Capt. Scott Walker and Steve Rodger: Into the Blue

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 54 with Captain Scott Walker and Captain Steve Rodger.

Scott Walker: This is Scott Walker.

Steve Rodger: And this is Steve Rodger of Into The Blue.

Scott Walker: And we're on Tom Rowland's podcast.

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Got a great one for you today. I was able to sit down with a couple of people that are probably the most popular request when I ask for suggestions on the next guest. I get a lot of suggestions for the hosts of Into The Blue Television, my friends Scott Walker and Steve Rodger. And that's a show that we produce, and it seems like it would be very easy for me to get time with these guys, and I get plenty of time with the guys. But the problem is that usually we're fishing ten, twelve hours, and pretty much the last thing they want to do is sit down and talk to me anymore. So it's been very difficult to get them pinned down, but I found a little time, and I did get them pinned down. We also have another of our crew, Jake Perry, who does our underwater. He joins us on this one. And we had a very cool story that happened that Jake was a part of, so you get to hear his perspective on that. A swordfish attacked him in the water. Seriously. And if you don't know about swordfish, they're no joke. No joke at all. And we actually got very lucky on this one. Nobody got hurt. So you'll hear that story, and you'll also hear the origins of both Steve and Scott, how they got to be where they are today and the path that led them here. So I am excited to bring you my friends, Steve Rodger and Scott Walker of Into The Blue. So here we are. You guys ever done a podcast before?

Steve Rodger: This is going to be my first, buddy.

Tom Rowland: What do you think? Isn't it as great as you were betting?

Steve Rodger: As exciting as I thought it was when you were chasing me around a month ago.

Scott Walker: This is my first one too, but it feels just like a radio show, and I've done plenty of those.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it is. What about you, Jake?

Steve Rodger: As soon as you hit the record button, he clammed up. Earlier, he wouldn't shut up.

Tom Rowland: He did. Okay. Alright. So how did you guys, so many people want to know how you got started with your fishing career. Who wants to go first? Scott?

Scott Walker: Simple as that. My aunt and uncle had a boat and needed someone to wash it on weekends, so I got to go to the beach on weekends.

Jake Perry: Where is it?

Scott Walker: That'd be Ocean City, Maryland. And we'd take the boat out on a Friday, Saturday, then I'd spend all day Sunday washing it for them while they got the beach house closed up, and then back to school on Mondays. And by the time I was 14 years old, I started washing boats and then bluefishing. And then that wasn't enough of a challenge for us, and then it was tuna fishing, marlin fishing, and traveling the world. It was really that simple.

Tom Rowland: What did it look like to go from doing it as a hobby or something that you just love to do, to doing it for pay?

Scott Walker: It had to happen because I couldn't be on the water enough. So to satisfy my need to be on the water all day, I had to start a charter business. I mean, you just can't fish on weekends when you get the bug.

Tom Rowland: Where did the charter business start for you?

Scott Walker: Well, as much as we fished in Maryland, it was still a short season. So we would put the boat away in the Chesapeake for the winter, and then my aunt and uncle would travel to different places for their winter vacations. And we ended up in Duck Key, Florida, at the Indies Inn, which is now Hawks Cay Resort. They fell in love with it and decided, why leave the boat up there in Chesapeake Bay when we can move it down here, live on it, and fish all winter long on Christmas break, spring break, and stuff like that. On a side note, I was quite a basketball player in high school, but I could never stay for the camps. So I ended up just playing high school and AAU level because I was never available for what the coaches wanted. But fishing was more important to me. Went from weekends and vacations in The Keys to building a home and then started charter fishing right there. When Indies Inn transferred to Hawks Cay Resort, they needed all new boats, nice boats, and we were there, right place, right time.

Tom Rowland: As simple as that. And then you had your charter service there until, what, a couple years ago?

Scott Walker: Till just three years ago. Started as my aunt and uncle with the boats. We were called the Huntress. And when they retired from fishing and left The Keys to move to another part of Florida, I stayed and then started finding jobs in Maryland with people that were more than willing to bring their boat to The Keys for the winter. A nice place for the boat to be safe, for me to run it a little bit, and for them to have a nice place to come catch fish in the dead of winter up in Maryland.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. And then on the other side of the coin, you two guys, Conch, born and raised.

Steve Rodger: Perry and I. Yep. You want the story? You ready for the story?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, hit me with it.

Steve Rodger: I will hit you with it. So I guess for my start, it was the fact that my dad was a school teacher, thirty-five years, Key West High School. My mom worked at a credit union, and I don't think we were extremely well off, but we had one car they shared. My dad used to ride me to school on the back of his bike, and he'd drop me off and go teach at the high school. And through that, my father would subsidize his income through commercial diving for lobster and spearing fish and fishing for yellowtail snapper. And so every weekend, one of the boys, I had a brother, one of us would spend the weekend with my dad fishing. The other one would be with my mom, and then we'd flop the following weekend. And I think that income was needed. He needed to sell those lobster; it allowed him to pay for the house and be prosperous being a school teacher, because as you know, they don't pay school teachers much. So through that, I think that's what got me on the water every day, just learning that I can make money at it, which is crazy to say. I loved it, don't get me wrong, but to me it was a way to get outside, get fishing, and we're actually making money. So as a young age, my dad had a partner, and we'd want to get paid because we were making money. And the partner said, oh, I can't pay them. My dad's like, hey, we need to pay the boys. They're actually putting a lot of fish in the boat. They're getting older. They've got girlfriends or whatever. We need to pay these boys. And he's like, well, let's just let them do their own cooler and see how that goes. So me and my brother were super stoked. We're like, oh, our own cooler? Okay, cool. So we pull up to the first spot. These old guys are trying to get the gear on. We're already in the water. We're coming up with hogfish and grouper we speared, and next thing you know, we got the cooler full, and these old guys are like halfway there. And they're like, okay, well, let's give them 3%. And so it started there, and then we slowly got paid to go out with them. And then we started doing our own thing. I started spearing fish whenever I could and commercial fishing, kingfish, or whatever it was. And ultimately, we were doing lobster, making a lot of money. In the heyday, I didn't have plans on doing much other than commercial fishing. It was good money. Am I supposed to keep going or what?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I'm waiting to see how it turns into hook and line.

Steve Rodger: You mean guiding? Yeah. So basically, how it turned into hook and line was I was at the marina. We were commercial fishing, and it's a bit different for people listening that don't know about commercial fishing. We're not doing the deadliest catch. We're not running these giant nets, and we're not running these giant traps. We were commercial fishing, catching one fish at a time on a rod and reel, diving crawfish, catching one crawfish at a time with snorkel gear, scuba gear. I was at the marina, and a guide, Bill Oliver, he'd been around forever, one of the original pioneers of this light tackle whole industry, the whole IGFA, the MET, the hook-and-line records. I think a lot of that, I could be wrong, but a lot of that originated right there in South Florida, Miami, Key West. Everybody came from Miami to Key West to get involved in that great fishery. And the MET tournament was huge. Absolutely. And so this Bill Oliver had accidentally had two sets of customers show up at the same time. He had messed up on the books. So he was panicking a little bit, and then I just happened to be there. And he looked over at me and said, hey, Steve, I need you to help me out. I'm like, well, what's that? And he goes, I need you to take these guys fishing. And I'm like, well, Bill, man, I'm going spearfishing. I got my buddy coming. It's crystal clear. There's a bunch of black groupers out there. I don't know about that. He's like, come on, I really need you to help me out. I said, well, what are we fishing for? He goes, we're gonna fish for tarpon. And I said, well, I've never tarpon fished before. And he's like, oh, it's no problem. It's easy, man. You just follow me. And I'm like, okay. So here I am, gonna take my first charter, never been tarpon fishing before, and I'm gonna follow this guy around and just do as he does. So that's what we did. And I followed him out there, and he gave me these bags of trash off the shrimp boat. I got enough of it, but I just never fished in the harbor. There was no money to be made in there, so I didn't really go in there. And I just started cutting trash and drifting them back just like we would for yellowtail or for mutton snapper or whatever else. And I think we ended up catching like 12 tarpon, two thirty-five-pound permit, a giant cobia. People were so stoked, got back to the dock, they handed me a wad of cash, and I'm like, okay, I think I'm gonna be a fishing guide now, because it was so much easier than starting out in the red when you're commercial fishing and diving. I was selling all the fish at the local restaurants, and I was scraping together the hundred dollars for the fuel tank that day. You didn't start making money until you put that hundred dollars back in your pocket. And if it was dirty, you didn't do it sometimes, or if it was rough or if the equipment failed or the boat broke down, it was tough. So that was it, man. It was a really neat entry. And then I think the skyrocketing of the guiding was when I started listening to some of the other guys' customers getting off their boats. Like Joe Green. I don't know if you remember Joe Green. He's like the originator of those little tiny jig heads and sandballing for those big muttons and all these things that nobody knew anything about. All these different knots these guys were tying. They were the real deal. His customers would get off the boat, and I'd hear them talking, and they'd be like, man, I can't believe we just paid that guy to yell at us like that all day. Jeez, man, I've never felt that way, humiliated. And he was very successful, but I think his passion was really to expect those people to know exactly what to do and how to do it. And if they didn't, they got their ass chewed out.

Steve Rodger: There was no doubt. So I said, wow, okay, let me take them out. So I started taking a few of the overflow, and they would be like, oh my god, we actually didn't get yelled at at all. I made it a point that if people threw rods over the side, broke a rod, I didn't let it bother me. I just said, man, that kinda sucks, that was like a two-hundred-dollar rod. And then it normally would end up at the end of the day the guy would throw me four hundred dollars and say, I'm really sorry about your rod. Sorry I broke your seat. Sorry, I stepped on this. And so I just kind of watched and learned, and those guys were, you know, before me, those four guys pretty much.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That time in the Florida Keys, there were a lot of guys that were known for yelling; it was kinda rough. And then when you came in and I came in, that was a time when what you learned is, man, if I just add a little hospitality to this, and really not a lot, like if I just don't yell at them, and maybe I don't catch as many fish as they were catching, but I'm not gonna yell at them, then all of a sudden you're full.

Steve Rodger: No, you're spot on. These guys had zero personality. They were running three hundred fifty days a year, killing it. I remember stories about John Boy on the Kingfisher. He would sleep on his boat in the barns, and people would show up and be like, oh, your captain's in there. And he'd come up out of the bilge with beer cans all around him. And he'd go out and follow somebody fishing, and he'd tell his customers, hey, when that guy pulls his anchor to head home, wake me up and let me know, and then we'll head home. He'd drive them out there and go to sleep sometimes. But it was a rough group.

Tom Rowland: Same thing was happening on the flats boats. Hey, we're gonna stake out right here. You wake me up when those tarpon start showing up.

Steve Rodger: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: And that's a totally different deal today, because that just wouldn't fly at all. Once you start that hospitality and people realize they don't have to get yelled at and there are other options, they no longer go to those people. But the Keys were hard. It was a hard bunch of men down there. When I first showed up, I was like, dang, man, these guys are tough.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, they ran the show, man. That Oceanside Marina, that was a tight-knit group. They were fighting; the old men were mad at each other even. It's way different now. They lose their mind if they see this whole new deal, these guys out here with three, four boats operating like a little company. There's so many tourists there now that it's pretty easy to survive.

How the Keys have changed

Tom Rowland: There's been a lot of changes. So, Jake, you grew up in Key West too. What kind of changes have you guys seen? We've all been in and around The Keys for a long time, but between the times that you were a kid, there were, like, no traffic, basically dirt roads in a lot of Key West.

Jake Perry: I ain't that old.

Tom Rowland: You're not that old for dirt roads? No. But what are the main changes you've seen? Come on, Jake.

Jake Perry: Thinking.

Scott Walker: He has a very small circle, and no one gets inside of it. He's trying to stay inside of the circle.

Steve Rodger: Once you hit that record button, dude, he clammed up.

Tom Rowland: He did. He clammed up. I tried to throw him a softball.

Steve Rodger: He missed it.

Steve Rodger: I'll try not to get negative on it, but a lot's changed, Tom. You see it, man. My family and I now, we spend a lot of time out of there, and I schedule when I travel away from weekends and holidays. You can't just jump on that highway no more. In the old days, man, you jump on that highway, two and a half hours, you hit Miami. It was simple. Now there is something going on in every little city every other day, and there's an event or a festival, and it's packed. I'm sure the old timers said the same thing as I'm saying now, but it's just busy. That's what it is. It's very busy.

Hurricanes and resilient communities

Tom Rowland: So we all, we went from an area like The Keys that experienced a bad hurricane last year, Irma. And here we are in an area that experienced a bad hurricane not very long ago. Probably two of the most resilient places that I know of. I mean, Venice, Louisiana, and the Florida Keys. Storms come often. But when they do come through, it's remarkable how quickly they recover and get back to business. Where we were today, Venice Marina, that place was underwater in Katrina. And all of this where we're sitting, this was basically all underwater.

Scott Walker: Just ten feet of water.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Scott Walker: We're sitting twenty feet off the water right now, and this place barely survived.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, this was built after all that, wasn't it? Because of Katrina.

Tom Rowland: But they built it super high.

Scott Walker: Absolutely. They just put their boots on and go back to work. They don't complain. The Keys are the same way. Some people were hurt more than others, but that's where the ones that weren't pitched in and you get your neighbors up. You do what you gotta do in your yard, then you go help your neighbor.

Tom Rowland: And we experienced that together right after Irma this year. We went down with you. We couldn't get in by car, so we went by boat. And I thought, man, if I can do something to help you guys, then I will. And we went down there, and what I saw there was so similar to what I saw in Wilma. We got hit with Wilma really bad. And the neighbors all pulled together, but they're on Duck Key. That is a particularly special community there, and you know every single person. And we're going in everybody's house and emptying out their refrigerators, and then you've got your neighbor, I can't remember what his name was, but he's got all the heavy equipment. Captain Bob. Captain Bob got that place cleaned up months ahead of the surrounding areas.

Scott Walker: Before anyone's allowed in by car.

Tom Rowland: It's really special to see how the community will pull together and how quickly. Like Robbie's, they were back up and running, feeding those tarpon, built the dock right away. Bud and Mary's, same deal.

Scott Walker: If you're not running, you're not making any money. It's just like you asked what's changed. There are more boats in The Keys than have ever been there, period. Everyone has just enough available income now they can afford a boat. And if they're not fishing for dolphin or yellowtail snappers, they're on sandbars. They're everywhere. Besides the traffic on the road, the traffic on the water is just as heavy. And it's a tribute to the fact that everyone wants to live in The Keys. And they're willing to pay the price of getting hit by a storm. But if they get in the right neighborhood, with the right friends, they're gonna lose something, but within a few months, they're gonna be back the way they were.

Tom Rowland: Now The Keys are a hundred fifty miles long. A lot of people that listen to this may want to go to The Keys but may not have ever been there. And when a storm comes through, like when Wilma came through, it really hit where I was in Key Haven, just a couple miles up from Key West. Key West did okay, but still got hit a lot harder. You got Islamorada that barely got, or, no, I'm not gonna say barely got anything. But some places are a lot better off than others just because of wind and where it's located and all that. But as far as this storm, it was a little more north, although you encountered some pretty significant issues.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. I think we were, like, right on the beginning of where it got bad. If you just went pretty much from mile marker 11 to 18, anything north of that got pretty slammed. These guys got it.

Tom Rowland: Until you get to, like, north, like Key Largo kind of.

Scott Walker: That's right. I did evacuate. And the people who stayed in Islamorada that I talked to, the captains that hunkered down, said they had ten hours of a hundred forty mile an hour winds. Ten hours. And plus the storm surge came up three to five feet on all the places between Islamorada and Duck Key, where the streets turned into rivers. And Duck Key never flooded during Wilma, and I was confident it would never flood. But Wilma came from the bayside, and Irma came from the other side, and Duck Key went under almost three foot of water.

Tom Rowland: And so where do you think the Keys are now compared to, I mean, it was almost this time last year that storm came through, I think September 9th, wasn't it something like that? So we're just over a year later. And from my view, it's been remarkable.

Scott Walker: That's the word, remarkable. I've been home every day. I didn't travel as much this year since the storm. So I had seven months on Duck Key every day, cleaning up after the storm, helping my neighbors, and trying to get life back to normal. And then I left for my summer trip to Maryland. I was gone three months. And I just got home a week ago for this shoot. So I finally had left Duck Key for the first time in seven months since the storm. And I just got home a week ago, and I noticed that the island looked remarkable. I didn't think the green would be back, the palm trees would be back. But the Keys have been going through these cycles way longer than we have. And the trees and all the local stuff that's supposed to be there look dead, but that's just its way of regenerating.

Tom Rowland: The mangrove to me is probably the most remarkable plant. When we were down there right after the storm, everything was brown. If you took a satellite photo of the Keys, the Keys would be brown. And those trees, they look all gnarled and beat up anyway, but when the leaves are off of them, they look as dead as dead can get. And then you're like, well, those are never coming back. A few months later, they got leaves on them. I find that to be amazing, that that plant can handle that kind of wind and being underwater and actually grow. They grow right on the saltwater, but that's gotta be the toughest plant in the world. But yeah, I find the Keys and this area of Louisiana to be quite similar. It's basically a peninsula that's coming down, and the Keys are just a chain of islands, all connected by a bunch of bridges to the end of the road. And here in Venice, it's the same thing. It's just the end of the road. And here we have this Mississippi River that creates one of what has to be one of the greatest sport fishing areas in the entire world. Do you guys see similarities between The Keys and Venice, both with the personalities and the storms and everything that has to go into it?

Scott Walker: Fishing-generated income is half of it. Well, no, they got oil here. You got roughnecks and fishermen side by side. In The Keys, you have tourism and fishing. Throw a little diving in there. But yeah, that's all generated by the beautiful water. It's brown here, but it's prolific. It's so full of fish and opportunities, from freshwater bass to catching a swordfish. It's all right there on any given day. In the Keys, you can go catch a mangrove at the dock or a swordfish, if you want to. The fishing brings everyone back.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, I've always said that if Venice had the restaurants and the nightlife that Key West has, we'd be out of business, because the fishing is spectacular. It is.

Tom Rowland: But you know what they don't have is wintertime warm weather. It gets cold here. And I think that you're not gonna have somebody from New York decide that Venice is a great place to go in January.

Steve Rodger: Right. Those tourists travel in the spring and early fall. People get away from the cold and they go to the Keys. But as far as just the amount of fish that I see hit the docks here, it is ridiculous.

Tom Rowland: When we were sitting there eating lunch today, we were at the Venice Marina, and that's just a place where work gets done. Every charter captain that pulls in has a limit of something. And there is a fish cleaning table there that has to be outside of a commercial fish house in some place like The Keys or a California place, some place where they're bringing in serious fish. I don't know if there's another fish cleaning station that has seen as many fish come across it as the Venice Marina.

Steve Rodger: This one guy, his pile of trout was eight feet long and three foot wide, and they were, like, five high. Then I peeped my head around the corner, and there was, like, another guy with a pile the same size. Then I look around the other corner, there's a guy got a pile just like that of redfish.

Tom Rowland: Electric knives buzzing as fast as they can go. And then here come the tuna boats.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. And there were seven more bay boats waiting to unload their fish to clean them.

Fishing the shrimp boats

Tom Rowland: It's really incredible. But it's the Mississippi River, I think. This trip, I really thought that we did really well because we had this front that was coming in, and I saw it on the radar before we even started to move towards this area. I thought, man, that front, you could see it coming across the country. It's like, man, that's gonna get us. And so day one, we did pretty good, and it didn't really hit us until yesterday. But we had a good trip. I thought this trip was as good, if not even better, than some of the other trips that we've been on.

Scott Walker: Well, we were able to fish for what we wanted to every day. We didn't have to settle. I mean, we'd have gladly gone redfishing if we couldn't get on the ocean, but we didn't have to deal with wind over 15 knots. And generally it was 10 knots the whole time.

Steve Rodger: Couple of rainstorms here in the area.

Scott Walker: Wind-driven from a little thunderhead. That's rare, man.

Tom Rowland: Well, I'll tell you what's rare is when we show up someplace that the wind's not blowing 50.

Steve Rodger: I was watching the weather. I was watching what these guys were catching prior to us coming, and it was slick every day. And I'm like, oh, there go our days. There's our days. And I just stopped looking. I didn't even want to know. And yeah, we made out. It was a little bouncy, but I think it was better, because I judge it by the fact that we got in sometimes when the sun was still up. The times before we've been here, we had to hump it. We had great catches, but we had to hump it a little bit. Maybe this was off or that was off. Work a little harder or go a little further. But the fishery seemed a lot closer this time. The shrimp boats, we targeted more on that. I think the time before, it was more of the oil floaters.

Scott Walker: Eighty-five miles.

Tom Rowland: So we also fish the shrimp boats in The Keys, but this is a different deal. First of all, you got yellowfin tuna versus blackfin tuna. We have blackfin up here, but they treat the blackfin almost like we treat the bonito down there, like not interested. We're here for the yellowfin. Blackfin is a nice second place. And then the bonito are nuts, and they're huge. But I don't know, those shrimp boats, I like that, the way that they do that here. And I wonder how that really started as far as these guys that are looking for the tuna. How do you think that got started? You were doing it in The Keys.

Steve Rodger: The story I heard was these guys were basically getting the bait to catch these tarpon, and there was a huge tarpon fishery. It was so important to Key West.

Tom Rowland: Well, there was a shrimp fishery, a factory, right there.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, right there.

Tom Rowland: So they would bring the shrimp in, and, this is a little bit before my time, but they would get the shrimp heads. And they would chum for bonefish with the shrimp heads. They'd chum for tarpon. You could chum for anything with a 50-pound sack of shrimp heads. And that was easy. And for some reason, that went away, and you couldn't get that any longer. And so some people were like, well, let's just go straight to the boat, and they've got all this other stuff.

Steve Rodger: That's how I heard it played out from some of the guys. These guys were running out there for the bait, and through passing the bait back and forth, something hit the water and the customer was like, okay, so why are we gonna run back to Key West to fish for tarpon when you see that there's like 400 tunas here and a bunch of amberjacks and a bunch of cobias? I think somewhere in that. But I'm sure those guys are out there even fishing in the Gulf, fishing on the shrimp boat wrecks, because that's the only wrecks we have out there. There's a few wrecks from like World War Two, but I think a majority of those wrecks are old shrimp boats that have sunk. They were all wooden boats back then, and they had ice on them, so they had to come in. These guys saw what was happening behind those boats, whether it was the sharks or the tunas or just the sea life.

Scott Walker: But you gotta believe the guys actually working on shrimp boats told them something too.

Steve Rodger: Yeah.

Scott Walker: So, listen, we've shoveled a bunch of stuff overboard, and I don't know much, but there's more tunas here than I've ever seen anywhere. And maybe that guy got off that shrimp boat, got onto a charter boat and said, you know, if you really wanna catch something, I was working on that shrimp boat 40 miles over there, and there was all the blackfin tuna you ever wanted. And then the right captain goes, huh. And then secondhand news turns into headlines.

Tom Rowland: You also have to see that that's gotta evolve a little bit because at that time you're probably running a 25-foot single-engine boat. So 40 miles, it has to be the right day. And then you have to get on the radio, or you have to come directly off of that boat. And then it kind of evolves. Now you got the twin-engine boats, now they get a little bigger, and then today, there's no shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico that these guys can't hit now. I bet you the way that the Keys started and the way that this started is kinda similar. Kinda like, wonder what's going on over there. And next thing you know, there's like a 200-pound yellowfin tuna.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, it was crazy because I actually recognized some of the boats here.

Scott Walker: Really?

Steve Rodger: Yeah, absolutely. From dealing with them down in Key West. So I thought it was really cool because, listen, there's like three shrimp boats out of Key West. One's Jake's neighbor. There's another dude that by chance bought his slip in Safe Harbor, because there's nowhere for the shrimper to tie up anymore. In the old days at the Key West Harbor itself, where the raw bar is, where the concrete public seafood company is, where all the action is and all the big yachts now, that was all shrimp boats. And the fishery was huge. And I think a lot of guys started traveling and finding the shrimp. But when we're out there, they're from Alabama, they're from Texas, they're from Louisiana. They're not out of Key West.

Scott Walker: The weather's too tough here.

Tom Rowland: And then there's that story about the Key West shrimp being a nocturnal shrimp. You probably know way more about that. Is that an urban legend or what?

Steve Rodger: From what I heard, and I could be wrong, but I always took it as, that's the difference I noticed between Key West and Louisiana. These boats fishing in Louisiana are moving, and they're shrimping twenty-four seven. They are shrimping during the day, and you're pulling up behind a moving boat, throwing bait behind the moving boat trying to pull the fish off. In Key West, all the boats are sleeping during the day. They work all night long. And what I was told the reason was, and Jake might have the answer better than I do, but it was because they catch too much fish. They can't shrimp during the day because there's too much fish. Maybe it's the sand, a different type of bottom that we have versus up here. But if they pull the nets during the day, there's too much fish, too many little fish, whitefish. So they just wait till night, and then their catch is a majority shrimp and crabs. Or heck, you know what, the water's so dirty here, these shrimp might think it's nighttime. That's why they catch it during the day.

Diving in dirty water and the swordfish attack

Tom Rowland: But where we were actually catching the yellowfin, that water was beautiful. You were in the water. How clear was it?

Jake Perry: It wasn't very clear.

Tom Rowland: Was it very clear?

Steve Rodger: It was a lot clearer than the river.

Tom Rowland: As far as comparing that to where you fish in Key West.

Jake Perry: It's brown here. In Key West, when it gets dirty, it's white. So you got the river water coming out, which is brown, and it's a majority freshwater. It's all freshwater when it's brown there, and then it's mixing with the ocean. But that brown water just kinda rides on top of the ocean because it's freshwater, it floats.

Steve Rodger: Listen, you're talking to a spearfisherman out of Key West, and we like one thing. We like that water to look like glass. You get a glass out of your kitchen sink and you fill it with water, and that's what we're looking for. That's what gets us jacked up and fired up. And we all know about sharks. We've all seen tons of sharks. We've all had our personal experiences with sharks, and it's just nice to see it coming. If you're gonna get punched in the face and you know it's coming, it's kinda like, okay. But the sucker punch will get you. You ain't getting up from that. But if you see the guy coming, I think he punches you, you almost got one to come back at. And that's how I feel about the sharks, and I think Jake's the same way. You don't wanna get bit in the dirty water. You wanna see it coming.

Tom Rowland: Were you nervous at all this trip?

Jake Perry: I'm nervous every time I'm working for you guys.

Steve Rodger: And you're like, I ain't getting anywhere.

Scott Walker: Just going to dinner.

Jake Perry: I was trying to figure out yesterday while I was doing it, and I couldn't come up with an answer.

Tom Rowland: Well, yesterday, that was the day where if you were gonna have some doubts, that might have been a good one.

Jake Perry: Oh, doubts all the time. And you guys took that cobia and you drifted off the rig, and I couldn't see my feet. And I was on that rig by myself, and the camera boat's out of sight, and you guys are drifting away. And I'm just, okay, now what? Now what are we gonna do?

Steve Rodger: Did you see a ladder or anything that you could climb up on that rig?

Jake Perry: I was eyeballing it.

Scott Walker: We never leave you behind.

Jake Perry: But yeah, that water is dirty on top. Dirty. I mean, you can't see your feet.

Steve Rodger: It's a morale killer, Tom. I don't know how much time you spent snorkeling for lobster with your family when you were living there in the Keys. But basically, it's a morale killer. If you spend any amount of time spearfishing or swimming or snorkeling or scuba diving or tropical fish collecting or whatever, you wake up in the morning a lot different when you know it's gonna be dirty. You don't even wanna go. It's like when the wind's blowing hard. We're commercial diving lobster, me and Jake, we still do it. We try to get it done a little bit every year, and we dove together this year. We went out on the south side, and it was supposedly some unbelievable amount of crawfish on the south side. So we went out there, and it's a morale killer because, Jake will tell you, man, I was like, Jake, how's the visibility? It's not the same when you can't see what you're doing.

Jake Perry: We couldn't see the bottom from the top.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. And we'd go down there and feel around. We'd lose the spot. So he'd come up and he'd say, oh, there's 30 in this rock. And then he'd go back down, and that rock's not there anymore. Whereas when it's clear, you can just sit there and hover, and it's just a lot easier on your body and a lot less swimming around looking. I think when you use your eyeballs in that dirty water, it's burning oxygen. You're trying to find what you're doing. Whereas if it's clear, you don't have to struggle and look for something.

Tom Rowland: That's the key to holding your breath a long time, being totally relaxed. So if you're concerned about a shark, or you can't find what you're looking for, you're not gonna be able to hold your breath as long.

Jake Perry: All those video clips on that oil platform where the water was dirty, they're short. They're real short. The heart was beating fast, and the clips are short. That clear water is some long clips.

Tom Rowland: So yesterday, we catch a swordfish, and you have a little encounter with a swordfish. What happened?

Jake Perry: What happened? Well, made a mistake. The mistake was getting between the fish and the boat. That's a DMZ. That's no man's land. You don't go there. I went there, and I found out why you don't do it.

Tom Rowland: Well, explain why. Because you're saying don't get between the fish and the boat, because the fisherman, you're talking about a hooked fish, and the fisherman is actually pulling the fish towards you. So if the fish decides to turn to you, there's no resistance.

Jake Perry: That's right. That's one thing. But since the fisherman is pulling him to the boat too, that's what's trying to catch him. That's his problem. And he can see the boat, and he sees his problem, and you're part of it. You get in between them, he was, I believe, just trying to defend himself.

Steve Rodger: That fish was not charging the boat at other times, because he was fighting us. He's like, listen, whatever is messing with me is coming from that object. And so he's like, man, what is this? Why can't I swim away? Why can't I go back down to the bottom where I wanna go? And then old Perry got in there, and he's like, oh.

Tom Rowland: When you watch the video, and we'll put the video in the show notes, we'll put the pictures of what we're about to talk about in the show notes, and you can go to tomrowlandpodcast.com and look at all this stuff that we're talking about and get a better idea of what's going on. But what happened, we've looked at this video over and over again, and even done, Jason Stempel showed us how to move it frame by frame. And this swordfish is coming from the right to the left on the hook. Jake kinda pulls in front of it, like he's talking about, and he gets between the boat and the swordfish. And all of a sudden the swordfish is going right to left, and then he sees Jake and makes a conscious decision, the swordfish. Like, oh, you're the problem. And does a 90-degree turn and comes and slams into you.

Jake Perry: Yeah, he hit me pretty hard.

Tom Rowland: Pretty hard. So Jake and I started trying to figure out how we could do a better job with the underwater on this deal. Jake had an idea that maybe one of these scooters would be a good idea. And if you don't know what that is, it's like a Sea Doo makes it, and it's got a battery pack in it. It's got basically a big propeller on the back with a guard on it. Then Jake holds onto these handlebars that have his little throttle control, and we've mounted the cameras on top of that. So he can go down, and if you have to kick your feet and chase after these fish, no matter who you are or how long your breath hold is, you're burning up all your oxygen doing that. So now he can use the scooter and go right up next to the fish without burning any oxygen. You're able to stay down way longer. And it also, in this case, provided basically a shield for you because it's out in front of you, which I know you like for the sharks.

Jake Perry: For sure.

Tom Rowland: But I'm telling you what, man, we've done a lot of crazy stuff, and we've seen a lot of fish that you just jump right in with. And I'm like, man, a hooked tiger shark at the boat, and you're just no problem going right down the side. And I'm thinking, man, that is a hooked fish. That fish is gonna behave differently than just a regular fish. I know you've swam with tons of sharks, but the ones that make me really nervous are the hooked ones.

Steve Rodger: Whatever he bumps into, he's biting. Even if he's scared to death, the shark's like, oh my gosh, I want out of here. We release him. If he accidentally bumps into you, you're getting bit.

Tom Rowland: A hundred percent. Because he's mad. And we've all seen it where a lemon shark or something turns around, bites his own tail, and is in a physical donut holding onto his tail with his mouth and will not let his own tail go. He won't let his own tail go. He's not letting your leg go.

Steve Rodger: Well, what usually happens in that case, I've been bit by a lemon. The damage is done when you pull away.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Steve Rodger: Yeah. Because I always kid, I'm like, the best move is to sit there and maybe try to pull his mouth off of you. But when you pull away, that's when you tear everything.

Tom Rowland: So you're telling me that as a kid, you have the presence of mind to sit there with a lemon shark on your leg?

Steve Rodger: That was after I got bit, and I pulled away. And the damage was pretty bad from pulling away. So I said, next time I get bit, I'm not gonna pull away. I'm gonna poke him in the eyes or whatever I gotta do to try to get him off. And I know that's very hard, but pulling away, those teeth are designed to hold.

Tom Rowland: Right, and they're going back. They all go back.

Steve Rodger: And when you pull away, that's how it's designed. You're gonna do a lot more damage. Now that's easier said than done, because a lot of people pull away quick when something ain't right.

Tom Rowland: That's obviously the natural reaction, to get your arm or your leg out of that shark's mouth. But man, talk about presence of mind. That's unbelievable.

Steve Rodger: Haven't done it yet. I'm gonna keep telling myself I'm gonna do that.

Tom Rowland: But did you have any idea, I think we've all heard about swordfish hitting divers and stuff like that, but that's just not the one that I thought we would have a problem with.

Jake Perry: Well, I was imagining that at some point it would be, and it was. And getting back to how fast things change, I had one of those cameras set to take three photos per second. So it was taking a photo every point three seconds. When we looked at them, there was a photo of the fish 15 to 20 feet away, and the very next one, his bill was in the scooter. So he moved from 15 feet to 20 feet away, completely sideways, to stuck in the camera in less than point three seconds.

Tom Rowland: And we were watching this video over and over again, you and I, last night, before Jason Stempel showed us how to do the frame by frame. And so I'm going, I wonder how many times he wagged his tail before he came at you. And I'm trying to count, but it happened so fast. And then when Jason showed us that, it was a 90-degree turn and then four tail kicks as hard as a swordfish can kick. And what happened was the bill went into the nose cone of the scooter. I explained it to somebody today, like if you were to take a railroad spike and put it into a railroad tie with a sledgehammer. The bill went in six inches and then broke off. And you can see it happened in seconds, and we've all tried to pull this out.

Scott Walker: It's like Excalibur. It's in the stone. It's not coming out.

Tom Rowland: I don't think it's coming out. But it went all the way in.

Scott Walker: We're gonna get it. I don't know how we're gonna do it. We'll take it to the factory to get this out.

Jake Perry: Don't break it.

Steve Rodger: I think it goes back to that. That fish is a whole other animal. You've always heard people talk about it, those guys on the West Coast, they talk about the bills being in the bowels of some of those boats. That fish, and Scott's caught more of them than any of us in this room, it's just got an attitude. It's a different deal. It's hard to explain. I think it spends its life with the makos. I think a mako was created to eat swordfish.

Tom Rowland: But a swordfish was created to fend off the makos.

Steve Rodger: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: They live together, and one's a predator.

Scott Walker: I've talked to longliners who caught makos in the Gulf of Mexico over 800 pounds that have had multiple swordfish bills snapped off inside their mouth. Because their move is to take the tail out, then the bill, and then let the carcass float for days while they feed on it. That's their move, tail, bill. But on the other hand, the sword's only way to defend himself is to get that eye, get the head of the mako. So there have to be some incredible undersea wars between the big sword and the makos.

Steve Rodger: What I'm saying is, the difference is this. Sharks are not after you out of a vendetta. You know what I'm saying? The shark is after you because he's hungry. He wants to eat. He's after you because you just shot a fish. He's after you because you look like a sea turtle. He mistakes you for food. I never would think that a shark on a hook is going to turn around. I don't think they've got the capability, and I could be wrong, I'll probably make a bunch of people mad, but I don't think they're smart enough to relate those situations and turn and say, okay, I'm gonna bite that guy, and that's gonna end this problem. I just don't feel that with that fish.

Tom Rowland: But do you feel like if there's a hooked fish and the diver comes near it, that it might think, okay, that's obviously my problem, or I'm just turning and biting anything and everything?

Steve Rodger: I think, yes, he's gonna turn and bite anything, everything, but I spent a lot of time in the water, and I can't ever say, oh, there's a tarpon, he's two hundred pounds, he's gonna go after the diver, ram him, or this sailfish is gonna go after the diver. We've swam with a ton of sailfish and never have had an issue. I just think that fish is a level up. You know what, I'm a badass, I run the show. You know what I mean?

The swordfish: a badass of the deep

Tom Rowland: Well, when we did the first swordfish show that we ever caught one on Into The Blue, we did a really nice feature just on a swordfish. And we talked to some scientists, and I was just amazed at what a badass that fish is, period. Scott, tell us about where is a swordfish making his living? What is he doing? And how does he go from the bottom to the top like no other fish?

Scott Walker: Because he has the ability to warm his brain, just like the bluefin tuna. So the depths don't bother him. They can feed all day long, all night long. They come to the surface. The greatest migration on Earth is not the plains of Africa. The greatest migration on Earth is the travel from the deep to the surface every night.

Tom Rowland: When you say deep, how deep are you talking?

Scott Walker: The bottom of the ocean. Everything on the bottom of the ocean rises to the surface after sundown. It's the microorganisms, the squid, everything. And the sword rises up with them and goes down with them because he has a twenty-four-hour feed bag. And I know from personal experience tagging swords that ten years ago, maybe fifteen, I tagged about a 35-pound swordfish. Way undersized, circle hook, but he came up dead. In my opinion, he's dead. I tagged it, I filled out my card, I sent it in to National Marine Fisheries or the Billfish Foundation. And I felt bad for the fish, but I did my due diligence. I filled out the paperwork, sent it in.

Steve Rodger: But you called it dead in your mind.

Scott Walker: I thought it was dead. And three years later, I get a little email letter from the Billfish Foundation with a hat and, thanks for releasing, here's the information on this fish. Three years later, the fish was caught in North Carolina by a longliner, and it was 300 pounds.

Tom Rowland: So just to be clear, you thought it was dead, and you had to let it go by law, right?

Scott Walker: And I tagged it anyway. Filled out the tag card and sent it in. Because they want to know if they're released live or dead, what condition. I said condition dead. Circle hook, dead. And then three years later, it was recaptured on a longline. It was 300.

Steve Rodger: What made you think dead? The blood or the lack of movement?

Scott Walker: It wasn't moving. It wasn't bleeding. The circle hook went in the mouth and came out that soft spot underneath the eye. Because I used a lot bigger hooks when we first started this. I said, that's just terrible. I felt like, man, I'm trying to catch them, and I can't keep it by law. I could have eaten it, but no, the law says you gotta let them go, and that's what you do. So I let it go. I filled out my paperwork. Didn't think anything of it again. Three years later.

Steve Rodger: Turns out the law was right.

Scott Walker: Yeah. Three hundred pounds in three years. But think about it. They can eat squid twenty-four hours a day.

Tom Rowland: So that's interesting, because to me, a swordfish looks like a very old fish. You see one of these big swordfish, but that story tends to make you think that they're putting on about a hundred pounds a year.

Scott Walker: Well, knowing what I know and watching dolphin like we do year-round here in The Keys, come April, we're counting the big ones. Then June, they're not as big. Then July, you struggle to catch big fish. There's so many, 12 to 14 inches as far as the eye can see. And then you find out from science that a 20-pounder is one year old. So why can't the swordfish do the same thing? Obviously, they're fast-moving, and they have a constant food source. Dolphin have a constant food source with the Gulf Stream and the sargassum that they live in. But swordfish are eating squid from day one, and that's a bigger protein snack. And more and more, when you catch them and their stomachs are full, a 100-pound swordfish can have 15 pounds of squid in their belly. They can either have three big ones or 30. You can't fit another one in there, and yet they eat your bonito strip.

Tom Rowland: Right. That lead that Jordan showed us blew me away.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Rowland: So these guys are dropping, what, 10 pounds of lead?

Scott Walker: Two, six, eight, and 10-pound lead sticks.

Tom Rowland: Lead sticks.

Scott Walker: About twelve, fourteen inches long.

Tom Rowland: They are almost as big around as a beer bottle, and they're dropping that down to what, 1,600 feet. And so that takes a long time to get down there, and it looks like someone took a file and just filed into it, but that's not what happened at all. A swordfish just beat the hell out of that thing. Lead's not very hard, but a little softer, but man, the way.

Scott Walker: Forced to bend it, for starters. Imagine a stick of dynamite like the Roadrunner would be using, and it was bent almost two inches, and it's three inches up of inch-and-a-half-thick lead, and then the gashes. There were 20 gashes on this one lead.

Steve Rodger: Yeah.

Scott Walker: He said it was one drop, one fish. It was early in his career. He was trying to hook his first one, and nothing was going on. The rod's going bam bam bam, and they're just not hooking. And when the episode ended, they wound up to see what's going on. Maybe their hook turned over or something. And the lead was what the thing was beating on.

Tom Rowland: Monsters down there, man.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. To not lose interest, you know what I mean? That's gotta hurt a little bit, but apparently those guys, they're tough.

The dolphin that made the show

Tom Rowland: It was almost as stupid as that dolphin you caught yesterday.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, exactly. That was amazing.

Tom Rowland: We had a giant dolphin as we were releasing. So I'm on the camera boat, and these guys are wrapping up the show and releasing the sword, or putting the sword in the coffin box. And I look down, and I see what appears to be a 60-pound dolphin swimming right off the bow of the camera boat. And I'm jumping up and down and trying not to yell too much, but I'm also realizing that this thing is probably gonna swim off into the glare, we'll never see it again, and I finally get somebody's attention. I'm like, 60-pound dolphin, 60-pound dolphin. And they scramble. Steve, you always are prepared. One of your MOs is you should always have a jig, you should always have a lure, something that you can throw. And pretty much every shoot, that spinning rod ends up somewhere. There's a lure that usually catches everyone's shirt as you walk by, but it paid off yesterday, big time.

Steve Rodger: Absolutely. But that fish made the show, really and truly, because we were coming off of this crazy high-fiving session on the fact that we actually pulled the hook on this swordfish at the boat. This fish was done. The swivel was at the tip, and it was time to gaff him. And as Jordan reaches over to gaff the fish, the hook pulls, and you see the squid fly out of his mouth to the other side of the boat. And I'm like, oh no. And luckily, Jordan was quick and fast, and he stuck that fish while it was still getting its wits about itself, between losing half its bill, Jake's scooter, and just getting yanked up from the bottom. He stuck him before he got away. And we were just totally stoked that this thing didn't turn into another lost fish, because we'd already lost two swordfish prior to that. It's just hard doing a show without the money shot, and that fish was the money shot for all of us. At any rate, one of us heard you say dolphin, and I ran back and snatched that lure. I threw it out there, and I didn't even know what the fish was. I didn't even care. I just knew I needed to throw it real far because I didn't wanna be short of them. A lot of times when fish are cruising, they're not gonna turn around, but if you put it in front of them, they're gonna bite it. So I threw it as far as I could off the bow, not even really paying attention to where. I popped that thing a bunch. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I didn't realize he was only 30 yards away, but I threw this thing like 60 yards. And then he saw it at maybe 30 yards off the bow, and he's chasing it, chasing it. And basically, I had the lure two feet from the rod tip, and I was doing like that musky stuff you see on TV where they swing the rod around in circles, because I was out of line to reel in. And he was chasing it right there, and I couldn't get him to get it. So I made another quick cast. He ate it, and we're all, woo, all jacked up. And he jumps and spits it. And we're like, oh no. So Scott fires a lure. We're hooked up, and we're like, sweet, everybody's happy again. And then it jumps and spits his lure out. As I fire again at it, I snag it in its back. I tear its dorsal fin in half, and now you see this big white stripe on his back. And I'm like, oh my god, this sucks, it's over. Three strikes, you're out. That's the way it works, baseball and fishing. I threw it again, and he piled on it. And he ate it, and I set the hook like nobody's business.

Tom Rowland: And it's flopping around on the deck. And then in less than a minute, we miss this dolphin three or four times and then finally hook up. And what was crazy about it too was that Jordan was so jacked up, and this guy played linebacker for Tulane, and he is no joke. He's already got the gaff in his hand, and he's just waiting. That fish made one jump and actually jumped towards the boat. It jumped towards the boat, and they hit and kinda glide. Well, he glided the wrong way. And Jordan was like, yes.

Jake Perry: Got it.

Scott Walker: That fish went from free swimming to in the icebox.

Steve Rodger: Normally, we'll have to take out the fighting of the fish, like when we're catching sailfish or tarpon or permit. In a show, you only got so much time, so we don't show the fight. We just try to show the hookup, show the catch. Well, this one, you don't have to take anything out. You can show the whole thing, and it literally is gonna be thirty seconds. From bite to box.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I just thought that summed up saltwater fishing completely.

Steve Rodger: Why people are addicted.

Tom Rowland: Why they're addicted, but also, yesterday was just perfect. You couldn't describe saltwater fishing better than yesterday, and it is an intense amount of rigging, an intense amount of paying attention to the details, a long journey. And then I couldn't believe it, one drop and you're on. A tremendous amount of boredom, followed by, okay, finally we've got it, and this is probably gonna be our day. Also, there's weather coming in, a horrible lightning storm coming in. And then just this amazing amount of excitement and action in a very small amount of time. That is saltwater fishing.

Steve Rodger: And the difference too, with TV, it's tough on us. A lot of times, you guys are our cheerleaders, and you're like, okay guys, how about some enthusiasm? And I'm like, I'm not excited about this kingfish. It's a kingfish. Okay, yay, look, Scott, I'm hooked up. And we're trying to be excited. But I love it when that kind of situation unfolds because that is a true natural reaction to why we're there, why people are spending this kind of money to come out to Venice, why people travel around the world, why people have $400,000 outboard boats, because you can't buy that feeling that we had in that block right there.

Tom Rowland: Right. And for me, why I like to tell the story is exactly for that. That's the story that ultimately we're trying to tell on the television show. Exactly what happens, the natural raw emotion and all of that stuff. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's tough. People ask a lot about how long does it take to film a TV show. If we told somebody three weeks, they wouldn't be that surprised. But often it happens early. But sometimes it's really tough. And I'd like to know what you guys think is the most difficult part about filming a TV show, because I got my ideas. But I think mine is when I'm driving the boat, I revert back to, let me get this done.

The hardest part of filming a TV show

Steve Rodger: Let me find these fish. We got a heck of a production team behind us, and we have a lot of people. And hey, let's not kid ourselves, we're all getting older. And we all wanna get it done. And so for me, if I'm behind the wheel, it's making the right decisions. I almost feel like I'm on a charter again, because let's get it done. Let's get the lighting right. Let's get it before it's darker. Before we gotta sit back at the dock and clean the fish in the dark and get the lights out and make a bunch more work for everybody else. So I think the hardest part for me is just to get on the fish if I'm the captain, I guess.

Tom Rowland: What do you think, Scott?

Scott Walker: What's the hardest part for me on the boat? Catch as many fish as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. That's what I've been doing since I was 14 years old. That's how you make money. That's how you make a name for yourself. That's how you get repeat customers. And to do that and film it, it's not possible. Hurry up and wait. The fish is right there, cameras aren't ready. It's a sailfish. He's not gonna stay there. Your window from the time he bites your teaser to the time he bites your bait is fifteen seconds. And I'm paying attention, and I know the cameras are heavy, I totally understand that, and they had to be on the right side. But if you're right there, how's the fish even gonna come to us? I'm just amazed that eleven years later, me and Steve are continually able to make good TV for everybody to enjoy, because there's always a camera boat right in the way.

Steve Rodger: In the chum slick.

Scott Walker: In the chum slick.

Steve Rodger: But that's gotta be the artist in him, because I beg, I'm like, Scott, alright, show the fish to the camera. He's like, in the cooler, laid down. No, there's no bites, they'll hook you. And I'm like, okay, this will be cool, he'll actually take the hook out and the guys on the camera boat will get to see the fish. No, knife out, cuts the leader off, slams it in the box, shuts the box.

Scott Walker: Hook in my hand.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that happened.

Jake Perry: Yeah, I know.

Scott Walker: And I haven't forgotten. It was painful.

Steve Rodger: His MO is,

Scott Walker: And I can make Steve laugh because my blood's pouring out of my finger. That's not good.

Steve Rodger: But his MO, I would agree, because I see it, and I think his hardest part would definitely a hundred percent be having to wait on you guys. And it's frustrating to him because he's a tournament guy, and I get it. But with me, I did enough guiding, and I'm like, well, it's frustrating for us because you see what we're doing. We're pulling him back up to the rig, we're holding this route. We're not out here for a fun time. The rain, the sun, the lightning, the storm, the weather, everything. We're fishing, pick the camera up.

Tom Rowland: No, man, you're acting like I don't know. It's fourteen years of the same frustration as a tournament fisherman. That's what I'm supposed to do. I find that to be the hardest thing ever. When people ask me, what's hard about filming a TV show, I'm like, everything. First of all, you're out there when you first start, and you pull in and you got everything perfect, and you catch a few fish, and you're thinking, okay, great, this is going great. Now you have this burden of someone doing donuts around you while you're doing this. And all of a sudden, you're being asked to do things that you would have thought previously were completely impossible. And I don't know about you guys, but I know that it's made me a better fisherman to realize, okay, well, I thought this was completely impossible, and obviously it's not. We got it done. Like, we're getting ready to catch a bonefish that's tailing right there. Well, it's right into the sun. You can't cast in there. We can't shoot that. So we're like, so what, you want us to pull all the way around the thing? There's no possible way it's gonna be there. But you know what, if you do it really slow, sometimes they're there. Sometimes. It's absolutely amazing. Sometimes they're there.

Steve Rodger: I rarely think we're gonna catch a sailfish on our drift lines when you guys are sitting on top of them. I'm like, I won't even look that direction. I just look at the kite. I'm like, yep, not gonna bite over there. But sometimes.

Tom Rowland: Sometimes they do?

Steve Rodger: Yeah. Mostly they bite on the other side of the boat, we can't see them.

Two captains, two backgrounds, one boat

Tom Rowland: The reason that you guys are the hosts of Into The Blue is because you're both the real thing coming from two different backgrounds. Scott with the billfish background, and you with the commercial fishing, commercial diving, center console background, Steve. You're both incredibly capable captains, incredibly capable fishermen, and you probably think about things a little bit differently. How have you guys figured out how to have two captains on a boat? Because it's really difficult to have two captains on a boat, but you guys seem to have pretty much worked it out. Obviously, there's times where you think one way and you think exactly the opposite way.

Scott Walker: Oh, that makes good TV.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, well, it does, actually.

Scott Walker: Eleven years later.

Steve Rodger: But I think we're experts at our own areas. Scott is amazing at what he does, at sailfishing, at kite fishing, at swordfishing, the things that he targets, tournament fishing, preparedness. And my forte, I think, is bottom fishing or reef fishing and snapper fishing. I never even knew how to snell a hook until I met him. I never even thought about snelling a hook. He brings me circle hooks, and I'm just pissed. I'm like, what are these things, bro? And so he's an expert at what he does, and I don't do those things often. He bottom fishes as well, but not as often as I do. Just like, yes, I sailfish as well, but nowhere near as often as he does. So his knowledge of the blue water, and trolling even. When I go dolphin fishing, I literally walk in the store, I grab a pack of ballyhoo, one pack. I have these two beat-up lures I've been pulling around for six years. I poke the ballyhoo through the eye, and we let it rip. And I drive this boat, follow that blackbird, wake me up when he hits the water. And then I show up at the dock when we got a shoot with Scott, and we're doing a dolphin show, and this joker is like a thousand miles a minute. There are 47 rigged ballyhoo. I'm like, are we selling those to somebody? What are we possibly gonna do with all these ballyhoo that are pre-rigged?

Scott Walker: Not pre-rigged. He rigged.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, he rigged. Pre-rigged by him. Poop is removed, eyeballs removed. And dude, I take a spring and I wrap it around its head maybe. I get it, there's a whole different, I came at it way differently. I just came at it with, tie this on, it works. I think Scott, with the tournament and the blue water and the Maryland and the trolling and the marlin fishing, I think every bite you have to make count. The tension's in the detail. Everything needs to swim, needs to be perfect. Whereas I think a lot of my amazing catches that I've had are just right place, right time. And I truly feel that my confidence is there because I've made it happen with a chicken-shit rig.

Scott Walker: And I like to think that I bring a little technology into Steve's life.

Steve Rodger: Absolutely. As much as I want to grasp, it's all there for me too. I've never had a Plano box with everything. Scott took my box, and he put the ceramic rings in one section, and he had the bobbers in one section and the rubber bands over here.

Tom Rowland: His stuff is tight.

Steve Rodger: Man, I love it when Scott plays with my tackle box. It's kinda funny, but no, he's tight.

Tom Rowland: Super organized.

Scott Walker: I do fish a lot. But usually I am driving the boat, making all decisions, where we're gonna go, what we're gonna catch, training new mates, making sure they do it my way. I'm always happy to have a new mate because they might know something I don't know. I never discourage them from letting me know what they think. But I get excited when I do Into The Blue with Steve. I know that I get to fish again. And I'm not gonna fish and just bob around on the ocean. He's gonna put me in a spot where I can catch more fish than I could find on my own, and I get to fish for him. And I get a little gung-ho. I don't want to catch one. I want to catch 10. If you give me 10 poles, I want the 10 poles bent over. I don't get that opportunity very often. So when I get time to be with Steve, I know he's gonna put me on his mutton spot where I can catch three at once if I can hold three poles. Or he's gonna put me on tuna where I can catch 10 at once.

Steve Rodger: And you know what else? Scott has no problem letting me drive, which is huge. You would think that, like you said, being a captain, running around in a 65-foot, three-million-dollar rig, he'd be pretty cocky on the fact that, hey, I'm gonna run this boat. But he lets me drive whatever. He's never once told me, hey, let me take the helm today. Obviously, it's a known fact, if we're in Duck Key, Scotty drives the boat. We're in Key West, I drive the boat. But if we're somewhere where neither one of us are on our home waters.

Scott Walker: I like that challenge the best. Being in Louisiana, I love that we have a guide here. We couldn't do what we do here without a guide. This is too much to bring up.

Steve Rodger: You could do it.

Scott Walker: You could drop us out there. Take time. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: That's exactly right. You could do it, but not in the time that we need to film this TV show. Nobody's so good that they can just show up anywhere and all of a sudden be as good as the locals. That's just not happening, right?

Steve Rodger: Take a couple days.

Scott Walker: You could drop me and Steve off in any ocean, and we'll be fishing the next day. We're not gonna go hungry. With enough time. We're gonna take, he sees water a little different than I see it. He sees a current line, I see a weed line. He sees blue water, I see powder water. Our eyes are looking and processing it totally differently but with the same goal in mind, to catch the fish that are living in that water, or where they're not living. We're not gonna waste our time. We both have that ability.

Tom Rowland: I find this to be very interesting. First of all, you guys have just kind of accepted the fact that, it may have taken a little while and you might have had to fish together a little while to realize this guy brings a lot to the table, and this guy brings a lot to the table. So when we're bottom fishing, you're listening. When you're billfishing, you're listening. And do you think that helps you to be better anglers, better guides, fishing together like that? Obviously, you're learning a lot about billfish, you're learning a lot about bottom fishing. But do you think it also helps you to realize, like you just said, that you'll listen to anybody because your mate might teach you something? Do you think your experiences with Steve made you realize, oh, there's this whole other world out here that I hadn't really been paying all that much attention to?

Scott Walker: Ten years later, I'm even a better fisherman than I would have been if I never met Steve. I wouldn't be where I am now.

Tom Rowland: That's huge, bro.

Steve Rodger: I like it. Yeah, man. When we're doing a drift for sailfish, he's got all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. There's things he's doing nonstop that I never would have even dreamt of doing. Scott, he knows the rigs, he's on the latest and greatest. He's in that circle. There's a lot happening in Islamorada. I always said that if those Islamorada boys and the Duck Key, Marathon guys came down and competed against the Key West fleet, the charter boat fleet, their heads would fall off.

Tom Rowland: It happens every year, right? At the World Sailfish Championship, which you have won, right?

Scott Walker: Luckily, yes.

Steve Rodger: Nothing to take away from the Key West guys. We just have awesome fish. But I don't think any of those guys on a big boat even own a cast net. You drive through the Middle Keys, and every single charter boat is drying out their two fourteen-foot cast nets.

Scott Walker: And they're feeding their baits in the pens. And while the nets are drying, they're sabiki-ing more.

Steve Rodger: We got one guy that fishes like them. We got Bryce. You know what I'm saying? We got one.

Scott Walker: He's the man in Key West.

Steve Rodger: And he came from there.

Scott Walker: He learned from some of the better boys at Islamorada.

Steve Rodger: And I don't know what the difference is, and it could be we have an easier fishery. You know, we have an easier fishery.

Scott Walker: Yeah. You can go out by the ballyhoo right out of the store and put it out and catch a dolphin.

Steve Rodger: We have an easier fishery than these guys, so maybe we don't have to work as hard. And I'm just speaking about trolling guys. They didn't have to evolve. If you walk down the dock there at Garrison Bight, there's probably maybe 25 troll boats there, or 20 trolling boats.

Scott Walker: That's fair enough.

Steve Rodger: If you ask those guys to take you swordfishing, you'd be lucky if you found two of them that have ever been or would even consider it.

Scott Walker: Or even owns an electric.

Steve Rodger: Or even knows what to do, or even where they bite. You go anywhere from Big Pine to Jacksonville and you walk down any other charter boat operation and you said, hey, we'd like to go swordfishing, and they'd be, me, me, me, I'll take it. Everybody on the dock has done that and will do that. And I think that's because we have such a massive influx of tourists down there. People have never been fishing.

Scott Walker: It's easy to be lazy.

Steve Rodger: They're from wherever, maybe not even this country. And they're like, we just wanna pull on fish. And so these guys take them out there, and they catch some kingfish and some mackerel and some barracudas, some yellowtail. Boom, made the day. Everybody's happy. Clients could never have been happier. Whereas I think you guys might bump into a few more real deal clients.

Scott Walker: Real deal fishermen. There's not too many clients in Key West that show up with a cooler and an expectation.

Steve Rodger: Oh, there are. I had a bunch of them.

Scott Walker: Well, you're a Marine boy.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. But I'm not saying they were my favorite.

Scott Walker: You were part of the world where they grind. And if you don't come in with fish, you don't go fish the next day.

Steve Rodger: Yeah. It's funny because when you start guiding, you gotta show the eyeballs that you can produce. And then as you get good and you have a clientele, then you're like, oh god, what did I do to myself? Now I don't wanna produce. I need to go back to the guy who doesn't wanna take anything home.

Keeping an open mind and staying fresh

Tom Rowland: So how do you, you guys have both been in this for long enough, and you've seen plenty of people get sour on the guiding business or the fishing business. The sun is brutal. It's hard on your body day after day. But you guys seem to have managed to keep a pretty positive attitude, and you have an open mind, and you're willing to learn from a lot of different types of people. What do you think the trick is in order to keep that open mind and keep learning and keep everything fresh and exciting, as opposed to just doing the milk route and getting tired of it and becoming kinda sour?

Steve Rodger: You know, I think if you love being out there, that's the majority of it. And it is very rare that there's something where you can be surprised every day. And I know this might sound cliche, but you really and truly can see something for the first time every day. You might have seen something similar, but it's not the same. There's some amazing things that take place out there. It changes every day. You can't predict it. And I think with Scott, with all these new techniques, that keeps him fired up. Okay, we're gonna use this O-ring now to put on the hook to hold the ballyhoo, or we're gonna do these dredges now with real mullet. His thing is faster, technical. That probably keeps him jacked up, just finding a faster, cooler, more productive way. I think on my end, it's just the anticipation of what you're gonna catch, because you never know what's gonna happen. It's something different.

Scott Walker: Yeah, Steve stops to smell the roses.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask, whether Steve liked commercial fishing or guiding or hook-and-line sport fishing better, because when he's commercial fishing, I don't think he's stopping to smell the roses very much.

Scott Walker: I hear you. But it's a little more linear for me. Every day is a puzzle that you wanna put together, all 500 pieces. And at the end of the day, when you put that last piece in, wow, an achievement. And then you go home and your child knocks that puzzle off, and you start all over again every day. I caught 14 sails yesterday, I'm jacked up. You'll catch 14 more. Next morning, the water's gone. Where is it?

Steve Rodger: Bait's gone.

Scott Walker: Bait's gone.

Tom Rowland: Bait's dead.

Scott Walker: The puzzle's been destroyed. You gotta find the four corners every morning to get it done. And that's how I approach every day. I gotta find the four corners, and then I can get this thing going.

Tom Rowland: How often do you put the final piece in the puzzle?

Scott Walker: Every day.

Tom Rowland: You do? Dang, dude, that's strong. Into the blue, baby.

Steve Rodger: He's still looking for that third corner. That's why I'm here.

Goals for the future

Tom Rowland: Well, man, I know that so many people love Into The Blue. When I put it out there that I wanted people to give me their suggestions, I think that you guys are right at the top. And, we talk about learning, and we talk about keeping your mind open and learning from other people. And the experience that I've had watching you guys create this show and helping in whatever small way that I can has made me a thousand times better fisherman. To watch what both of you are doing and then bring little pieces of that back into my world, whether it's just by principle, like, oh, well, Scott does it this way, and we could kite fish for sharks in the backcountry. Or Steve does this, and maybe we could go out there and try that, sandballing or any of these things. And all of a sudden, I take some of these little things back into my world, or maybe it's just I learned how to throw a cast net a lot better. But watching you guys has been really incredible. Before I did this, Rich was the offshore guy, and I didn't know much about offshore fishing. But I'm the production guy, so this kinda fell into my world, and it's been really fun. And both of you guys are amazing fishermen, no doubt about it. But what about goals for the future? Scotty, you got some goals for the future?

Scott Walker: Keep winning money.

Tom Rowland: Keep winning money. And just so everybody knows, you're fishing in what type of tournaments, and which tournaments?

Scott Walker: The season just ended, as summer ends for the white marlins. We never found the right fish this season. But as soon as we leave here, I gotta wind down my season in Maryland and get the boat ready to go to the Dominican. It's a new adventure for us. We're gonna go chase blue marlins till Christmas in the Dominican Republic. I've never been, and I got a crew hired to take me there and teach me the waters. And then when they leave, it's all me till Christmas.

Tom Rowland: Wow. So how many billfish do you think you catch a year?

Scott Walker: Three or 400.

Tom Rowland: Three or 400? Do you tag them all?

Scott Walker: No, not anymore. I've really wound that down a little bit.

Tom Rowland: And those billfish are sailfish, all of them, right?

Scott Walker: Sailfish, a few white marlin, and blue marlin's next.

Tom Rowland: So when you're after the money, it's the marlin?

Scott Walker: The biggest purses are in the summertime in Maryland and New Jersey. The Calcuttas can get upwards of $4,000,000. So win and a fish should be easy, a million, million and a half. But the sailfish turns to South Florida, which is really driving me crazy lately. Jimmy Johnson's got a new one, and Key Largo, the Hard Rock, is back at a guaranteed million dollars.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Scott Walker: And that's all catch and release. But Maryland, you gotta bring them in. You gotta show me.

Tom Rowland: That's gotta get you pretty excited, because all of a sudden you have.

Scott Walker: Two hard days against the best of the best, on a tight little area.

Tom Rowland: In your water.

Scott Walker: And it's in our water. So it's a little north, but I spent enough time there that I feel that I've got as good a shot as anybody. Just gotta find the right rip for one hour. That's our motto.

Tom Rowland: What time of the year does that tournament go on?

Scott Walker: That's March. It's prior to the big finale in Key West. They start off in Miami, Palm Beach, and they finish in Ocean Reef and Key West. There's probably 30 sailfish tournaments, but there's six that you really wanna be a part of. And you just plan on putting a quarter million in to fish those six. But if you hit it right, you can take it all back.

Tom Rowland: That is definitely a different league.

Scott Walker: It's a lifestyle.

Tom Rowland: That's definitely a different league than the redfish tournaments that I used to pitch in. It was like a thousand-dollar entry fee in one of them. And we had Calcuttas, but 40,000 would maybe be what you could win, not 4,000,000. What about you, Steve? You got any goals for the future? Anything that you're working on, anything that's important to you?

Steve Rodger: No, just the kids. I got a nine- and eleven-year-old, and just trying to get them more involved out in the outdoors, more comfortable with being on the boat, more comfortable with being in the water, doing the hunting and the fishing thing. Just raising those kids right is pretty much my priority right now. No real goals, man. I'm pretty happy right now.

Tom Rowland: That's the ultimate goal, in my opinion. I don't think you can ever go wrong with that. That's the most important.

Scott Walker: I'd say that both of us are in really good places right now.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it seems like it. It seems like everybody's super happy, and the future for Into The Blue is very good. Just making great shows now. We got four of the best shows I think we've ever filmed in the last week. And next stop is Key West. Last stop was The Bahamas, and onward.

Steve Rodger: Yes, sir.

Tom Rowland: Alright, boys.

Scott Walker: Heading into the blue, baby.

Where to follow Scott and Steve

Steve Rodger: Will you wake up Jake and get him those headphones back?

Tom Rowland: Jake, thank you for being part of this, and thank you for getting in there with that swordfish and sharing that story with us. That was truly amazing. If you wanna follow these guys, both of them told me today somewhat confidentially that they need some more followers on their Instagram. No doubt, Steve puts some really cool stuff on his when he's doing the commercial fishing, commercial lobster diving. Those are some really cool posts where you're showing what you're doing, and I really like that. So what's your Instagram?

Steve Rodger: I believe it's at steve.

Tom Rowland: You don't have as many followers.

Steve Rodger: Exactly. My phone's dead, I don't know.

Scott Walker: It's steve.rodger.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, with a dot.

Scott Walker: Just Steve.

Steve Rodger: S-T-E-V-E.

Scott Walker: You don't wanna be Captain America.

Steve Rodger: Rodger, R-O-D-G-E-R.

Scott Walker: Just a dot.

Steve Rodger: Yeah, no s.

Tom Rowland: So sometimes we call you Steven. Your wife calls you Steven.

Steve Rodger: Yes.

Tom Rowland: And sometimes we call you Steve. Which do you prefer?

Steve Rodger: It doesn't really matter to me.

Tom Rowland: You have a TV name and a charter name and a family name?

Steve Rodger: I think I got a family name. It's Steven, I think. When she's serious, when she says Steve, I'm like, oh, I did something really bad. But it's just weird, I don't know.

Tom Rowland: Seems like Steven would be the more serious one.

Steve Rodger: I got, like, so many names. It's Stevie from my mom. It's Steve from my dad. My wife's Steven. I go with all of them. Scott calls me Stevie.

Tom Rowland: So, steve.rodger, R-O-D-G-E-R. No s.

Steve Rodger: No s. That's it.

Tom Rowland: And what's yours, Scott?

Scott Walker: C-A-P-T Scott Walker. And I'll put some fishing on there, especially when I'm traveling.

Steve Rodger: I think he wants to be a cook.

Scott Walker: You're gonna see a lot more, I'm more of a foodie on Instagram. So if you're gonna follow me, be ready for a big afternoon.

Steve Rodger: Listen, today's lunch, Tom and I both drilled you for recipes and whatever. Scott's a cook, man. He likes to cook.

Tom Rowland: I think every group needs somebody like Scott. You gotta have your cook person. Whenever we go someplace and we're ready, Scott's like, okay, this is what we're doing.

Steve Rodger: My house Thursday night.

Tom Rowland: Exactly. It's gonna be ribs. We're gonna do this, firing up the green egg. You're a pizza party. That's what I always like about Scott. A fish comes over the rail and he's like, oh, you are going to be in with some stewed tomatoes, and he's already thinking about it, man. That's cool. And you're a good host. When you have one of those parties, it's a good host because the food is incredible, but you can just see how much you enjoy it. You really enjoy the whole process.

Scott Walker: Thank you for making it available to do it on TV as well. I love my life. I love my wife. I love my house. I love my island. I love my Keys.

Tom Rowland: Man, we gotta end it right there, because that's love. That's good. If there's any more love that's gonna go on, Jake's gonna start talking. Alright, boys. Thank you.