BlacktipH (Joshua Jorgensen): How a Shark-Fishing YouTuber Built a Sensation

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 17, with Joshua "Josh" Jorgensen of BlacktipH. Lightly edited for readability.

Opening: Introducing BlacktipH

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. We have an excellent guest. This guy is a YouTube sensation. His videos get millions and millions and millions of views. His name is Josh Jorgensen, and he's known on YouTube as BlacktipH. BlacktipH is coming at you right after I tell you a few things.

Tom Rowland: First of all, super excited. This is episode 14. Just started this thing. I've sat down with some incredible people. I've heard some great stories, and I've learned a lot so far, and I really want to keep this going. I'm getting some excellent feedback both on iTunes and also on the email address that we've set up just for this podcast. I love to see that email inbox overflowing. Thank you to the people who have sent the email so far. Really appreciate it, and I look forward to getting other emails from people who have suggestions on how we can improve the show or people that we can sit down with.

Tom Rowland: BlacktipH is one of those people. I asked on social media who we should sit down with, and I got a couple of suggestions. BlacktipH was one of them, and so I tracked him down. We got him for you.

Tom Rowland: This episode is going to be brought to you by Waypoint TV. As always, Waypoint TV has over 2,000 episodes. It's growing every day, and more and more producers are embracing the Waypoint TV platform. You can go there and watch all of their fantastic outdoor content, both hunting and fishing, and it's absolutely free. You can get it on any device you want. Go to waypointtv.com.

Tom Rowland: Alright, everybody. Josh Jorgensen, BlacktipH. Man, he can talk. He likes to talk. And pretty much, we went through where he started, where he's been, what he's doing now, where he's going, and maybe went down a rabbit hole here or there. I hope that you enjoy it. Josh is an interesting character, and you're going to learn a whole bunch. So with no further ado, BlacktipH.

The Name Josh — and Where BlacktipH Came From

Tom Rowland: So here we are live, BlacktipH in the studio with Josh Jorgensen. Joshua? You prefer Joshua or Josh? I noticed on your YouTube videos it says Joshua always.

Josh Jorgensen: Yeah, I always put my full name. But people call me Josh. I always try to be as formal as possible with my lower thirds.

Tom Rowland: Most people call you Josh, but on the bottom I noticed that with a lot of different people — like the host of Into the Blue, Steve Rodger — he goes by Steve on TV, but if you enter it, it's always the full name. So I always ask somebody what they prefer. Would you prefer people call you Josh?

Josh Jorgensen: I like Josh. Joshua takes too much to say. It's an extra syllable.

Tom Rowland: With me, my dad always calls me Thomas, but he's the only one. And I'm usually in trouble — or he wants to give me a big hug. One or the other. It's one extreme or the other. Everybody I grew up with calls me Tommy. But in the fishing world, it's always been Tom. I just like to see what people prefer.

Josh Jorgensen: You can call me BlacktipH. Some people call me Blacktip, BlacktipH, Josh.

Tom Rowland: Well, where'd that come from? BlacktipH? I've always wondered that.

Josh Jorgensen: When I was 13 years old, my parents bought a condo down here in West Palm. I've always been fascinated with sharks — actually, probably the first thing I can ever remember drawing was a shark.

Tom Rowland: Are you an artist?

Josh Jorgensen: No. I have done some works of art — maybe a digital artist, but definitely not a painting guy. It vaguely resembled a shark.

Tom Rowland: Is that when you started fishing? At 13?

Josh Jorgensen: No. When I was three. I started fishing when I was three years old in Canada. And then they got a place down here, and I saw a guy catch a shark, and at that point it was just the greatest thing in the world. So I would come down here on spring break, and I would just sit on the beach from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wouldn't leave. If my parents didn't bring food, I would starve to death.

Josh Jorgensen: And I became known as the Blacktip Hunter online. As I'd go on the forums — "oh, look at these blacktips I caught" — everyone just called me Blacktip Hunter, and then people started calling me BlacktipH because they were too lazy to type "hunter."

Starting on YouTube in the Early Days

Tom Rowland: So it started on the forums. How does that translate into when you decided you wanted to start making videos?

Josh Jorgensen: In Canada, you talk about sharks — no one there has seen a shark. So I go, "I catch sharks on the beach," and they're like, "Yeah, sure you do." "No, really, I catch sharks on the beach." So I said, okay, I'll film a video and prove it to you. I filmed some videos and put them up online, and that's how it started. And then it just escalated from there.

Tom Rowland: So what year is that? 2006. Now YouTube is experiencing a giant rise in popularity on all different kinds of videos. That would have been a great time to get started.

Josh Jorgensen: I got in in the first couple of years. There were a few other fishing guys on there. It was definitely a special time. I remember the platform back in the day — it was more of a social media platform. There was a friends list. You could add friends on YouTube. So I would sit there all day in class and add as many friends as possible, max that out, wait five minutes, and keep going. That's how I grew my channel back in the day. My views started going up, and the videos started getting more views. I think I had my first million-view video in 2007.

Josh Jorgensen: And that was when Viacom sued YouTube, so my channel got deleted.

Tom Rowland: One of many that got deleted?

Josh Jorgensen: Yes. Copyright infringement. That's when I learned the reality of copyright infringement. I think I was 17 or 18 when it all happened. So then I started another channel called BlacktipH. I had all these videos and had to start over from zero. I started that in 2008. In 2009, I quit it. I said, I'm not doing any more videos. And then in 2010, I came back. I thought, man, it would be unreal if I could just fish and film. And — don't quote me on this — but I think I was the first one on YouTube to use a POV camera while fishing. That was early 2010. I was like, man, this is so cool, I'm going to keep doing this. And I did like 40 videos in 2010.

Physics, Web Development, and a Confusing Year

Tom Rowland: So let's go back to 2009. What happened where you decided this wasn't going to pan out and you quit?

Josh Jorgensen: It wasn't anything about that. At that time, I wasn't making any money really. 2009 was just a difficult time in my life. I was running the Blacktip Challenge, my fishing tournament, and I didn't run that tournament that year at all. I love theoretical physics, but I did not like the education system. When I got in there, I wanted to do math and physics — that's all I wanted to do. And they said, you have to take History of Rock and Roll. I'm like, what does this have to do with physics? I did this in high school. I don't want to do high school over again. So I got so frustrated with the education system, I said, I'm done. I wanted to work for my dad for a year, and then I figured out I really liked web development.

Tom Rowland: What does your dad do?

Josh Jorgensen: My dad sells commercial office equipment. I actually worked in laptop repair. I would take apart laptops and put new screens in — grunt work.

Tom Rowland: I can see why you went back to fishing.

Josh Jorgensen: I really like programming. I like web design, all this stuff with the internet. But going back to 2009 — I don't even think I came down to Florida much that year. I was just so busy with other things in life. I think I came down once or twice and just wanted to relax. Sometimes you just want to go fishing. Like, the stress of the camera, the pressure of getting a show.

Tom Rowland: Well, it's a totally different deal, especially as you develop a crew around you. It's no longer just going fishing with your buddies. This is now an entirely different thing. The goal is to get a show. And that requires other people, and now maybe a second boat and all of these other things. And it can really take the fun out of it — just as it can take the fun out of it for somebody who only wants to fish, and they become a fishing guide. Now they're on the back of the boat looking at the front of the boat thinking, that's where I really want to be. And that's not a good fishing guide. Guiding is an art form.

Tom Rowland: But anyway, you were having a tough year that year because of what? Because you were trying to figure out what you were going to do with your life?

Josh Jorgensen: Yeah. I was just confused. I didn't know.

Tom Rowland: You're 19. Everybody's confused at 19, I think.

Making Microchips with a Nuclear Physicist

Josh Jorgensen: I actually had a really cool job. I was going to Wayne State in Detroit, and I was working at a lab called Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems doing photolithography. The sensor on that camera, everything — that's how we make these sensors. We have to put it in a chamber, deposit gold, platinum, whatever conductor we want on that chip. I haven't done it in a while, so I might be misquoting things, but basically I got to make microchips.

Josh Jorgensen: It was really cool. I really enjoyed it. I got to work under the professor, Dr. Gregory Auner. He's actually one of the top ten nuclear physicists in the world. We had government contracts. We were doing stuff with NASA and the army and things like that, but I can't really go into the projects.

Tom Rowland: At this point, you had studied a lot of that stuff, and you're moving in a direction where this is going to be a career.

Josh Jorgensen: Oh, man. I'll tell you what. I would just sit there and read all day long about black holes and quantum mechanics. It was super nerdy. Mega nerd. Now I do the same thing but for cameras. I'm like a camera nerd now. You've got to be nerding something. I love fishing — I'm a fishing nerd too.

Tom Rowland: I find as I get older, I become more and more nerdy. And if you ask my kids, they'll agree. But I think that's good — you get a passion, you really put yourself into it, and you're trying to learn as much as you possibly can, trying to maintain that white belt mentality. You may know a few things, but there's always people out there that know more. If you're a great fisherman — well, have you tried this kind of fishing? There's a guy that does that every single day.

Local Knowledge and Chasing Moving Fish

Josh Jorgensen: You just brought up a really good point about fishing. I don't care how smart you are, no matter what fish you've caught, no matter how good you are — at the end of the day, it all comes down to local knowledge. How well do you know the spot? You could be the best guide in the world in the Florida Keys, but when you go somewhere new — where do I go? The locals are always going to dominate their water space better. You might have better techniques, better knots, you might be able to do some things better, but at the end of the day you always have to rely on that local knowledge.

Tom Rowland: We saw that repeatedly in the redfish tournaments. Rich and I did the IFA and then the ESPN redfish tournaments. It started in the Keys — there used to be one in Key Largo — and then there'd be a lot of them in Louisiana, even Texas all the way down to Port Aransas. So all the way around the Gulf Coast, down to the Florida Keys, up to South Carolina. We'd have to go there and learn the water within a week because that's about all the time we had. And the locals are totally there, they're on the fish. But what would happen a lot of times is the locals run everywhere. Sometimes we opened the eyes of the locals — "you caught that right there?" I never burned more than a gallon of gas all day, because sometimes you don't know where to go.

Tom Rowland: Andrew Bostick was always the best at that. He always stayed close, and he surprised a lot of people. Whatever he did back in Florida, he'd just go there and do his thing. He'd stay local, stay close, and man, consistent. But there's no substitute for being out there every day.

Josh Jorgensen: I just feel like I'm not dialed anymore. When you're out there and you get on a group of fish — wahoo, kingfish, redfish, I don't care what it is — every fish is always moving. They've got fins. Some fish stay in the same hole their whole life, but the highly migratory species that everyone wants, you've got to stay on top of them. The next day, they're 30 miles north. If you're not out there every day, especially when it comes to filming a show, you don't have time to sit there and waste money trying to find fish. Around this time of year, at this place, they should be here — but every year is a curveball. Sometimes they never even show up.

When the Weather Never Cooperates

Josh Jorgensen: April is a terrible month. I don't think many mahi were even caught in April.

Tom Rowland: Horrible. I find it cyclical. Sometimes you have the big ones, you get the cameras out there, and it obviously doesn't happen. That's the same thing with the fishing tournament. As soon as the fishing tournament rolls into town, the wind starts blowing and the fishing gets terrible. Every time.

Josh Jorgensen: Every time I want to film a show, it's blowing 30.

Tom Rowland: We just experienced exactly that fishing in the Bahamas. We went over there and every fish was a challenge. You've got to put all the cameras up. The forecast says it's supposed to be blowing 25. We never saw 25. It was 30 to 35, blowing so hard. Finally we did get a good day. But the point is, you're exactly right — same thing happens to us. For someone that doesn't film a television show, their relative — their brother — says, "Oh, you've got to come down and tarpon fish with me, it's so good, can't miss in May." Can't miss in June. Bonefishing, redfishing — you've got to come this time. And then they come down, and the brother's like, wow, I didn't even get out.

Tom Rowland: But if you pay your dues and you stay out there long enough, sooner or later you get the thing.

Building a YouTube Empire from Rental Boats

Tom Rowland: So I've got a couple of questions. One thing I've been intrigued and extremely impressed by is that you have created basically a YouTube empire by yourself. A lot of people start out guiding. A lot of people start out tournament fishing. A lot of people start out as a commercial fisherman. Maybe you start out in all of these different ways. You have taken a different road. Tell me about that. I find that incredibly interesting.

Josh Jorgensen: You know what's funny? Certain fisheries I can't do in rental boats, because the live wells don't work or something.

Tom Rowland: It's hard enough in a brand new boat.

Josh Jorgensen: A rental boat is literally a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. That's how I learned the water here — just go rent boats over and over again. Then I said, well, if I'm going to film a show and I want to target a fish that requires live bait, most of the time when you have a live runner boat, the live bait is out. Because 50% of the time if the live well works, it might be this big.

Josh Jorgensen: So when I target fish with live bait, I can't tell you how many cobia I've missed because I didn't have a live well. I've done very well cobia fishing just cutting pieces of banana and crabs, or whatever I can keep alive in a bucket. I look at them almost like blessings. I look back and think, man, that was a great day. How did we have that day?

Why the Abundant Fish Get No Respect

Josh Jorgensen: One thing I want to bring up — I love targeting sharks, my favorite big sharks. I like targeting fish that are fast and aggressive. A lot of people make fun of me because I like catching bonito. But everyone hates what's abundant.

Josh Jorgensen: I'm going to do a trip up in the North Carolina, Virginia area in a couple weeks, and they catch 50-pound reds — the average redfish there is bigger than our state record. And they hate them. They absolutely hate them. But down here, if you had redfish that big, people would lose their mind. Same thing in Virginia — that's the end of the cobia run. They breed in the Chesapeake Bay. People there kind of like cobia, but they go, "that's cobia, whatever, who cares?"

Tom Rowland: Same thing in Louisiana. Same thing holds true for bluefish — in certain areas bluefish are highly sought after, and in other areas it's a trash fish. That's interesting. I've never heard it said like that. People don't like what's abundant.

Josh Jorgensen: Barracudas, bonito, bluefish, sharks, jack crevalle. Look at what a jack crevalle is — it's just a little GT. But people will spend $10,000 to go catch a 100-pound GT.

Tom Rowland: They're a little different. But a lot of people don't like it when I say this, and I don't know if I have enough experience — probably don't — with GTs. I've been to Christmas Island twice. I've been to Australia once to fish for them. I thought they were a little overrated. Now, that's because I didn't catch — and this is what the GT fishermen would say — well, how big did you catch? I caught them from here to here. I can catch the same-size jack crevalle. I didn't think it fought that much harder than a jack crevalle, or at all. But the difference between a jack crevalle and a giant trevally is that the giant trevally can get huge. Can you imagine catching a 130-pound jack crevalle? Okay, so that's not overrated. I understand that part. But I see a lot of people who are super happy to catch a giant trevally this size, and they'll poo-poo a jack crevalle this size.

Josh Jorgensen: I think GTs fall in the same category as bass fishermen. They're always catching the same fish. But I don't care who you are — if you catch a 10-pound-plus bass, everyone's like, that's so sick. Because it's so rare to catch a double-digit bass. And I think the same thing comes with GTs. If you catch a triple-digit GT, it's just unreal.

Split Rings, Solid Rings, and Losing Fish to the Sharks

Tom Rowland: And it's incredible that you could actually bring it in — that it didn't straighten the hooks, that it didn't pull a split ring. We had that happen in the Bahamas where a black grouper pulled open a split ring on a plug. That's a lot of pressure.

Josh Jorgensen: One of my videos — some people make fun of me because of it. It's an amberjack video where we lost fish. And that day, I learned something I never really knew was true. We were using a combination of different manufacturers with jigs, and I learned how important it is to make sure your solid rings and your split rings are actually quality. A lot of solid rings are stamped. They're not polished, not rounded on the inside. If they're not rounded and they're stamped, they have edges.

Josh Jorgensen: Where I fish here — I hope we can get out there this week because they're loaded out there — you've got to fish max drag immediately, because there are 130-pound fish down there. The second they hit it, they burn you. I've hooked fish in 100 feet and they rip you all the way to the bottom and break you off. There's nothing you can do to stop them. And there are also a million sharks there. You think an amberjack fights hard, but an amberjack getting chased by a shark is like putting the afterburners on. That's like amberjack on speed.

Josh Jorgensen: So you've got these split rings and this inertia change. You have very little pressure when you're vertical jigging, to the point where the fish grabs and goes. The stretch on that mono or that fluorocarbon, I found, was actually worse than mono. It splintered. That inertia change — the second that jig was grabbed, the solid ring would cut the knot. Even if you triple up the knot, wrap it around three times, it would still immediately snap it, because of that stretch and the force generated on the loop around the solid ring, and the edges just break it. So you have to look at your solid rings and make sure it's a rounded solid ring. If it has edges, you'll never catch fish in heavy drag. I learned that from that video. Now when I go out there, I can keep them on, but the sharks still get them all.

Tom Rowland: At what point do you decide — we encounter this all the time. We just did it in the Bahamas. We got out on a giant tuna, the sharks are getting them —

Josh Jorgensen: Were you off Great Isaac?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, in the canyon.

Josh Jorgensen: Same thing happened to us. Every silky shark there just eating them all.

Tom Rowland: At some point, you're just feeding the sharks. You have to move.

How Sharks Learn — and Outrunning Them

Josh Jorgensen: You know what I do? I keep trying. People say sharks are stupid. I think they're very ignorant when they say that. This might sound cruel, but if you put a hook in a hot dog and threw it at any dog in the world, they'd eat it. You could hook any household dog. So a shark — yeah, he's coursing you, but I've had days where sharks won't eat anything. You could throw the bloodiest, freshest bonito in the world and they won't touch it. It's based on how fired up they are.

Josh Jorgensen: You're teaching them. Think about those sharks — you're fishing 3,000 feet of water. Those sharks can hear your engines. They can feel the boat. They know, oh, food's here. And they learn. The more boats that go out there and catch the tunas with inexperienced anglers that are just losing them — over time those sharks have learned that. Just like pelicans at the boat ramp: oh, I can sit here and eventually scraps will come to me. The silkies and duskies over there — I experienced this when I was out with Dude Perfect.

Josh Jorgensen: One thing I wish we would have done — I wish we'd have brought some 80s, loaded with 150-pound braid, and then used a PR knot or an FG knot to a heavy mono. Hook the tuna and just drive away. Just put it in low gear and start cranking.

Tom Rowland: That's how a lot of people over there catch the wahoo, with the electrics — they just troll and never slow down.

Josh Jorgensen: That's the only way they can get them out of the sharks. The sharks are horrendous there.

Tom Rowland: They're horrendous off Palm Beach too.

Josh Jorgensen: My buddy had a 100-pound wahoo get sharked. Imagine having a 100-pound wahoo on, seeing the boat, and then it just gets destroyed.

Tom Rowland: That's painful. A tough one because that's twice as painful.

The Shark's Place in the Wild World

Tom Rowland: But the shark definitely has a place in this world, and it's part of it. I always like having the shark there, just like I like having the goliath grouper there. It's like I like having the grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park —

Josh Jorgensen: I like the competition of the wolf.

Tom Rowland: It's a wild place. I like that. And on our discussion of the other fish — as a fishing guide, you make your living, honestly, sometimes on trash fish. The fish that people don't particularly like. Not every day is the perfect target day. You could save the day with some jack crevalle and other things.

Josh Jorgensen: You know what's funny, talking about trash fish? I actually really enjoy catching big houndfish.

Tom Rowland: Houndfish?

Josh Jorgensen: People hate on them. But if you've hooked a legit thirty-six-inch, 40-inch houndfish that's got some muscle, on a 3,000-size reel, man, he screams.

Tom Rowland: They run on their tail for 200 yards. They're very fast.

Josh Jorgensen: Very fast. And they have those huge eyes. I've been bitten a bunch of times by them — they literally try to bite you. But that's a fish on fly. That'd be incredibly fun with a lighter fly setup. And that's a challenge.

Tom Rowland: It's certainly a challenge, because how many people have actually done it? Lots of people have caught permit on fly now, and they're supposed to be the hardest fish ever. Have you tried a mullet on fly? There are lots of different frontiers out there. I don't like it when people dismiss something before they've tried it.

Josh Jorgensen: I'm not a fan of that. I'll catch every fish. Obviously, am I going to sit there all day and catch pinfish? No. But if they're giant pinfish — yeah, why not? Who cares? Put down a 1,000-size reel and try catching them.

The Money Fish and Making the Bonito Cool

Josh Jorgensen: Fly fishing big game is highly prized. People travel for that. If they knew the average bonito in South Florida is 17 pounds, which is giant — man, I tell you what, these guys.

Josh Jorgensen: People say, you've got to come catch the sail. I'm like, dude, those are great fish, don't get me wrong, I love catching them. But in terms of the moneymaker, the bonito is the moneymaker. April is supposed to be an awesome month for mahi. But I know for a fact, in July there'll be 17-pound bonito everywhere. Millions of them.

Tom Rowland: And it's hard to weed through them to get to the blackfin. And again, people don't like those because they're abundant. The blackfin are underneath — that's what everybody wants. I get it. It's just interesting.

Making Videos for the Person He Used to Be

Josh Jorgensen: One of the things that formed my mindset with fishing down here — I didn't grow up in Florida. I didn't grow up a saltwater fisherman. I grew up a freshwater fisherman on the Great Lakes, catching smallmouth bass, catfish, carp, musky, pike, whatever. It was special. It really meant a lot. And I think that's where a lot of people miss the audience. The audience isn't this "wahoo, exclusive permit" crowd. They just want to see fish caught. A lot of people miss that. They go, "oh, we have to film this prestigious fish, this crazy-looking fish."

Tom Rowland: So, of your videos, do you have a sense of what people want to see?

Josh Jorgensen: Very much. I'll be honest — tarpon videos on YouTube don't get a lot of views. Neither do bonefish. I haven't really done a good permit video yet. Unless it's 50 pounds, no one knows how special they are. We did this video — you might have seen it — the mutton snapper on the flats.

Tom Rowland: Very tough.

Josh Jorgensen: Very tough. Very smart, very fast, spooky. We got this awesome show with Tommy in the Bahamas, and it was really special. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is going to be great — everyone's going to look. It's one of the worst-performing videos we had on our channel. Because people don't appreciate that. Only a fisherman who's been fishing for years understands how special that is. In Florida, I know it still happens in Key West, but nowhere else along the coast does that happen anymore. We wiped them out. Can you imagine if we could just go inshore right now and catch that? That's insane.

Tom Rowland: So who do you think your audience is?

Josh Jorgensen: I try to imagine my audience is that guy or that girl who just dreams of going fishing. I make my content to inspire people to go fishing. At the end of my video, if people want to go fishing, I did a good job. I don't care what they want. I catch bluegills, pinfish, sardines on sabikis — it doesn't matter. If the content motivates me to go fishing, I was successful. That's my goal. I want to show different fisheries, do different things.

From Big Sharks to Never Losing Fish

Josh Jorgensen: I used to only do land-based shark fishing. I've got to catch big sharks, big sharks, big sharks. And it just got old on me. It stopped becoming a challenge. Now I go out there and catch 12-foot hammerheads like it's nothing. But before, it was so hard to get these fish, because you've got to learn everything. You probably saw back there those massive spools of mono. Literally, every fish I catch, I cut all my mono off and put fresh 200-pound mono on. Because that mono stretches and gets destroyed. You're fighting that fish for an hour, and that mono is like an elastic band. Once you stretch it too much, it loses its original shape.

Tom Rowland: Your catch ratio goes way up.

Josh Jorgensen: I don't lose fish anymore. The only way you lose them is if you de-hook them or if you get cut off by a reef or rocks. You use a 130, heavy hollow core, 200-pound hollow core — two-thirds hollow core, one-third mono top shot, 200-pound — it's over. You've got them. The only fish that could really —

Tom Rowland: A 14-foot hammerhead, that's approaching a world record.

Josh Jorgensen: There have been a couple of them caught this year, actually, land-based. My buddies fought one on — it's bigger than a 130 — everything was an Everol 18/0, which is like a 150-size. They almost got spooled on that reel. I've seen big fish just smoke reels, but you can really stop them. The biggest one I've had the opportunity of being around, we estimated around fourteen-four. It was really big.

Tom Rowland: Land-based, you caught that?

Josh Jorgensen: Land-based.

Tom Rowland: That's incredible. That really is. That's an incredible catch, because the biggest one I've ever caught was thirteen-six, and that's out of a boat, and you're following it. It's a great fight, a very challenging fish. But it's not catching it off the beach. That's a really exceptional catch.

You Can't Land a Giant Fish Alone

Josh Jorgensen: The only funny thing is — the shark community is a very proud community. A lot of guys beat their chest: "I caught the biggest fish." It's like an ego thing. But when it comes to actually catching a fish that big, whether you're on a boat or on land, you can't do it by yourself.

Josh Jorgensen: You need a crew, especially land-based. That's like going to the gym and saying, I'm going to bench 500 pounds by myself. No one does that. You need a spotter. Two people cannot physically land a thousand-pound fish. And think about a hammerhead or any big shark — they're dragging them up on the beach backwards. That goes against their entire being. So it ain't easy. There's one person fighting the fish, but it always takes a crew.

Josh Jorgensen: A lot of people just like to take credit for a lot of things. You probably noticed that too. You were there, or you helped out, and then it's all about them. "I did everything." No. On a boat, you're fighting a thousand-pound black marlin or blue marlin — if you just sit there, he's going to smoke your reel. You need someone backing down the boat. It takes a crew. You can't catch these giant fish by yourself. It's not possible.

Tom Rowland: And that's where teamwork comes in. I've never been on one of those boats where you have a thousand-pound marlin caught, but I know that is super teamwork. Because there are also people's lives at stake. That thing pulls you in. You're tied to the rod.

Getting Pulled Into the Water

Josh Jorgensen: You've been pulled in by that, by the way.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, tied to the rod.

Josh Jorgensen: I was clipped in the harness and everything. I got yanked in.

Tom Rowland: And then what happened?

Josh Jorgensen: It was actually amazing. I'll tell you what, I've never been so calm in all my life. I was perfectly calm.

Tom Rowland: What fish was it?

Josh Jorgensen: To this day, I still don't know. Some big fish — either a goliath or a bull shark.

Tom Rowland: And you're on what kind of boat?

Josh Jorgensen: A rental boat.

Tom Rowland: And who's with you?

Josh Jorgensen: He was actually the one behind the camera.

Tom Rowland: So it doesn't sound like Johan from Sweden knows his way around a boat that well.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, Johan in the ocean. He was supposed to be spotting me. He turned for one second.

Tom Rowland: Okay. So you go in, and what happens?

Josh Jorgensen: I'm in, I open my eyes, and I'm perfectly calm. And then the weirdest thing happened. It was like God was with me in the water. As I was going down, I started going up. I was lifted up in the water. It was very strange. And I'm so glad it happened to me. The first thing you do if you ever get pulled in — people can panic — you have to back down that drag very slowly.

Tom Rowland: Because you could throw it into free spool and then bird-nest it, and now you're going down to the bottom.

Josh Jorgensen: So that's what I did. I went very slowly. I was super calm. I unclipped from the reel and I swam up.

Tom Rowland: Man, that's presence of mind. That's pretty good.

Josh Jorgensen: It was not a forgettable experience. I'm very glad it happened to me, because if it happened to anybody else, I think they would have died.

Tom Rowland: Wow. Did that change your fishing?

Josh Jorgensen: I made a new rule. What happened was, I caught a bonito, and I was like, oh my gosh, finally. So I threw it out there, blood all over the deck. Now the rule is, make sure the deck's not slippery.

Tom Rowland: You've got to finish it up.

Josh Jorgensen: Yeah. I was too hasty. I was like, oh, I've just got to get out there. So I made a rule change. I guess I'm a little more cautious, but I still fish heavy drag. Like, when I fish for the goliath, we fish on a scale about 120 pounds of drag. And a 120 pounds of drag — you make one wrong mistake with that, you're gone. You're flat out of the boat with that amount of pressure.

Why Mono Beats Braid on Big Fish

Josh Jorgensen: When you're dealing with fish that have speed — like a marlin or a tuna, or even a really big shark — if you put that amount of pressure on them in the beginning, immediately the lines are going to snap. You could take heavy braid, hold it, and if you pull fast enough, even 200-pound, it could snap. It's just the inertia change. That's where mono — you try taking mono and doing that, you can't break mono. That's why I love mono so much.

Tom Rowland: It has stretch.

Josh Jorgensen: And you know what the stretch is like? Braid is like sleeping on a wooden board. Mono is like sleeping on a nice comfy mattress. When you get those nasty headshakes on braid, man, it can rip your shoulder out.

Tom Rowland: A redfish shakes his head like this, and you're seeing the rod just moving a little bit. A tarpon is a little bit more because it's a longer fish. You get a thirteen-and-a-half-foot hammerhead, and it's going like this, and then the line goes completely slack. And then it hits you over here. A lot of people that would not expect that might get snatched off their feet right there as the head is coming back around. There was so much throw in the head that I really wasn't expecting it. That was one of the more challenging things.

Josh Jorgensen: Did you have mono or braid?

Tom Rowland: The first time — every time it's been braid, with a wind-on leader.

Bringing On Guests

Tom Rowland: One of the things I want to ask you: how many videos do you have on your channel?

Josh Jorgensen: A couple hundred. Yeah, 300.

Tom Rowland: In order to keep things interesting and varied, you choose a lot of different species, you go to a lot of different places, but you also have guests. So I want to know about the first time you thought, I need a guest. How do I do this? Who is that going to be? And what does that road look like?

Josh Jorgensen: I actually started doing YouTube collaborations around 2014. I've reached out to guys — let's go fish. When it comes to guests, what I like the most is bringing people out. I'm not a guide, but I have this guide mentality. I love watching people's reaction when they catch a huge fish. You can feel it — the excitement — like, oh my gosh, this really happened right now. It's a surreal moment.

Tom Rowland: And then some of the fish you're pulling up — huge fish.

Josh Jorgensen: I love it. Going back to the trash-talking quickly — I've taken out some people, and they're like, oh my gosh, that thing's huge. They go nuts. It's a nurse shark. Who cares? But they don't see that every day. So it's a big deal.

How One Word Ruins a Catch

Tom Rowland: Isn't it interesting, though — and this is something I'm not a big fan of nurse sharks, and I'm very bad about this, where Rich, on the other hand, is very good about this. The guy knows. He's all about it. "It's a nurse shark, man! Awesome! That's the way to go, man, good job." And I'm like, nurse shark. But I need to be more excited about it when you have someone, especially — maybe by the way he was talking about it, maybe I should even be embarrassed that I caught this thing. And it's just one word. One word can make him have a roller coaster of emotions, from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low. Like, that was a huge fish. Why is that not cool? And then we catch one smaller, but that's super cool. They don't understand.

Josh Jorgensen: I think what happens, especially with people that don't fish, that hire guides — let's just say we're out there catching bonito. It's a 17-pound bonito. If you caught that in Rhode Island or wherever, that would be a state record. But when you start comparing how big that fish is to other fish — the first thing I ever ask people, when I take people that have never done anything: what's the biggest fish you ever caught? "I caught a bass once." Alright. And now you have something to scale whatever they catch — how it fights and everything. So then they start thinking about it and go, oh my gosh, that was just unbelievable.

Josh Jorgensen: It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, when it comes to fishing — are they having fun? They could catch nurse sharks all day. It doesn't matter. Are they having fun?

Tom Rowland: And are they going to come back?

Josh Jorgensen: That's it.

The State of the Sport

Tom Rowland: That's a great attitude, and I love that, because honestly our sport needs help. I think a lot of people are fishing, but in the day and age of video games and more TV and more inside time, the tradition of fishing might not be as strong as it once was.

Josh Jorgensen: I think a lot of people fish now for the wrong reasons too.

Tom Rowland: The wrong reasons?

Josh Jorgensen: Attention. And who are we to talk? We have shows. But when I uploaded videos on YouTube originally, I did it — "man, you don't believe me? Okay, I'll show you." But then they start getting attention. "Oh, this is interesting." And then you start liking that. You start liking those likes. But honestly, sometimes I wake up and I just go, man, I wish there were no computers. I wish I could just go out there and enjoy everything. And I actually struggle to remember things outside of the camera. Because I'm so focused on what the camera's looking at, I forget everything else. When I look back at all those videos I filmed, I really can't remember anything else besides the video.

Reconnecting: Fishing Just for Yourself

Tom Rowland: I think that's because you're in work mode. And there'll be another time when you're in a fishing mode. One of the greatest days I had recently — I went back out to a place that I know very well, Jackson, Wyoming. There's a little creek, Flat Creek, that runs right through the National Elk Refuge. One of my favorite places ever, because I would be a drift-boat guide. I'd take clients over there. We put the boat in, I'm entertaining them all day long, come back. It's very gear-intensive — lots of knots, lots of instruction, lots of stuff. So on a day off, I would go somewhere with no one else, no camera, and I just had a day to myself.

Tom Rowland: It had been a long, long time since I had done that. I got an opportunity a couple years ago to go back out there and spend the day by myself. I'm able to sit, enjoy the day. There's not a camera. Don't have a cell phone. Nothing. I'm back to the most basic form of fishing, and really the reason I got into all of this to begin with. And that's the reconnect part. I don't have a camera. This is incredible. It would make a great video, it would make a great television show, but I'm choosing not to do that today, because I'm choosing to give this opportunity to myself, and not ruin it with all these other things that go with it. A TV show or a day of guiding is something entirely different than that for me.

Josh Jorgensen: It is.

Tom Rowland: When I go into guide mode, a lot of the customers would say, "here, you catch one." Like, I'm good. I don't need to catch one. I'm here for you. This is what we're doing today, and I'm getting great satisfaction, and I feel like I'm doing a good job. I'll just sit here and eat my sandwich. And when you've had a break, then it's time to go back. But then when it's time to fish, it's time to fish. When it's time to film a TV show, it's time to film a TV show. They're all different things even though they're the same. Our reasons for getting into the television business to begin with was simply to show people what had driven us to complete obsession. A lot of people don't get to see this.

Filming the Mullet Run and Working with Nat Geo

Josh Jorgensen: The videos I get most excited for — I had to put a video up every Tuesday. That's my schedule. Some videos I'm not very proud of. Some videos are more like work. But when I actually get a show where we get great footage and it was an unbelievable day of fishing, I'm like a kid in a candy store. I can't wait to edit that video. It's just those banner days that we get where we can capture them on video.

Josh Jorgensen: Like the mullet run. This is going on, and I was like, why has no one ever filmed this? What is wrong with all you people? So I started filming it, Nat Geo style. And down the road, Nat Geo calls me and says, we want you to film with us. I'm like, okay, let's do this. I actually did that this past fall. It was awesome — we got some unbelievable footage.

Tom Rowland: Has that aired?

Josh Jorgensen: It's set to air in 2019. It's going to be one of their blue-chip videos. We had phantom cameras and rays — everything was to the nines. But we had bad weather. We'd just had Hurricane Irma. It destroyed everything. The water was black. It was very tough. It wasn't the best conditions. We tried to do underwater stuff, we couldn't do it. But going back to the mullet run — I really wanted to catch it. It's hard to pick which shot I want to use. Capturing a tarpon busting through the mullet — you only get a couple of those shots every year. You've got to put your time in.

Josh Jorgensen: It's such a special moment. When I capture something on that camera, I'm running and gunning down the beach — I look like a crazy person walking around with this giant camera and tripod. But when you get it — "did that really just happen?" It's like a one-hour-photo mentality. Oh my gosh, I have to go back and watch it right now. I've got to watch it ten times. It's such a special moment. The same thing as when you catch a fish of a lifetime — it's a surreal moment.

The Elusive Cobia and the Problem-Solving Mind

Josh Jorgensen: I'm going up in a couple weeks to try to find a 100-pound cobia. I've never caught one. I really want to get a 100-pound cobia. And if I catch one, that will be one of the most special moments ever. You'll never forget the feeling.

Josh Jorgensen: I really like cobia. I don't know what it is. They're so elusive. People think, oh, they're stupid, they're easy to catch. No. I've been out there many days where you can throw whatever at them and you ain't going to catch that cobia. He's got lockjaw, he ain't biting. I've had days where you just can't get him to come off the sharks or rays — they're glued to them. I'm a very competitive person, so I like to problem-solve it. That's where that physics thing comes in, the programming mindset. Okay, so you didn't eat that — let's try this. I like to figure out, okay, what is he going to eat?

Tom Rowland: You'd like trout fishing.

Josh Jorgensen: I do. I love catching big trout.

Tom Rowland: But the fly fishing on that little creek I'm talking about — that's what you do. He comes out and eats, and you can see these bugs on the water, and you're trying to look at them and see what they are — it looks kind of like this one, and this is what should be hatching. You put the perfect drift over, and he eats it. And then another one, you get him to come out, but he doesn't do it. And then you keep changing flies over and over. You might sit there for two to three hours. They're the same fish, and this fish might be this big. But you can't lose.

Tom Rowland: Change in leaders, change in flies, change in position, doing this, doing that — and ultimately, it happens more times than not, you come back to the original fly that you tried, and he eats it. You'd really like that. Have you tried fly fishing?

Josh Jorgensen: Not really. I mean, I have tried it, but when I see fish, I'm so impulsive. I just go — catch fish, fish, fish. I get so caught up in the moment. I just forget about everything else. But I really want to learn fly fishing, because it's the next level. I feel like it's another challenge.

Fly, Bait, and Boat: There's No Easy Way

Tom Rowland: That's exactly what it is to me. It's just another tool. I started out only fly, and I went down that road and thought, anybody can do that. But I was wrong, because all the other aspects of fishing — it's a tremendous amount of skill. It really took the tournaments for me. Guys are catching bonefish — they're catching 10 bonefish, and we're struggling to catch one on fly. I was like, but they're catching them on bait. Well, until you learn how to keep the bait alive — and now you've got all dead bait because you don't know how to take care of the bait. There's this whole thing: not only learning how to keep shrimp alive, but crabs alive, pinfish alive, how to feed them, all of this stuff. It's this massive amount of information. Yeah, anybody can hook it on the hook and put it out in front of a tarpon that's already chummed up. But what went into creating that situation? To get to that moment, you've got to be able to run this boat. You've got to be able to navigate. You've got to know where the bait is. You've got to be able to throw a net. And there are a lot of guys that only fly fish, and they think, anybody can catch them on bait.

Josh Jorgensen: It's an ignorant statement. I used to be like, okay, I'm going to catch fish from the beach. Boat fishing is a joke. I used to think that. And then you go offshore.

Tom Rowland: A lot of people say that because they never really done it. So they're dismissing something they don't know anything about. That's what I said earlier. I don't really like that, because at some point you develop enough experience where — I think education's cyclical. You learn something. You feel like you really know something. You learn a little bit more and realize, man, I have a lot to learn. And then you learn more and more, and you realize, man, I think I've got this nailed. And you learn a little bit more, and you realize I know nothing. And then you just keep going around that circle. Some people get to the point where they really feel like they know everything, and they just stay there. They never make it that little bit further.

The White Belt Mentality

Josh Jorgensen: If you have pride, pride blocks the ability to learn. You have to be humble. You have to listen. I've learned new fishing tips and techniques from people that have been fishing for six months. They just have a different mind. They may be approaching it in a way you never thought of before.

Tom Rowland: That's what I call the white belt mentality. If you go into martial arts, you're trying — everything's new. And he's showing you something? Oh, okay, I'll do that. The black belt teacher shows you something — well, of course. But as you go up, some people just feel like, man, I'm a purple belt, I'll never learn from a white belt. But the true artists feel like, I can learn from anybody, just like what you're saying. I've learned something from somebody that's been fishing for six months. Who knows? They came across something. Maybe they're a physics person like you and know something you don't.

Tom Rowland: I find that really refreshing to know that you feel like that, because I think that's what fishing is about. That's what keeps me entertained. And if you feel like you've worn out this one little part — fly fishing for trout — try fly fishing for saltwater. Try offshore fishing for sailfish. Try this. Try that. Try a different location. Get your own boat and see how you do. You've only been with guides? Now try it on your own and see how you do. Try it with a rental boat.

Tom Rowland: I can only imagine, man. That's really impressive that you've done so much out of rental boats.

Favorite Guests and What Really Makes a Good Day

Tom Rowland: So of all the people you've taken fishing and all the collaborations, what are your favorites?

Josh Jorgensen: I'm going to be honest. I really don't have any. They've never even been fishing before. There's some NBA player, or NFL, MLB, whatever, and they're like, oh my gosh, this is really unbelievable. And then you do a video with someone who's been fishing their whole life, and they do that same thing — "oh, you caught a bonito? It's garbage, man." But at the same time, you and that person that's been fishing forever catch that quality fish, and you're both rejoicing. Oh my gosh, we just got a 60-pound wahoo. So it's all relative to the environment.

Josh Jorgensen: I've had days where I'm doing a collaboration, and it's not going good. And it doesn't matter — you could be with the greatest person, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, the biggest social media guy, whoever it is. If it's not a good day of fishing, it's not going to be a good memory. You can have a great day of fishing with somebody you don't even know, who may not even speak English, but it was just unbelievable. So it's hard to just say who's your favorite.

Tom Rowland: You're not a favorite. I don't really care who's your favorite. I just find it interesting.

Josh Jorgensen: We haven't even fished together yet.

Tom Rowland: It's getting ready to happen. After a lot of trying to make it work, we're going to make it work this time. How are you getting in touch with these people? How do you select them?

Josh Jorgensen: It's interesting, actually. It's funny how the world works. It's all networking. Somebody's like, oh, dude, my buddy's buddy knows this guy. He's going to be in Miami, Palm Beach, Tampa, wherever. Oh, cool. Let's connect. Let's talk to him.

The Rock, Being Star-Struck, and Flesh and Blood

Josh Jorgensen: I actually reached out to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. I reached out to his crew, and we were talking. We were going to plan a show for his HBO show, Ballers.

Tom Rowland: I love The Rock.

Josh Jorgensen: So we were supposed to do this awesome show together, and it just never happened. It's depressing, but at the same time not — it's just upsetting. But look, I just believe people are people. I don't get star-struck. It's just flesh and blood. That's all we really are. Some people are more elegant speakers than others, but at the same time, flesh and blood. That's the way I approach life and relationships. If I want to fish with somebody, I'll figure out a way to get them fishing.

Fishing with Tito Ortiz and the UFC Fan Connection

Tom Rowland: So what about — I only watch a couple of sports, and at one point they were both very off the grid. I watch CrossFit, and I watch UFC. So when I'm watching your videos, I see all these people, and some of them I don't even know who they are. NBA stars and all this stuff — that's cool, he's really tall. The fish doesn't look nearly as big when he holds it as when Josh holds it. But you got to fish with Tito Ortiz. Great guy. And I have been a long-time fan of Tito Ortiz. Not only did you get to fish with Tito Ortiz, but then you went to work out with him. And I just watched this video and was like, dang. To me, I'm a super fan. I was like, wow, that is so cool. I started wrestling when I was five years old. So I was like, that is awesome. You're in there with Tito Ortiz, and you're going fishing with him. How did that happen?

Josh Jorgensen: I reached out to him. I was like, hey man, let's fish.

Tom Rowland: Well, I saw him one time and would do the same kind of thing. We don't have a lot of guests, but I saw Tito Ortiz. There was a documentary about him going up to Big Bear, training in Big Bear. And he's like, "nah man, I'm training, I'm going to get hurt, can't do that, I'm not going to do that." And he just picked up a fishing rod and was like, "I'll be right here." And I was like, Tito Ortiz fishes? I'm going to call Tito Ortiz. I'm going to get in touch with Tito Ortiz. That was when the UFC was way smaller than it is today. He was a megastar, but the UFC was much smaller. I thought I actually had a shot at it, but I never made contact.

George St-Pierre, Matt Serra, and Meeting the Legends

Tom Rowland: I didn't really pursue it that hard, but he would be awesome. He's a great guy. We had two other MMA fighters on the show at one point. We had Nate "The Rock" Quarry and Paul Buentello. And Paul took me to a fight. He actually took me to the Georges St-Pierre fight. And Georges St-Pierre, one of the greatest martial artists of all time —

Josh Jorgensen: He's really good. He got beat —

Tom Rowland: At the fight that I went to.

Josh Jorgensen: Which one was that? Matt Serra?

Tom Rowland: Matt Serra. Yeah. So I go there, and I was in the second row, sitting with Paul Buentello, and Paul introduced me to every fighter there. And I knew them all. I was like a kid that collects baseball cards and all of a sudden goes to the World Series. I was like a kid that knows all the football stats. And I was just like, wow, I know these guys. All these people that were off the grid. And then Georges St-Pierre — I got to meet him, and I got to go into this room and watch him spar and hit the pads. It sounded like a shotgun going off in that room when he kicked the pad. So I was like, man, I'm a big GSP fan. And I go in there, and he gets hit with a spinning backfist and gets knocked out right there by Matt Serra. I couldn't believe it. But that's the only UFC fight I've ever been to, and I just thought it was really cool.

Josh Jorgensen: He's the beginning of the UFC.

Tom Rowland: At the very beginning. And just awesome.

Josh Jorgensen: I used to watch the UFC all the time.

Tom Rowland: Did you do martial arts?

Josh Jorgensen: I did karate and Commando Krav Maga. No jiu-jitsu, but I learned some stuff.

Tom Rowland: Jiu-jitsu started getting more popular later, to where you could actually find a studio to go to.

Josh Jorgensen: But I enjoyed it. Have you ever done Commando Krav Maga?

Tom Rowland: No. I was a wrestler growing up. I tried a little boxing and also tried Taekwondo, American style. I did that, and I liked Taekwondo, and it helped me in wrestling tremendously because I became way more flexible. What was interesting about the Taekwondo class I took is half the class was stretching. We'd stretch for the first half of the class. It might be an hour-and-a-half class, and we'd stretch for a good chunk of it.

Josh Jorgensen: That's what we do in Krav. We just stretch, like, thirty minutes.

The Grind: 4 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Tom Rowland: So what about you these days, man? Are you staying in shape?

Josh Jorgensen: No. As you can tell in this interview, man, I've been cracking. This chair is killing me right now.

Tom Rowland: Well, you can stand up if you want. So tell me about your life. How do you end up not in shape? Is it because you're just super busy?

Josh Jorgensen: Well, most of the time I get up at four and I work till 7 at night. And it's just so much work. Dude, you saw it in there. I've got papers on the wall — do this, do that. I can never get it done. There's so much stuff.

Tom Rowland: Go through your day. You get up at four. What do you do?

Josh Jorgensen: I'll be honest, I'm not very happy with my morning routine. I could run, but most people don't like getting up at four. I mean, you can ask the audience — you guys don't like getting up at four, do you? I don't think anyone does. So I'm a little tired. That's my news source now — I don't look at mainstream media, whatever. So I'll go on Twitter and see what's happening in the world. And then I go take a shower. I start getting a little crazy sometimes because I like to time myself in fifteen-minute intervals. I try to stay as highly disciplined as possible. Sometimes I get upset — you have five minutes, and you have to stop doing this. Once you make something a habit, then you don't have to keep re-disciplining yourself.

Josh Jorgensen: And what I hope to do — because I know you like exercise — I really want to wake up, go run for twenty minutes, do some body-weight exercises, calisthenics, and then go to work. I think that's my best schedule.

Family, Two Little Kids, and a Brutal Season of Life

Tom Rowland: So your family life — you're married?

Josh Jorgensen: Married, two kids.

Tom Rowland: And, like we talked before the interview, you're on my schedule. You have a two-year-old and a one-year-old. Is that correct?

Josh Jorgensen: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: So two-year-old, one-year-old. How many months between the two?

Josh Jorgensen: It's like thirteen or fifteen months.

Tom Rowland: Dead on my schedule. So I know exactly where you're coming from. And that time in your life is unbelievably difficult, without running a media empire. It's just unbelievably difficult. Like, you're going through the jungle with a machete, trying to figure out what's the right choice to make, how do you time-manage, how do you spend time at work, how do you spend time at home, all that. I remember those things so well.

Josh Jorgensen: You're making money, but you're not making the money you want to make, and it's just like, okay, I need to work more. But then you can't work more. So what I came to realize is I have to be home for dinner. I think dinner is one of the most special times for a family to spend time with each other, because you get to talk.

Josh Jorgensen: And I'll be honest — Tom, I would rather live in a world without cell phones. I held on to my flip phone. I was building mobile websites, and I had a flip phone. I hated it. I was like, I want my flip phone.

Tom Rowland: You're like the guy that can't stand jack crevalle.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, you know what? I never used to text. If someone would text me, I would call them. I would reply, but I don't like texting. Because I knew with my personality, if I get that device, it's a black hole. It's going to suck me right in.

Starting New Businesses and the Cost of Time

Tom Rowland: So let's go back to your morning routine and where you are in your life. You're trying to build your business — you feel like it's in its infancy still?

Josh Jorgensen: Well, I've started more businesses. So I'm doing stuff besides BlacktipH. They're all in their infancy right now, and I'm trying to get them going, but it's just time. Time is the most valuable asset.

Tom Rowland: Do you have people helping you with any of this?

Josh Jorgensen: Oh, yeah. But there's so much to do. I start hiring assistants to do stuff. I'm going to hire someone just to read my mail. I'm sick of reading my mail, dude. I don't even like reading my emails, man. Just stop. I don't know.

Tom Rowland: It's a never-ending deal.

Josh Jorgensen: I want it to be empty.

Neglecting the Body — and the Toll of Fishing

Tom Rowland: So with all of this going on, at some point you neglect your body?

Josh Jorgensen: Yeah. It's not good, though. I've never been the most flexible person in the world, but I like being in shape. I feel like when I used to do a lot more land-based shark fishing, I was in a lot better shape because —

Tom Rowland: You were running, lots of walking.

Josh Jorgensen: A lot of walking, running, pulling, looking. Long days. Sun cooking you up there, sand beating down on you. I really want to build my strength up, because I know I would fight fish better.

Tom Rowland: There's no question. You'd fight fish way better.

Josh Jorgensen: I've got the technique down. I have to wear compression sleeves on both elbows every day. Both elbows are done from fishing.

Tom Rowland: What's your diet like?

Josh Jorgensen: Actually pretty good. I don't like alcohol. I drink no alcohol. I don't do any of that, or smoke, or nonsense. And I do like a lot of carbs — I like my pastas. I take multivitamins. But I have a problem. I do like sugar. I have a sweet tooth.

Turmeric, Inflammation, and Cleaning It Up with Diet

Tom Rowland: Turmeric. You ever tried that?

Josh Jorgensen: I don't know what that is. How do you spell that?

Tom Rowland: T-u-r-m-e-r-i-c. And you can get it in a pill form, or you can — that's a root, and they look like this. You can get it at Whole Foods, and you can eat it straight, but it's strong. This is advertising for Whole Foods. But I was having some — why are my knees feeling like this going down the stairs? And I was like, I haven't been taking all these vitamins I was taking before. And I went back and started taking this stuff, and sure enough, felt a lot better. You can have an inflammatory response, especially from the pastas, the breads, and stuff like that, that can really aggravate stuff like what you have, and you can clean it up with diet. You should try that.

Josh Jorgensen: You know who you need to meet? And he's actually a fan of your show. Have you heard of Layne Norton? Layne Norton is the most talented person I've ever met for nutrition. He's got a PhD in nutrition. I think you guys should definitely connect. You two would talk for fifty hours. When it comes to nutrition, he's a freak. And he loves fishing.

Tom Rowland: I'd love to sit down and talk with him.

Josh Jorgensen: If you're watching, there you are. Let's do it.

Cameras, Fishing, Fitness, and Family

Tom Rowland: You have a passion for cameras. That's your thing.

Josh Jorgensen: It's just cameras and programming.

Tom Rowland: And I like fishing and fitness and family. That's mine.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, family too, obviously.

Tom Rowland: Of course. I think that's super cool. You can definitely get it back, and you're a young guy. You just have to develop that morning routine. I found — even before your stage, it was when my son was being born. He's going to be 21 in December. So 21 years. I was a fishing guide, really working hard on building the business, exactly what you're doing. I'm working every day, and then I'm not leaving enough time for my wife. And there's this delicate balance of — are you moving ahead, or are you actually hurting yourself? Because you're really trying to move ahead, but this is suffering over here.

Finding the Sustainable Balance

Tom Rowland: It's your race car. You stop changing the oil, and all of a sudden that can drag you down.

Josh Jorgensen: That's a good analogy.

Tom Rowland: And eventually you just burn up, just like a race car engine. So what I had to do is — okay, I'm going to get home from fishing and immediately put on my running shoes and go running, or figure out some other exercise. And so then I come home from a long day at work, and now my wife's happy to see me, and I'm gone again. That didn't work.

Josh Jorgensen: That does not work.

Tom Rowland: So I had to figure out — am I going to tell my clients that while they're eating a sandwich, I'm going to start swimming? I was thinking as creatively as I possibly could. How can I get some exercise in this day? Because the day didn't get any longer, so I had to go the other side. I had to go earlier and earlier and earlier, to where the early morning was my time. I had to get up before the clients, before everybody.

Josh Jorgensen: You have that time. Most successful entrepreneurs, most successful people in business — they work long hours. You have to be home for dinner. You can't come home, see your family, and then leave to go to the gym. That does not work. You can't come home, see your family, and then go somewhere else.

Tom Rowland: That doesn't work. It's not sustainable. It's not going to create a happy home environment. You may feel a little bit better, but you're really not going to feel better.

Josh Jorgensen: Your emotional exercise.

Tom Rowland: The only way to get in shape and stay in shape is to find a way that it is actually accentuating your life. It is enhancing your life. You're getting stronger. You're feeling better, and it is enhancing every aspect of your life. And if it's dragging down your relationship, that's a non-sustainable thing. If it's dragging down the time you would spend with your kids, that's a non-sustainable thing. That's only going to go on for so long before something breaks. So you have to figure out where it is.

Waking at 2 a.m., No Caffeine, and Learning Your Body

Josh Jorgensen: When I have days where I have to get a lot of work done, I'm getting up at 3 a.m., 2 a.m. I will.

Tom Rowland: What time do you go to bed?

Josh Jorgensen: 9:10. When I was in university at Full Sail, I would just crash. I can't do an all-nighter, but I can wake up at one in the morning and just grind eight hours straight and then go in at night.

Tom Rowland: Caffeine?

Josh Jorgensen: Nope. No caffeine. No coffee.

Tom Rowland: Waking up at 2 in the morning and working all day long and you don't drink caffeine at all? None? That's unbelievable.

Josh Jorgensen: I have started taking 5-Hour Energies a little bit here. Because what I've learned is, everyone has to learn their body. Everyone's body is different. My body has a tipping point, usually after I eat. For lunch, in order to maintain energy, I had to eat smaller portions. If I eat a big portion, my day's gone. It's over. My brain shuts down. The only way to reactivate it, I know for me, is 5-Hour Energy. I've tried other things — they don't work. I tried caffeine pills. I don't really like the taste of Red Bull. It's nasty. But the 5-Hour does it for me. And I did not like the idea of doing that stuff ever.

Josh Jorgensen: We woke up at two, drove down there for five. It was a three-hour drive, fished all day, and then had to drive back. So I'm on that stretch — the ropes in Florida City and Key Largo. And I'm like, we're going to die. It's not good. So I get into that racetrack right there in the southern part of Florida City, and I'm like, I really hate 5-Hour. I hate energy drinks. That pride in me. But I went and — I felt so ashamed — I went to the bathroom and took it. I'm not joking. And I immediately went, oh my gosh, this actually works. And then I drove home. I was like, heck yeah, man, I'm wide awake. It's a great day. My camera guys are sleeping in the passenger seat.

Tom Rowland: Imagine — 2 in the morning, fish all day, get back home. Back at 10?

Josh Jorgensen: No, I got back at like nine or ten. And we caught no fish.

The Days YouTube Never Sees

Tom Rowland: Those are the days that people on YouTube don't see. There's got to be a lot of those days.

Josh Jorgensen: I have so much content sitting on hard drives. We caught one — you can't make a show on one fish. I mean, you can if it's a big fish. But there has to be some. If you catch one twenty-inch cobia, I ain't seeing the light of day. No way. That gets buried in the hard drives. And maybe when you pass away, your kids can watch and go, oh, look at this terrible day dad had.

Josh Jorgensen: And some people go, oh, 5-Hour Energy is not good for you, it's bad for you. I'm like, look at it — it's just caffeine. It says it's just caffeine. I never drink a full one. When I learned — if you take a full one, horrible. You get the tingles. It's like your brain is firing off in multiple directions at the same time. But if you take a little bit — I take a third or a quarter of it — it's just enough to get over that little dip. Little bit of stimulant.

Tom Rowland: Little bit of stimulant, but no other caffeine. That's impressive, man. You are really burning the candle at both ends.

Sleep, Productivity, and the Body Clock

Tom Rowland: I just listened to this amazing podcast. Joe Rogan had a sleep specialist on — I can't remember his name, but it's a recent podcast. And this guy was talking about the difference between six hours a night and seven hours a night. When you're not getting sleep, basically you're walking around drunk.

Josh Jorgensen: It's funny you say that. I noticed with my body, if I sleep in — if I don't get up at 4 or 3 or whatever — if I sleep in till like seven or eight, I have a terrible day in terms of productivity.

Tom Rowland: So you just have to go to bed earlier?

Josh Jorgensen: Well, that's the thing, but you can train your body to do that. You can force yourself to go to bed earlier. When I go offshore, and it's four to seven or six to eight, out all day — when I come in, I don't care if it's 3 in the afternoon, I'm gone.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Bed. That's another thing that makes it tough on family life. You come home, and now your family is expecting you to entertain them, and you feel like — I don't have anything left. There's nothing left. I don't have any more jokes. I can't even lift my arms up to pick the kids up. You're just absolutely wiped out, and that makes it really tough. But there's a fine balance. You'll come across a balance.

Josh Jorgensen: You probably know more than I do, but I heard your body changes every seven years or something like that.

Tom Rowland: I believe that. There are things that I eat now that don't particularly agree with me. They either put on a bunch of weight because I'm eating those things, or I just don't feel very good. My diet changes regularly. If I eat the way I ate when I was 25, I'd be three hundred pounds. So as you age, you have to change — the stretching and the mobility.

Corn-Fed Country Boys and Eating Real Food

Josh Jorgensen: It's funny — we hear about this diet stuff. I know this is a fish podcast, but —

Tom Rowland: Not to say anything — this podcast, we talk about anything, man.

Josh Jorgensen: So think about where we are today. The records aren't the best from back in the day. My neighbor in Canada grew up in a very small Greek village. I don't even think they had electricity. They lived in the mountains. He told me stories about how there'd be 95-year-old or 100-year-old women carrying buckets of water a mile down and a mile up to get their water for the day. My god, how are they doing that? It's funny — we think we're so advanced. But like you said, you are what you eat, really. People back in the day, they were just eating real food.

Tom Rowland: There's a lot to be said about that.

Josh Jorgensen: Just eating real food. What are we eating?

Tom Rowland: I have this thing I talk about sometimes, and I probably might have talked about it on this show already. When I was a kid, we would play — I grew up in a more affluent area, went to a private high school. And these guys would show up, and they would have mustaches and beards. They would step off the bus. They were all six-foot-two, wide shoulders, small waist — hugest people we've ever seen in our life. We called them corn-fed country boys. They were strong as new rope. It was like they were four years older than us.

Josh Jorgensen: Maybe they were.

Tom Rowland: I don't think they were. We were small, runty, weak, scrawny-looking little team. Maybe we had better coaching. Maybe we had better facilities. We could actually play against them, but there was no question that we were physically overmatched. They came from the outlying areas — in this time, a lot of farm country. On the weekends they're throwing hay. Their meals are what they grew. They were bigger than us. They were stronger than us. And we were eating TV dinners, because that was the thing you could do now. This was a luxury — to eat a TV dinner, sit at the TV, eat some kind of processed meat and dessert and ice cream, because that's what city folks did.

Tom Rowland: Now, as Walmart goes out into the country, maybe the farming's not. Maybe they're not growing the wide variety of stuff. Maybe it's all soybeans. And it becomes a food desert out there.

Josh Jorgensen: When I played hockey, we hated playing the farm boys because they were giants. One of them hit me — scary guys. Nobody liked playing those guys.

The Original CrossFit: Lumberjacks and the Amish

Josh Jorgensen: I believe — I don't know anything about fitness or nutrition — but I believe even going to the gym is so unnatural. I think the way we were designed is to be constantly working. If you're like manual labor, the way we were designed, constantly moving your muscles, your body, your blood flow — everything.

Tom Rowland: You're picking up logs and rocks. They're making a fire. Look at lumberjacks, for example.

Josh Jorgensen: Obviously we don't have many of them left, but when they shook your hand, they'd break your hand. They would shave with their axe. All they did was chop wood all day.

Tom Rowland: You need to go to CrossFit, because honestly, that's what it's all about.

Josh Jorgensen: That's the original CrossFit there.

Tom Rowland: But we lost it. The fitness world got sidetracked with looking like — the reality was 99.9% of the people going down that road were never going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Josh Jorgensen: Just genetics, man.

Tom Rowland: And so what CrossFit has done is bring back this idea of functional fitness. And most of the workouts just resemble hard work. Honestly, that's what it resembles. I find that it's really good. I'm not just a diehard super — I try not to talk about CrossFit, because you know how CrossFitters are, they won't shut up about CrossFit. So I try not to talk about it too much.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, let's talk about a different kind of fitness here, actually. Have you ever seen people from an Amish community?

Tom Rowland: Well, they're hardworking people.

Josh Jorgensen: Have you seen their body shapes? It's insane. It's unbelievable.

Tom Rowland: They eat from the land. I love going to the Amish farmers markets. When you see an Amish community or a Mennonite community, you go to their farmers market where you can get their produce, and it's unbelievably good. So that's what they're eating. Why wouldn't they be strong and strapping people? And also, the Amish are incredible woodworkers. So they're working with wood all the time, and they're eating great food.

Josh Jorgensen: I don't know why they were there, but this group of Amish showed up. And we were like, why are these guys so big? Why do they all look the same? Why do they all have the same build? That's all they do. And honestly, there are days where I just wish I could just be a lumberjack. I know this sounds absolutely absurd.

Tom Rowland: Well, here's the thing, man — that does exist today, and you can fit it into your life. And it lives in a CrossFit gym. You go there and you basically —

Josh Jorgensen: You just said you shouldn't talk about CrossFit.

Tom Rowland: I know.

Josh Jorgensen: He's promoting CrossFit, guys. Just letting you know. Link in the description.

Tom Rowland: That's what it's all about.

Weaknesses That Became Strengths

Josh Jorgensen: You brought up one thing — and I don't think I ever answered the question about my path and how I got to where I am. I got distracted talking about cobia or something. So I was just a tourist that came down here and had a passion. That was my path, basically. Simple.

Tom Rowland: So this is very interesting. And I've asked a number of people this. We'll close out on this, because we're approaching a good amount of time. Keep going — phone calls we've had go two hours, four hours go by. "Josh, dude, I've got to go to work. Sorry, man, I've got to go."

Tom Rowland: So I have this concept that was a theme in my life, and for a lot of successful people I've seen it be a theme in their life. And I want to know what you think about it and if you see it as a theme in your life. So you have a weakness — and we've pointed out several. You don't own a boat. You were a tourist. You're not from Florida. You had no experience fishing for these fish that you're now making a living on. All of these things. Those are all challenges. Those are all weaknesses. Those have become strengths. How do you feel about that? Did you ever think about the fact that your weaknesses have actually turned into your greatest advantage?

Josh Jorgensen: I think so. I think my biggest advantage of why I've gotten to where I am is because I've approached fishing in a totally different mindset than most people that grew up down here. You grow up around something your whole life, and it's not special. So to me, catching whatever was so special. Most people hate catching sharks — they don't even want to look at a shark. To me, that's special.

Josh Jorgensen: So I think that's where my advantages come out. And you say not knowing the fishery — on camera, when I get to see a fish for the first time, a new species, and it's big, I just freak out. That raw emotion, you can't make that up. You've caught 500 tarpon in your life — oh, wow, another one. And I'm not going to lie, I've caught a million blacktips, they're not as exciting as they used to be. But when they hit a topwater lure and they do a backflip, I don't care who you are, I don't care how many you've caught — that's pretty special.

Josh Jorgensen: One of the things I've learned — I'm able to make the bridge between a landlocked freshwater fisherman and a saltwater fisherman. Saltwater fishermen — I'll be honest, and I fall into the same trap all the time — we think we're high and mighty over a freshwater fisherman. We catch bigger fish. We have to have way more technique in terms of how we catch these big fish. There's a lot more that can go wrong. But then you go do a specialty freshwater fishing trip, and you're like, this ain't easy either. Like you saw with the trout on fly.

Challenging Kevin VanDam and the Nature of Greatness

Tom Rowland: To beat Kevin VanDam in a bass tournament — I don't think it's going to happen.

Josh Jorgensen: If we can go back on one of the lakes I grew up on, I think I could put up a challenge with any bass fisherman. Like you said — local knowledge. But Kevin VanDam will probably whip my butt. But I will say this: I would love that challenge. When you say that, man, someone inside me went, that would be a lot. I would love to challenge Kevin VanDam to a bass fishing tournament. That fires inside me.

Tom Rowland: Well, you can do it almost every weekend. It's called the BASS. And he's in it every weekend and going after it, and he keeps winning. He's a beast. And there are a lot of people that say exactly what you did and then dedicate their lives to it.

Josh Jorgensen: See, I don't follow BASS that well. I know Kevin VanDam is the biggest name.

Tom Rowland: What he's done is truly incredible, on the level of Michael Jordan, on the level of LeBron James. And he's managed to do it and maintain total respect for the field. And they have total respect for him. I just think he's done a remarkable job. To me, he's on the level of a LeBron James — LeBron James came out of high school, went straight to the pros, and he's not gotten sidetracked. He's not had issues. He's not been in the news. He wants one thing: he wants to be the best basketball player he can possibly be. And he's made it this long without any kind of scandals. That's on the level of what Kevin VanDam does. He wants to be the best bass fisherman he can possibly be. And at that level, that is the best bass fisherman of all time.

Tom Rowland: And let me tell you something. I know a lot of professional bass fishermen, and they are every bit, if not more, obsessed with it than you and I sitting here talking. They travel all the time. They are constantly thinking about it.

Josh Jorgensen: So if Kevin's watching right now — Kevin, Tom and me want to challenge you to a bass fishing tournament.

Tom Rowland: I'm going to go on Kevin's boat.

Josh Jorgensen: Straight up. No, we all three have our own boats. I'm being serious.

Tom Rowland: I will challenge Kevin VanDam to a permit fishing contest.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, that's a little lopsided there.

Tom Rowland: I would challenge Kevin VanDam maybe to a redfishing contest, but I don't know. He's managed to keep his nose clean the whole way.

Josh Jorgensen: Actually, I didn't know he was that dominant. Like I said, I don't follow it, but that's really special. But I will say this: for me, the bigger the challenge, the more I want it. That's just who I am. The bigger the giant, the more I want to go up against the giant.

Where He's Headed: Back to Freshwater Roots

Tom Rowland: What is the challenge? Where are you going with this? Where are you taking this? What are your goals or your vision for what you're doing?

Josh Jorgensen: I've done the saltwater. And the saltwater is unlimited. The oceans are huge. It all comes down to how much money you have. Do we really want to go and spend tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars traveling to catch these fish?

Tom Rowland: Yes, I do. I would like to do that.

Josh Jorgensen: But the money runs out very quickly. It's very expensive. Imagine a custom 120-foot yacht.

Tom Rowland: With Scott Walker at the helm.

Josh Jorgensen: There you go. It would be special. But at the same time, that's one reason why I felt such an urge to get married. I was fishing five to six days a week nonstop, and I wasn't guiding — I was just fishing, fishing, fishing. Kind of boring, man. Because you're catching all these fish, but at the same time — it's funny, we're never satisfied. The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible says the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing. You think, oh man, if I made a 100 million, I would never work another day in my life. But then you get to the 100-million club, and you're like, dude, that yacht cost 200 million. I want one. Now you're going to make a billion.

Tom Rowland: I think that's a trap people fall into: if I can get here, then I'm going to be happy. If I can get here, then I'm going to be happy. I think the path to happiness is being happy on the way to whatever it is that you're doing.

Josh Jorgensen: It's the process.

Tom Rowland: And it goes back to fitness. That's the way to get in shape. It's not that when I get a six-pack, I want to be satisfied and then lose it all. It's — no, I want to find something I can enjoy all the way through, that is sustainable and enhances my life. Same thing with success or happiness or whatever. You have to be happy on the way.

Josh Jorgensen: If you're not happy on the way, you're doing it for the wrong motives.

Tom Rowland: Where are you headed?

Josh Jorgensen: Saltwater fishing — I think I really want to start getting a little more into the freshwater, going back to my roots in the Great Lakes. I really want to go back. I want to figure this out. The only cost of that is time. Time is very valuable.

Tom Rowland: You couldn't be more correct. It's not a matter of whether or not you can figure it out. It's how quickly you can figure it out. And there again, it's not about catching the fish. What you're saying is that what gives you great pleasure is not catching the fish — you hire a guide for that. What makes you happy, and what makes a lot of fishermen happy, is the act of going up there and figuring it out. How do you navigate this lake? What's the best time of day? Are there tides? Is there all these different factors?

Catching Parrotfish on Seaweed

Josh Jorgensen: Did you see the video — and this is totally going back to absolute trash fish — did you watch the video where we caught the parrotfish on seaweed?

Tom Rowland: Yes. So I don't watch all your videos, but I have watched a few, and that was one that I thought was really cool.

Josh Jorgensen: So we were beach fishing. The pompano were biting. I love catching pompano. But the waves were so big, we couldn't — the line got washed on the beach. We're like, okay, that's not happening. And I had a guest in from out of town, Kyle. He's actually The Fish Whisperer — you might know him on Instagram.

Tom Rowland: I've been following that guy for years. He feeds the bass.

Josh Jorgensen: Super cool guy. So we're like, okay, this isn't working. So now we've got to go to a jetty. I wonder if they would eat a sand flea. I had a sand flea with us. So we start putting sand fleas in a while, because I know they've got to eat something. And I'm like, no, they're not eating that. And then the tide switches. The seaweed starts flushing out. And these things are hanging out in the seaweed. I'm like, is there crabs in there? What are they eating? Then it clicked, dude — they're eating the seaweed.

Josh Jorgensen: So we sat there and snagged seaweed. I'm saying to myself, I can't believe I'm actually trying to catch seaweed right now. This is the one thing I've always hated my whole life. I hate seaweed. So we're trying to catch the sargassum. And then the next day we go there — we spent that whole day, we figured it out. And one thing we learned with the seaweed: if the seaweed starts changing color, they won't eat it. It has to be fresh. The sargassum has to stay alive. So that seaweed was just as important to keep alive as any other bait.

Josh Jorgensen: So we went and got a big glob of seaweed. We put it in the bucket. We changed our water, and we caught like 40 parrotfish the next day.

Tom Rowland: That's super cool. That's a pioneering kind of thing.

Josh Jorgensen: I've never seen anybody do that. It was awesome. I'll never forget that. And I showed my friends and they're like, this is like a world record. How did you figure this out? Everyone was fishing with seaweed, but everyone grabbed a piece of seaweed and then tried to catch these parrotfish. Because that's all they were biting.

Why Bad Conditions Make the Best Fishing

Tom Rowland: The only reason that happens — correct me if I'm wrong — but you're out there to do a video. Nothing's happening. So now you needed to do a video, and this seems to be happening. So you try to figure it out. It's the same thing that happens with a tournament. It's cranking, it's 30 knots. Well, the tournament's still happening. Would you have gone if it was a charter? No. Would you have gone if it was you and your buddy? No. But you've paid to be in this tournament. Everybody else is going. Now you're going in conditions that you previously thought were completely impossible. Probably nobody's going to catch anything, so you don't fish that hard the first time you do this. And then somebody catches something. And it's not BS, because they went on a scale. Everybody saw them. It's real. And you saw exactly who did it, exactly who performed and who didn't. I found that to be incredibly interesting. Can you catch them in the rain? Well, the tournament keeps going in the rain. The tournament keeps going in every condition, and you see who is consistently a performer.

Josh Jorgensen: Of what you're saying — I've noticed some of the most special things happen in the worst conditions. I'll never forget, I'm on the beach one day, it's the most miserable weather you've ever seen in your life, and there are sailfish everywhere jumping a hundred yards off the beach. Like, what's going on right now?

Tom Rowland: Barometric pressure.

Josh Jorgensen: My best wahoo day ever, in Florida — we're high-speed trolling and the storm rolls in. And I've learned this now. Every twenty minutes: bite, bite, bite, bite. We were just whacking left, right, and center. And the moment it started raining, the bite stopped completely. As the storm was ending, just as the storm was ending, the bite turned back on. So they definitely react. And you can only learn that if you're out there on those bad days.

Tom Rowland: If you don't dwell on those bad days, then it's just theoretical. It's probably not that good out there. Or, I hear people kill them on these days. It's not one more thing that you can draw from. Trout fishing makes it really obvious. Freshwater trout fishing — it's very obvious what happens. The storms roll in, the barometric pressure changes, and every insect in the river comes up, and you have this massive hatch. And all of a sudden there's just fish, and then the clouds part and it stops. So it's really super obvious, and you're actually targeting those days. You see that, and you're working toward that.

Josh Jorgensen: There's a spotted fish — I'm not going to name it, and some people listening might know it. If the conditions aren't the nastiest thing you've ever witnessed in your life, you're not going to catch tarpon. The nastier and bigger it is, the better the fishing is. But if it's flat calm and there's no wind, you ain't seen nothing.

Blacktips, Light, and Sight-Feeding Sharks

Josh Jorgensen: You ever see the video of the blacktips I got with the poppers, blowing up and doing backflips?

Tom Rowland: I've seen some amazing footage that you've done with the blacktips.

Josh Jorgensen: I've tried to recreate that day. I filmed that in 2015. I tried to recreate that day for the last three years. Can't do it. It was a rainy — those two days, we filmed that over a two-day stretch — it was rainy, southeast wind. And the most important thing was cloudy. What I've learned with blacktips: if it's cloudy or low light, because of the way their eyes are, they will feed unbelievably. If it's midday, you have to downsize your lure to the point where it's like this big, and with fluorocarbon, for them to even think about it. If you don't downsize your lure and downsize your leader —

Tom Rowland: Have you tried those Spook Ticks?

Josh Jorgensen: They break them. Those things aren't designed for a blacktip. When they jump and spin — I've caught a lot of big fish on those, but even that's too big. You have to throw the smallest one possible. Midday, they won't eat it. It's not the leader. In low light, it's unbelievable. They will bite. My favorite thing is topwater blacktips on those. The second the sun hits the surface, the bite's over.

Tom Rowland: Very similar to tarpon.

Josh Jorgensen: Very similar. And they won't bite. On the beach, you have one advantage over the boat. The boat — because there are so many big hammerheads trying to eat the blacktips — the boat spooks all the sharks. They feel that presence, they feel something big, they shut down. From the beach, you can approach much more stealthily. You can creep up on them. But if you get too close, they're done. Like bonefish on the flats, they're gone. I've thrown — the second the popper lands, it pulls in the other direction. The splash spooks them.

Tom Rowland: It's crazy. Very smart. They're a very smart animal, I think. The blacktip, in my experience — some seem to rely way more on scent, some rely way more on feeling this stuff, and the blacktip seems to be more of a sight feeder. That's what I've always thought — that they're seeing. We would catch them on tarpon flies a lot of times. You're dredging a channel — what was that? And you look, and it's running just like a tarpon, and then it's a blacktip.

Josh Jorgensen: Can you imagine if blacktips were 300 pounds?

Tom Rowland: Whoa. That'd be awesome.

Josh Jorgensen: Imagine how hard those things would fight.

Tom Rowland: That's what you have to do. You have to go there and catch them.

Josh Jorgensen: That's what I'm saying. It's how much money you want to spend. You've got to go to Durban. You've got to go down to all those places. Those trips cost money.

Why Florida Has It All

Josh Jorgensen: The freshwater — we all know this in the industry — that's the biggest market. So I want to go back and relive what I did. I want to go back to the places.

Tom Rowland: Does that mean you would move?

Josh Jorgensen: No. Definitely not. The moment I came to Florida, I knew I would live here for the rest of my life. The only way I'm leaving Florida is if our fishery completely shuts off, dies, and there's no hope of it ever coming back. Then I'd move to Louisiana or somewhere else. But if you're a fisherman — man, it's so odd. Because you can do whatever. If you like bass fishing, you can go catch giant bass. If you like inshore fishing, we've got everything. Indian River Lagoon.

Tom Rowland: Exotics. And the saltwater on both coasts. Very different. And then you go straight down and you hit the Keys.

Josh Jorgensen: The Bahamas is right there. There's so much to do here. Other states — North Carolina has a lot, but you need a really big boat.

Tom Rowland: A really big boat.

Josh Jorgensen: You need to spend the money to go and catch those fish. You can catch the reds and the cobia that cruise the beach. But if you want to hit the big marlin — there's big marlin there — the wahoo, the dorado, the mahi, you've got to spend the money. Just to go to the Bahamas on a 67-foot Bertram, it's like almost $2,000 in fuel.

Tom Rowland: That's an amazing trip. That's a lot of money, just like you're saying.

Working with the Same Crew and Guides

Tom Rowland: That's an interesting thing — when it does boil down to the money, but it also boils down to the time. And that's where a lot of people want to experience this. The time cruncher, the time killer, is you get a guide and he takes you right to it. And you can experience that without having to put in all that time. And that's awesome.

Josh Jorgensen: That's amazing. So a lot of people get on my case, like, "wow, all you use is fishing guides." I'm like, dude, listen. If I go somewhere and I don't know that fishery, or — like I said, I don't own a boat. So if I need to film a specific show that requires reliable electronics and reliable live wells, I'm not going in a random boat. I've got to work with a guy. And I try to keep it the same group of guys. I don't like just going with random people. So how they are on camera is very important. There are a lot of guys that are just a piece of plywood. And that's not good for TV.

Tom Rowland: Well, they may have a wonderful personality, but they just get a little nervous when the camera turns on.

Josh Jorgensen: They get camera shock. But going back — you guys have a business. I'm doing one show a week. So when I travel, I don't have time to waste. We're paying hotel fees. You're spending all this money. You do not have time to sit out there and try to figure out a fishery you've never been to before. That's a waste of money and a waste of time.

Tom Rowland: That's just reality. That's the way you have to do it. You have to understand that. You're going places to increase the variety of your show. You're trying to keep people entertained. And you're not going to make everybody happy all the time.

Dealing with Comments and Haters

Tom Rowland: So that's the final question. How do you deal with the comments? Do you read them?

Josh Jorgensen: I do. I used to respond to every comment. I would even translate every comment in every language. I've run out of time now. So I try to read every comment, but the reality is I don't. There's not enough time. And I'm trying to get better with the fans and interact with them more. When you're not married and you don't have kids, my gosh, man, you can just come home, open up the computer, sit there for four hours, answer comments, put on a movie, put on the game, whatever. But when you have to spend time with people in your life — and like you said, the fitness problem — you just run out of time.

Josh Jorgensen: So the hate comments — I have probably 300 words in my block filter on YouTube. So anything that I don't like, it gets blocked and it's gone. And some people, the haters — you've got to respond back to things kind of. Sometimes some people really irk me and I just go, alright.

Josh Jorgensen: I remember the one time — you had that one guy, when I was working with you guys for your YouTube channel. I'll never forget the comment. I don't know if I'll say it, but —

Tom Rowland: Go ahead.

Josh Jorgensen: Remember they called you Hollywood Tom? They said Rich Tudor is a real fisherman, and Tom just comes down from Tennessee, and he's Hollywood Tom.

Tom Rowland: I don't remember that, but that's interesting.

Josh Jorgensen: You got shook up about it. But then you call me, Josh — I eat ramen noodles every day. I didn't guide, I didn't charter. I wanted to learn my fishery. You paid your dues. But they don't see that. And everyone — the way I look at it — everyone wants to chop down the tallest tree. People want to pick at giants. When you have big numbers, you're on TV, whatever it is, people want to hate. They're not hating us. That's the truth. They're hating that they're not successful.

Josh Jorgensen: Some people will get really successful at doing something so simple, and everyone's like, well, I could do that, no problem. Well, why don't you? Why don't you do it? What's holding you back? It's because they hate themselves. And to be honest, those are the people that I need to pray for. People that just hate on success — most of the time, they're not successful. They're hating on their failures.

Tom Rowland: And they'll never get it, because they're creating a blockage that they can't get around.

Competing Against Yourself

Josh Jorgensen: There's a lot of noise out there. If someone in a specific industry is getting really hot, you're going, what is he doing? You want to study that person. But at the same time, just do your work. Just compete against yourself.

Tom Rowland: Pay your dues. Do your work.

Josh Jorgensen: The more competitive you are against yourself, the more successful you become with yourself. So, okay — I built this tool in twenty minutes. Now I want to build it in fifteen minutes, build it in ten minutes. How can I become more efficient? I used to do two videos a month. Now I do one video a week. Now I want to switch to two videos a week. But if I'm worried about what other people are doing, how am I ever going to keep stepping that up? I can't. So what if I'm catching bonito? So what if I'm catching whatever? It doesn't matter. I'm going out there, I'm having fun, and I'm enjoying my time.

Wrapping Up and Where to Find BlacktipH

Tom Rowland: Well, listen, man. I think we're going to call it here, but honestly, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I love that you have such a positive attitude. I have positive people around me. I don't deal with negative people. I love a positive attitude. I love being around people that are positive and going after it. And you're doing it, man. You're doing a great job. It's been really fun to watch you progress through this.

Tom Rowland: So tell everybody where they can find you, if they're not already one of your followers.

Josh Jorgensen: Follow Tom, Saltwater Experience, check him out. I'm BlacktipH. You can call me Blacktip or Josh or Joshua. Just go to YouTube and type in BlacktipH — b-l-a-c-k-t-i-p, letter H. One word, no spaces. Same thing on everything — BlacktipH, Facebook, Instagram. It's all the same.

Making the Plan: Running the Beach

Tom Rowland: Alright, man. That's awesome. We're going to fish. We're going fishing. I'm going fishing with Josh, day after tomorrow.

Josh Jorgensen: I have a plan. So the plan is to run the beach. We're going to run 30 miles. We're going to cover a lot of water. We're going to look for tarpon, jacks, permit, and cobia on the beach. I'm going to use my drone. I've got nine batteries. Every fish within 700 yards of our boat is going to be seen. Then we're going to head offshore. We're going to run the ledge north, and we're going to go get mahi.

Tom Rowland: Am I having to wake up at 2 in the morning?

Josh Jorgensen: No, no. We'll wake up — I'll get up probably at four. We probably want to start fishing at, like, six.

Tom Rowland: Five. I might need to go to bed now.

Josh Jorgensen: Well, you've got a whole day to sleep.

Tom Rowland: Well, while I'm here, I'm going to do another podcast with another YouTuber, Deer Meat for Dinner — Robert Arrington. So Rob's a great guy.

Josh Jorgensen: Positive guy, great guy, all around a great endorsement. And I don't hunt, but when I was out with him, he's dialed, man. He understands that stuff.

Tom Rowland: I'm really looking forward to getting to know him a little better. I don't really know him very well, but I put it out there to the podcast audience. I said, who would you like me to sit down with? And I had like 25 people say, Robert Arrington, Deer Meat for Dinner. So looking forward to it. It's going to be a very productive trip from the Bahamas — doing this podcast with you, fishing with you, and doing the podcast with Robert. Looking forward to it.

Closing

Tom Rowland: Just look up Tom Rowland Podcast on any of those platforms, and you can hear all of BlacktipH and all of the other amazing guests that we've had. We talk about everything under the sun. Sometimes it's fishing.

Josh Jorgensen: Lot of CrossFit, guys. Lot of CrossFit.

Tom Rowland: You just lost 90% of the audience.

Josh Jorgensen: No. Later, Josh. Alright, dude. See you.

Tom Rowland: Alright, everybody. Thank you for listening to that podcast. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Josh Jorgensen, BlacktipH. Thanks for suggesting him — that was an excellent suggestion. If you have suggestions, hit me up. Podcast@saltwaterexperience.com is an email address that comes directly to me. Fill up the inbox. Overflow it. So many people have really told me how much they like the podcast. So, man, awesome. Let's keep it going.

Tom Rowland: If you enjoyed this podcast, please go to iTunes, rate and review it. The more ratings and reviews we get, the more it gets into the feed on iTunes, and they get it out to more and more people. The more people we can get it to, the more sustainable a model it becomes and to be able to do this for a long, long time. I'm hoping — because right now, it's an experiment. Anyway, thank you for listening to the show. Subscribe so you get every show. We try to put them out every Wednesday. Sometimes we have technical difficulties, but mostly they're coming out on Wednesdays. So be ready, because I sat down with some incredible people. We've got Ryan Nitz coming up. We've got Davis Bennett. Three more YouTube social media sensations, so stay tuned. Subscribe. Thank you. See you.