameras by t the cam black ovis.

Use the code M ww 10 for 10% off. And you probably need to do some shopping. You might need to start, I don't know, man, thinking about some different things cuz you know, if you guys are gonna go up, you'll probably drop camping up there. So you're gonna have to look at, maybe some freeze dried meals, some kinds, those of stuff that yeah.

Might need more. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know man. [00:12:00] Lot, lot to think about Hydration pan. I'm gonna be using black filter Orbis for that. I can guarantee you that. And then as a tie-in company, we got Cammo Fire, flash Shale. I haven't been on it for a couple weeks actually, but I need to I know. Getting like a busy, I bet I've been like going through, like I've been downstairs a lot, like organizing my room, like my camp, everything I got as far as hunting wise and so I need to.

Find out what holes I got and start looking for those holes, holes I got in my system. Oh, buddy Pat. He's always picking up some pretty sweet hats and shirts. They always got really good deals on like their, Russell had a cool shirt on the other day. I was I they got, obviously it was a cam fire shirt, so I know where hat got it.

Hats today. They got all kinds of packs on there. Some sleeping pads. Hey, are you getting 90 sleeping pads? Got, I think I got one. See that's what I have some stuff. I'm pretty sure I got a one person tent, but I don't remember freaking throwing knives. Throwing knives. Hell yeah. Let's just get you some, throw a knife in a [00:13:00] elk's eye.

Just be done with it's right what you're saying. So yeah, camo fire rivers, edge tree stands. We just made a joke during the show about gotta get these put together. Yeah. You and me got some work to do cuz we got ourselves several doubles. And not that they're a pain in the ass to put together, but they just are.

Like it's Just a, it's not something you really feel like doing, putting together a come together and, rivers Edge has some very good options for us. We're both, thinking ahead a little bit, Mike already got some last year of, taking kids. We got some buddy stands so we can take kids with us this year and we gotta get 'em put together.

And then in my situation, I gotta then replace two singles with some of those doubles. So it's like just a pain, which I know I'll have help, in doing that, but just, it's always been a pain, you know what I'm saying? So we need to get to it. But check out River's Edge Tree stands, river's Edge Midwest Gun Works man.

They it's funny, I discussed possibly going rifle hunting out in Wyoming. And then the whole like, okay what would I [00:14:00] take? Do I wanna be suppressed? I've got a 300 win mag. It's not suppressed though. And do I wanna take that or do I need to get something different?

And get with our buddy or boy Cameron over at Midwest Gun Works and, figure something else out. I think it's a good excuse to get a new gun. Babe, I just don't have a Wyoming gun. If for some reason we went out with rifles, I think it would be the 300 that would go.

Yeah, just I'd say it doesn't need to be France out your, no. Out, out of your, you using six five if you want it. Artillery. That's the one I would end up picking. That's outta your, outta yours. I would use that one. But if I need to I can go to Midwest Gun Works and a Confined Ammo, all that stuff.

Shoot seven millimeter PRC is what I want for my next big game gun. Why don't you just go buy it and I can test it out for you? No. Oh, I've heard a lot of good things about that gun. I, it just intrigues me severely. I have a feeling I know someone who will probably have one if he does go. Who? Russell.

Oh, obviously me and him haven't talked about it before. [00:15:00] It's because he's a big seven millimeter mag fan, which he's got one, right? Yeah. And that seven millimeter PRC is pretty Yeah, it's a distinct possibility. If we don't, if we come back empty handed, going back with archery rifle, oh, I would, making a trip back up for a couple days, a weekend, whatever it might be.

It's pretty much the only shot we're probably gonna have in next decade to do it. Might as well try it out. We'll see. But Midwest Gun Works is a great place to look for some of that stuff. Athlon optics, that's gonna be the glass I'm gonna have on top of whatever I'm taking Your bonanos, your rangefinder.

Spotting scope. Yep. Because I don't know, I would think you what terrain you're getting into, right? Yeah. You probably more than likely you would be able to get into some of that stuff where you can actually spot and stalk. It depends on where you go. There's the the red desert or something out there that's apparently pretty good. And that's basically just sage breast desert. Yeah. You're not like just walking around for elk and that you're spotting them, and so I gotta, God, I gotta get with our boy at Athlon too, cuz I don't have a spot in scope. Might have to very get loaded up, man.

Get with him. Yep. Start thinking about, I don't even know what [00:16:00] kind of binoculars I've got to be honest with you. Think eight by 20 eight's the biggest I've got right now. That's all you need. Be fine. Yeah. I'd at least get some Timbo 40 twos. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember what I got, but so anyway, check out Athlon optics all those cool new stuff.

They got some cool new t-shirts too. Yep. I did just see those. Yeah. Which I don't remember. I don't think I ever any, ended up getting some I need to, but they got some cool new, I guess what you call it, logo wear. And I'm a fan of logo wear. For sure. It's merch. I'm wearing our explicit outdoor shirt right now.

Andy's wearing our Missouri Woods and water shirt. What you got on Micah? True Classic. I dunno what that means. It's a brand. Just a shirt. Yeah. True. Classic. All right. And Weber Outfitters. We're gonna be making a field trip. Few weeks think. We're actually just talking about, we keep people that we just haven't done it yet.

We're actually going to, we're we think you've come up with a date that's gonna work for all of us. Yeah, we just gotta, I'm waiting on you guys. Just waiting. It's on you pieces of the puzzle to get not all of us have a seasonal job, Micah. It's not seasonal. I'm [00:17:00] still working. You're a farmer. I also a banker.

Oh yeah. B, you have banker's hours though. First off, somebody let me know what those are cuz my cell phone rings a whole, he just call himself a banker. Yeah. Remember when he gets mad at us for saying he owns a, I'm a loan. I'm a loan officer. He owns a bank. So I think you can make your own hours. I'm not gonna go have this argument.

Do you not own a bank? No, I do not own a bank. I think you do. He keeps saying he doesn't, but he acts like he does. Okay. Like how many times has he walked into my basement? Our studio with like wads of cash, just like flaunting them. Literally never bullshit. Like tonight you were just like, look at my bands.

And I'm like, what's bands?

Oh geez. Marrell targets. Wait, are we done with that? Webber? Yeah. So anyway, chucker buddies out at Webber Outfitters Bowes are what, obviously they're gonna be really pushing right now and what they're [00:18:00] doing they pretty much still have a big brand out there except for one who I will not name. So we can pretty much get 'em all.

And then finally, Morell targets not really a shooting into mine currently, cuz I'm waiting to get a new setup. Kinda like you were saying, Mike, I feel like I'm just like, Almost wasting my time if I'm just gonna be switching my bone out. But, so eventually they'll get used, but right now they're not.

Yep. And I think that's our sponsors for today. Sponsors check out our website. Keep saying it. Missouri Woods and water.com. I have added to my gear page. I've done a few videos that I need to upload to our YouTube, and then there'll be links on into that specific piece of gear. And that's, we'll keep building that.

We'll get a lot of questions on what we use and I think that gear page will be nice. The problem is we gotta, we gotta build it. So yeah, it's gonna be a process. We'll work on it. I still haven't even shown Andy how to do his yet. Nope. So one of these days. Yeah, it probably won't be tonight either.

No. Anyway that's the sponsors. Appreciate it. [00:19:00] Thanks for listening, folks. Let's get into today's show with Dalton Gorum. About crappy. Crappy. This is the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast.

All righty, let's get this show going with us tonight. We got our buddy Dalton Gorum. I actually know some of your relatives, so that's different, but a buddy of ours told me about you and all these things that you've been doing with in the crappy. Do you guys say crappy or crappy? The folks down south say crappy, but we say crappy.

Yeah, I said crappy. Is that a real thing? Is that, oh, I said crappy in front of my mom the other day and she's what are you talking about? That is a crappy. I didn't know people called 'em crappies. You en Oh yeah. The further south you go. It's all crappy. Yeah, I'll be down. I'll be damned. You didn't know that?

No, I thought that was a well known thing. No. Okay. There's a lot of well-known things. I don't know, some people would be like [00:20:00] just making fun of them and calling 'em crappy. I just thought it was like a joke. I didn't realize people actually called 'em crappies, which they're delicious, so I don't know why he would do that.

That's why I always thought, I was like, you guys are fools. You don't think they're good? Yeah. It's a good fish, right? Crap. Yeah. But yeah like I said, Dalton is a crappy fisher man and man, fisher of man. And you've been doing tournaments, you do a little bit of everything with it.

Before we get into it though, introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, how old you are. Man. Man. We shouldn't ask him how old he is cuz might just, he make us feel old. Make us feel old. And then what's your favorite thing about the Missouri outdoors? Who we haven't asked that question for a while.

Yeah, you probably shoot. Alright. I'm Dalton Gorum and currently reside in Kingsville and originally from Oak Grove, Missouri. And like we were talking about earlier, I graduated in 2021, so I'm 19. And I'm going into my junior year at uc. M you offered him a beer earlier? You I did. I didn't know how you, I'm gonna to get arrested.

I'm like, I need to get this bush light outta our freaking [00:21:00] house. Yeah. So you go to Central. So go mules, go jack places. I didn't get offered one. You want to, it's probably yours. Go get one. Probably. Probably is fine. Yeah. Could test shit outta my house. Yeah. It is yours cuz you brought that two months ago.

Yeah. Or maybe Pat brought it, somebody brought it, it don't matter. Anyway. So what do you like about Missouri? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I just like, pretty much the diversity that it has with lakes around Missouri. It pretty much suits every fisherman from pretty much any background, you go to Truman Lake and you find muddy or water catch big, crappy do a lot of bow fishing and whatnot. You got down to Lake the Ozarks and. There's bass fishing down there, great bass fishing Palmie, Stockton, table rock, all beautiful lakes. That clear water. There's just so much to do on the lakes in Missouri.

And that's what I guess I'm most thankful for for the Missouri department or Missouri conservation. I didn't realize Missouri had so or was so sought after. Would that be the word? Yeah, I've, cause I'm just not in that world Uhhuh, so I just never [00:22:00] paid attention to it till I've heard, numerous people talk about it, so that's pretty neat.

Andy and I learned that on the heck episode like number four for us. It was like in the very beginning. Yeah. Doug Vard bombard about bass fishing that Missouri is a very sought after area to fish at, people travel a long ways the world too. Yeah. Yeah. Fishing Missouri. He was saying people were coming from different countries to come fishing on our lakes which is pretty cool.

Yeah. Yep. We're lucky, oh yeah. For some of the things we disagree on we do have a good conservation department, yes. Some of the things they do, we don't necessarily agree with everything, but they definitely do hold job. Yeah. Do a good job. Yeah. So Dalton was worried about we told him, gave him a little bit of a warning that question was coming and he asked What do other people normally say?

And we let him, but everybody always pretty much does that. Yeah. It's a little different, but everybody talks about the diversity of Missouri. Yeah. And how, it offers so many opportunities. They never name one specific thing. They always talk about just everything you can do. Yeah.

It's always be, oh, I love the whitetail man. The whitetail is so [00:23:00] great. It's no, it's, I love everything. You can do in Missouri. Wasn't the crappy, wasn't the bad, it was all of 'em. Turkeys, whatever. Yep. Yep. So why crappy? What, how'd this all start for you? My parents actually, and it was actually came from my mom.

She crappy fished her whole life with my grandpa. And my dad was actually a bass fisherman before he turned crop fisherman. And this was back in like the nineties quite a while ago. But yeah, pretty much my whole life I've grown up on a boat and crappy fishing.

Nice. So like when you your mom and dad did they fish tournaments and do all that stuff as well, or just more of like hobby fishermen type? No, it was more just go down to Baw Marina and just put the boat in and, yep. Find a bluff somewhere and try to catch as many crappy as possible.

But my dad fished a couple like local or like little like company tournaments, back in the day. Yeah. Nothing too big. Cool. What what do you, cause I'm assuming you have also fish for bass and other fish. It's probably just like any fisherman, you're not a single one trick pony, but what do you love about crappy fishing compared to bass fishing?

Which I would, I would guess [00:24:00] in our state bass fishing's probably the most popular type of fishing. I bet it's pretty close down, like big. I don't really know. That's just assumptions. Yeah. But what do you love about crop compared to bass? I'm, I think. I prefer a bass fight.

But ever since live scope came out there's no, no type of fishing that you can do that's more fun than live scope and crappy. You go down there with a 12 foot pole and we'll get into that later, but the tactics and whatnot. But you go down there and you put a jig, drop a jig down to the fish's nose, and there's noth You can't beat that.

And you can see it all on the live scope. And it's just, it's so much fun, huh? He's gotta teach me more about live scope. Didn't Doug talk about that a little bit? Like it was, yeah, it new at that time. He was newer then. It was just three years ago. Three years ago. Didn't he like, have something to do with it?

I thought he was like it's very possible. He, if I remember, like he was working all kinds of stuff. He was a big developer or I think tester for Minnkota. Minnkota, yeah. Yeah. And what was the other, it's like a butterfly or something. He used to say the name of it [00:25:00] anyways, but Yeah, that was pretty new.

It's pretty new technology, isn't it? I'd say it's pretty new, but we've been using it for about, I guess since 2018. The national championship was on Truman, so that's what, five years? Yeah. Yeah. Pushing five years ago. Yeah. And we talked to him in 20, so pretty new. Yeah, since the original Panoptics came out.

That's pretty cool. So a crappy is super aggressive. What do you like? What do you mean? Compared to a bass? Now I'm the level of fishermen of I go out with my kids and I throw some shit in the water and hope I catch some stuff, right? Yeah. But I've been told by different fishermen that obviously bass are aggressive.

But when crappy are on, you just can't, it's like a frenzy. Yeah. I see what you're saying now. I'd say it's much easier to catch a, to get a crappy to bite than it is to get a bass to bite. I like to think that the bass fishermen overthink a lot of things, out there ever since live scope came out, you can tell fish behavior and whatnot.

But bass are more finicky and you gotta change up bait styles and presentations a lot. And crappy fishing. Nowadays he's either gonna bite he crappy is gonna bite 90% of the time.[00:26:00] I need to start crawl fishing then. It's really finding the crappy, right? That's the hard, yeah.

You go down to Truman in the summertime, it's actually, if you got live scope, even if you don't got live scope it's pretty easy to find the crappy. But I just find the guys that are hing and hollering and Yeah, they're, nobody's over there move your ball. The dickhead pulls up right next to him up, for the listener doesn't know.

Explain live scope. There's probably somebody listening right now that's what the hell are those guys talking about? That code word for, yeah. I don't know what live scope is. Okay. So live scope is basically like a live sonar technology. That You can pretty, it's everything on it.

You can see the fish tail wa you can see you could size up fish. I could tell what, you could tell what a crappy is pretty easily on live scope. Once you get the settings right, you could tell what a carp is. We've seen six and a half foot spoon bill on live scope, which is, they're tearing up spoonbill on live scope down there and the conservation's gonna have to do something about that cuz they're tearing 'em up down there.

But live scope, a lot of people [00:27:00] call it cheating. That's basically I've heard that. Yeah. That's like the number one thing that people say. But it's if you don't have it and you're going out there fishing, then you I don't wanna say you're wasting your time, but he's doing an old school way.

Do doing an old school. Yeah. A lot of people are like they, they don't want to make the switch. They want to preserve that old school way of fishing. But once you do it and once you go out there and learn it, That there's nothing there's no type of fishing that's better than live scoping.

Yeah, it's a really, like a.

The, it's a really e advanced version of a fish finder. Yes. That's really like the fish finder was the first thing where you just got like a dot on a screen, wasn't it like a bleep and you knew something was down there. Yep. Now it's, like you said, you can see pretty much see underwater the whole time.

Yeah. You know what, I'd be freaked out by it. What if you ever saw a dead body? Oh, I'm sure they use it. They do. That is a human. Yeah, they probably use it for that. They use it for search and rescue. That'd be the last time I was sufficient too. Be like, there's a dead body on. How deep does that thing like work?

I honestly have no idea, but sometimes when I'm [00:28:00] adjusting and dial on it it'll I'll accidentally go too far and it'll just shoot the whole screen up and it goes a hundred. I honestly don't even know over a hundred foot down, oh, wow. Wow. I guarantee it probably goes down further and you can shoot out however many feet you want.

Will it show you the The terrain of the topo. Like the topo too. If there's a, a wall that comes out or there's water, we have no freaking, there's a bunch of vegetation down there. Yeah. There's a lot of that. There's different like settings that you can go to that brings up, like the chart and stuff.

That you're talking 'em out. But I don't, we, we usually don't do that. We run it on the back with a hummingbird. Hum. Hummingbird hum Humm. Yeah. That's another fish miner they got. I think it's mega Live or something. Something like that. They got their own live scope type technology out, but Nice.

Yep. It's a pretty badass. Yeah that's what I remember Doug was telling us about. Like with bass fishermen, Doug was a professional bass fisherman for years. Uhhuh recently retired, but they would use that, for finding top topography or different bins in the, the water structure.

Oh, yeah. Where they might be like, all right, there, there could be a bass, laid up in there or whatever. They would use it.[00:29:00] In that fashion, if I remember him. Telling us correctly. That sounds all right. Yeah. So break down a tournament for us, like bass, bass tournaments where they're usually like two or three days, something like that.

Yep. Usually most, whether it's pounds or biggest fish or whatever, they go like that. How does a crappy tournament work? So like bass tournaments, they go five biggest fish and crappy tournaments do seven biggest fish. Oh, okay. And that's pretty much like a general, like through all of America, every Crapp tournament pretty much does seven.

And the main trail is the Crapp Masters out there. They do, they got the elite Trail, which they just started up this year. I forget the entry fee was like $1,500 a tournament or something like that. And shit it was, it cost, it would've taken up too much time and money. So we didn't do it this year, but we fished the, just the regular national trail and I mean they got about four or five tournaments I'd say.

Ah, probably they might have a little over six tournaments a year. And you weigh, it's not Missouri that's all over, right? Yeah, that's all over. Yeah. [00:30:00] Usually Truman is a it's pretty much set in stone, Truman, because there's so many I like to brag, but about the Truman Lake Live skaters cuz I like to think that Truman Lake has a lot of the best live scopes in the nation and you go down to Grenada Lake in Mississippi Darbo, Louisiana you follow Oklahoma, all over St.

John's in Florida. There's a lot of good live skaters everywhere, but, those turn, that, that tournament trail goes pretty much all over. And you have seven fish you weigh in biggest seven fish. It's a two day tournament. And there's another big tournament called Mr. Crappy Invitational that's like 125,000 for first place or something like that.

Oh, wow. But maybe we should think about buying a crappy boat. Eh, pretty sure you can shoot fish and you do the same thing. Crapp say the same boat. We'd be like those dudes out in the tournament with like flood lights all over. We're fishing for crappies. That's how I used to fish.

Growing up, my, my family, they were from North Carolina and my grandpa, he lived on a lake. And the way that we would [00:31:00] go after Croy is we'd go out at night, we'd have lights that would, shine into the water and then you would get minnows and the lights would bring other minnows in, and then you would just

Fish like that, put your minnow in there and if you get on 'em, you get on 'em, whatever. But we've always had, that's how we did it growing up. I didn't even know that was a way to do it. Yeah. Nice. All right, so little different anyway. How many of these tournaments are you doing at 19 years old?

You're in school, obviously, and are you doing them by yourself? Are you doing 'em with your dad? How are you doing these things? Yeah, I'm doing 'em with my dad and we've been tournament fishing I think since, we've started before live scope. So back when it was like, I think 2014, maybe 2015 we started doing tournaments.

So I don't even know how old I was back then. Maybe seven, 10 or 11. I was close. Yeah, no, but I've been live scoping, I've been running the live scope since I was probably like 15. Yeah. Pretty much since it came out. And my dad he jokes about it, but he says he's showing bow fishing boats.

Oh, boat fishing boats. Man I'd get [00:32:00] a nitro, get a crappy fishing boat. Live scope. Ah, how we getting, how shallow water can those go in? Not too shallow. We bought 'em out with the troll motor at about two feet on the live scope at least. So that attract a little bit, but it's pretty similar.

I don't know. We've gotten, we were pretty shallow the other day. We'll get into that way. Sorry. Getting us off subject one track mind. Get into subject. One thing you'll learn about us is we get off the subject really quickly. Oh, okay. We call it what? Rabbit holes. Yeah. Yeah. No, but my dad, we fish every tournament together and I'd say in the past we've done two or three out-of-state tournaments every year, the majority of the tournaments they got state trail tournaments.

So you're facing people in the state of Missouri. Or some Kansas guys will come over and fish over here. But we've won a few of those. We won a national trail tournament last year. Nice. And that was our first national trail win, which felt really good. But most of it is they got the Truman Lake series.

Which is pretty much the best at Truman Lake. Just[00:33:00] a bragging rights tournament, it's like a hundred dollars entry fee. And it's pretty much just bragging rights, but, there's a lot of little trails out there that we try to fish and, try to do the big one as big as, as much as possible.

As much as time allows. And hell if you guys win. You just paid for your boat, you know what I'm saying? No. Okay. These are 10. The big one is $10,000. Still there. That's paying for a good portion. Yeah. But they probably got thousands of dollars Oh, yeah. Into it already. So what do they say?

What do they say about when a man buys the boat? The two best day of a man's life, or when he buys the boat anyway, he sells the boat. I'm not saying, but I'm just trying to have one of them days. Yeah. It's it's nice to win some of that cash, get some of it back. Yeah. If you can do that, which is cool.

Yeah. And do you have sponsors or anything like that? Or you just, I we pretty much just roll without sponsors. A lot of guys do have sponsors. We really just gotta go out and ask. That's what a lot of guys do. A lot of guys get $6,000 tournament entry paid for, a couple guys have signed.

Deals for $50,000 with companies, which is insane in the crappy industry [00:34:00] because I don't wanna say it's like way behind the bass industry, but it is. I could see you, it's not near as commercial. I'll be honest, I've never seen a crappy tournament On tv. Tv.

Yeah. Cuz it's you got the MF and I saw like they had a helicopter flying over and stuff. Like you, you're not gonna see that in the crappy industry, but they're trying their best to Yeah. Make it as grow as possible. Yeah. Grow it as much as possible. We've got a buddy Tristan Williams.

He does a lot of video for bass fishermen Yeah. On in tournament. So he's sitting on their boat and he's taking, video. Yep. High quality like TV type of video. And I'm pretty sure it's only been bass. I could be wrong, but so far that's usually what I see. But I mean it's definitely, like I said, it's.

It's not something I knew about, which I think is pretty cool that we've got these, I mean I, all these opportunities had 'em, but I didn't know like what the major circuits and stuff were. Cuz they're not televised. They're not publicized as much, but I knew they were out there. So when you do fish tournaments, it's the biggest seven.

How many you allowed to have in the boat? There's some tournaments that allow you, you can only have seven fish as soon as you hit dry land, you gotta make your determination and you gotta coal out [00:35:00] on the water. You come to land with eight fish, you're disqualified.

Gotcha. I don't know how that is for bass fishing, but I think it's something like that where you gotta come in with five. If you some tournaments, which the crappy masters, they allow you to have eight or nine, 10, however many fish you want in the boat. Yeah. But it's probably not wise to put too many fish in the live well to, take all the oxygen out of the water.

But we probably run about nine fish, I'd say. Yeah. If it, if the tournament allows. If it allows, yeah. Yeah. Which that sucks cuz they're good to eat. So I know you're like one, one, this isn't really a eating tournament. I guess I know, but at the end of it, why not fry some of those suckers up, man?

One thing that, which I should probably tell you is, I'm allergic to fish. What are you shitting me? That, that, that's what kind of sucks about it is I can't eat the fish. So we really don't take home. How did you learn. That you were allergic to fish? I've had a lot of shots in my arms over the years.

Uhhuh when I was younger, and I think I had 50 shots just lumped up in my arms. I don't know how they do that little prick thing, trying to figure out, trying to figure out what you're allergic to. And I was [00:36:00] allergic to white fish, peanuts, tree nuts, all that type of stuff. I think it's just white fish though.

So like white meat? Don't know about salmon and stuff like that, but I'm not telling not to find out. Yeah. That says just go to the hospital and try a piece right there and then have the lady get the EpiPen and see what happens. Yeah. See what happens. So you're so allergic to it that you have an EpiPen.

Oh yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. That's legit. But you can you like hand, you can handle 'em and everything. I can handle them. Yeah. But the, like the fish clean station down at Baw on Truman Lake there's a couple times where I'll go in it and it's just so bad in inside there and just breathing it in and just like the chin starts tingling and No, really, and it's, I start wheezing and all this other type of stuff.

Holy cow. That sucks, man. You gotta, I will say this though, that you, it shows you how much he loves crappy fishing. He's allergic to him and still likes to be around him. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's called dedication and something that you really love. Yeah, I like to think of myself as a provider for the family.

I can't eat it provider. There you go. There you go. No, that works. It works too. Hey, I I'm with you. I'm not allergic to it, but I'm not a [00:37:00] huge fan of fish for whatever reason. So I'm guessing only one. The family allergic to it. Yes. The only one allergic to rough. Is your dad a little bit disappointed in you?

This is damn, I can't believe this is my son. No, I mean my birthday parties over the years consisted of fish fries, so I didn't really hinder anything. The best part is the kid don't get here, have this hotdog bud. Pretty much it was hotdog and hamburgers for me. Everybody else is eating this awesome crappy that your dad pro makes and he's here, there's some hotdog in the fridge.

You go microwave one way. Oh, that's awesome. Jesus. Oh man. That's good. So do we want to get into some of the tactics and like how it works? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So we'll just stick with tournaments right now. What's your game plan? You know how like leading up to a tournament.

How soon do you get down there? How soon do you start scout? I'm assuming you scout. Yeah, like pre fishing. And how's that work? A lot of guys pre fish a lot and we don't pre fish as much on Truman Lake since, we pre, we pretty much like already know what spots we're fishing and what time of the year.

And it's limited to two or three spots each time of the year that we're gonna [00:38:00] fish. And so we just bounce around to it, early in the morning of tournament hours and just go with it. Like breaking down another lake we've learned, oh, since we fished table rock and stunk it up on table rock and that was the $125,000 tournament that we stunk it up on.

We find the muddiest water possible when you're crappy fishing and if you find the muddiest water, which that pretty much means go up the lake, wherever you're at, you go up. As far as you possibly can. And that's where you're gonna find the biggest crappy, plus you don't have to fish in 40 foot of water, 50 foot of water, like table rock.

You could fish in 70, 80 foot of water. That's just dumb. I kinda want the tributaries like right where the tributaries are spilling in. So to create that muddies. Yeah. Yeah. You want, I don't wanna say you want like it's when the, a flood happens and it just like washes out a creek that happens in crappy fishing.

So you want it murky water, you just don't want it to be like, extremely chocolate milk. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, find the muddy edge water possible up there at least. And fish [00:39:00] shallow water. That's all we do. You could pretty much fish shallow water all year long when we're talking shallow give us some feet, like how shallow we're talking.

We've been catching fish in. Here recently, probably four or five foot of water. And you could catch 'em in three foot of water. On the live scope, it's hard to see it on the live scope in that shallow water. But your biggest fish are gonna be up there shallow. Really?

And, you could find, I say that, but you could find 'em out deep, but it's just not, there's not as many of them right out there as consistent. Yeah. And you think about the volume and space you get in deeper water, there's more area for them to be in yeah. Yep. Yep. So we just, we try to find shallow water and we try to find muddy water and, find trees if possible.

I'm thinking right now that's exactly opposite of how I would attack it. It look like it hurt. Yeah. Like big ass fish. I'm usually like they're not gonna be on the bank anywhere. They're gonna be Oh I actually don't mean like on the bank though. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah. This is like flat, like fish a flat that is tabletop, [00:40:00] underwater, tabletop type stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean. Like you got a channel that comes up hits a flat. We, we've started fishing a lot more channels, channel ledges and whatnot. You could catch 'em on there. They're pretty scattered.

But fish are flat with trees. Pretty much makes sense. I knew they liked structure, like that was something they enjoy, right? Yeah. And I'd say, we used to catch a lot of crappy on trees above the water, but with, since live scope came out, I don't think we really touch trees above the water, all the fish we catch are either out Roman in between the trees. So you want, you still wanna find the structure, because the fish are like condensed right there. But they're not, they don't relate to the structure as much as, people like we previously thought, we thought every fish is stuck to a tree.

They hang out, this is where we live. Yeah. But 70% of the fish are, you got a tree right here and you got a tree five feet over here, 10 feet over here. Fish are just out in the middle, just sitting there. Just doing what fish do. Yep. Just hanging out, just sitting. Okay. I will say like [00:41:00] just from boat fishing, that one time, like looking in the water, I assume a lot of what we've seen were car or crappy.

Little, yeah, little. They're fast as shit. They are fast, holy crap. I don't know. There's a bunch of 'em, but talking about live scoping, I would imagine, I'm guessing they don't sit in the spot for you very long. You'd be surprised on like Truman and a muddy water lake.

Yeah, you can. We've had a fish, like a big fish that I don't see in, in time, cause you're moving really fast trying to scam for these fish and if I pass over fish or it's like a foot underneath the troll motor, and I'll be like, oh shoot dude. And I'm prop washing this fish trying to back up to get on this fish with the live scope.

But, I, and sometimes you do that and it spooks a fish. Sometimes you do that and it's like, how is that, and the fish is still right there the whole time, like a foot underneath the troll motor that I just prop washed him right there. And he's still standing right there. And you could catch him. That's wild.

It's pretty, it's the amount of different behaviors in with the crappy and with every fish, pretty much with live scope is, it's pretty insane. That is [00:42:00] crazy. Cause like we hinted to it, me and Andy went bow fishing the other day, and especially like the carp, like we were mainly going after carp and gar.

But the gar, we noticed they would hang around. Like they'd stay, they close, they wouldn't care too much, but the carp, they'd gone. Oh yeah. They're just gone. So that's interesting that, each fish has its own whatever, scare meter or something. I don't know. Yeah. It varies by like water clarity and whatnot.

I honestly don't you could be in a Clearwater Lake and it can, you can do that too. But, like on Dar Bone in Louisiana, which is west Monroe area, I don't know if you're familiar with that. Couldn't tell you. Down Wichita River it's just off of it. And that lake is our, it's our nemesis down there.

Because you can't get within 40 foot of a crappy, doesn't matter if that crappy is 20 foot down, you can't get within 40 foot of a crappy without it spooking Really? Which is pretty pretty crazy. So how do you fish those fish then? It makes it a very [00:43:00] hard to fish those fish which is why we've not done too well on that lake.

Do you think they, maybe, like those ones just go deeper or something, or they just, I just out of there. It's so crazy. You get within 40 foot, like you, if you, if fish allow, allows you to get 30 foot from 'em it, he'll just dart right off. It. Dart right off, like you said, or one of you said that crappier really fast.

Just like that in the blink of an eye, he's gone. Yeah. So walk us through the process, right? You let's go to the gear, like what, type of poles and stuff you use. I wanna get to the process of okay, you're, rolling along live scope when you see a fish, like what the process is.

But let's talk about like the poles jigs, like the type of stuff you like to use. So we pretty much, my 12 year old son's ears, just, that's, he's gonna be listening to this intently. So we pretty much any tournament that allows minnows, we use minnows. Okay. You don't, a lot of people just, if you're fun fishing and you're fishing a chig you're not you're [00:44:00] doing it wrong.

You go down and fish with a minnow and you're gonna get way more fish to bite. So unless some tournaments allow or they don't allow minnows, so it's artificial only. And we use a lot of times we use little hair jigs, like sometimes we try to go as small as possible. Don't know why everybody's been doing it here recently, but hair jigs and minnows is pretty much the number one thing.

Yeah. They use bait wise. And you're talking about a live minnow, right? Yeah. A live minnow. Yep. What do you feel about the size of the minnow, right? And then that, and then how do you feel about artificial minnows? Minnows, like the plastic ones that try to mimic a minnow? We've never really tried that, we try to mimic.

Like the color with a hair jg. So it's not like the exact, it's not like the exact presentation of a minnow. Sure. But it's pretty similar in color and whatnot. But, you're gonna get more fish to bite a minnow than anything. But we try to use small minnows as pos if possible. You don't really know what they're biting.

They could bite a ginormous minnow. Like when I say [00:45:00] ginormous, like however big that is. I know they can't see it, but four or five inches. At least eight inches.

Yeah. But sometimes you got get 'em to bite on that and sometimes you just gotta use the smallest minnow possible. Yeah. But as far as pull We use an Ozark ride, which is a type of ride. There's a lot of different types of crappy rides out there, we use a 13 footer and we used to use 10, then we bumped up to 11 and can't use a 10 anymore because it just feels so weird.

Oh, okay. Then we bumped up to 12. Can't use an 11. And it just, yeah, the cycle continues. I think we're going up to 15 next, but so you do that? I don't, so I, again, pond fishing's what I do. I always like those, like super small, like ugly stick or a super, honestly, I like the short ones, that real flimsy, I can feel everything.

Those long ones. Uhhuh that, you get that long so you can feel what's happening a little better or like what the, what's the reason for the length? You get the length so you can reach out there further on the live scope. Okay. So like a 13 foot ride you could flip out 20 feet on a fish.

Okay. And we don't usually flip out [00:46:00] there. I usually just set the pole out there, drop the bait down. As soon as it like gets and playing with that fish, I'll push it into that fish. And pretty much do it that way. A lot of it allows you to just cut. It allows you to just get it out there.

Drop it before. Yeah. Because sometimes the fish do spook, yeah. If you get too close to 'em. Yeah. Catch a lot of guys are casting nowadays, if you get a long rod on a muddy water lake, there's no need to cast. There's there you can get pretty much essentially on top of you.

You could get on top of 'em. Yeah. Okay. And I'm catching fish sometimes just like poles behind my back. I'm live scopes right here. I'm looking at the live scope. Fish is 10 feet that way behind me. And my pull is just all wo jaw and just set the it, the amount of the, what did you just say?

Wo jaw. Wo jod. Uhhuh. That's a new term for me. No, but pretty much like all messed up, and just not like your typical like way of just dropping out right out there. But Yeah, that's why we use long pulls. Okay. I'm gonna start using that term water drill. Harbor drill. Yeah, write that down.

I'm [00:47:00] taking notes there. There you go. All right, so we got the what you're using, how you come about 'em. What other kind of things should, so if somebody's wanting to get into the tournaments or just fishing crop in general, what are some other things that you should think about? So if you're fishing a tournament and you gotta have live scope.

What was crazy is do they have tournaments? Excuse me, but do they have tournaments with like, where that's not something you can use? I think they're starting to like like push for that uhhuh, because a lot of people are still, I don't wanna say they're outraged since live scope came out, but it's people that don't know how to use it and they have it, they get mad at it and they sell it or freaking throw it in the waters.

I'm sure it's not something, not cheap thing, right? That's not, it's not. Yeah. And that's another thing is it does take a sacrifice like going into tournament fishing. If you're just fun fishing, you don't need live scope. I don't wanna say your odds go down of catching a big fish because, I'd say the biggest crop you ever caught in state records everywhere if we're caught pre-live scope, so you don't need [00:48:00] a live scope to do all this stuff, but if you're tournament fishing, you need a live scope because unless you're fish, the St. John's River, these two locals down there were fishing lily pads with a cane pole and whooped all the live scopes butts. Oh, shit.

That's funny. Yep. They just knew what they were doing. Yep. That's pretty cool though. Like the, what do you call it the classic person in you Yeah. Likes part of that, I'm always gonna root for a dude using a long bow. Right when you talk about bow hunting?

Yeah. Like I'm always gonna root for the dude using a long bow. I'm always gonna root for the guy that's doing it the hardest way. The hard way. You wanna go out there with an at allow and freaking make it happen. I'm gonna sit there and clap for you every time. Cuz that's badass.

It's the same thing with that. The guy's using a cane pole use, use fish in the lily pads. It was tip your hat to it. It was pretty neat. Yeah. Yeah. But cuz live scope's gotta be what, thousands of dollars. You can get I don't know the smallest screen that they make, but you gotta get an eCom maps garment.

They make it and the transducer costs, I think like around a thousand, you could get a eco maps for transducer might be like 1500 or something like [00:49:00] that. You could get an eco maps, which is the screen itself. So you gotta get the transducer and the screen separately. And it's like anywhere from I think it's around $800, something like that.

But they got I think it's 24 inch screens that are just, that's 20, I think it's 24 inch, four inch in dia diagonal crosses. Like a tv? Yeah, like a tv. Yeah. Yeah. And it's half the size of that. Yeah. It's just, if you see it in person, it's like you ha you got a flat screen television on the like, pretty much like that.

Yeah. But those costs. We'll never buy one of those cause that's like thousands and thousands of dollars. Geez. You gotta be pretty serious about it. If you want to drop some coin like that, huh? And, but yeah, but the size of the screen and whatnot, it doesn't matter once you get the fish sized up on the screen that you're at.

We got a 12 inch screen. We were at nine inch and it took some time to size the fish up on a 12 inch screen. But pretty much just if you can afford it and you're into crappy fishing and want to get into crappy fishing, I would say it's worth worth your money. Yeah. And if you're just getting [00:50:00] started like Dalton's saying, you don't have, yeah, you don't have to have it. Obviously you got, kids that listen or young folks that are just wanting to, kids that go to college like you that are like, they're looking for something to do in their downtime because, Despite what people say, college is getting easy.

Yeah. You got some downtime, you get to enjoy yourself, looking for things to do. And we're talking about like competitive, right? Crappy fishing, yeah. Yeah. That, Dalton o obviously you probably do it for fun a lot too, but you also then are in this world where you do, do tournaments and I'm guessing you do a lot more enjoyment fishing than you do tournaments.

Like you and your dad just do tournaments or like how's your, like your normal fishing life Look, what's pretty crazy about that is we actually don't do a lot more enjoyment fishing, which I'd rather, I don't wanna say I'd rather, cuz tournament fishing is so much fun, but sometimes we got in the spring and summer, like two or three tournaments a month.

So it's that takes up two or three weekend, that's enjoyments, so that's that's, that is your enjoyment fishing. That is it. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense. Obviously for, if you're 19, I'm assuming your dad's not a super older individual. He's [00:51:00] above 50 53. He must be right there.

He must be the baby. Yeah. Yeah. My sister's older and so people are busy and they're doing stuff and obviously you're in school and you're doing stuff, so sometimes you only get a few weeks or a few. So I'm pretty sure UCM has a bass fishing. Do they have a crapp fishing team?

They don't have a crapp fishing team, but I have bass fished a couple tournaments on the Ozarks for the ML f college bass series. Yeah. Didn't do too well in them. Yeah. But I think we finished like a hundred out of 200, which isn't like road 50th percentile. Yeah. Yeah. Not too bad. But crappy fishing is definitely our forte.

Yeah. And they don't have that in college currently? No. No. You gotta push for that, man. You gotta make that happen. I don't know if another school would do it. They don't want, they don't want any of the smoke is what you're saying. Oh yeah. Catch your smoke. These jack asses would come in.

Yeah. By when I say jackass, the school mascot is the mule. Oh yeah. I'm making fun of myself when I say that, but we would come in and just smoke. Everybody's what you're saying. No. You guys would be the northwest version. [00:52:00] Football, Northwest Missouri State Uhhuh. You'd be the crappy fishing version is what you're saying.

You'd just dominate. I don't know. Gr the guys, if there's a college around grenade Mississippi, they'd be pretty good too. I will say that. Be between you and Nim is what you're saying. Yeah. We're having a fantasy fishing draft of teams that do not exist. And here's our next show.

Fantasy Fishing crappy draft. Who's your number one draft pick? I'm going with Dalton Gore. I don't know anybody else that does that. So who's that? You're number one in our book. Oh yeah. Do you do obviously you do the tournaments, but what about ponds? Do you ever mess with ponds anymore or are you done with that like pond hopping type thing?

Yeah. No we fished a buddy's pond. This is pre-live scope and my biggest crappy was a 1 75 and that was my biggest crappy 1.75. So a pound of three quarters. Which, that seemed pretty small now at least. That was my PB in a pod, we don't really do any of that type of stuff anymore.

We pretty much as fish Truman nonstop. So what's like the average fish you're catching out on the [00:53:00] lakes then? What was pretty funny and I don't wanna sit say this to I don't think it's bragging, but like this last weekend we were I guess fun fishing cuz my dad is trying to catch fish for a fish fry and see you were, yeah.

Yeah. But but. We threw back so many fish that were like, probably the length limit is nine inches. And back in the day we would put the nine, put a crappy that was like close to it in the fish measure thing. The grip and check. And if it was nine inches, you threw it in the live well, but we threw back so many fish that were probably like 11 inches that we thought were, under nine inches because it's just with live so used to Yeah.

You're not targeting nine inch fish anymore. I was getting say like how many small, like you're targeting fish now, so that means you're just completely probably ignoring a lot of fish. Yeah. I would say yeah. And in the springtime, especially on Truman Lake, it's really good on grenade. It's a whole different world because you're targeting three pound crop, you just nonstop down there.

And so like on Truman, there was a tournament earlier this year where [00:54:00] we caught probably like 50. Fish over a pound of three quarters. Which was my PB a few years ago, but yeah, you're targeting you're targeting, you can size up crappy on the live scope to, if it's a one pound crappy, if it's a nine inch or if it's a one pound and a quarter pound, three quarters, two and a half pound crappy.

Yeah. It's pretty easy to tell once you get used to it. With a live scope, which if you went out on a pond like mine, which is, about an acre and a half acre and a quarter pond, you'd be done fishing in five minutes. Yeah. You'd be like, I found the fish, and which would be really cool to see.

You have three fishing. I really want him to bring that damn thing over and just be like, all right, we got some fish here because dude, I haven't stocked that pond since we moved here. Uhhuh, there's been some big fish caught out of there, but I don't know what's in there now. And I would be cool to see.

Yeah. But, That's part of it, so you'd almost have to go back to the roots, as you say, if you went into a pond and you're not bringing out the live scope, you're just getting on the bank and just, trying to find some fish and I guess you can almost equate it a lit, not exactly to night thermal hunting [00:55:00] coyotes.

But it's like in that same world, like once you, it seems like to me at least once you started live scoping and you are able to, really get good at that. You don't want to mess with the other way you used to do it and, there's a lot of thermal hunters when it comes to cow hunting that are like that.

I'm not, I like them both. You only have so much time for your hobbies anymore, we just, life in general, we've sped up our time. Exactly. We've crammed so much into our lives. If you're gonna go crabby fishing, let's make it, I could see where that'd be like just. Make a huge difference. I don't wanna spend my time jacking around, not catching anything.

Yeah. Yep. I wanna go out and I wanna expect a catch. If I have a handful of weekends a year, I get to go fishing. I wanna make 'em count. That makes total sense. Yep. And but there, there is a misconception with it. Like as soon as we first got live scope, we thought it was just gonna be like, just nonstop action, didn't catch a single fish the first day we had live scope. The snakes broken fish. Yeah. I think we caught one fish the next day we had it, and maybe, we worked our way [00:56:00] up and it takes a lot of time on the water to figure out what figure, how to use it. Yeah. To figure out how to use it.

To figure out like the trolling motor. Boat control is just it's insane. Bass fishing, you hit spot lock and just start casting to a spot, crappy fishing. You're just nonstop moving the troll motor. I it's hard to visualize this for the viewers, but speak, visualize.

Yeah. But like the troll motor foot pedal, like when you turn it, it turn it you push down, it goes right And it's just scanning nonstop. And you're constantly doing that while hitting the troll motor and covering water as fast as you possibly can. And it's definitely a lot more challenging, I'd say, than what people make it out to be.

I'd say because a lot of people that think live scope is cheating and, go out and run that live scope and just see, cuz it it's not just drop it in there, it's and catch a bunch of fish. Yeah. You, if you put timing on the water, you will have a blast with it.

But it does take time to get used to it. It's probably, it's another tool in the toolbox. [00:57:00] Yes. Sort of thing. You learn make up bringing out his old tool on the toolbox talk. Yeah. But it is just like thermal then. Because if you handed somebody a thermal and they're gonna suck, Hey, here go your coyotes.

It, there's a learning curve to it. Yes. Oh, they're gonna shoot a mouse. They're, that's true. Mean, that's factual mean, you know what I'm saying? You gotta understand what you're seeing on screen, whereas it's the same thing with that live scope. I wouldn't know the difference between a CRO and a bass if I probably looked at your live scope tomorrow.

Yep. It takes time to figure out what you're seeing, what that is how big that one is. Yeah, that's, yeah, like in tournament fishing, like a lot of guys are targeting nine inch fish and it's like you need to size 'em up and figure out, waste all your time in here. Don't, you're catching a bunch of six inch fish or whatever, yeah. Which would be nine in my book, you know what I'm saying? It's a big car over there. That's a rock that happened to you guys. Last, somebody about shot a big rock. So what's the biggest one you've caught before? What's your all-time record? It was just a few weeks ago. It was in [00:58:00] March and it was a 3 83.

And if you look up Truman Lake. I'm looking at the state record right now is 4.8, so 3 83 I think is a three pound, 13 ounce I think somewhere around there. Okay. Yeah. So 3.83. Yeah. But I think there, there's definitely probably been bigger fish caught out of Truman maybe before. Just never recorded sort.

Yeah, that's, yeah. Cause this one, I don't know, does it say where it cut? It was a private pond. Ah, and that was back in 1967. Yeah. See Lake of the Ozarks does fish records. Down there. Truman Lake on the other hand, they don't do, they don't like keep track of it. We should have had the conservation come down and tried to weigh it cuz you know, our scales might have been different.

Different but it was over 18 inches long and just, holy hell, just. There's a hybrid crappy, which is a mix between a white and a black crappy. And that's the biggest crappy you can catch is a hybrid crappy. Really? Yep. And I don't know if it's registered as black crappy on there or not.

The four pointer is black, crappy. Yeah, I think there was a white 4.44 [00:59:00] pounds, nine ounce white, crappy. But I think the world record crappy is, was a black, crappy down, I think that's right in Florida, right down, yeah. Florida or Tennessee or something like that. Now the difference, I know the difference between a white and black crappy, but what do are black, crappy, typically larger?

They're less they're less normal here, right? Or less white, crappy, or much more abundant. In our waters. Correct. So like Truman Lake White, crappy is dominant like by far. We're starting to see a lot more black crappy in Truman, but Lake the Ozarks, you go down and cast docks and stuff, most of the crappy are gonna be black crappy.

Okay. Because it's clear water. It's weird because black crappy tend to stay in Clearwater, white, crappy Tennessee. So they act different. Yeah. They act different. Yeah. Huh. Black, crappy. You know it, certain times of the year you can pattern them. Like you can see all on the live scope and it's dad, watch this.

I guarantee you this fish is gonna be a black, crappy two foot down. Sitting with another crappy, like usually black, crappy, or in schools. Okay. And so like you could pretty much tell based off of like their behavior, [01:00:00] what's a black and white coffee. But you can't like know for sure until you catch 'em.

But there's obvious similarity type. Yeah. Now in your tournaments, are all, are they all. Free fair game. Like the tournament. You're are black and white, crappy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Course. It's crappy. Yeah. Yep. The world record was 1957 five pounds, three ounces, and it was a white cro.

I no, there was a guy here recently that caught a, I thought, yeah, it was broken like a year or two ago. Yeah. This one and this one says guy. He this 1 1 19 57. We'll keep scrolling. World record. Biggest slabs. I believe it's a black crappy that he caught too. Click. I, it's actually click on field and stream right there.

I think it's actually a hybrid for the listener. We're looking Yeah, I remember seeing that picture. Jam Ferguson. Is it a black, A current black, yeah, it, yeah. Black, crappy. Yep. Per ig, ffa, whatever that means. You see how big it was? That's a bear. I think it was like five four maybe. [01:01:00] Five four. Five three. I'm not seeing where It's not even telling all tackle world record.

Crappy right there. Five pound, seven ounces. Yeah. Five pound seven. Okay. Dang. 19.25 inches long. Fish is a private, small, deep and weedy spring-fed pond. London County near Knoxville, Tennessee. That's big fish. Damn. That's huge fish. That's pretty impressive. Yep. But my biggest before that was a two 80. So to put that in comparison, that's just, that's you're gaining a whole pound.

A pound, which is pretty significant in a crappy, at least. What is that? Isn't that a hundred percent larger when you're talking about percentages? No, you go from two to three pounds, two, it's like growing by a hundred percent. 30% or is like 30 or is it 50%? I think it need to be 5.6 to be a hundred percent.

I'm not an, I'm not a mathematician hundred. You're still in, what are you going college for? Economics. Economics, okay. A little bit of math. Yeah it's, I was just wa on it. Wa Oh, that's awesome. So what else we got here? I didn't know that about black and white cro. I assume they just acted just the same.

They [01:02:00] just the black CRO had a lot more black highlights, uhhuh than white. And I just assume they acted the exact same. They looked the same when you're looking at 'em, black, crappy, like other than that feature, but Uhhuh, yeah. But like black, crappy tend to be in schools more. That is like the number one thing.

White crappy tend to be on their own. Yeah. But the five biggest crappy I've ever caught were on Truman Lake and they were all hybrid, crappy. So mixed between a white and a black. And apparently now, how can you tell when they're a hybrid? If you pull it up I don't really know, like that exact definition of it.

It hybrids like hybrid, crappy, like the, it's got vertical lines on it, like a white crappy, but it's also got specks on it, like a, they call 'em speckled crappy. Okay. I was getting ready asks I've always call her speckled crappy for some reason. Yeah. So that's a hybrid right there. It's got a line right there.

You can see the I feel like that's vertical lines like that. Yeah. I see that. The specks on it. Huh? But that the biggest crappy, that and pretty much every lake is a hybrid. Crappy. I was gonna say the genetics are just so much different. And [01:03:00] so just I, you'd have to talk to a conservation or a biologist about it, but Yep.

What I've always liked about crop is they are, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, don't kill me folks. A very beautiful fish. Yeah. Oh yeah. I think they're prettier than bass. Yeah. A lot of people do. I don't know why a lot of people, or my dad calls bass. What is it? Green carp or, I think a bass is a good looking fish, but I've always thought crappy, have prettier markings, I guess you'd call it.

My boss was trying to talk me into eating some bass the other day. Oh. He's he's got overloaded with bass. And we just got talking about, cuz my dad needs some bass. Here's trying to talk you into it. He's dude, he's just eat 'em. They're good. He's bass is good. I'm, why would he have to talk you into it?

I've never heard of people eating bass before. He bass all the time. You, there's a bee at the beginning of that bud. Oh my god. You've never fried up bass. [01:04:00] Never. Do. We used to do it all the time when I was a kid cause we got big old slabs from 'em. It was easy to, yeah. I mean it makes sense. You'd get more meat on it now.

Crappy was better. Sure.

Pull together may have pull it together if we see, I guess I like grown up fish and farm ponds. Like you would never catch enough crappy to be able to have a fish fry because there, there are times that kids like we all go down and fish and that night's up. We, our plan was to fish, catch the enough for fish fry that night.

We would catch enough bass, two three pound bass. You go out there and eat some bass. We would come back, fla the bass, but have to hit the pause buddy. Fry the bass and eat the bass and eat the bass. I just, I've never done it before. I can't think of a time I've even tried bass. No you haven't. I got, I have, I've tried fish every way you can attempt to make it.

Honestly, it bothers me that you haven't, I know I would assume you, you literally eat cow testicles. Hell [01:05:00] yeah. You would eat anything an animal produces. Oh, I'll eat it. But you haven't tried a bass before? I just, it's never been in front of me. Hey, it's not like this whole show has just changed now to shit on Micah.

It's not like a high quality, I wouldn't call it like a high quality fish, but still, definitely tasty and edible. I feel like it's like a universal general rule that people don't eat bass, but like really said. But like you said, that's what I thought. But like you said, because it's a sport fit.

It's like a definitely. I understand that. So it's like it's like a different I don't wanna say it's like an off limits thing, but it's like, Caden, that's what fuck I grew up poor. I no bass. Damn. My, my dad did that too. My dad did exactly what you were saying. Farm ponds. Yeah.

That's what they would do. They would catch bass and they would eat it, if you could catch crappy. I, if you c croy, like obvious it was like, like a filet vinn or something. Exactly. It was like, yeah, that was the T-bone. Yeah. I'm not opposed to it. I just have not eaten it.

That's what Caden did last year when he I posted all that on our Instagram, whatever people don't, he caught that fish, brought it up to the house, cleaned it himself, then cooked it. My wife helped him bread it, and then he fried it and that was, it was a bass. So what's the reason [01:06:00] people don't eat bath?

Is it, I think what he was saying. They consider just like a sport fish. Yeah. It make crappies taste better, but it's not like a sucker fish. It's not like their diet's the same as a crop. It's not like they're a trash fish. Wouldn't they have the same diet anyways, aren't they? That's I'm saying like, yeah, but from what I've heard, it's, I've never been able to really sit down, but like they, they do.

Crappy is like apparently way better. Yeah. Like it's more tender. They, yeah. They say Walleye's the best fish out there. Walleye's freaking good. Walleye is good, but trout cook, Pike's really good. Pike's real good. But like bass there's just like a certain I don't wanna say aura or something to it, to where it's it's like you can taste the fish. Fish. It's fishy. Like you heard that. I remember and that might have been the worst idea ever. The first fish I ever ate was a bass. And I'm like, this, it's horrible from then on and it's horrible. I just I know it's like a fishier. It has more of a thicker texture.

Yeah. Than like a crappy is more like light. Light, yeah. It's a lighter, yeah. Like less fishy taste. Yeah. I don't know. Which is probably [01:07:00] why people like it so much. It bothers me, man. I know outta anybody in this world I would not have thought Micah Winsted had, would've been the only ever had a bass. I've eaten some weird shit.

That's what my point, like literally. I went and shot a squirrel and ate it, five minutes later. That's Micah right there. But never a bass. I've done that. No, but you never had a bass. Of course, my family, they, we've never been big fish eaters. Like my family don't care for fish. They'll eat it.

Sure. But we've we're never ones that, Hey, let's go catch our limit and fry everything up. I guess I was Griffin, a redneck ass family to catch a nice bass. I'm like, Hey, that's a filet right there bud. Eat it. Okay, next time it's the same thing. We're gonna go fishing, we're gonna catch a couple bass.

Let's do it man. We'll catch a couple croy. I'm down for it. And you can, and we can all try to say, what do we like better? Because I'll do it. Y'all know. I'll try. You're out. Hit up our bucket. Sorry. You outta here. We'll cook you a hot dog. Dalton doesn't eat bass.

We'll call everybody Nick at Hunter Bo and get a good [01:08:00] fish recipe. Yeah, that's a good idea. It's a good idea. And we'll just have a little. It's smorgasboard of fish. I like it. Go right here with this pond right there. Let's do it. Caden. Caden can catch 'em all for us. That's all. We put. Deer stands together.

We that definitely needs to happen. Yep. So is there anything else that we need to cover on the crappy end of things? Not really. I think I pretty much, gave a basic, thing, live scope is pretty much if you can afford it, go out and get it. And if you're a diehard fisherman, but you don't need live scope to out and catch a bunch of fish.

But you gave a good, a few tips as far as the muddy water, what kind of feet or, what kind of range people should be looking at and that sort of thing. But you're honestly, dude, like if you think about it, I've talked about my son several times on this show. He is, he fishes every night at our pond.

If the kid had the ability to go out there and not only fish, but then catch 10 fish every day, he went. It would be even worse. Yeah. Because there's, there's weeks that he'll go down there fishing every night and not catch anything.[01:09:00] Just because it's a kind of a murky farm pond and it doesn't have, I don't even know what the hell's in it right now at this point.

So it might need to be restocked, all that stuff. You could see where if you really learned live scope and you understood how to use it, then it's just, then you're, you can become more effective fishermen. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're like, if you could get good at live scope and learn it and you could pretty much provide food if you're not allergic, pretty much provide food like for yourself for forever.

As long as you want, yeah. Yeah. There is that scene. Teach man to fish, see him for a life. Buy my live coat. He's feeding the whole family. He's feeding everybody. Feeding everybody. So fool me once. Shame on you, fool me twice. Wait. You can't fool me twice. Do you have any social media or anything like that?

Yeah. Do you want, do you document any of this stuff? I do on my Facebook. Instagram, I don't really Gotcha. Do too much. But my Facebook, you could just look up [01:10:00] Dalton Gorm on Facebook and, I've, I should post more videos on there of the live scope and whatnot. But can they follow the your circuit or anything and is there a way to look up the circuit?

Yeah. And that's actually like what they're doing pretty well is crappy masters. I don't know if they're gonna have a TV series out this year. But in the past, pretty much for the past 10 years, it's been on the pursuit, pursuit channel or it's on one of 'em. And it would come on every Sunday at 12 or noon, and.

Pretty much every tournament is filmed and whatnot, and they're doing live tournament. They're like, there's a live cameraman in the boat in some of the tournaments now in the Elite series. So pretty much like the MLF and whatnot, they're starting to do the camera guy in the camera or you got a camera boat out there.

You got a guy in the boat the whole time that's filming you. Yeah. And you can watch the live feed for eight hours a day, oh wow. This is cool. During tournament days, you, to do that I is the website crappy masters or Facebook page? Yeah. Crappy Masters Facebook page. That's pretty much what it all goes through.

Nice. Okay. Now, and this is your rut right now. This is the tail end of your quote unquote, like [01:11:00] crappy rut. Yeah. So this is when it becomes the worst time to crappy fish, about now. This is it right now and we're recording on May 17th because Perfect timing guys. Yeah. Good job. Yeah, because, sorry about that.

We'll heat up again here in a little bit. It will, the summer bite will heat up, but it's like that post spawn bite is just it's brutal. Even with live scope, that's a pretty good fall one too, right? Like in there, one in the fall, like Yeah, one once October. I'd say October is really good cuz then there's a little.

There's two different lows throughout the year. There's the post spawn, and then there's just like this dead of dead heat of July, August where it's just, they don't even wanna move it. It's just it, you can't get 'em to bite whatsoever. And it can be pretty brutal that time of year.

But it is definitely, this is I'm working the next few weekends because we're not going to the lake because why? There's no, why I don't wanna catch, the biggest fish that you're gonna catch, it's all spawned out, so it's not, doesn't weigh anything anymore. So it's like you're catching finicky fish right now that don't weigh a lot, that [01:12:00] aren't very big, but yeah, this is definitely the worst time. But they, there is still some on the banks right now. Some little stragglers, it's pretty much done. So if you're listening to this, folks, rewind time about a month and go fish. Oh yeah, you'll catch 'em then. And so then it'll heat up August on the August frame, or I'd say, late June.

Okay. And there, there's just like a month right there where it's just really good where the fish are starting to feed again. And, like it's just I can't explain like the way the bite is right now, but it's just, it's not good. Even with live scope, you put it on its freaking nose. It just ain't gotta touch it.

No. Yeah. Okay. Now's the time to go hunt coyotes then. Yeah, that is true. Go hunt coyotes this time of year. All right. Dalton, go. We appreciate your time tonight, man. And thanks for coming out and talking about some crappy fishing with us. Oh yeah, anytime. All right. We'll see you bud. Thank you.

You man. Yep. See you.[01:13:00]

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